Tag: kiko

2006 Sunflower Festival

It took a long time, but we have finally put up a new photo-album! We hope to have more to come.

Today we took Noa (and our good friend Lee!) out to take some pictures with the sunflowers on display for our town’s annual sunflower festival. The town chooses a few plots of land (always near our house!) to grow a ton of sunflowers and people from all around the prefecture, and Japan, come to take a look.

Take a look at the new gallery here.

Here is a sneak peak:

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Below are some pictures of Noa, us, and our good friend Lee enjoying the view. (Despite the popular view that Lee is a photoraph-taking genius and is currently trying to raise my photo-knowledge from 0 to some, I see him as my protegee whom I hope to impart some of my fantastical camera skills.) 8)

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Our trip to Naruto

We took a trip to Naruto in Tokushima (our neighbour to the south/east/west) with Ayano-san last weekend. Naruto is famous for “uzumaki” which is like a whirlpool in the ocean. It is supposed to be quite exciting, but unfortunately the two times I have been there have been no whirlpools. The excitement was compounded by 0% visibility due to fog. 8)

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(note the nice new jeans.)

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Note Kiko’s hotness.

Because we don’t have any pretty pictures of whirlpools to show you, we will compensate by showing you pictures of a pretty little baby.

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followed by pictures of the behemoth Japanese baby who is younger than Noa but looks like he is about to eat Noa (with his 3 teeth. Noa has no teeth yet.)

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(Noa’s expression signals that he is distressed by the presence of fat baby-san beside him.)

And finally… here is a picture of me putting Noa to good use.

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Tanabata Festival

Here I ago, attempting once again to explain some sort of Japanese festival thingy that I don’t know very much about. So with wikipedia in hand, here I go.

Tanabata (七夕 lit. seven evenings) is a Japanese star festival celebrated on July 7th (or August 7th, according to Wikipedia. What’s up with that?)

Apparently there is some story where two people (stars) , Orihime (織姫 lit. seamstress (vega)) and Hikiboshi (彦星 lit. boy star (altair)) are seperated across the sky and connected by a river of stars. They are only allowed to meet once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar.

There you go! Apparently it’s an old chinese mythology.

I am lazy, so watch me copy the rest from wikipedia:

In present-day Japan, people generally celebrate this day by writing wishes, sometimes in the form of poetry, on tanzaku (短冊, small pieces of paper) and hanging them on bamboo, sometimes with other decorations.

The bamboo and decorations are often set float on a river or burned after the festival, around midnight or on the next day. This resembles the custom of floating paper ships and candles on rivers during Obon.

Many areas in Japan have their own Tanabata customs, which are mostly related to local Obon traditions.

And now we have some super neat pictures of Kiko, Noa, and I celebrating our first Tanabata together in Manno (aka. Chunan).

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Noa Update #5

Just a few more pictures we thought you would enjoy. (I am still working on our albums… so… umm… don’t get too excited.)

Although I always suspected, I was convinced Noa is a genius when I saw his sleeping pose. (Note the raised leg and holding of the cloth. Can you do that?)

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To really know Noa is to know that he loves nudity.

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Here is a picture of Noa just hanging out with his Mom.

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That is all.

A bit short on pictures…

I am a bit short on pictures because Noa and Kiko are still in Canada. 🙁

It’s quite sad actually… but do you know what is keeping me going while they are gone?
Super exciting World Cup excitement. For an entire month people that usually have no interest in soccer get together to watch some soccer! There always seems to be an increase in the amount of games me and my lazy ass friends play, and it is a great opportunity to get together with friends that you hardly ever see and watch a game.

I seriously am in love with the World Cup. I am also in love with the thumping Ghana gave the Czechs, in love with the winning goal I scored in the Mitoyo-shi Mini World Cup (don’t even get me started on that… it was a fabulous goal, and perhaps my first goal of the year), and in love with the excitement of different matches everyday on TV.

(Umm… ok… about my fabulous goal, it was actually a fairly average goal due to a large mistake on the other teams part, and came after 2 very badly missed headers on extremely nice crosses. I hit one cross with the very top of my head, and the other with the very top of my nose. Both were fabulous (and by fabulous I mean ridiculous). But I am pretty sure my goal makes me the best player in Kagawa, so there.)

I am also very excited because tonight (tomorrow morning, whatever…) Japan will completely destroy Croatia in preperation for completely destroying Brazil in their final match. It should be very exciting… (and no more of this retarded conceding 3 goals in 10 minutes crap.)

Do you want to know what else I am excited about? Skype. My user name is davidbennett1979. I think you should add me. It allows me to have very clear and free conversations with my friends and family, and while Noa and Kiko are in Canada, allows Noa to not forget who I am! It really is super exciting. 😮

have a look!

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Noa updates

Since we haven’t updated in awhile, many of you have been asking for some Noa updates. 😮

I’m getting a little stressed myself as I won’t see Noa for a little while as I will be heading back to Japan a little earlier. 🙁 I guess I will have to visit the website to see Noa too!

Anyways, here are some recent Noa photos. He crawls, he speaks (sort of), he sleeps…. and he still looks like a girl. (apparently.)

We are going to get him a haircut any day now…

Noa  Noa  Kiko and Noa

Just to set the record straight…

it turns out that baby’s eyes do in fact grow. Both Kiko and I had read (separately, in Japanese and English) that the eye was the only part of a baby that didn’t grow. Apparently we were wrong. Very wrong.

Because baby’s eyes look so large in comparison with the rest of their face, it is a common misconception that the eye does not grow.

There you go… learned something new. Sorry guys! 😳

Although the circumstances were the worst possible, it was great seeing so many of our friends. We look forward to seeing you all in summer.

Dinner with friends  Dinner with friends