Skip to main content

Ulterior Motives

Mr. Chihuahua stopped by. I had never seen him wear a necktie before.

Eri and I were talking about him recently. We were afraid maybe his health wasn’t good. He’s an old guy who lives a few blocks away and he walks his chihuahua Sakura-chan by our house every morning and every evening. But we haven’t seen him in a couple of months. 

I pass by his house sometimes on walks and was morbidly on the lookout for one of those signs that people put out here that somebody has passed away. 

Turns out he’s fine. Very fine. Thank goodness. But it also turns out that Sakura-chan might not be so fine. We told him we were worried about him, and he said that his chihuahua hasn’t felt like walking recently and her health may not be very good. 

I don’t know what his job is, but he wears a necktie for it. I thought he was retired. Whatever he does, he rides a scooter there and this morning he stopped in front of our house for the sole purpose of delivering snacks to the boys.


And then we proceeded to embark on a glorious Saturday. First day of July. Birthday month. No soccer. Just pure at-home, early summer, mid-rainy-season fun.


Kenzo goes through waves of being in need of mama and being in need of papa. This morning he was in need of papa. I don't begrudge it when he rejects me, but I absolutely soak it up when he needs me.


Eri was gonna serve up some avocados to the boys, but the avocados turned out to be not quite ripe yet. So she did her magic with a recipe for rescuing hard avocados and I was the beneficiary. It turned out to be one of the best breakfasts I have ever had.


Then came the main event.


For the third year in a row, and this time scheduled perfectly, we headed up the back road from our house to the Takahashi Blueberry Farm. 



Economic times are hard, so they raised their prices a little. So we in turn informed Kenzo on the way there that he was "in kindergarten." I did some quick rationalizing because I don't want the boys to get used to the idea that lying to save money is a virtue. In the car, as Eri was explaining the plan, I reinforced the idea that we are not going to lie, but we don't have to say everything.


I distracted the boys outside while Eri got the tickets and all was well. Since Kenzo is pretty scrawny and his little brother is clearly a kindergartener nobody was the wiser. 



Plus Kenzo had ulterior motives that didn't involve eating a ton of blueberries in 45 minutes.



He brought his bug box and from the moment we alighted from the car he was on a mission to catch frogs.


And caught frog after frog. They were everywhere.


You can tell Eri was super excited as well.


After dinner it was time to celebrate summer. Jinbei and fireworks.

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

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

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...
Post a Comment
Read more