This'll Just Take a Minute

I was looking forward to meeting up with my friend Adam for delicious craft beers downtown, but I wasn't looking forward to the walk down to the Izumi Chuo subway station. There's always the bus, of course. And Eri always offers to drop me off in the car. I need my steps, though. And usually I love that walk. But this evening I suited up for a 25-minute jaunt down the hill in  1 °C sleet.  And the effort was worth it. Adam and I had a grand feast of craft beers and truffle pizza and  bagna càuda. The best part was I am certain everyone in that joint thought we were a happily married gay couple enjoying a holiday season date. The beer was magnificent. I think we may have overindulged, but since I hardly ever do I was able to easily rationalize it to myself and feel good again almost instantly. As I was getting ready to leave the house Kenzo was watching one of his Netflix shows and writing in his English book. He had the hot carpet on and a thick, furry blanket was draped ...

Eri does this awesome thing where she uses the food processor to chop up spinach or carrots and then she mixes that into the pancake batter and voila - colorful, flavorful pancakes that the boys love and also contain the stuff they need but often don't eat enough of because they're little boys. This morning was spinach. I think. I got downstairs as the boys were already eating so I missed the creation part. Kenzo got his in the shape of Mickey Mouse and Osamu just announces, using big arm gestures, "Big. Round. Pancake, please." Eri asked me if I'd like a pancake. I love pancakes. They're one of my favorites. However, I'm trying to stay away from sugar and starch as much as possible so I declined. The boys' pancakes smelled so good. Eri had her pancakes on a plate on the dining table, smothered in butter and maple syrup. Without asking, while she was still wrapping things up at the kitchen counter, I swooped in and helped myself to a bite she had alrea...

Right on time for Sendai, the first snow to stick came last night. The streets were fine, but when we opened the curtains this morning all the houses and gardens and cars were topped with a nice white blanket. The boys' kindergarten is located about 8 kilometers from our house, closer to the mountains, so the snow piles up more there. When they came home they told me about playing in the snow with their friends and teachers.  We have this chest of drawers in the tatami room where all the boys' clothes are kept. Eri put labels on the drawers to help them (and all of us) with being able to retrieve and put away their own clothes each day in the proper place. Tonight I praised Kenzo for how well he's been folding and putting away his kindergarten uniform. Up to recently he was just stuffing it all into a random drawer or leaving his shorts and sweater on the floor. In the morning when I open the bottom drawer now, where the boys' bags and other necessary daily items are ke...

My favorite time of the day is reading stories for Kenzo and Osamu before bed time. Even when I'm exhausted from everything, especially the crazy evenings with Eri gone at her web design class, story time is when I can sit down with the boys and attempt to carry us all away into some fanciful other place to experience an existence a little different than ours for the sole purpose of enjoyment. For the last three evenings there has been no story time, however. A record. Eri read the boys a Japanese storybook one night, but papa has been sitting out. The reason is because story time before bed is a privilege, not a right. There has been some pervasive bad behavior in the evenings that has led to some draconian measures, like no bedtime stories. I get it, of course. The boys get excited and hyperactive and it causes them to sometimes get hyper emotional as well. Kenzo is especially susceptible to saying things in the heat of his six-year-old emotional roller coaster. For example, ...

"Why are you taking a picture of your bedroom?" Kenzo asks the best questions. I told him I just liked the way the afternoon light was coming in through the windows. I was about to tell him that that I like taking pictures of the simple and mundane, like the rooms of our house or the streets in our neighborhood, because there will come a day when looking at those images will no longer be simple or mundane. They will be fascinating. We live in an era where photographic images are as easy to capture as they are taken for granted, so we have to be thankful for the opportunity to capture the way life is today so we can enjoy the images tomorrow. But before I could go into all of that Kenzo asked me for his snack and headed downstairs.  Today was Osamu's kindergarten Christmas party, so Eri was busy with shuttling the boys around due to the special schedule and then getting them home for nap time so she could head off to her class downtown. All this while I was in my office me...

Eri has been telling me for a while that I need to go to the eye doctor. Most of the time she tells me this when I'm driving. Sometimes she tells me I need to go see the ear doctor. Curiously, she tells me this when we're having a heated discussion. There seems to be a pattern emerging.  At any rate, I took the morning off and walked over to the eye clinic, and man it was packed. I got there around 9:30 and checked in with my health insurance card and they said just come back at noon. So I did. And it was still packed. There must be more sight problems than I am aware of. After a whole bunch of tests where I stared into lenses and had scans and even an eye test test chart where the nurse tried out various lenses on me, the main doc told me that my eyes are fine. To which Eri was incredulous. She was sure my eyesight is the reason for what she considers my bad driving. My driving is excellent. So is my ketchup art. Eri prepped the rice and I made the omu rice toppings for dinne...

Nine o'clock on Sunday morning and I'm strolling into my neighborhood association meeting, thermos of coffee in hand. When the chairman called me last week he said it would go until noon, so I figured I better bring supplies. I'm so glad I did. They provided hojicha , which is basically the same as chamomile tea except meant to be thirst quenching. Not great for boring meetings. I knew this was going to stretch the limits of my focus and attention, and knowing the demographic of the attendees (the average age was probably around 76) there was zero chance there was gonna be coffee. I am also addicted to my Aeropress coffee maker. It makes a perfect cup of coffee. And every day is a new chance to improve upon it. So I showed up with a freshly pressed thermos of goodness and gave my full attention. The meeting was over by 10. I still had coffee left. Most likely due to the fact that they can't find anyone else to do it, I was pre-selected to be the vice-chair of the neighb...