Tag Archive for 'Japan'

The Golden Week That Was

Published on May 7, 2010 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Golden Week has just ended and I am sick. Not sick of having time off, just getting over a feverish, stuffy-headed cold.

A quick recap of the events, more for my memory than anything else:

Saturday – Hospitals. Lots of hospitals. Both Layla and Tamie are getting healthy and news is looking good on all counts. Thank goodness for that.

Sunday – Spent the day in Ebina, looking around. We headed to a park with a 75m slide, found a temple we knew nothing about, and hit up Starbucks for our weekly(?) fraps.

Monday – Went clam-digging with the in-laws. About a million other people had the same idea and we were stuck in a huge crowd – luckily the ocean is large and we all fit. Layla decided she wasn’t afraid of the ocean anymore and ended up having a blast. I think this is where I got sick.

Tuesday – Headed down to Enoshima for the first aquarium/beach visit of the season. Enjoyed the dolphin show with another million people – Layla didn’t cry and was quite proud of the fact. I was quite proud later when we left the aquarium and she wanted to play on the beach, fearless of the waves that petrified her only a year ago.

Wednesday – Went to an outlet mall in Minami-Machida called Grandberry Mall. Found out that I’m too big for even the XL pants. Shamed and sick, I went to bed early this night.

Pictures? I got ‘em. You want to see ‘em? Click below:

Saturday Gallery
Saturday		 Sunday Gallery
Sunday		 Monday Gallery
Monday		 Tuesday Gallery
Tuesday

… Wednesday still to come.

Day Off Today

Published on April 30, 2010 in Family. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Golden Week is upon us and we’re entering a time of rest and relaxation here in the busy land of Japan. Golden Week is a grouping of national holidays that amount to nearly a week off. Today (Thursday) is the first of 4 holidays. The others being next week’s Monday-Wednesday.

We spent a lazy day relaxing before Layla got it into her head she wanted a (surprise, surprise) Matcha Frappuccino from Starbucks. Being the pushover parents that we are, we headed out for the cool drinks.

On the way home, we stopped off at an amusement park of sorts for kids. Layla had seen it in our travels before and every time we neared it, she’d remind us of our promise to one day take her. Today was that day. She’d seen kids driving cars and wanted to give it a try so we let her. It took her a while to get warmed up, but once she started playing she didn’t want to leave.

Gallery
Pictures Here.

Quiet Weekend, Except For The Coughing

Published on April 18, 2010 in Family and weekend. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Layla’s been a bit under the weather recently, her nose bubbling more than usual and her cough getting worse every day. We decided to take it easy this weekend in the hopes of her getting a bit better with a couple days to recuperate. As it’s Sunday night now and the poor kid is in bed hacking up a lung, I fear we didn’t succeed. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be back at the hospital — hopefully it’ll be a quick trip.

As for the weekend, Saturday we headed up to Machida to do a bit of shopping, but mainly to check out a fruit parlour Tamie knew of. We were going to hit up the usual green tea ice cream place, but wanted to try something different and this place was actually pretty decent. It being strawberry season, they have a lot of specials on — Layla wanted the strawberry sandwiches which were actually strawberries and whip cream between two slices of white bread… with pepper on it!

Today, with Layla coughing even more than yesterday, we didn’t go anywhere but grocery shopping. Tamie had a date with a masseuse tonight, so I stayed home with Layla. She wanted to play Candyland and, surprisingly, knew all the rules. I ordered pizza, which I thought was a good idea at the time… until I screwed up the order and ended up with two medium pizzas, one of which mistakenly had mayonnaise instead of tomato sauce! Never having tried a mayo pizza before, I wasn’t eager to taste it… but after shelling out the equivalent of 20 bucks for it, I had no choice. My openmindedness was rewarded with a lot of beer being drank as I choked down as much as I could, saving half the pizza for Tamie’s return. She, too, thought it was less than tasty. Layla seemed to like it though… kids these days…

Machida Fruit Parlour
Machida Fruit Parlour

Candyland
Candyland With Layla

Tamie’s Home

Published on April 4, 2010 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Tamie got back from India on Saturday. After cleaning our apartment, I headed down to the airport to pick her up. As I waited, she walked right past me not even noticing me after I whistled at her. I understand it’s hard to pick me out of a crowd of short Japanese people so I wasn’t too upset.

We headed back to Tamie’s folks’ house where Layla was waiting. She was pretty excited to see her Mom – she ran outside to greet Tamie as we drove up the driveway. After seeing that reaction, I’m thinking of taking a business trip of my own for a week.

Sunday was our planned day to head to Kamakura to do the annual sakura (cherry blossom) thing. The weather was not very co-operative, although I guess I should be grateful it didn’t rain much. It seemed we were a couple days late as the a lot of the trees had already shed most of their blossoms, but it was still a nice trip. We visited a couple different temples, explored some back roads, and had a nice meal before coming home.

One stop we did make was at Tamie’s chopstick shop — I call it that because it’s where Tamie brought me to buy chopsticks when I first came here, and it’s where we go every time we need new chopsticks. This time, it was Layla we were getting chopsticks for! She picked out a small pair of chopsticks and we all ended up getting some. Even at the tender age of 2 (almost 3), Layla’s skill with chopsticks has already surpassed mine. Must be genetic.

Pictures can be seen here:

gallery link
Click here

Happy (Belated) Valentine’s Day!

Published on February 16, 2010 in weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Saturday, we had a doctor’s appointment to ensure Layla’s health. She’d been coughing and sniffling all week and we were concerned that she was having a recurrence of her asthma attack, but luckily the doc said she was fine. Except for the extra medication we have to give her. We went for a nice breakfast after the appointment and then headed back home where I napped with Layla while Tamie went out for a massage. Tamie was meeting some friends for a girls’ night out that night, so I spent the evening with Layla. We visited the pet shop to see the dogs (they have a saint bernard puppy there now – only $2500!) and went to the kids’ floor in the department store so she could flirt with boys and play with toys… All in all, it was a good night for everyone, although Tamie might have had a bit of a headache the next morning ;)

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and the custom here is for women to give chocolates to the men. So I had to meet as many girls’ as I could — we actually spent the day at Tamie’s folks’ place, heading over there in the afternoon to have a nice sushi dinner. We’d been planning on buying them sushi to thank them for the time they spent with Layla while she was in the hospital and the schedules all finally worked out. Nothing better than sushi, beer and chocolate! The perfect Valentine’s Day, I’d say.

Pictures of the weekend here:


Saturday
Saturday
Sunday… TBD.