This'll Just Take a Minute

There's this app on my phone that I used to use pretty much daily. Then I stopped cold. Today I opened it for the first time in a real long time. According to the activity log the last trip I used it for was March 28th, 2020. I was traveling back to Sendai from Nobeoka in Miyazaki Prefecture. Japan Rail was canceling trains and the apps hadn't caught up fast enough so I ended up missing my flight home because, well, no train when I thought there would be one. I caught a flight to Osaka, stayed the night by the airport, then hopped on the first flight to Sendai the next morning. And after that we all barely went anywhere for a long while. Today I went on a business trip. After a full two-and-a-half years. To Kanagawa. I rode the bullet train. It felt kind of familiar but also refreshingly new. The ticket system is paperless now. You just pay for your tickets online and scan a QR code at the station and you are off. As I walked away from my house and down to Izumi Chuo to catch t...

I walked down to Izumi Chuo for lunch with friends. When I get to the bottom of the hill there's a pedestrian overpass, I suppose since crossing the Route 4 could be precarious for some folks who might not be able to move so fast along a wide crosswalk. It seems they are finally refurbishing this thing. I noticed scaffolding. Thank goodness. These rusty, crumbling steps are gonna give way at some point in the not too far off future, and I cross several times a week. We did food truck cuisine by Izumi Chuo Station.  Recently a more wide variety of food trucks has been showing up. I had a Taiwan burger - super fatty and tender pork in a steamed bun. The nice lady asked me if I'm okay with cilantro and I told her to load it up. A lot of people in East Asia can't do cilantro. They gag at the thought of it. One of my best friends is Korean and one time when we were at a Mexican joint in Seoul he accidentally had a tiny nibble of cilantro and his face swelled up like a veiny pum...

This is the top of the path leading down through the graveyard to Dounji Temple. I walk through here at least three or four times a week. Today the air was perfect. Hot sun, cool breeze. The cicadas are starting to calm down. A little. Watching the seasons change through the lens of this particular location excites me. I look forward to my visits here. I also regularly come across snakes and get bit by gnats and mosquitos here. Apparently the temple was established in the year 1338. If you come visit me in July I'll take you there in the evening to see fireflies. If you visit at any other time I'll take you just to take you. We can go across the road and have fried chicken. Eri took the bus and subway downtown this morning because she's enrolling in a web design course. I'm excited for her, but also nervous because the class is every weekday evening for four months. We're gonna have some family adventures for sure. I showed Kenzo how to use his police pistol to pick...

My eyes open around 6:30 a.m. No alarm clock today. It's Sunday. Eri's been sleeping with the boys in their room since they're going through a needy phase. Good for me because the last couple of nights have been cool and I looooove having the window open. Eri is sensitive to the elements so she tends to close the window, though often politely after I conk out, which on average takes between 70 and 95 seconds. This morning I can't move though. My body and my mind are immobile. Technically, if there was an earthquake or a ninja burst in through the sliding glass door I could muster up something. Although, who knows. This happens every few months. I just run out of fuel, physical and emotional. If the Kool-Aid Man burst through my bedroom wall there's a good chance I would just lay there and accept my fate. Eri and the boys were busy. She took them shopping with their own money for the first time. They've both been working for me doing special jobs like cleaning ha...

That noise in your brain when the dental hygienist is scraping your teeth. Fingernails on a chalkboard, but inside your skull. I'm sitting in the dentist's chair (they keep getting comfier) and the lady is sandblasting the plaque off the back end of my lower jaw and there's music playing and it's "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins. It's 2022 and I am getting my teeth cleaned at a neighborhood dentist in Sendai. Kenny Loggins. After that some recent local pop came on and I could zone out again. I enjoy it when western music randomly comes on in places where no one has a clue about the cultural context. The most extreme version of this is when super dirty rap music comes on in a Uniqlo fitting room or at the mall. I love my dentist. In Osaka we had a great dentist, and that was one of the many things we had a hard time parting with in 2018. My amazing 1000 yen barber too. And Tsurumi Ryokuchi Park. I realize there are tons of amazing parks in the country and in ...

I am an idealist. I am an optimist. I am a realist. I am a pragmatist.  And yet if you were to drill down on any of these labels with me I am certain you would find evidence that I am not any of those things. And furthermore, you might even find that I don't even truly have an understanding of what those things even mean. It's been about a month, but I went back to my Friday night group therapy tonight. I wrote it on the family calendar and Eri came in to my "office" this afternoon and said, "You're going, right?" To which I did what I always do and kind of turn away and avoid answering, as if she's just going to forget we had this exchange and move on to something else. I do the same thing all the time in a variety of ways... I need to do ___. I don't feel like doing ___. I decide to not do ___. Eri says I should do ___. I put off ___. I then do ___. I feel great after doing ___. Aaaaaand repeat. So I went tonight. I walk. From my house to the s...

