Nothing But Words

View at Picasa The Toyoda House, in Zushi16-Jun-2004 15:26, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.006 sec	View at Picasa Zushi streets16-Jun-2004 15:26, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.017 sec	View at Picasa Zushi beach16-Jun-2004 18:52, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.002 sec
View at Picasa Looking for Little Critters16-Jun-2004 18:53, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.006 sec	View at Picasa The Kamakura Buddha16-Jun-2004 20:25, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 7.1, 5.40625mm, 0.003 sec	View at Picasa The Buddha's sandals16-Jun-2004 20:21, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.01 sec

Right after finishing my last blog entry, we took a 10 minute stroll through the narrow neighborhood roadways in Zushi, and arrived at the beach. Kai loved it, but it was one of the most poorly maintained public beaches I’ve ever seen. From what Maria tells me, it’s fairly typical for a Japanese beach. There were empty cans and used fireworks everywhere, no lifeguards, and no amenities of any kind. It made for a stark contrast with the cleanliness of everything else I’ve encountered in Japan, where even the subway toilets are immaculate. It’s interesting that beaches are one of the few types of public spaces that Americans are generally good about keeping clean, while it’s the only type of space I’ve seen so far in Japan that isn’t spotless. In addition to the garbage, there were bits of pottery all along the shore (I’m bringing home a cool little tile I found that contains a portion of a natural scenery painting). Maria says she remembers playing with them when she visited Zushi as a child. My guess is a cargo ship loaded with pottery sank in the bay at some point.

After returning from the beach, Maria’s aunt, “Big Auntie” came to visit, and we drove with her and Makiko to see the giant Buddha statue in Kamakura. From there it was lunch at Denny’s (Japanese Dennys look just like American Dennys, but they have no American food). Makiko drove herself and Big Auntie home, while Maria, Kai, and I strolled to what we thought was Zushi beach, as Kai really wanted to go there again. We had fun among the old bottles and used bottle rockets, and then we started to stroll back to the house. But we couldn’t find the path we were looking for. I took out the digital camera to compare the shoreline to the pictures I took in the morning of the Zushi beach shoreline, and we realized we were not at the same beach. It turned out to be the Kamakura beach, so we hailed a cab, which drove us back to the house in Zushi.

Back at the house, Maria and Big Auntie went through a box of memorabilia that was left to Maria by her grandmother. It mostly contained documents written by her grandfather. He was an officer in the Japanese navy, and quite a Renaissance man: there were brush paintings, and numerous letters, including a gripping one he wrote when he got some very unexpected orders to leave the Japanese embassy in New York, 72 hours before the Pearl Harbor attack (he left all his belongings behind and just made the last boat leaving from San Francisco). There was also a copy of a published paper on a discovery he made in the field of fluid dynamics.

We finished the day with dinner back at the Toyoda Compund (Maria’s aunt made sushi for us), and we were very happy when Kai’s stroller was delivered from the airport.

We made it! We arrived last night at Narita airport (near Tokyo) and then took a train to Zushi, about 3 hours south. We’re staying at Maria’s aunt’s house.

Total door-to-door travel time: 25 hours

Hours slept while traveling: Mike – 0, Maria – 1, Kai – 4

Kai playing in the Philadelphia airport before our flight View at Picasa Kai playing in the Philadelphia airport before our flight15-Jun-2004 04:49, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.017 sec

Even with the 13 hour time change, we all slept well last night. Kai was really good on the plane. He actually didn’t watch many DVDs – he just played endlessly. He spent about half an hour pretending to stamp our passports, an hour with his toy cars, half an hour pretending he was flying the plane, etc, etc. He was only difficult a couple of times: the little bugger bit me when we were changing planes in Chicago (he’s never done that before – I guess he was really wound up), and he had a mini-meltdown when we arrived in Narita, which was just due to exhaustion. On the plane I read all of Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. It was an obviously polemic but hilarious book. The only thing that went wrong was that United forgot to send our stroller from Philly to Chicago. So I had to carry Kai around the airport in Chicago and Narita. But they gave us a loaner and will bring his stroller to us later today.

