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One Mind

I love oden. It's a delivery mechanism for my favorite Japanese condiment - karashi mustard. 


Eri informed me just before 9 as I was heading up to my office that lunch would be oden. I spent the next three hours of online work meetings anticipating the goodness.

She loaded up my bowl with the favorites: satsuma-age, hard boiled egg, konyaku, daikon, chikuwa. The standard way of applying the hot mustard is to paste it to the edge of your oden bowl, but I don't like that because then the mustard slides down into the soup and dissolves. I grabbed a little side dish plate, dolloped a liberal little lump of karashi on it, and enjoyed every bite with a healthy burn of mustardy goodness.

Kenzo came up to my office around five and asked for a coloring sheet. Up to recently he'd come in, even during a meeting I was in, and say, "I think I want a coloring sheet." I helped him out a little by telling him it's nicer to ask, "Papa, can you print me a coloring sheet?" He's a good boy and has asked super nicely ever since.

Today he wanted to color Holley Shiftwell from Cars 2 while he watched the movie. He's been collecting and coloring all the characters from the Cars movies and decorating his top bunk bed area.


I got the boys fed while cleaning the kitchen and straightening things up. Today was one of those days where I didn't need dinner myself. I had a little oden, but just a few bites. Last night I ate that big bowl of miso ramen when I wasn't all that hungry and I could kinda still feel it.

I opened up some red wine while I peeled kiwis for the boys' dessert and switched on the living room audio system (actually it's just a bluetooth speaker embedded in the ceiling light). As the boys used their remaining energy up running around the house and making little boy mischief, I turned up one of my favorite albums - One Mind by Ulfuls. 

In particular, two songs on that album hit me a certain way every time - Tomarahen and, a song that I feel was written just for me every time I hear it, Atsui no ga Suki.

Kenzo and Osamu were super hyper, so I turned the music up to add to the mood. Why not. I was cleaning up dinner and getting the bath ready and enjoying their laughing and excitement.

Without me even telling them they put their clothes in the laundry basket (all tangled up however) and went to the bathroom and noticed I wasn't quite ready yet (gotta grab my PJs from upstairs), so they looked at each other and proceeded to do a bunch more laps around the house, giggling and screaming all the way.

I forgot that this album has a bonus section of the best of Ulfuls. The song Waraereba came on. Ohhh man. I just leaned on the kitchen counter and sipped the last of my glass of wine and watched the boys as they laughed hysterically running around the house in their underwear without a single care in the world.

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