Tag Archive for 'shopping'

Long Weekend, At Least For Some…

Published on March 22, 2010 in weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

This weekend was (still is =) a long weekend here in Japan. At least, for those of us not working on a very busy project for a car company that shall remain nameless… Tamie had to work on Saturday and she has to work again tomorrow (Monday), so while the rest of the country gets a special 3 day weekend, the employees in her group get a special 1 day weekend. Nice!

So Saturday, I got the opportunity to take care of Layla for the day. I took her to the park because she wanted to go on a big slide, but she never actually went on it. Instead she discovered that she is able to jump across the tires that are set up that she’d been, up until Saturday, afraid to attempt. She was so proud that she made it across that she did it four or five times in a row. On the fifth time, she fell and cried something fierce, but eventually got up and played again… on another part of the playground.

Eventually, the kid got hungry and we were off to grab something to eat. I offered everything from rice to burgers to waffles to pasta but she wanted Starbucks. I’m beginning to think we go there far too often. Regardless, I took her there and we sat and watched people walk by as I took about a million pictures of her eating and sucking back her frappuccino.

When the music started playing from the band downstairs, we bailed on the chilling and went to take a look. It was a band who’d played Ebina before, but for good reason – the crowd seemed to really get into it, singing along, waving towels and dancing! A much livelier crowd than I usually see at the free concerts every weekend.

We met Tamie for dinner later that evening, yakiniku was the meal of choice (ladies’ choice, and a good one at that!). We bbq’d up chowed down on a lot of meat that night. We even a bit of vegetables too — to satisfy Tamie’s momly instincts.

After dinner, we headed home. Climbing a set of stairs, Layla nearly passed out. I don’t know what they put into her orange juice, but the poor kid collapsed as Tamie caught her. It wasn’t until I asked he if she wanted some chocolate and to be carried that she came to and promptly climbed up into her mom’s arms.

Sunday was a day for the family, albeit a lazy one. It wasn’t until the afternoon that we even got mobile and headed out to do some shopping. As Layla is getting older, she is getting into the more advanced stages of daycare — the strict requirements are getting even stricter. We need to get a bunch of supplies, things such as bags of various sizes, play-doe with associated tools, and SIXTEEN different colour crayons. Why sixteen? Because it seems like they only get sold her in packs of 12.

With the daycare shopping out of the way, we let Layla check out the kid’s arcade that houses rides and games for young kids. They must make a killing there as it’s always busy and the games and rides are a minimum of 100 yen and last about a minute. I see some parents in there with there kids for a lot longer than a couple minutes (ie. they are there when we get there and still there when we leave). Luckily Layla isn’t the type of kid to make a fuss after only one ride… at least, not yet. After riding the Thomas the Tank Engine ride for 45 seconds, Layla was happy to go. She was even happier when one of the employees gave her a snack on the way out.

We ended up at Vina Walk shortly after shopping. There were kids playing in the small water pools there, despite the strong, cold winds blowing that day. Of course, seeing those kids, Layla wanted to take a turn. We sat by the pool as she debated whether or not she really wanted to go in. She slowly took off her jacket and socks and rolled up her pants. By the time she got down to the water and touched it, 15 minutes must have passed. Once she was in, though, she had a blast!

Check out the pictures here:


Saturday Pictures
Saturday Pictures
Sunday Pictures
Sunday Pictures

This video was taken Sunday night, after we got a diaper delivery. Layla loves playing in the box and I love playing with her. I got a kick out of the video, I hope you do too. Click on it to go to youtube to see it larger/higher def.



Shopaholics Anonymous

Published on November 8, 2009 in weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

To say that this weekend was a bit lazy would be an understatement. In fact, to say that this weekend was a lot lazy would still be an understatement.

Saturday we woke up around 1… in the afternoon. Layla was up until 11 the previous night, but she’d never slept in this late. I would have gladly slept in another hour if I wasn’t worried the poor kid was dead, or worse. Luckily she was still sawing logs, sweating up a storm in the process. I think she might have had a bit of a fever early in the morning and had sweat it out by mid afternoon. It’s why we kept her up late the previous night — score one for forward thinking parenting!

Our plan for the day was to go out and get some shoes. Big plans, to be sure, but we were already behind schedule. After getting cleaned up and having breakfast we were off to Machida for some shopping fun. If there’s one thing I love, it’s shoe shopping. Especially with my two favourite girls…

Surprisingly, we found Tamie’s shoes at the first place we hit. It was amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen before. She didn’t even need to try on more than three pairs of shoes before deciding. Twas’ a sign of things to come, or so I’d hoped, as we headed off to find my shoes…

The last pair of shoes I got here, they didn’t have my size so I had to get it delivered through the mail. I had tried some on for size, and they fit pretty well, so thought the ones coming in the mail would be as comfortable. After a couple days of wearing them, trying to break them in properly, I found they still were a bit small. To this day, they are still one of the most uncomfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever bought. With that in mind, I was determined to find a pair of shoes, in stock, that we could try on and buy… no matter how long it took.

