Tag Archive for 'train'

Long Weekend, Short Week

Published on September 20, 2010 in Family, Japan and weekend. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

This weekend was a long weekend, due to today being “Respect for the Aged Day”. Not sure why it’s an actual holiday, but I’ll take it. Thursday this week is also a holiday (Autumn equinox) making this week a pretty short week. Gotta love it when that happens!

This weekend wasn’t especially busy, but we did manage to get out to do a couple things. Saturday we went shopping, looking for a new mattress for Layla for her new big bed. Tamie got it in her head that she wanted bunk beds in preparation of number 2, assuming we could just put the two kids together in one room from the get-go. I thought it best to wait until the second was old enough to sleep through the night before we considered that… Layla, however, loved the idea. Luckily, this time, I won out. We got a single mattress for her (although, I’m sure it fits into the bunk bed frame if need be)

That night Tamie wanted to have some meat for supper and who was I to argue? Barbecued beef sounds good to me anytime. We tried a local yakiniku shop, which from the outside looked like a hole, but inside turned out to be pretty decent. The old lady owner really took a shine to Layla, equally impressed that she spoke Japanese and was very polite. I knew she spoke Japanese, but I’m always impressed with how polite our kid is. I guess she gets that from Tamie.

Sunday we headed down to Hon Atsugi for what I thought was a small food festival, celebrating different foods from all across Japan. I think all of Tokyo showed up for it, as there were only about two million people milling about. Lineups ranged anywhere from 45 minutes to up to two hours! People were waiting 2 hours for 400 yen yakisoba, a food you can get at any festival in Japan. Thankfully, Tamie thought better of lining up and instead we bought some at the grocery store and she made it at home. Personally, I think her yakisoba is much better than the festival variety… and even if this particular festival’s yakisoba was supposed to be the best in all of Japan, I still think hers is better because I didn’t have to die in a two hour line to get it!

Layla, too, was anxious to have some food at the festival. When she hears the word festival now she associates it with the flavoured shaved ice she gets when we go. She was looking forward to it so much that she even agreed to walk all the way to get it, fighting the urge to ask me to carry her. And much to her credit, she did walk. Through two different festival sites. Only to find that there was no shaved ice booth. D’oh! We ended up at a cafe that sold the stuff, only at a 600% markup, but they added some frozen strawberries and a scoop of ice cream for the trouble. It was actually pretty good, and the price of admission paid for the air conditioning we enjoyed. After leaving the cafe, we found a booth selling the festival variety shaved ice, but by then Layla was satiated. And we were broke.

Today was the final day of our extended weekend and we didn’t really have any plans. Tamie had a dentist appointment at 10 and we were going to meet after that. She called me at 10:10 and said she was finished. Layla and I had just finished eating breakfast and were nowhere near ready to head out to meet her so she came back home. We ended up spending the day spoiling Layla (as opposed to every other weekend, eh?). We took her to the indoor kids’ fantasy land, the park for kids where most parents zone out in massage chairs, sit at slot machines or just read a book while their kids go wild. She loved it. After that, we went for lunch and she took her Mom on a train ride around the shopping centre. Finally, we ended up at an outdoor concert that broke out, as they often do, at the same shopping centre.

That’s about it. Check the gallery for more pics. Sorry for blurry, dark, or overexposed pictures. I’m still practicing with my new camera and I’m too lazy to filter out the bad pictures.

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Just One of Those Days

Published on November 10, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

The day started out good today – we were up early(ish) and Layla was pleasant(ish). It seemed like things were going to go well. The sun was shining, the baby was eating breakfast, the wife was getting ready for work. Everything was on time.

Then I checked Layla’s temperature.

37.3 degrees.

Hardly anything to be concerned about, unless your daycare considers 37.5 to be a fever and reason to keep your contagious child away from the other children. Instead of panicking, we let Layla finish breakfast, get dressed and ready to go like nothing was wrong. It’s not really a problem if we ignore it, right?

Before we left, I checked Layla’s temperature one more time. 37.0. Good enough for me, so I grabbed her and dumped her on the daycare staff and was gone before they had a chance to stick a thermometer in her armpit. Luckily, they never called all day so I guess she survived.

On my way to work, I reserved a seat on the train home, timing it so I could meet Tamie and Layla, who would be coming from Grandma’s house. Thankfully, there was a seat available. Again, except for the minor temperature hiccup, everything was going smoothly…

Work seemed to go well, until my boss had a meeting with a customer. 30 minutes after they started their meeting, we got a call reporting a bug. Not a big deal – all part of the job. A short while after that, another phone call. Another bug. Two bugs for the two developers still in the office – easy. Comes with the territory. Luckily, there were no more phone calls after that…

All was quiet… 6:00 rolled around and the other developer was about to go home… of course, that’s when errors start happening and we realize that our database server is out of disk space. Oops.

For the next two and a half hours, we were knee deep in investigations without a sniff of leaving. Around 8:47, we had done enough (or were tired enough) to feel it was safe to go home. Now, 8:47 might sound late but it’s really not that bad, compared to some nights. The bad part was the colleague who wanted to leave at 6 — he got to the office early (7:30am) today. On top of that, my seat on the train to meet Tamie and Layla was for 8:30… argh.

