Parenting School – 両親学級

David and I went to parenting school last weekend. David doesn’t know much about Japanese parenting, so I think it was good study for him. Now I will soon be 8 months and my stomach is very heavy. David had to wear a suit and see how hard it is for me and my stomach. emoticon

  先週末、初めて両親学級なるものに行ってきました!Davidにとっては初めての事ばかりで「ほほ~」なんて感心したり納得したり・・・いい勉強になりま した。妊婦体験スーツを着て床に落ちている物を拾ったり寝転がったりして、8ヶ月の大きいお腹がいかに大変かを実感したようです。

Davids suit   Davids suit   Davids suit   Davids suit

(edited by David) Here is another one for good measure!

ps. Why the hell did they have to add breasts to the suit? I feel and look and am retarded.

Davids suit

 

My Day …

Well, it was actually yesterday, but I had a pretty crazy day. Not only was there a killer typhoon, but a number of other … stuff … happened. Here is a quick summary.

 The Good emoticon

Look at my new printer? It is an Epson PM-A870. It is a copier/scanner/printer all in one. It specializes in photos and also has a negative scanner as well as memory card inputs to print your photos directly. The thing is a beast!!

    in more ways than one. It’s friggin huge. Here, take a look:

 newprinter.jpg

It prints fantastic pictures by the way!! Super friggin excited. 

 The Bad emoticon

MY COMPUTER BROKE!!! Not only did it break a little… it broke a lot. 🙁 I am very sad. It wasn’t my main computer, it was the Linux machine that runs my MythTV server, my phone server, parts of davidandkiko.com (the parts you guys don’t visit!) and held davidandkiko.com 4.0. (We are skipping 3.0 in case you didn’t notice…) 

  What the fuck? emoticon 

So there was a typhoon yesterday, right? Anyways, I wish I had taken a picture, but there is this dog that is always locked up outside of his house. (like every other dog in Japan.) He always barks but is super lazy so just kind of wanders around his little house barking at people half-assedly if hes not too tired to get up. Because my computer broke I was depressed and decided to head out in to the typhoon for some lemon coke. A little part of me expected to not see the dog there, the day of one of the biggest typhoons to hit Japan in a long time.

… he was there alright, but don’t think his owners didn’t care. In front of his little house they had nailed up a peace of light wood. So this poor dog was locked in his house and nailed shut by a flimsy peace of wood that didn’t cover the entire door.

Nice…

Anyways… on a brighter note here are some more exciting pictures. (Yes, I am trying to draw my readers back with bribes of pictures.. bastards.) 😉

kaito.jpg

A big congratulations to our good friends Mike and Tomoko who recently added "Kaito" in to the mix. Look at how cute he is? When my baby is older he is going to wrestle Kaito… or something.

How about a picture of Kiko’s little garden pre-typhoon? She loves it.. most of the plants blew away though. emoticon

 

augustgarden.jpg 

And finally… since I’m all about giving the people what they want, here is what everyone needs. A giant kiko. (photo by Greg!) Thanks!

giantkiko.jpg 

That is all.Love David & Kiko

Monster Bash 2005 & More Tokyo

Monster Bash 2005 – Yes… it was pretty exciting. I got to see exciting bands such as Orange Range, Dragon Ash, rize, and Yaida Hitomi with my good friend Greg emoticon. It was a lot of fun! (I have pictures to prove it!) (and movies to! – try them!) (How was it Greg?)

For those that don’t know, I live on Shikoku. Now nothing really exciting happens on Shikoku. However, once a year, a really big musical festival comes to Mannou Park, which happens to be about 5 mins from my house. (Incidentally, mannou is the name of the town I will be living in after Chunan merges with the surrounding villages.) The venue is super beautiful and the weather was co-operative.

… too co-operative. You will be excited to learn that I had an allergic reaction to my sunblock. Stoopid ass Japanese sunblock. I didn’t realize until after I let it soak in the sun for an entire day. I now look like the Phantom of the Opera. I don’t think it will be going away anytime soon (and I have a big C on my chest for some unknown reason.) Stop the excitement.

See how beautiful the concert was…

 

Monster Bash   Monster Bash   Monster Bash

Here are some movies I took at the conert. Keep in mind that these were taken under duress as I had an angry man trying to prevent me from filming.

Orange Range 1    Orange Range 2    Dragon Ash 1    Dragon Ash 2 

This last picture is Kiko, myself and my very good friends Nakanishi-san (whom some of you have met!) He is a super nice guy and took us to Jojoen, one of the best yakiniku (Korean BBQ, read: super good) places in Tokyo. It has a fabulous location overlooking Shinjuku and is fantastic… and expensive. THANK YOU!!!

