I went to renew my Japanese driving license and was rewarded with a gold license!
What’s a gold license?
A gold license is given out to people who don’t have any points on their current driving license. From what I’ve heard, this is an achievement usually limited to “paper” drivers - those who have a license but never actually drive! The card itself looks the same as a standard blue license except the color of the stripe through the middle is… yeah, you guessed it… gold.
The biggest difference is that I don’t have to renew it for five years as opposed to the standard three. I’m also eligible for a SD (Safe Driver) card which gets me discounts at various hotels, hot springs, car rental places and gold courses (!) around Japan.
For once I was able to hold my head high as I walked around the driving center, knowing that by Japanese standards, I was one of the best in the building! 
I better wrap this up by touching wood, and lots of it. It’s almost a given that after writing about my lifelong, unblemished driving record, I go out and get pulled over tomorrow! 
My mum has been hassling me, quite rightly, for some photos and video of her grandson. Here are a couple of pictures after his accident with the lamp, and a video of him crawling, trying to walk and then trying to sleep.
After staying up late last night to upgrade JapanSoc, I was woken abruptly this morning by a loud smash, a scream, crying, a further scream from my wife, and then the vision of Rikuto’s face covered in blood!
An obstacle course
Rikuto is getting squirmy, and by that I mean he can squeeze through or climb over all kinds of obstacles. I thought we had done a pretty good job of making our living room baby-safe, but clearly not enough. Somehow Ricky managed to squeeze between the sofa and a chair (placed deliberately to block him), then under another chair to reach the far side of the table in the furthest corner of the room.
With me in bed and Mami hanging up the washing - 3 minutes at most - Rikuto had clambered his way across the room, through the various furniture to a cable dangling from the table above him. A strong tug was enough to pull a heavy, glass lamp off the tabletop and send it crashing down onto his head, smashing into fragments all over the floor.
A trip to the hospital
Considering the weight of the lamp, and the number of shards of glass it shattered into, it was quite amazing that Ricky suffered nothing more than two cuts and a big bump. Let’s not underestimate those cuts, though. Both were deep and bled profusely, one on his forehead about an inch and a half long, and another on his cheek.
Fortunately, Mami is a nurse, so she was able to patch the little guy up and I drove them to hospital where Rikuto got some proper treatment, and fortunately, no stitches were necessary.
Reflecting on the day
It’s amazing that the cuts he sustained were in easily treatable places, and what a miracle the glass didn’t get him in the eye.
Parenting is a tough gig, and we’ve learned some valuable lessons today. Let’s hope Rikuto has, too.
This month’s Japan Blog Matsuri theme is The Language of Japan, and I’ve been scratching my head all month over what to write. I haven’t studied Japanese for years now, and although I have a few amusing stories of miscommunication, nothing worthy of an entire blog post.
So, I delved into the LongCountdown archives and submitted an article I wrote back in March 2007. It’s about the confusion that arises from having a foreign name in Japan. It’s just as appropriate today as it was when I wrote it. Enjoy: What’s My Name?
The deadline for this month’s Japan Blog Matsuri is this Saturday night, September 20th. Get your entries in quick! More info here.
So I bought myself Rikuto a train set. It’s not a patch on the beautiful Hornby railway set that my dad made me when I was a child, but Tomy’s Plarail is a lot safer, which is important when you buy a one-year-old boy a toy made for 3-year-olds!
Plarail, or “Tomica World” as it’s known outside of Japan, is awesome. There’s a huge selection of trains from all over Japan, and the track is stackable so you can build amazing sets like in this video.
For now, I’ve settled with a rather simple design, and fortunately, Rikuto is so scared of the noisy, battery-powered train that flies around the track at unnatural speeds, that he won’t touch it!