So I didn’t meet Tamie and Layla. What I did meet was a rainstorm when I finally got back to Ebina. And here I was without my umbrella. And without any money to buy one.

I headed over to the bank to withdraw some money only to find it locked up tight. Here’s something (else) that doesn’t make sense to me about this country — ATM’s that are not 24 hours. After banking hours, I have to pay an extra fee to withdraw money, but only while the ATM’s are actually open. I’m not sure what time they close but I am sure that it’s before 10pm.

So I ran home in the rain, cutting through the grocery store that I would have bought some dinner at, had I any money. Luckily, the torrential downpour stopped by the time I got to the other side of the store. I walked home, grateful that the storm blew over quickly.

At the apartment, there were three packages waiting for me to carry upstairs. Tamie had ordered diapers from Amazon and they arrived with another, thankfully smaller, mystery package. I decided to take the elevator, double-checking that I pushed 3. I didn’t want to wake up anymore unsuspecting neighbours.

I dropped the packages at home, took some money from Tamie, and then headed back out to get some grub to eat. We needed cereal and milk for tomorrow morning, and I needed a beer tonight.

As I stepped around the corner, on my way to the grocery store, I stepped in a huge puddle. Just great. I hope the waterproofing I put on those new shoes works.

After picking up a couple things, I headed back outside to go home. The rain had started again… no, sorry – the STORM had started again. The cats and dogs from the previous drizzling were huddled under a bench while the wolves and tigers fell from the sky. The rain drops were so big they hurt when they hit you. Yah, it was rough.

By the time I made it home, I was soaked. A quick change of clothes and a quick beer and food later, and I’m here typing this tale of woe.

Luckily, tomorrow is another day. Here’s hoping it’s one of those other days.

Sick and Tired… But Mostly Sick.

Published on October 1, 2009 in Japan and Layla's sick days. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I woke up this morning to the sounds of a crying baby… before sunrise — it’s always a bad sign when Layla is awake before we are on a weekday. I went and grabbed her and brought her back into our bed in the hopes she’d get some sleep and allow us to do the same. Unfortunately the sweaty, feverish baby also had a bug bite on her leg that she insisted on scratching so despite her silence there was constant movement as she was determined to stop that itch. Eventually, after several warnings and Tamie grabbing her leg, Layla finally slept.

Hours later, we all woke up and scrambled to get ready as we got up later than expected, as usual. I wonder, if one always gets up later than one expects, shouldn’t one’s expectations eventually change? I’ll let you know if/when mine do. It was with little surprise that I found Layla had a fever and, as a result, could not go to daycare. Thankfully, Tamie’s mom was available to take care of her so we were able to go to work.

Since I didn’t have to drop Layla at daycare, I had the wonderful opportunity to get in an even more crowded train than usual (ie. an earlier one). The general strategy I employ when getting on such trains is to find an old lady or a young student sitting on a seat and stand in front of them. They are usually the ones that get off the earliest leaving me with a place to sit down and sleep for 45 minutes. Luckily for me, I found a plum old lady sitting alone watching the time closely on her cell phone. Unluckily for me, her apparent eagerness to get off was not a sign of her impending departure and I was forced to stand for the whole trip.

Stinky salary men on my flanks and at least two elbows in my back, I was having a great time on my commute. The only bright side was the train was running late due to a fierce drizzling of rain meaning even more people tried to cram their ways onto the coach at every stop. At one stop a guy got literally stuck in the door. These aren’t your friendly elevator doors that reopen if they bump into someone – he was seriously stuck. It took two train employees to open the door enough so that he could cram himself into the sardine can with the rest of us. The funny thing is, I’m sure that in the time it took to dislodge him from the door and get the train moving again, the next train would have come.

A busy workday later, I got a phone call from Tamie. Her mom is concerned about Layla and thinks she might have swine flu so she’s taking her to a clinic. Say what? It was during this phone call that I found out that one of the daycare staff had caught the virus. Better safe than sorry, I guess.

I told Tamie I’d go and meet her and Layla in Ebina, and at just after 9 we met up. Layla, hopped up on drugs, seemed absolutely fine, although she hadn’t eaten anything and was still boiling. On the way home, I grabbed a light double quarter-pounder meal at McDonald’s and we got Layla some bread to go with her water, at her request. We shared the food which, looking back, might not have been the smartest thing to do given her high fever and my not wanting to get sick.

It wasn’t long after we got home that Tamie started feeling a bit sick. And then a bit more sick. She went to lay down while I stayed up with Layla, who refused to go to bed but instead laid on me trying not to fall asleep. It was a losing battle that she eventually gave up — I put her to bed with little trouble, thankfully. At this point, Tamie emerged from the bedroom looking ready to keel over. She was planning on working at home but those plans obviously changed to planning on not dying. I told her to her to get back to bed and rest but she refused and instead laid on me trying not to fall asleep. It was a losing battle that she eventually gave up… it’s sometimes scary how similar my two girls are…

… and then there’s me. The pillar of health, tapping out this blog entry in my vain attempt of not going to bed and exposing myself to whatever it is that those two might have caught. Is it swine flu? Who knows — not the doctor, that’s for sure… turns out you (or at least he) can’t properly diagnose swine flu in the early stages so Layla needs to go see a doctor again tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.,