I found a pair that seemed decent, and we asked the salesguy for a size 27, the sizes here being the size of your foot in cm… I’m still not exactly sure what the size 10 I wore in Canada actually represented, as my foot is neither 10 centimeters or 10 inches. He brought them and they were a bit snug, to say the least. We tried a 27.5 and again they were a bit small. Finally the guy looked at my current shoes, which were supposedly size 10 and said that should be a 28… I tried on a 28… and voila – a much better fit. Especially compared to the torturous shoes I’d been wearing. We walked out of that, the first store we hit for my shoes, successful in our search for shoes. Two for two!

To celebrate, we headed off for some ice cream. Layla told me she didn’t want a big ice cream, but she wanted me to have a big ice cream. How could I say no to that? She ended up taking all the parts of my parfait that she wanted, leaving me with her leftovers. Regardless, it was a decent snack and turned out to be most of our dinner. It turned out to be later than we thought and we were a bit stuffed, even after looking around for a while after the ice cream. We ended up at the outback for some steak salad… and some ice cream (for the kid) for dessert.

Today, we headed off for another trip to the park. Layla seems to love it there, and we love to take her. It’s the only grass field for miles, so it’s kind of a special place here… making it kind of a busy place too. One interesting thing about the grass park is the hill, where kids use cardboard as toboggans and slide down it. It sure looks ghetto, but I guess when there’s no snow you have to make do with what you got. One lady even tricked out her cardboard by putting plastic handles on it. Very impressive, indeed.

At the park, we kicked a ball around before heading off to the playground for some slide fun, only to close out with a terrifying steam spray. The same steam spray Layla used to love to run through as a young(er) kid, she’s now deathly afraid of. I ended up carrying her through it, which is more than she let me do last time, so progress is being made, albeit slowly. Maybe someday she’ll be as brave as she was when she was a year old. Maybe.

As we were leaving the park, the chipper youngster chirped up with her suggestion of what to do next. “Starbucks!” The call for the green tea frappuccino was message enough that we go there far too often. Regardless, we went. Some parents mark lines on a wall to watch how their kids grow up — we take pictures at Starbucks. I figure in five years, I’ll send the pictures in to the marketing department and see if I can’t make a few bucks on all the money we spent there. It’s really more of an investment, in that respect.

While we were sucking back our drinks, Layla pointed out that we dress her like a bum. The knee of her pants, already sewn up once, had another hole from her skinning her knee one of any number of times. She was adamant that we buy her new pants, and we were more than happy to oblige. We went to the Gap where a nice saleslady got to practice her English with us. She showed us a great deal on a new line of pants — buy 2 pairs and get 20% off the purchase. Sounded good. The only problem — there’s no way I am going to shell out 9200 yen (100 bucks!) on pants for my kid that she’s either going to outgrow or rip in two months. Even with a 20% discount.

I checked a few other places while Layla played, but I couldn’t find anything decent for a decent price. Tamie took a look and found a couple options (I’ll admit, she’s a much better shopper than I am). Layla picked a pair, tried them on, and was so happy with them that she ended up wearing them moments after we bought them.

Not having spent enough money yet, we headed off to buy a new vacuum cleaner. It wasn’t exactly a spur of the moment thing, as every time I vacuumed Tamie would complain about the quality of my work, and I would complain about the quality of the tools I was equipped with. The fact that she complained about the tool whenever she vacuumed too was a clear indicator it was less the blame of the operator as it was the fault of the machine. One new vacuum cleaner later, and I have a happy wife and a cleaner apartment. How’s that for win-win?

The last thing we wanted to buy, a Google phone for Tamie, had to be put on hold because by the time we actually got around to it, the store had closed. It wasn’t a total loss, though, as it will give us something to do next week, if we don’t find something else to do first.

Pictures from the weekend are here:

Saturday
Sunday

Long Week, Short Weekend

Published on October 25, 2009 in Family, Hospital, Japan and weekend. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

After a week of long working days and longer working nights, I was happy to have the weekend upon us. But alas, when the going gets tough, it just gets tougher.

Friday morning, Layla had enough of a fever that the daycare wasn’t willing to take her (38 degrees! oh my!) Swine flu running rampant in our little town, and reports all over the news again caused great concern in Tamie and her parents, enough to take Layla to the hospital. The doctor, after poking and prodding, concluded that she was undetermined to have the flu (of any kind) and we’d have to come back on Saturday. At 9am. So much for sleeping in.

