Here’s a rare picture of Rikuto smiling for the camera, and he has every right to be happy – he’s only 18 months old, but can eat his dinner with chopsticks!
He also said his first English word yesterday… I was hoping for “daddy” or at least “google” (in the hope of striking it rich as the “Google baby”), but no. Rikuto’s first English word was “crash!” – the result of me pushing him around on his Thomas the Tank Engine car and screaming “Crash!” every time we hit something.
Incidentally, his first Japanese word was wan wan (doggy-woggy?) and he’s added korrya! (what the heck!) to his vocabulary, too. I suspect he got that one from his mum!
Bill Belew from the Rising Sun of Nihon is asking how we resolve to make the most of our stay in Japan this year. For most people, I’d imagine learning Japanese and visiting new places would be high on the list of things to do, but since I’ve been here for over ten years, the fact that I’m in Japan doesn’t weigh heavily in my plans for 2009.
Instead, I resolve to be a good parent and further my ability to provide for my family. While that doesn’t make for especially good blogging material, those are the things that top my 2009 agenda.
I’ve not always been a stay-at-home, family man, though. When I first came to Japan, I was very much the explorer, visiting dozens of places between Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Japan Sea. I often stayed out all night, opening doors to window-less cafes, bars and clubs, not knowing what to expect inside. For a long time, learning Japanese dominated my free time and I was excited to practice what I learned with as many new people as I could. Everything was new, everything was fascinating, and I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing it.
To make the most out of your time in Japan, I advise newcomers to be courteous to the natives, respect Japanese customs, learn as much of the language as you can, and then completely let yourself go! Only you can make 2009 full of memories to cherish forever.
This was part of the January 2009 Japan Blog Matsuri.
There are 15 families in our neighborhood, and we rotate the twice-weekly task of unlocking the “gomi” station before 6am, then coming back, cleaning it out and locking it after the garbage men come at 8am. The rules couldn’t be simpler – put out your burnable rubbish between those hours in a designated city rubbish bag. There are different days and places for disposing of plastics, cans, glass, cardboard and any other rubbish listed in the “instructions” distributed to all the households.
This week is our turn on “gomi duty”, and today, there was one bag leftover. It really is potluck whether the garbage men take everything or not and unfortunately on this occasion, they didn’t. Normally if there is rubbish left behind (usually because the transparent bags give away any attempts to hide unburnables) I would take the bag up to the incinerator and let the professionals sort it out for me. Of course, since the country is on holiday for New Year, I donned some gloves and picked through the rubbish myself.
Air freshener containers, plastic bottles, cardboard, job-hunting magazines, used makeup stuff, balls of hair, potato peels, generally really gross leftovers from dinner… and half an envelope! BUSTED!!! 
Wait a minute! This woman, Hiromi, isn’t one of our group! In fact, not only has she broken all the rules of rubbish etiquette, but she’s put out her rubbish in the wrong gomi station!
Here’s the thing: Hiromi’s apartment block is right in front of our gomi station, but due to some geographical misfortune where the line dividing neighborhoods runs right between our gomi station and Hiromi’s apartment block, she would have to walk for 10 minutes, hauling her bag of rubbish to her designated gomi station.
Not that I have any sympathy for her. I went straight to her apartment and rang the doorbell, wondering what her reaction would be to a pissed-off foreigner returning her bag of rubbish. Fortunately for her, she wasn’t in, so I left the bag on her doorstep with the envelope fastened to it so she would know she was caught out. Don’t worry, I have photographic evidence in case she dumps the bag somewhere else – after all, because of New year, the next rubbish day isn’t for another week!
I while ago my mum wrote a poem about her relationship with the grandson she has only seen via a webcam. In her latest poem, she talks about his antics with phones and fire extinguishers. Very funny stuff…
I love my baby grandson, Ricky.
Heβs such a cute little fellow to me.
He lives so far away in Japan,
A strange country across the sea.
Shane Sakata from Japan’s Online Culture and Travel Magazine, the Nihon Sun, is asking us for photos of the real Japan from the windows of our homes.
The timing is a bit off since we’re having the house painted right now, but that just adds to the realism…
Fortunately, we still have a pleasant view out the back window, so long as you ignore all the power lines…
My former neighbor, but still same city dweller, Jason, offers another view of the mountains around our city from his own window.