The rule is that you always have to forget at least one thing when you travel, no matter how well you prepare. I remembered the digital camera, and I remembered the CD to install the software on Maria’s new iBook, and I remembered the recharger for it. But I forgot the cable for connecting it to the computer, which means I can’t download the pictures. Maybe I’ll be able to track one down when we get to Akihabra (“electric town”) next week. So my entries in the meantime will be pictureless [Since returning, I've gone back and added the pictures]

Our tatami mat room at Maria’s aunt’s house View at Picasa Our tatami mat room at Maria's aunt's house17-Jun-2004 06:36, Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 2.8, 5.40625mm, 0.017 sec

Today is a day for visiting with Maria’s relatives: two of her aunt’s three daughters are here in the house with us (Akiko and Makiko), and Makiko has a baby boy. And one of Maria’s other aunts, known as “Big Auntie” (aka “the Flying Nun”, as she’s a nun who gets around) will be coming to town to see us too. We’re taking it easy today, since we’re still adjusting to the time change. We’ll probably go to Kamakura this afternoon, mainly just to see some shops. Then tomorrow we’re off to Aomori in northern Japan, for Maria’s conference.

The house is new, but it’s built on the property that’s been in Maria’s family for generations (the old house was in disrepair, so they had it kncoked down and replaced). The house is loaded with gadgets. The tub has a control panel, but since it’s all in Japanese, I just kept hitting buttons randomly. Then it started talking to me (in Japanese), at which point I gave up and got some help. The toilet seat has an automatic heater, and there’s a armrest on the right hand side with a bank of buttons and blinking lights. While I was brave enough to experiment with the buttons on the tub, I was not quite so brave while sitting on the toilet, so I have no idea why a toilet would have so many buttons. And everything from the lights to the air conditioners have remote controls. At the same time, it’s a fairly traditional Japanese home: many of the rooms have Shoji screens instead of doors, and we slept on tatami mats.

I deserve congratulations for managing to type this entry. I’m using Akiko’s laptop: the keyboard layout is different from a US keyboard, it’s got a Japanese version of Windows, and it took me a while to figure out how to stop it from converting my English characters to Kanji.

I was most of the way through writing my post for Part II of “Anachronistic & Implusive” when my browser crashed. Grrr. I’m almost out of time now, so I’ll have to try it again later.

I’ve been doing the single-parent thing since Maria left for Japan, so my posts here have become more infrequent. But that’s only temporary.

My brother John arrived yesterday, and he’ll be helping me with Kai until Maria comes back at the end of the week. I’m glad he’s here! I don’t know how single parents do it: even doing something seemingly as simple as taking a shower can be a challenge when there’s no one else to keep the boy busy (Kai’s actually good at keeping himself occupied – it’s more that I can’t really keep an eye on him – so I guess it’s more of a worrying parent thing). And you can definitely forget about doing certain things, like mowing the lawn.

Rather than driving straight here from Arizona, John actually drove home to RI first. He and a friend of his made it across the country in about 48 hours. What a couple of nutcases.

Last night John and Kai were looking through Kai’s infant photo album. John pointed to a picture of me holding Kai the first day we brought him home, and said to Kai “that was your Daddy when he was 16″ (for those who might not know, I was 30, but I guess I didn’t look it). So apparently the past few years have aged me!

Sunday morning, when Kai got up, he asked me what the words on his pajamas said. He was wearing his Old Navy pajamas that have cool drawings of toy cars all over them. I told him the words said “Old Navy.” To which he responded, “no Daddy, look: O-L-D N-A-V-Y. It says ‘Hot Wheels’.”