The boys went back to kindergarten today after a solid five week summer vacation filled with barbecues, water guns, bike riding, bug-catching, fireworks in the driveway, donuts for dinner, Covid fevers, Netflix binges, running up and down the street with the neighborhood kids, ice cream, a trip to grandma and grandpa's house, and more but I'm tired just thinking about it now. Kenzo was especially excited to put his school uniform on this morning after the long break. He and Osamu even put on an undershirt. True professionals.  Since Eri quit her job at the end of last month, she's dived back into full-time mom mode. She's so amazing at it too.  Over the last month I've been kind of taking advantage of the leeway time in the mornings to stay up a little later and sleep a little later in the morning. It's afforded me the chance, after everyone else goes to sleep, to read without checking the time, go for a cool nighttime walk without worry, and watch some TV show ...

Little by little the mornings are feeling cooler. It's been a long, hot summer. Days that have topped out at thirty-five degrees (or higher) were more than enough this year. Maybe I'm closing up summer too soon. It's only August 24th.  I definitely got some heat exhaustion. I stubbornly walk (gotta get my steps) during lunch breaks even though it's the hottest time of the day. I refuse to use the air conditioner because the fan is fine. Objectively I know it's not about the electric bill. That hardly changes. I'm possibly just a stubborn middle-aged guy with my own brand of misguided horse sense. This morning, though, we had all the windows open early. It was clearly gonna get hot later, but at seven in the morning the air was relatively dry and kinda felt cool. The living room curtains were pulled wide open the way I like and the boys were eating breakfast at the dining table while Eri and I went about our morning routine. Mr. Chihuahua walked by. He's the ...

I was walking up the steps from Dounji into the Koyodai neighborhood, part of my usual walking course, when I came across another gaijin dad with his two little boys. Often I've got an earbud in listening to a podcast, but today I was just enjoying the sounds of my own inner voice, so when I got to the top of the steps and greeted this trio I was in full "Howdy how are ya!" (not a question) annoying-but-what-can-you-do American mode. After all these years of being a human I still do that stupid thing... make assumptions about other humans. I just thought another relatively tall caucasian guy would be an English speaker. And maybe he is. And maybe he had assumptions about me. And maybe he just wanted to be left alone with his two little boys. And maybe he was surprised to see me. And maybe his wife is Portuguese. And maybe he's South African. And maybe he's my long-lost cousin. Any assumption I could make would be a roulette spin on a wheel the size of the planet....

On these warm, sometimes sultry, August nights I really like sleeping in these v-neck cotton undershirts. I have a small rotation of shirts I sleep in during the summer, but those cotton v-necks are especially comfy. After an evening bath with the boys the feeling of that cotton just makes me feel like it's time to settle into evening cozy time, even though I'm not gonna do anything particularly cozy except read my book and go for a cicada-serenaded walk. In the morning I usually trade out the undershirt for a work friendly polo shirt, maybe the occasional necktie if I have an important Zoom call with a customer or my boss. He always asks me why I'm wearing a necktie and I always give the same sorta honest answer: "Wearing a necktie makes me feel more official, and if I feel official then maybe one day I'll be official." That's not exactly what I say, but close. This morning as I was getting set for my pre-work 30-minute walk I thought about how I always...

The boys and I set off at 8:35 this morning for the "new" traffic park. New to us anyway.  It seems like it's been longer, but it's just been four months since we went on our  Loople adventure that would change the course of the year - nay, the course of our lives. Back in April the boys and I took the subway downtown to ride the tourist Loople bus that goes around to all the main sites that folks like to see in Sendai. I can't wait to take friends and family on it when they visit. The all day pass that includes the subway fare to anywhere in town is such a great deal. The thing is, most of the stuff on the Loople route is really cool, but my partners for the day were 3 and 5 years old. Shinto shrines and mausoleums are not gonna do it for them. I learned my lesson after taking them to the dinosaur exhibit at the natural history museum a while back; you gotta pace yourself.  So we're on the Loople, which is a cheesy cable car shaped bus but pretty cool becaus...

A few Saturdays back I forgot the boys' soccer balls. We keep them in the shed outside and we just took off for soccer without them. I realized it about halfway there and the boys were evenly split between "Go back!" and "Keep going!". I kept going. That was foolish.  When we got there I told the coach we forgot our soccer balls and he did that face that says, "Then why are you even here?" in the most polite Japanese way of course. I left the boys at soccer and raced home, grabbed the balls out of the shed, and high-tailed it back. It's 5 kilometers one way, and it's Saturday morning, and it's suburban Sendai. And I am not used to just leaving the boys, except for kindergarten. I don't even know if it's technically okay to leave them there without a parent. It was a journey of emotion and mad summer sweat. Today we didn't forget the soccer balls. We don't any more. Soccer Saturday means remembering four important things: 1) ...