Nakanishi-san

Flying Noodles

Not so much to everyone in Canada, but to our friends and neighbours in Japan, I often get asked to explain why we choose to live in Chunan, Kagawa Prefecture. (and don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a choice to come here, rather, it was a choice to remain here.) For those of you back in Canada, it would be like a Japanese family coming from Tokyo, Japanemoticon to up and move to the-middle-of-nowhere, PEI. emoticon(think Milton, but smaller and in PEI.)

 Why!?

Well, for one, my farming. Couldn’t exactly be doing that in Tokyo… and it’s cool. Secondly, flying noodles. nagashi somen is a dish where noodles are placed in a water pipe and fly down the ramp. You have to grab them from this water slide and eat them. Chris Houston and Trevor had the experience when they visited me in Japan in 2002, but I have never been lucky enough to do so… until now.

 here, take a look.

 

Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen   Flying Somen

What made this experience absolutely fantastic was the hardcorednessemoticon of it all. One of the teachers at one of the elementary schools I go to (who’s house this was held at) went to the forest, cut his own bamboo ramp, smoothed it out, set it up, and then proceeded to make enough glasses and sauce containers for all of us. He apologized for not having enough bamboo left over to make the chopsticks, but suffice it to say it was pretty cool. Everything was homemade, and it was a lot of fun. (That and I was amazing at catching the flying noodles…)

Earthquakes & The Embassy

emoticonEarthquakes

 

That was a crazy earthquake today. It wasn’t particularly strong where we were, but it was long. About 2 minutes exactly. I was actually sitting in a McDonalds reading my book when it started. Nice and gentle, and then slowly getting stronger. Everything was ok at first, no one seemed to notice or care, but after a minute of it not stopping people started to freak out a little. Man, Tokyo is going to sink one of these days. 

Here is a picture of me at the embassy. Yes. Yes, I am aware that I look like an old man. Many people have pointed it out. I like to think it’s just the business clothes… sigh. I don’t suppose anyone has any advice on how to look cool and still buisnessy at the same time? 

daveembassy.JPG 

Recently…

Other than yesterday’s exciting Jet Journal news, here are a few pictures of what we have been up to the past few days.

It has been very hot, and very busy, but our very good friends from California were in Japan, and we got together in Okayama to see them for a few days. Their kids are crazy cute.

One of Kiko’s best friends, Sanae, has some very good news and is up from Tokyo to visit her boyfriends family in Takamatsu. We were really happy to be able to see them (and Kouichi for the first time!)

Finally, a very nice family, the Yamauchis, had Kiko, myself and Greg over for a great BBQ and a magic show. Don’t get me started with the magic show, the kid is amazing. I have some on video and hopefully I will start getting video up on this site.

Anyways, e-mail me and post in the ugly shoutbox already. Don’t say I don’t love you. 

Also, look at the pictures already.

Friends in Japan Picture   Friends in Japan Picture   Friends in Japan Picture   Friends in Japan Picture

Oh yeah… also had a Jamaican cooking class with semi-real Jamaican food and a real Jamaican. It was actually really good. Curry chicken, rice and peas and pepper jelly. nice. I know you’re jealous.

Jamaican cooking picture

 

A few more pictures from Canada

I finally managed to pry a few more pictures off of my cellphone. This is Kiko, Chris, Franz & I celebrating Chris B’s birthday at a very good restaurant: Banzai sushi. I still owe him a present though… (not that seeing me wasn’t present enough mind you…) ps. Franz was kind of enough to treat Kiko and I to dinner. Thank you!! (my brain was not working, and I apologize, but upon reflection I could have used that as an opportunity to give Chris a birthday present and pay for his dinner. d’oh. chris, forgive me!)

 

chrisfranzdavidcanada2005.jpg   davekikojuly2005.jpg

The Sunflower Parade

I thought this post was going to be more exciting… (as you can see we have the first ever baby name poll happening to your right, SO VOTE!) but things have been pretty hectic. emoticon

We are finally getting over our jetlag, and even though my school visits are over until September I am preparing for the arrival of the new JET‘s to Japan as a member of the Tokyo Orientation Committee and the Kagawa Orientation.

This Friday I also have a Jamaican Cooking day in my town. Apparently I am in charge so I am going to try and make something resembling Jamaican cooking. They also are trying to get me to sing some Bob Marley… umm… no.

Other than that, I am reading Harry Potter 6 (yeah!) and am getting ready for a busy summer:

  1. July 30th to August 3rd: Tokyo Orientation (in Tokyo)
  2. August 5th: Kagawa Orientation
  3. August (dunno): Interning at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo (yeah!)
  4. August 25th: Kagawa Orientation #2
  5. Rest of my life: Baby.

My town is known for sunflowers (and frogs, and rice, and being a really small town) and their festival was actually a lot crazier than I thought it would be. Take a look! (click on the picture to go to a gallery.)

2005 Sunflower

Here is a picture of me being a Japanese ninja archer from like 2 years ago. I ran into it on my computer a few days ago. I’m cool. 

I am a Japanese Ninja