Town Merger – 合併

What do you get when you cross three towns (one of which I live in?)

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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. emoticon

 

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! emoticon 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.

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Next we have Noa’s favourite person, Tracy. (Note the connection between his favourite person and who is feeding him?) 

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Introducing Baby Awesome (Thank Scotty and Stacey for the clothes, Brian for the name!)

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Noa just hanging out reading his books…

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and finally Noa and partaking in his favourite activity…. stripping.

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See you when we are settled back in Japan!

Love,

David & Kiko emoticon 

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.

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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:

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It’s Chris and Leanne. Have a look at the excellent blanket Leanne made. (THANK YOU!!)

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(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.

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Our good friends Mike and Lara also made it up for a little. We are hoping to get down to their house today.

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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.)

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Expect more pictures soon… and yes I am working on the new website. One of these days… emoticon

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 emoticon