26 November 2009 Father and Son
I don’t know why, but I just love this picture of Genbo and me.
Archive for the ‘Lens: 18-200’ Category
7 June 2008 Gong!
(This is the first time I’ve ever used the “rear curtain sync” flash mode, and I see it works as advertised.)
4 June 2008 Papa needs a new pair of shoes
Let it be recorded that today was the first day that Zoe put on a pair of shoes.
She still cannot walk, but she does push a walker around, and when she does so outside at daycare her feet get all dirty (a serious no-no in Japanese society), so her daycare teachers have been bugging us to buy some shoes. Genbo needed a new pair as well, so I took the risky move of buying a pair for both on my own, thinking that I could always come back and make an exchange if the sizes were wrong. As luck would have it, both pairs fit fine.
Zoe wasn’t quite sure what to make of her new pink Nikes. For some reason, she loves sneaking to the front door, where everybody takes off their shoes, and finding a nice smelly dirty shoe to chew on. Lately she’s settled on Genbo’s purple Crocs. Today we told her this would be the first and last time she could chew on her or Genbo’s shoes to her heart’s content. Apparently clean, new shoes don’t offer what she looks for in a chew-toy, though, so she settled on the cardboard box instead.
I was a little worried about whether Genbo would like his new shoes, but yellow is his favorite color, and when I told him he coud run really fast in these shoes, he was hooked. In fact, he ran up and down the hallway about 10 times demonstrating how just how fast his new shoes enabled him to run. I smiled inwardly, remembering doing the exact same thing when I was very young.
By the way, at the age of 3 years and 10 months Genbo is now wearing 19 cm shoes, which is huge. That’s size 13 in the US.
And, this pose is pure Zoe. Middle two fingers in mouth, with hand touching other ear. That means she’s ready for bed.
2 June 2008 I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky…
(That’s the opening to the first poem I ever memorized, bribed for $15 by my Aunt and Uncle. I still remember most of it, too. Coincidentally (or not) they also took me sailing a lot when I was a kid.)
Sorry for the lack of posting around here. Today is the first day in about two weeks I have had neither a rush job to finish or a sick baby to care for. Hallelujah.
I have a lot to post, but for now just these two pictures of Genbo yesterday out on lake Biwa, the Taho-sized lake we can see from our house. It was his first time sailing, and although he was looking forward to it, he was kind of underwhelmed by the actual experience. We had a very full day before even getting on the boat at about 3PM, so he was pretty tired to begin with. Then, he wasn’t thrilled about the whole life-preserver thing. Finally, once he figured out there would be no jumping dolphins or breaching whales to accompany us, he was borderline sullen. He ended up falling asleep against me right where he’s sitting in these photos. I had to use one hand to hold on to him and one onto the boat, thinking the whole time how mad his mom would be at me if he fell in.
12 March 2008 Balcony baseball
The baseball field you can see from my balcony usually serves only high-school and college games, but this weekend they held a pre-season game for a couple of pro teams. One of the teams was the Hanshin Tigers, famous for their rabid and colorful fan base. One of their traditions is to release thousands of human-size, condom-shaped balloons into the field during the 7th inning.
Below you can see a detail of fans getting ready, followed by the moment of, ahem, release itself.
Genbo, showing good sense, was totally uninterested in the entire game, except the balloons. (I mean, what kind of game is it that can be played by fat tubs of lard, and has maybe only 2 or 3 minutes of actual action per 3 hour tedious game?)
12 February 2008 Japan’s Two Religions
…are illustrated well in this photo. They are Buddhism (actually native ancestor worship with a very thin Buddhist veneer) and construction. It is not much an exaggeration to say that the entire economy exists to support the construction industry. In Japan, everything is always under construction everywhere.
