Skip to main content

Hey Papa

Kenzo's friend Ruan came over after school and they played with the three lizards Kenzo now has. One died the other day and he buried him under the evergreen tree, the same place he buried his beloved first lizard Kiki-kun last summer.

Mama wasn't home yet and I was in a Zoom meeting in my office. Kenzo kept opening the front door and yelling upstairs, "Can we go to 1-Chome Park?" and I muted my Teams meeting and yelled back, "Wait until mama gets home!" and then a few minutes later came, "Can we go to 5-Chome Park?" and I muted my meeting again and shouted downstairs, "Stay on the grass in front of the house and mama will be home in a few minutes!"

Eventually he opened the front door one last time and asked if they could go across the street to look for bugs and I said sure and then when Eri got home she asked me where Kenzo is and it turns out he and Ruan had taken off somewhere.

After driving around looking for the boys I gave up and as I was pulling into the driveway Kenzo came walking up eating some snacks he'd gotten from the neighbors and casually said "Hey papa" as he munched Pocky.


Obviously Eri and I are still navigating the rough seas of expectation-setting for our sons.

After getting canceled on Tuesday because of rain, today was finally Osamu's big zoo field trip. 


I drove him and mama to the kindergarten bus stop. The sky was cloudless and the air was fresh and warm. The smell of freshly cut grass is everywhere this week.


According to Osamu, his favorite parts about the zoo were...


Hanging out with his good friend Kotona-chan.


And feeding the monkeys.

At lunch I walked over to the Yamada electronics big box store to get some gift certificates for the guys who are doing the neighborhood grass cutting this week. The guy at the counter was very curious about me. It's been a while since someone chatted me up about my non-Japanese-ness. He told me he speaks no English but then immediately asked me, in perfect English, "How long have you been in Japan?" Turns out he memorized that one phrase. 

I asked for an official receipt to get reimbursed by the neighborhood association so I had to write some stuff for him and his eyes bulged when he saw me write kanji. I told him I usually have to use my phone to check kanji before I write, but today I just happened to be confident.

The supermarket across from Yamada had pastrami hoagies in their deli so I grabbed one and moseyed home and back to work. Shoulda gotten two. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

Overpriced Highball for the Big Guy

I keep falling asleep at my desk and waking up all groggy and surly in the middle of night, stumbling downstairs to brush my teeth without waking anyone, and slinking back up the steps and into bed. So I was the last one up again this morning, but I made up for it by quickly getting ready and taking the boys out on a Sunday morning walk to look for bugs. Kenzo has been particularly keen on capturing another lizard. He doesn't understand that lizard season is ending and those guys are becoming more and more rare. He got his hopes up when we came across a little one walking up some woodsy steps. After that we took a break. Eri's sister and her husband stopped by to grab the car seats that the boys just graduated from. Their little girl Emika is just now big enough to start using one and next spring she's gonna have a brand new baby brother or sister who will also need a car seat, so the timing worked out nice for all of us. Emika apparently loves Thomas the Tank Engine (who d...
Post a Comment
Read more