9am rolled around and we were scrambling to get to the hospital on time. Arriving just after 9:07, I was happy to see that there weren’t a million parents with kids in masks. Who ever thought one would be relieved to be only the thirteenth in line at a hospital. We were actually taken care of pretty quickly, and it was determined again that Layla might not have the flu. The fact that her fever had broken wasn’t a good indication as it might come back.

A clean(ish) bill of health in hand, we set out to have a good weekend. So what did we do? The weather was miserable so we didn’t do much. We shopped, we played, we ate, we came home.

Shopping was interesting in that we picked Layla up another toilet. She’s deathly afraid of the big blue (in our house) water closet, and even when we put the friendly bunny Miffy on the toilet seat, she’s still paralyzed. The daycare, from what I understand, are doing their best to toilet train her and have a pot with anpanman, a Japanese cartoon character, encouraging the kids to do their business. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a similar pot at home, hopefully making her comfortable enough to want to use a toilet. So far? She’s had a lot of fun pushing the buttons that play music… not so much on actually using it.

Playing involved going to the kids’ floor in the department store and letting Layla run around and play with other kids. There’s a sample toy train track out that all kids seem to love, Layla being just one of them. She wasn’t too happy when her favourite toy train (Thomas the Tank Engine, for those keeping score) was being used by another little girl. The little girl was busy playing with two trains, and despite my telling her to wait her turn, Layla insisted on trying to get one. I, using all my cunning (and most of my Japanese skills), convinced the little girl to swap one of her trains for a caboose. Layla still wasn’t happy and tried to take the girl’s other train. She really wasn’t happy when I removed her from the toy section… screaming all the way. Fun times, indeed.

Eating was the highlight of the day. We had shabu shabu, which is lots of beef in a hot pot. Not unlike the previous two weeks of sukiyaki, shabu shabu involves thinly sliced pieces of beef that we cook ourselves in one of many kinds of broth, then dunk in sauce and eat. A new place opened up in our neighbourhood a couple weeks ago and Tamie finally didn’t refuse (at least not strongly enough) to going. It was decent, but we’ve definitely had better.

Sunday was another rainy, miserable day. Tamie had a dentist appointment in the morning, so Layla and I hung out at home before heading out to meet her in Hon-Atsugi when she finished. I was eager to hit up the Burger King there because they were offering a SEVEN patty hamburger, in honour of Microsoft releasing Windows 7. Thankfully, they were sold out when we got there so we went for lunch at a more reasonable, less beefy place.

Before lunch, we headed to the science museum to open Layla’s mind to the wonders and amazements that science has to offer. She seemed to have a good time, playing with marbles and … well, mostly marbles. I was most interested in the hand sanitizer they had available at the exit with the big sign outlining the dangers of influenza. Pandemic, much?

After lunch, we came back to Ebina and ventured back up to the kids’ floor of the department store to give Layla another opportunity to throw a tantrum… unfortunately, they were having some kind of halloween party so there were a thousand kids, all hopped up on sugar and adrenaline… I say unfortunately, not because I didn’t want Layla to get involved, rather she was too timid to go out and play. The chaos of it all seemed to wilt her spirits so we instead helped Tamie shop for a new jogging shirt that she used after we got back home.

Maybe not the most exciting weekend, but it had its moments.

Pictures are available here:
Saturday
Sunday

Lazy Days of Summer

Published on August 30, 2009 in rollerblading and weekend. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

It was with great effort that I got up this morning, not quite wanting to face the day yet. Tamie, good sweet wife o’ mine, was gracious enough to get up with Layla and let me sleep in. I eventually felt guilty enough to pull myself out of my slumber and zombie-walk into the living room to greet my girls with a friendly “uuuuugh, is it still early enough to say ‘good morning?’”. Man do I love weekends =)

With nothing but the obvious bit of R&R planned for the day, Tamie, always eager to go jogging, figured it was the perfect opportunity to head out for a bit of a run. I, not so eager to even think about jogging, figured it was a good chance to give the parents back in Ottawa a call. So while Tamie sweated under 40 degrees of mid day sun, I stayed air conditioned with the kid to call her Nonni and Chinni online. A good chat and an hour later, Tamie came in the door exhausted, explaining just how blistering the sun was before going take a long, cold shower.

As she showered, I thought about things and came to a conclusion myself. I’ve recently been having an email conversation a friend who has been lamenting about how quickly getting older seems to meaning getting heavier. Having put on my own fair share of weight recently, I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. Now, I’m not saying it’s just age that is putting on the pounds – I mean, I’m sure the beer and cookies might have played a small part in their nightly consumption, but age does get its fair share of the blame. The last email I received had the a number, a big 238 lbs of a number in it. Crikey! It was a scant 2 years ago when we were both hovering between 180-190 and worrying about the double century mark… oh, to be so slim again.