And Kai has a girlfriend now: Emme. She’s the same age, and lives a couple blocks down the street from us. They like to go for rides in Emme’s wagon, and they have conversations like they’re 35 years old. They talk about the work their parents are doing on their houses, they compliment each others clothes, etc. I know Kai really likes her because he’s always on his best behavior around her, and he goes into total showoff mode. We’ll see what happens when they’re teenagers…

Sorry for the slowdown in my posts here recently. Kai and I were sick for a few days last week, and then Kai was hit with Spring allergies. This is our first Spring in PA, so we weren’t prepared for this mini-cataclysm. He’s been having a hard time sleeping because of coughing (due to post-nasal drip – yum) and uncontrollable scratching (due to hives breaking out all over his skin). While in general it’s a good thing he inherited more traits from Maria than me, he unfortunately inherited her allergy problems. So we’re up usually a couple times a night now, to re-apply the various potions and lotions he needs so he can be comfortable enough to sleep (and not scratch himself to the point of bleeding). We’ve been to his doctor, but apparently the various heavy-duty allergy treatment options are not considered safe for toddlers, so we’ll have to tough it out for now.

In happier news, my Dad and step-mom came to visit us this past weekend, for the first time since we moved to PA. It was a pleasant and relaxing weekend, and it provided a great excuse to not do any work on the house for a few days

Yesterday Kai was on his sit n’ spin, and he called it his “spit n’ sin.” I tried to correct him, but he insisted his pronounciation was the correct one.

We have started calling him “delay fish” (it’s an obscure quote from Finding Nemo – I wouldn’t expect you to recognize it unless you have a toddler who’s made you watch that movie 5,000 times). He’s become very good at prolonging his bedtime routine, so as to stay up as late as possible. Last night, after he was already in bed and had exhausted his usual options (I need to pee again, I need another hug, etc.) he actually offered to get up and clean his room. We declined the offer. He’s getting very good at probing for our weak spots, and that attempt was a clever one (I know he was thinking “they can’t possibly turn this one down!”), but it didn’t quite work.

He’s actually become a much better sleeper than he used to be. He’s now averaging somewhere between 0 and 1 wakeups/night. That’s a huge improvement over his 3-6 average while we were in CA. All of us hardly got any sleep for his first two years (Maria and I were quite often stumbling around like zombies during that time), but since moving to PA he’s settled into a decent routine, and we’re all finally getting some sleep

We had beautiful weather this weekend, and since my Aunt Tisha was visiting from San Francisco, I just had to go out and enjoy myself. We had a fun afternoon at Fairmount Park, which is not far from downtown Philly. We took pictures, which I’ve incorporated into a new “Spring 2004″ Kai photo album – check it out! There’s some other pictures in there too. I’ll add more pictures to it as we go further into Spring.

How’s that for a headline? I’m shutting down Kai’s email account for a while. I made the mistake of providing it to United for his frequent flyer program membership, and I overlooked the pre-checked checkbox about receiving offers from “carefully screened 3rd parties.” Those 3rd parties are now sending him numerous messages every day for Viagra knock-offs, blind-date services, home refinancing offers, etc. I know United’s the culprit because:

• before I signed him up, he got absolutely no spam
• the spam started coming right after I signed him up
• I haven’t given his email address to any other organizations
• I signed myself up at the same time and started getting the same messages in my account.

It’s really quite despicable.

Hopefully if the spam bounces from his account for the next year or so, his name will come off the spam lists. He doesn’t really need an email account just yet anyway.

This is Kai’s first free-hand artwork that consists of something recognizable. These are four different renditions of “Thunderbird 1″ – a rocket from Kai’s favorite show. Unfortunately the scan did not come out very well – he drew on high quality paper, which apparently is very reflective when you scan it. But if you squint you can see the green, red, and blue ones have the nose cones on top, fiery exhaust on the bottom, and the number 1 emblazoned in various spots. The orange one didn’t quite work out – the nose cone and the fiery exhaust are both on the bottom.

And this is Kai’s first school mug shot. As in all such pictures, the subject looks a bit goofy. Yet his cuteness cannot be denied.

Tonight Kai got his hands on an old phone battery and – putting on his best mock-angry face – waved it in my face and said “I’m gonna batter you up.” Then he poked me in the arm with it, said “zzzt” and “there, you’re all charged up.”

Not long after that, he went upstairs with Maria, and she saw something that made her say “oh my goodness,” to which Kai replied “oh my badness.” Clever monkey.