Just Chat About Whatever

The sun came out but everything was still covered in a good thick blanket of snow when we took off for the first soccer Saturday of the year this morning.

The boys were shaking with excitement on the drive over, and we listened to the Coco soundtrack again in the car.

One of my favorite parts of the week is snack time with the boys on Saturday mornings. While Osamu's kindergarten group plays Kenzo and I walk over to the Yamazawa supermarket and grab snacks and sit and talk in the little cafe area they have set up with free green tea. We just chat about whatever is on his mind and I cherish it. When Kenzo's elementary school group starts I do the same thing with Osamu.

When Osamu starts 1st grade in April he'll join the elementary school group and my days of spending two hours at soccer will come to an end. I talked about that with Kenzo and he suggested that from April we just go early, do snack time all together at like 10:30, and then they can be on time for 11:00 soccer start and even have enough time to get there early to warm up with their friends. I told him that's a great idea.

I had a dentist appointment at 14:30 and soccer ends at noon so I figured we had enough time to go over to the mall and check out this Beyblade event I heard about.

The Beyblade demographic is exactly as expected: 5 to 9-year-old boys. And they all had their gear with them.

I should've read the fine print on the flyer I saw because it wasn't just a thing where Toys R Us sets up Beyblade stuff and welcomes all comers. They were having an actual Beyblade tournament with sign-ups and you have to bring your own stuff. Oh well. We had fun anyway and I'll prepare better next time.

They have these events every month. It's genius marketing. They were moving some serious units.

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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