My good friend Marc has arrived and we will be touring Kyoto! Marc says koneecheewa!
Category: Family
Noa’s 2006 Soother Collection
Introducing the 2006 Noa Soother Collection
That is all.
Goodbye Chunan-cho!
Today Chunan-cho (仲南町) had their closing ceremonies. I had a wonderful time here and I am going to miss it terribly.
Town Merger – 合併
What do you get when you cross three towns (one of which I live in?)
+ 
+ 
=
That’s right! My little town of Chunan has merged with two other towns (Kotonami and Mannou) to form… Mannou. I now live and work in Mannou town. (Some of you might be wondering why, if we merged, we took the name of one of the towns. Well, it is complicated.. not really but anyways…. the old Mannou was spelt 満濃 (chinese characters) whereas the new one uses the phonetic alphabet まんのう)
The opening ceremony was an exciting affair involving a crazy man on a loudspeaker denoucing the merger, the rope breaking on the unveiling ceremony, and the sheet covering the new town logo tearing after the rope had been fixed.
I am now working in the Mannou town office which is a 15 minute drive from my home. I absolutely love Chunan. It is a fantastic place to live and everyone at my office was very nice. That being said, I am also looking forward to working in Mannou. They treat me the same as the other employees complete with name badge, official swearing-in ceremonies, and a new computer. Yeah for me!
At any rate, Kiko and I are still recovering from our jetlag ordeal. We will have a ton of pictures (and dear I say it…? a new website???) soon!
Love, David and Kiko.
Mannou Town, March 20th, 2006
United Airlines is crap
Is that too angry? Am I allowed to say United Airlines is crap? Should I? Well maybe it is the sleep deprevation and the fact that I am going to work in 5 minutes having just stepped in my house but I will give it a shot anyways.
Wanna hear all the bad things that happened to us? Here is the list from worst to best. (And the one good thing I will give them is that there food is pretty good. Way way way better than Northwest and significantly better than Air Canada.)
My reasons why United Airlines service was bad:
1. They left 4 out of our 5 big suitcases in Chicago.
That’s right. My phone charger, computer chargers, baby clothes, wipes, diapers, EVERYTHING. Despite the priority in our bag, apparently stuff was opened by customs in Chicago (not their fault … I guess) and it missed the flight. Why am I angry at UA? Because our stuff won’t get here until Saturday or Sunday. THAT’S 5 DAYS. If our stuff missed the flight, and its important stuff that we need to live on and keep the baby happy, shouldn’t they be rushing this a little more? We are never flying through America (and thus never using UA) again.
2. The two things that did get through, our bag and stroller, were broken.
Nice. They all had fragile and priority on them but they still managed to break the stroller which we expected to ferry Noa around. Now Noa’s car seat cannot fit on top because the bar is broken in half, and his little eyes have to avoid the jagged plastic from the spot they broke. (It was fine in Chicago, got broken between Chicago and Osaka.)
3. We paid just as much for Noa, who on the way there and back, got to lay in a gym bag on our knees.
We paid for an infant seat (which cost as much as our discount seats) and asked for the "baby bassinet." I am not joking when I say that we had no room between our knees and the seat in front of us. All of a sudden the angry flight attendant gives us a hard plasticy gym bag and says to put Noa into it and place it by our feet. It was physically impossible and I didn’t want to put him in the gym bag. A very nice man changed his seat (and the two empty ones beside him, please note that both he and the TWO EMPTY SEATS were located RIGHT BY THE PARTITION WHERE BABY’S USUALLY END UP SITTING), so luckily we were ok going to Canada. The way back was ok, but we still got the gym bag treatment despite paying the same amount for our tickets for someone who weighed less than my carry on. Funnily enough we sat in front of the nice man on the way back… coincidence.
Arg… I could write more, or less, but I have to go to work now. Hopefully our luggage will arive saefely. I will let you know in a friggin WEEK. 
Love David
Back to Japan
To think that a month has passed! Crazy. I can’t believe that it is alreday time to head back to Japan. Noa has gotten bigger, decided that he only wants to sleep when his Mom rocks him to sleep, we saw a few good friends, spent a lot of time with family and had a great time.
To the good friends that we didn’t see, or the ones we didn’t see enough of, SORRY! 
I would like to blame Noa (it is afterall his fault) but apparently everything is my fault.
I was also super surprised at the amount of things I didn’t get done. I didn’t read any books. I didn’t redo the website. I didn’t see nearly half the people I wanted too… what did we do? We introduced Noa to his Canadian family and I renewed my passport…
At any rate, here are a few more pictures of the good times in Canada. The rest will come once I get back to Japan where my usb cable is waiting…
Wish us luck… its going to be a crazy flight.
Noa and Goggy hanging out. (Goggy is Noa’s great great grandmother (曾曾お婆さん) … that’s 5 generations folks.
Next we have Noa’s favourite person, Tracy. (Note the connection between his favourite person and who is feeding him?)
Introducing Baby Awesome (Thank Scotty and Stacey for the clothes, Brian for the name!)
Noa just hanging out reading his books…
and finally Noa and partaking in his favourite activity…. stripping.
See you when we are settled back in Japan!
Love,
David & Kiko 
I love Daddy -KaPPa Version-
I thought this was a nice picture. (it’s his Kappa hat, from Tracy and Thomas, remember?)
