Flashbacks about the homeland. Just something I found on the web, this is a bridge in yamaguchi, which translates as the mouth of the mountains.

I haven’t swam in your waters since the early days of yore, when the air was soft and sweet like tarted taffy from tuckers store. I long to see your shimmering body and gaze you over after forgetting what it was I wanted to do.

At night you patiently wait for us to rise, and with the sun we circle you, desperately trying to consume all that is there. Above and below the silky cover we lay our teeming minds to rest, and seemingly uncover a lost emotion, that escapes as soon as the roads widen and trees clear.

O’ Quaker, remind me once again how the old is undone, and the worst of worry dissolved within your belly. Take me out and never bring me back on a walk through your shaded arms. Spoil me with a season of friends, sure to keep me full throughout the year.

It has been almost 7 months of silence on the Kaimm blog, but don’t count us down and gone just yet.  There are new things we have hiding up our sleeves: here are some pictures while you wait.

We went to a maple farm over break, but I am not sure it could be called a farm at all.  The whole place consisted of a couple of goats, the sugar shack, and this spinning toy that the kids loved.

Now I know why these things at parks anymore.  Kids could get their limbs taken off if their not careful; Kai loved it, needless to say.  Good times and Ryan also agreed he enjoyed the carny-folk lifestlye we were able to experience for an afternoon.

You can tell from the picture below how slanted this thing was; the toys weren’t exactly kept in tip-top condition.

Taking a stroll on the Lake

We had a nice little break from work, school and life in NH.  We decided to spend the vacation in the Hamptons with the family.  It still isn’t over yet, but I thought I would share some of the pictures from the past week or so.  Highlights include the icy lake, birff-day parties, and NYC.

It was nice to see everyone, who we saw; those of you who we didn’t see you need to stop living in far off places: who lives in North Carolina?  That is almost as weird as living in Japan.

Oh speaking of Japan, NYC has a pretty good set-up when it comes to anything Japanese.  We were able to find a bookstore, many restaurants, and even a little authentic grocery store, complete with Asahi Super Dry.  We need to find some good places like this in Boston; if anyone out there is from Boston, hollar back and let us know where to go.

Coming up we have the Baby-shower for Kai’s soon to be Best-friend, and then Abol Hassan Fotouhi’s 98th birthday.  Spring has come, but I know how fast spring likes to turn into summer.  We will be back again, for the next vacation for sure.

Spring Slideshow (40)

Also I forgot to put these pictures up before, but they are basically all the photos from Summer ’08 till Christmas. Have a look.

This is pretty insane. Kai is only 2 years old, but he is already using chopsticks. If you don’t believe me just peep the vid. He is even eating tofu with them, which is probably one of the hardest foods to eat with chopsticks!

Enjoy

Wow, so I was just reminiscing about the past, reading the 1st blog I had created for Kai and saw this post about his possible Zodiac signs.  This was written before he was born and I was trying to determine what kind of personality he would have.

The description I wrote about scorpios is almost uncanny:

The eighth sign of the Zodiac and associated with intensity and power. Individuals born under this sign are thought to have a complex, emotional, analytical, focused, determined, hypnotic, and self-contained character.

Many people at this school have said to me, “I don’t think I have ever seen Kai walk before.”  Well I guess the writing was on the wall.

elfyourself.com

It is that time of the year again.  You know, the one where you stick your kid’s head on the body of a digital elf and send it out for all your friends to have a good laugh over.

Yeah so I did this little disco dance class with Kai and our friends who live below us, the McNeils.  The kids really picked it up quick and well, I will just let you see for yourself.

Staring Kai-Zilla, Manny-Totoro-McNeil, and Finnegan-Blue Eyes.

Kai's Favorite

Here are the pictures that I promised, a little before schedule even. There are a lot of pics in here, taken from Nov. 18th till recently. Yes that date does sound familiar: It was Kai’s birthday.

Besides the B-day photos, there are pictures from Thanksgiving Vacation back in the Hamptons and also a trip we recently took to Boston.

Enjoy the show!

He does this ridiculously cute thing where if you ask him what his favorite (insert noun, e.g. movie) is, he will respond with “Obama movie.” It is sort of indistinguishable in his speech, because he slurs it a little, but that is exactly what he is trying to say.  I do not know how he even picked it up.  Maybe it was all the hoopla over the election.  Kai is always thinking.

When you ask him who his favorite politician is, he will respond with Obama’s Chin-Chin, because he can’t pronounce “politician” correctly; this actually means something pretty funny in Japanese. I will leave it to you all to translate it.

