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Packed Saturday

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 the world, but Tsurumi Ryokuchi... we were blessed to live right next to it and I spent every possible moment there with baby Kenzo on my back. He did his first real walking at that park.

I'll go more into why I love my dentist (and Osaka) at some point, but for now it's enough to say that I started going there two years ago after some trial and error when we moved back to Sendai. Eri went first and sang their praises, they are a seven-minute walk down the hill from our house, and they claim to love it when Kenzo and Osamu join me to "observe" my teeth cleanings even when they go around and touch all the dental instruments and cause general havoc.

But that's not what this blog post is about.

It's about our relaxing Saturday morning, which feels so rare these days. Eri did public television exercise and the boys tried to be interested. 


It's about the boys learning how to be good brothers and good people as they make flatulence jokes and jump off the sofa like Mexican cliff divers. They grew a little more today and even though they quarrel like house cats their net gain is always love.

It's about my walk. When the boys settle down for their after lunch nap I always go out and enjoy Izumi-ku on foot. Today I walked a course that took me to Dounji Temple, then to Izumi Chuo (where I got some free samples of fried chicken), and through some back roads back up to my neighborhood.




The boys woke up soon after I got back and asked if we could go to the park. The answer was big ol' yes of course. Why not? We love the park. The only question is, which park?



We hit up 3-Chome Park because Kenzo wanted to play soccer and there's more space for that than the park in front of our house. Of course, the boys got distracted by our neighborhood friends.



The nice folks who live in front of 3-Chome Park came home from an outing and invited us in as always. I ended up practicing guitar chords in their back room with a cold can of beer while the boys played and ran amok. We are so lucky to have such kind neighborhood friends.

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