This'll Just Take a Minute

The good news is that Los Angeles International Airport is still by far the worst airport on earth. It's nice to know that in a world which is constantly changing, some things stay constant. The boys loved it, though. So many animals these days. I guess they're the emotional support animals. There was a big dude who looked like Michael Clarke Duncan and he had an emotional support boxer. We saw people napping on the floor, a lady breast-feeding next to the pretzel stand, gigantic people wearing yoga pants, dirty restaurant tables with apathetic staff, flight delays without apologies but lots of excuses, unbelievably friendly baggage check-in staff, and much more. My head was spinning. After a full 25 hours of trans-Pacific travel, a hotel shuttle in the middle of insane late evening traffic, late night fish and chips and beer at the LAX Sheraton Hotel, a hot bath, and nine hours of sleep, we got up and checked out just in time to catch the shuttle back to the airport and take o...

We're sitting in a hotel restaurant at 11:30 p.m. waiting for fish and chips and a Heineken. It's our last ounce of energy before we crash completely out.  It's been 25 hours since we left our house and I snapped this picture before getting in the cab to the subway station... Our flight out of Sendai was in the late afternoon so we had all morning to pack and prepare, but somehow we just barely made it out of the house in time. I'm trying to beat the boys at their own game by outdoing their crazy faces when we take photos, but I'm losing apparently. Kenzo and Osamu were excited to pack their own backpacks for the trip. Kenzo packed exactly what I thought he would: his monkey, a Pokemon monster ball, a robot pterodactyl, and his pencil case. Osamu packed light and pragmatically; just his magic wand, made from a piece of rolled up paper. Makes sense. If you forget your toothbrush just wave that wand and conjure one up. When we checked in we bumped into our neighbor...

There's a mention of tap shoes in one of the boys' new favorite books, If You Give a Pig a Pancake . They ask me every time what tap shoes are, so I act out tap dancing, which they are very curious about. Then the other night I Googled Gene Kelly and we watched a YouTube clip before bed. That led to this... They discovered the movie Singin' In the Rain , and they laughed like crazy. After about halfway, though, they moved to on to other shenanigans. Specifically, birthday shenanigans for Kenzo. He's been counting down the days, and he loves cake. Osamu loves getting a birthday cake but he usually has two bites and is done. So now we have a five-year-old and a seven-year-old in the house. In a failed attempt to keep Kenzo occupied this morning I was printing him mazes while I wrapped up the last day of work before my summer vacation. He kept coming back every few minutes with a completed maze and asking for a harder one. Finally he decided to simply taunt me. He wrote on...

I'm standing across the street from our neighborhood flower bed and trying to get a good picture but I just don't have the skill. I hope when Kenzo and Osamu see this in the future they'll know that papa and the whole neighborhood worked really hard to make this summer's flowers the best ever. It really is worth slowing down for when you drive by. There's a picnic table under a gazebo right behind the flowers. I can't think of any reason not to have breakfast or lunch there every day. It's gettin' spicy with the travel plans. Four passengers. Six passports. Twenty hours of travel.

I'm at the dining table doing some writing and sipping red wine. Eri's getting ready to go to bed. She turns back to me and takes a breath and is about to say something, but then just looks at me for a beat. "Nevermind. It's your birthday." I sleep with the windows open in our bedroom. On these dog day summer nights Eri bunks with the boys so she can enjoy the air conditioner. Last night with Kenzo gone at Friends Club summer camp it was just Eri and Osamu, who appropriated the top bunk in his big brother's absence. A relatively quiet morning. It was weird. Osamu said he missed Kenzo, but he was also living it up being the full center of attention. He also made a cool 30 yen helping me wash the car inside and out in the hot morning sun. He loves using the hose. Who doesn't. When Kenzo got off that bus from camp in a tie-dye T-shirt he made, it made my day. He went swimming, ate curry rice, had ice cream, played games, and best of all his lizards lived thro...

Kenzo's been looking forward to Friends Club 1st grade summer camp since probably last time this year when he came home from kindergarten summer camp. His good friend Kengo, who's in soccer club and was Kenzo's first kindergarten buddy, was equally excited. Kenzo insisted that he take his two lizards with him as well. Eri and I were talking tonight about the likelihood that one or both of those little reptiles won't return. She's skeptical. I think Kenzo might actually come home with more than two lizards. And so it was that Osamu, for the second time in his life, had the house and mama and papa and all the toys all to himself for a whole 22 hours spanning from Saturday after lunch to Sunday just before lunch. He didn't waste a second of it. He went with me to Higashi Park at 5 o'clock for flower bed maintenance and even though all he did was try to catch grasshoppers and bump into old people he made off with a cold bottle of barley tea.

Now both of these guys are on summer vacation. Today Eri told me she's worried because she might not make it to the end of summer vacation without a breakdown. I told her I understand. And that today is the first day of Kenzo's first grade summer vacation. We've got about a decade and a half of these to go. She took the boys to Nanakita Park. Luckily the rain let up a bit. Kenzo and Osamu are getting more confident with the "big boy" stuff like the zipline.  Kenzo's Friends Club teacher sent him a birthday card. Even if they didn't do stuff like this I would still gladly pay for the school tuition, but getting birthday cards and participating in consistently well-organized and fun events that often include hot dogs and hamburgers makes it a no brainer.