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爆裂肉食女子草食撲滅年末大夜会

My buddy Mike and I went to a concert in Tokyo on Saturday night. "...an all-night girl band thrash-punk rock extravaganza entitled 爆裂肉食女子草食撲滅年末大夜会 (Roughly translating to 'Explosive Carnivorous Girls End-of-Year Extermination Party')" Needless to say, it was a lot of fun.

Shake, Rattle and Roll

Last week there was a small earthquake here. Our house started to shake quite bit.

In my bedroom, I have a HUGE wooden dresser at my head, another huge one at my feet and a medium sized on my right side. If any of these fell on top of me they would either kill me or at least break some bones. Time to re-arrange the furniture...

Random Photos during my walks

Whenever the weather is good Leo and I go our for a walk. Here are some things we've come across....
Japanese are not religious at all so seeing this was quite a shock....and the fact that it's in English...WTF?

Life size bonzai trees

A small temple attached to a cemetary

Japanese style cemetary

Parking takes up too much valuable land....so they created vertical car parking. You punch in your pin and your car comes down.

Japan vs. North America

Japan could learn a few things from North America and vice versa. For example, we should adopt Japan's bath tubs. Tubs in Japan are short and deep so you end up being almost entirely submerged. Plus, the water is constantly heated and circulated so it never gets cold. In Canada, I'm not much of a bath fan but in Japan I take one almost daily. The only problem, and this is where Japan should adopt something, is that there is no central heating in most Japanese homes. They use space heaters in each and every room they want to keep warm. Our house is freezing!

Seven Months

Leo recently had his 7 month birthday. He'll probably start crawling soon.

My New Routine

Spontaneity is good but on a daily basis I prefer a routine ... preferably of my choosing. By day I play the role of Mr. Mom - Junior and I go for walks exploring our little town, I help prepare and feed our ravenous little boy, house cleaning, etc. Come five o'clock, I jump on my mother-in-laws bicycle and head to the train station. I train at the dojo for two hours and then rush back home. If I make all my connections and no one has jumped in front of a train I make it back home by around ten o'clock. That's my routine from Tuesday to Friday.

Happy 200 Days!

Normally, in Japan, when a baby reaches 100 days old the family celebrates this milestone. The purpose of the celebration is to wish the child good luck and a long healthy life. Family members are invited and a big feast is prepared. Samples of all the food are presented to the child on a serving tray. Due to the fact that we were in Canada for Leo's 100th day we celebrated his 200th day here.

My new home

This is where I'll be staying in Japan. The three of us are sharing it with our in-laws and sister-in-law. Leo loves all the extra attention.

Aikido

I started aikido training a few days after arriving. Currently, I'm training at night because that is the only time I can take back to back lessons. It takes about one and a half hours to get to the dojo (training hall) so even if I take two classes a day I still spend more time on the train than on the mats. Monthly fees are about half the cost of my train pass. Regardless of the cost and time it's definitely worth it because I get to train with some of the best in the world. I will try to train four or five times a week. Hopefully some of my nagging injuries won't get too much in the way of training.

http://www.yoshinkan.net/indexE.html

After months of planning...it's time to go!

With only two hours of sleep we headed to the airport.

We arrived at the airport and tried to check in but the girls working the counter didn't know how to check in a baby. It took more than 30 minutes just to get our boarding passes. Then, at security I was 'randomly selected' to be searched. Fortunately, there were no rubber gloves involved. I definitely felt as though there was some racial profiling going on.

Thirteen hours on a plane with a six month old baby isn't something most people look forward to and to be honest I dreaded the thought. I've been stuck on long haul flights with screaming kids before and it is no fun. Leo is an incredibly well behaved baby under normal circumstances but you can only expect so much from a little baby stuck on plane, surrounded by strangers and strange noises. I was prepared for the worst. Leo was a star! Not a tear was shed the whole time! He was full of smiles and all the stewardesses loved him. A few people sitting around us commented on how quiet he was. He didn't even cry during take off or landing. What a relief!

When we landed I was exhausted and very happy to be off the plane. Immigration went smoothly but took a while because the officials weren't sure how to give Leo a visa since he is technically a Canadian citizen but also an undocumented Japanese citizen. He got a special stamp in his passport and we'll have to visit the immigration office eventually to settle everything

We were greeted by Ayumi's parents. Leo was very excited to meet his grandparents. He smiled and giggled a lot. His grandparents were equally excited to meet him.

I'm glad to be back!