Return On Investment

It was Emperor Naruhito's birthday today. He turned 65. It was also my boss's birthday. He's 51. The national holiday was for the emperor though.

Auntie Kyla got a crick in her neck and made sure to tell us she doesn't blame our sofa. I loved watching Eri awkwardly putting a menthol compress on her back.

And we did it again. This time we got in the car and drove down to Nagamachi and played and ate at IKEA. They have a kids play area that the boys love but really IKEA is just one giant big box play area where grown-ups and kids can frolic about and nap and eat and impulse-buy.

Also our IKEA has awesome views of the bullet train coming and going from Sendai to Tokyo.

My only impulse purchase was hot dogs. One hundred yen. Two for me and one for Mu. Well I snuck another one in for me when no one was looking but what can ya do. That Scandinavian mustard is so dern good.

We were gonna visit the Sendai Streetcar Museum, one of our favorite places, but luckily I checked online before we went because they were closed, so we headed downtown for more exploring and treasure hunting.

Kenzo in particular was really great at finding the geocache boxes. I wish he would use that know how to find his school name tag on Monday mornings.

We parted ways with Auntie Kyla in Ichibancho. We had to head back and get the car and she had to grab the 17:45 airport train. The boys are so sweet with everyone. They demand hugs and kisses every time they have to say goodbye.

After three days of non-stop shenanigans we arrived home to Eri's delicious vegetable soup for dinner and then quickly headed to the bath, where I accidentally knocked Osamu's loose tooth out a couple of days prematurely. I was just washing his face in the bathtub and the face towel snagged his jingly-jangly loose front tooth and boy oh boy if I hadn't have caught it like the master of hand-eye coordination that I am that tooth woulda been down the drain.

All was well. Tooth recovered. The Tooth Fairy was texted and set to arrive to collect said tooth and leave 100 yen which prompted the boys to ask me again why the Tooth Fairy collects teeth and what does she do with them and I made up a story about how she invests them in projects and when you grow up you'll get some sort of a return on that investment and I hope they never remember I said that.

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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