Monthly Archive for July, 2010

Long Weekend In Hakone

Published on July 20, 2010 in Family, Japan and weekend. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

There was a long weekend here in Japan and we took advantage, renting a car and heading up to Hakone for the weekend. We booked a room at the Prince Hotel, showing up in the early afternoon, giving us enough time to catch a concert, check out the hotel grounds and grab some dinner.

The next day we hit up a nice breakfast, checked out the on-site aquarium (which turned out to be pretty decent), splash around in the water for a bit, summit the mountain and then get a good lunch on the lake. The sun was hot on the ground but on top of the mountain it was foggy and windy, which translated into a chilly (or refreshing, depending on who you ask) experience.

Layla fell asleep on top of the mountain, shivering in my arms. I wrapped her in my shirt, for whatever that could offer, and we took a look around while she slept. She was out for quite a while, not even waking up when we got on the cable car. It wasn’t until we were almost back at the hotel that her head popped up, eyes wide open and she said without missing a beat “Not windy anymore! No more chilly!”

Pictures from the trip are here:
HakoneClick Here

BIG NEWS!

Published on July 12, 2010 in Family, Parenting and weekend. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

We’re going to Ottawa in August!!

Got our tickets finally – we’d been scouring the internet and travel agents for weeks looking for a decent price. Ended up finding the least indecent. Can you believe it costs more than double the airfare to travel in August than in December! That’s ridiculous! But what’s even more ridiculous is the airfare fluctuates in price, thousands of dollars at a time every couple of hours.

A couple months ago we decided to head to Ottawa in August and started doing the usual probing online and found prices were pretty steep. At the time, the thought was that not all tickets were issued to travel agents and the price would eventually come down. It didn’t. In fact, it got as high as $9500+(!) CAD for 3 of us to fly from Tokyo to Ottawa. The cheapest I ever saw it was ~$6800. To put this into perspective, last year at Christmas we paid between $3000 and 4000. We didn’t get the cheapest fare, but we didn’t pay the highest either. On the bright side, the fuel surcharge has gone down.

What really gets me about the whole airfare game is it really is a game. I’d log into the Air Canada server to check prices in the morning and it would be one price, log in not 12 hours later and it shifted up or down hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. It got so bad, I’d be checking three times a day to see what the lucky number was. I wasn’t able to find any pattern, but it got me wondering what factors are actually driving the radical prices changes. Regardless, the whole thing feels like a bad casino game – no matter what happens, the house always wins in the end.

But the tickets are booked and paid for (thanks Tamie, I owe you one!) and we’re now in the midst of planning what we’re actually going to do on the trip. We’re only going to be there 7 days (get in on Friday night, leave the following Saturday morning), so I already know it’s going to go by too fast. In any case, we’re all looking forward to going… especially Layla who, after chatting with the grandparents that showed her a shiny new bike waiting for her in Ottawa, she’s raring to go!

So we’ll see you in a few weeks, Ottawa. Hope the heat waves and earthquakes are over by then.

…

oops.

I almost forgot! The big news!

Tamie’s pregnant again.

Number Two

Baby’s due in December, thus the August quickie. We’ll be in a delivery room around December 28th and I don’t think it’d be prudent to leave my waddling wife in Japan to celebrate Christmas in Ottawa.

From The Mouths of Babes

Published on July 4, 2010 in Family, Japan and Parenting. 6 Comments Tags: , , , .

I was eating dinner with Layla and Tamie the other night, I had a beer, Layla had some juice and Tamie had some Japanese pop. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

As I often do, I offered Layla a sip of beer to which she always tells me “NO! I’m not old enough yet!” and laughs. As usual, she gave me her canned response but this time I asked how old she had to be.

“Five!” she replied emphatically. “When Layla is five, Layla drinks beer!” (she speaks in the third person all the time. I think it’s because Elmo does.)

I laughed, and asked back “What can you drink when you are four then?”

You could see the wheels in her brain were working overtime until the mischievous grin on her face that revealed she had an answer. “Mom’s drink!” she answered, proudly nodding her head. “If Layla is four, Layla can drink Mom’s pop!”

Pop at four, beer at five. I had to ask. “And six? What will you get when you are six?” I asked, unsure what she would answer.

“Hmm…” she pondered, her brow wrinkled in deep thought. Finally an answer had come to her. “When Layla is six, she can have a chinchin!” she grinned.

“A what?” I asked, laughing but unsure if the Japanese in my head was working or not.

“A chinchin!” she answered again. Tamie’s giggling reassured me I knew what I heard.

The game ended there for I didn’t want to know what she got when she turned seven. For those who don’t know, chinchin is not a double-chin, it’s a penis.