We also decided to take some pictures of Noa’s first snowfall. Suffice it to say, he was not pleased with being made to sit through the second picture.
Friends in Canada part #1
We may be on vacation, but finding time (and a usb wire to get pictures off our camera) is proving to be way harder than it was in Chunan.
That being said, it seems as if we have angered the visitor-gods of this website. Once again there has been a request for more Noa pictures and less pictures/info about us. You are probably visiting davidandkiko.com, so what did you expect!!?? For those of you who visit davidandkikoandnoa.com, you have the right to request more Noa.
Anyways, to boost our popularity amongst the angries, enjoy this.
That is Noa sporting is ulta cool "Tuesday" bib, and Noa in his big boy clothes. That is not Kiko in her pyjamas holding him up. (I suspect that any of you that get to see this picture will be lucky as the not-Kiko-in-her-pyjamas might make me take it down.)
Now, I have said it before: Our main reason to come to Canada this time is to see friends and family. We have had been really lucky as we have been able to spend a lot of time with Mom, Dad, Goggy, Tray and Shane (on occasion. He is going to make it up to us this week.) Fortunately last week we were able to see some friends as well. It is hard for us to get out much, so we appreciate those of you who are able to make it down to Brampton. Hopefully this week we can make it out a bit more and see some of my good good friends in Toronto, Brampton and other places. For not enjoy the first few pictures:
It’s Chris and Leanne. Have a look at the excellent blanket Leanne made. (THANK YOU!!)
(although Noa looks slightly retarded in that picture. Am I allowed to say that?)
We also spent some good times with Trevor, another good friend who we haevn’t seen in ages.
Our good friends Mike and Lara also made it up for a little. We are hoping to get down to their house today.
Finally, we managed to get down to Toronto for a power lunch with Simon (who we haven’t seen in a few years and it was great to see. Thanks for the lunch, we are asses.)
Expect more pictures soon… and yes I am working on the new website. One of these days… 
For all of you who we haven’t seen yet, call! Come to Brampton! Force us to come to Toronto! 8 days left.
David & Kiko 
Noa’s family in Canada
Sorry for the lengthy time in between updates. I know you were all excited about the "right from the airplane" and "automatic timed" updates, but now it’s time for a Canada-update…
Kiko and Noa have decided that they prefer Japan time, and have only recently started getting over their jet lag. I am not sure Noa realizes he is in Canada, but he seems to enjoy the dog’s company. Chloe (maybe some of you don’t know Chloe… I’ll get some pictures up) often tries to include Noa in her games and looks a little hurt when he doesn’t participate.
Anyways, things here are going well. We haven’t really seen all of our friends yet (which is a priority!). Chris and Lianne mde it up to Brampton which was very sweet, and we also got to spend some quality time with Trevor. Still would like to see you all, so give me a call in Brampton and get your asses over here. If not I will try and make some Toronto trips starting next week… I am rambling. (On a side note, did you know that every time I swear in a post it prevents many people from visiting the webpage because those crazy censor-internet-blockers in Japan (and elsewhere) block the website… crazy!)
Where was I? Oh yeah… since Noa hasn’t gotten a chance to see many of our friends, we have concentrated on family. My family is absolutely thrilled (I think!) to meet Noa and Noa loves them. Here are a few pictures of Noa meeting his Canadian family. (I forgot the usb-wire to hook up our camera to my labtop!!! Fortunately we went to Tracy’s house where we were able to get a few pictures up. Thank you Tracy Tracy also has a kickass tablet pc which you can see here.)
Noa also got a chance to meet his aunts and uncles…
… and his good friend Livvy.
More to come…
Setsubun and stuff that I forgot!
This may just be one of the magical/mystical posts that I make while I am still in Japan (getting ready to leave for Canada) but which appears on the site a few days later… maybe. You decide. 
Don’t get too excited. Oh oh oh! Before I forget… Ricky Gervais is my hero. Forget the US version of the Office, take a look at the original Office, Extras, and listen to the podcast. It is really quite funny and provides me with lots of entertainment. Take a look and let me know what you think!!
At any rate, here are a few pictures that I had knocking about. Of some importance is our pictures from Setsubun. What is setsubun? And I quote…
In Japan, Setsubun (節分) is the day before the beginning of each season. The name literally means "division of season". Usually the term refers to the Spring Setsubun, properly called Risshun (立春), celebrated yearly on February 3rd (associated with the Lunar New Year).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setsubun
All I know is that Kiko made Noa and I put on scary masks and throw beans. 
I think there is something about it here…
Spring Setsubun is traditionally celebrated by the head of the household throwing pan-heated soybeans out the door, while chanting "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" (鬼は外! 福は内!). The literal meaning of the words is "Demons out! Luck in!" — the beans are thought to symbolically purify the home. In the Heian era, a famous Buddhist monk was said to have driven away Oni (demons or evil spirits) by throwing beans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setsubun
Enough with the chit-chat, here is the picture.
That was a big build up for just one picture, eh?
Here are a few other pictures I had laying around including a visit by the Kato family (one of my homestay families back when I was in highschool in Japan), Noa and me hanging out, Noa hanging out with his chair, and Noa’s first stroller ride. Enjoy! 