So with that in my mind, and inspired by Tamie’s industrious (or maybe insane) jogging today, I thought it was a good time to break the ol’ rollerblades out of retirement. I’d been talking about it for more than a year (I think it was my new years’ resolution… of 2008). Man, time flies. So like an old war veteran suiting up after a long spell of peace, I suited up in blades and wrist guards into the battleground of sun, traffic, and old ladies on bikes. It’s a dangerous world out there.

I got off to a pretty good start – felt like I’d never stopped blading. The wind was blowing just right, the traffic lights were green at every corner I approached and I was flying down the road at a good clip. I was free, and I was loving it. I was inspired to do this every day! Thoughts of waking up early and starting the day with a similar invigorating rollerblading session filled my head as I passed pedestrian and car alike. I couldn’t remember why I stopped.

Not ten minutes had passed before I was drenched in sweat, the sun beating down stronger than anything I’d ever experienced in my life. What little breeze there was only seemed to pick up the heat from the pavement causing even more discomfort. The old ladies on the bicycles I’d passed earlier seemed to pick up their pace and fly by me as easily as I had them only moments prior. Insulted, I tried to use that as motivation to keep my legs moving and not to die. I lowered my cap, focused on the few feet in front of me and rollerbladed like I was chasing women one quarter their age. And to my great surprise, I caught them. They were stopped at a traffic light, which I almost missed, but I caught them.

At twenty minutes, my legs were like rubber. I could barely breathe. I thought I was a goner, for sure. I wasn’t even insulted or embarrassed when those same old ladies walked past me pushing their bikes. The only thing on my mind was survival – I had to make it back to the air conditioned haven we call home. I rolled along at what I’ll call a leisurely pace for what seemed like forever until I finally made it back to the finish line. It was with great agony that I peeled off my rollerbladed and made my way up to the third floor — it’s not easy standing and waiting for an elevator as slow as ours.

After a quick 45 minute shower, I finally felt like I wasn’t going to pass out or pass away. I was anxious to check out the stats I’d collected on my spiffy new google phone. Tamie had used it first when she went jogging and found she ran over 7km in just under an hour at average speed of nearly 7km/h (funny how that math works out, eh — good thing google is smart enough to figure all that out for us). I, too, had carried my gps-enabled toy and found I’d gone just over 6km in 30 minutes. Check out my maps page here, if it works. Yah, she ran farther than me, but let’s face it – I’d like to say she’s in much better shape than I am but, honestly, I think it was because I’d gone out later in the day and the sun was so much hotter.

Exercise out of the way for another year, we went out to pick up a couple things we’ve been meaning to get. Tomorrow is Tamie’s sister’s birthday so we picked up a couple things for her (Tamie didn’t think she’d like some oversized, slightly-used, like-new rollerblades). While we were shopping, Layla wanted to ride on the merry-go-round she’d been on in the past (her memory is getting to be a bit of a pain sometimes). Since she’s spoiled, we gave her the 200 yen and let her go at it. She plunked the first coin into the slot no problem. The second one she tried a couple times. The third time she dropped it I put it into the machine for her at which point she started yelling, got off the merry-go-round, and cried until it stopped. Luckily at the end, it spit out a card which she was more than happy to collect and show off. Phew!

We eventually made our way back home where we had dinner (chicken caesar salad and potato-crust pizza, for those curious). Actually, I just wanted to mention the potato-crusted pizza because I’d never heard of such a creation. I’m pretty sure Tamie made it up due to the fact we had leftover potatoes in the fridge, but it actually turned out pretty well.

So that was our day. I call it a lazy day, but in all honesty it was one of the unlaziest days I’d had in months, if not years. Who knows if I’ll stick to the rollerblading, but I’m certainly going to try. And to Mr. 238, I know you read this — the gauntlet is off, good sir. We’ve talked about self-improvement for a long time, well the time is now. So step up! I look forward to reading about your adventures in rollerblading!

from the train

Published on August 17, 2009 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Yesterday Tamie wanted to buy a new phone. She thought she knew what she wanted before we entered the shop. As is usually the case, she wanted to be a good shopper and check out every phone in the shop. Again.

So while Tamie shopped, I played with Layla in the kids’ area. After an hour or four Tamie still was undecided so something had to be done.

Being a good husband means having to make sacrifices once in a while… so I did what any loving husband would do – I bought myself a new phone!

I guess i should mention at this point that we have been phone shopping for a while and I had my eye on the new Google phone since it came out so it wasn’t exactly unplanned, but… the reason I had to buy it was it was also one of the models Tamie was considering so by buying it myself she has the chance to see how well it works in the wild… and if she is the kind of girl who doesn’t want matching phones then I just made her decision that much easier. Can’t you feel the love?

So we left with a new phone, as planned, just not exactly as planned.