Say Something In American

School lets out at 13:25 for the lower grades, and once again I timed my walk so I could meet Kenzo on his way home. I was closer to the school today so there were kids everywhere walking through the neighborhood on their way home.

Kids were saying hi and one boy asked me if I'm from America. I said yes. He asked me to say something in "American" so I started talking about the weather and he ran off.

Fumi-chan, the girl who lives across from the park, saw me and yelled through the crowd of kids, "Kenzo, your dad's here!"

I'm thinking maybe I'll just refrain from meeting up with him from now on. He seems fine and pretty much just ignores me anyway until all the other kids have gone off to their houses.

Today was the day all the teachers went around to visit their students' homes to confirm where they live and probably to report anything suspicious. I can only imagine what some of those teachers have come across when they visit kids' houses.

Kenzo's teacher parked her car next door and I saw her walking up the steps. Eri was out picking up Osamu so it was just Kenzo and me. I said, "Hey, buddy, it looks like there's a salesperson coming."

He ran to the window and saw who it was and exclaimed, "Ayana-sensei!"

These visits aren't really for parent-teacher conversations per se, but I went out to greet her and we chatted for a few minutes and I found out that Kenzo listens to instructions nicely and seems to love writing. She said we can schedule a meeting any time we have concerns.

I recorded dinner time tonight. The boys were wound up as usual and Kenzo was especially losing energy fast. The conversation tonight went back and forth between English and Japanese, as it does, though I think tonight since mama was pretty talkative it leaned more in the Japanese side. I hope when the boys are older they enjoy listening to these.

Comments

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I absolutely should not be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep. But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time. When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it. I looked down at my l...

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