Halloween Costumes

We have moved to NH, where I am teaching at a boarding school named Tilton School (in case you have been living under a rock) and I am loving it out here.  It is a lot of work, but life is good and I am plenty busy with the students, the family and work.  Kai is starting to speak a lot more now, and also at the same time becoming more shy to strangers.  Before he would run right up to anyone and say “HIII!” but now he is more into the shy not interested game.  I am not sure if this is because he is meeting so many new people, teachers and students, or if he is just mentally developing that idea of being shy towards new people in general.

Kai has also started his potty training.  This is a big step and he is making some great progress.  For now  it is only #1s, and that is great; #2s are a whole other ballgame.  Aya has set him up with his favorite buddies in the bathroom: A curious George doll and a Cookie Monster doll.  It has worked wonders, and just watching George sit on the little seat convinced Kai that it was the new hwat-ish.

Aya is enjoying it here as well, and making some new friends.  She is with the Kai-man all day, but it is nice because I can always meet her for lunch and even pop in and out of the house between classes: my house is 20ft from where I work.  I have just finished my JV-B Soccer season, and we ended with a nice 4-6-2 record. We easily could of had a .500 record but a couple of bounces just didn’t go our way.  At any rate it is considerably better than last year’s record: 0-13.

Last, and definitely not least of all, Kai has a big birthday coming up.  On November 18th it will be Kai-man’s 2nd B-day, so make sure to post a comment or send some love up to NH.  I am going to try and get some photos back up and going, maybe even a video, but to be honest I don’t have my nice Apple iMac any more and working with any Windows OS is just to much of a headache.  Hopefully Santa will buy me one for Christmas.

I love you all!

Oh yeah and by the way, we will be home in 8 days!!! Can’t wait to hop in that lake, it’s been 100 degrees here for about 3 weeks now.

Woohhhh.

Barack Obama

I know this isn’t really on topic, but was compelled to share this with you all.

It’s not election day yet, but I am going to frank with you: Obama makes me wish I could vote for him every time I hear him speak.  I just donated, for the first time ever in my life, to a politician.

“Why?” might you ask, well I will tell you why, because when I watch videos like this I honestly am filled with an emotion so powerful, so palpable that I cannot do something to support a person as passionate and intelligent as him.

Honestly McCain, good luck to you big fella.

I forgot to explain the rules: Basically the first guy to step out of the ring, or touch the ground with any other part of his body than his feet loses.  Oh yeah, and no biting.

Sumo Slideshow (17 pics)

This is the opening ceremony where all the Sumo wrestlers are called by name into the ring (hand-made from clay new, for every tourney) in their formal gowns which have their sponsors written on the front.

3 videos of fights after the break.

This next video was one of the good mismatches.  This little dude kept false starting, I think on purpose, cause he was trying to intimidate the dude who was twice his size.

Here is how the whole buildup to the fight works.  They size eachother up, go in and out of the ring three times, and each time they enter they throw salt to purify the ring.  Then on the third squat down its smack down time.

And this last video is the bout for top Sumo: Yokozuna.  The guy in the brown belt was fighting for the top spot.  Check it out to see who wins.

Tokyo Slideshow (56 pics)

Come take a ride with me, on the shinkansen (aka the bullet train).  This is what it is like to be moving at 200mph on the ground.  For a more smooth ride let the video load up first, and/or play it twice.

Two more videos after the break.

This is another video, which kinda gives you a feel of really just how fast the train is going.

And here we are doing our favorite activity in the whole wide world: Dancing!

Cuteness

Kai is gearing up for the move back home: making sure he will be able to impress everyone with his mastery of two completely different languages.  This is for all of you who have asked if he can speak any English yet.

P.S. Thanks Brian for the wonderful, ever singing “Leap.”

Update: Fixed the Video of Kai dancing.  Sorry about that, it accidentally got deleted.

So this past weekend we were able to get out for a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant.  This was of course in celebration of our 2 year wedding Anniversary, which was a month prior to our date out.  It took sometime to secure a babysitter, but Kai had a wonderful time, as did me and Aya.  My friends were completely surprised at how much Kai ate for dinner: 2.5 bananas, lots of grapes, some baby food and some baby snacks to boot (this is normal for Kaizilla.)

I have some pics of the night out and a couple of the Kai-man playing around with his cars aka Ba-ba’s.  Although recently he’s been saying “car” and “truck,” better than most Japanese people.

We also have this funny video of Kai doing one of his many dances.  This is from a children’s TV show, with Aya singing in the background.

Videos after the break.

Here is a video of how they do the dance on TV.

This is just what we did last weekend.  Had a little day out at the department store with Aya’s family, and then also went to the immigration office to change my Visa over to a Spouse one.

This is Kai playing with what could have been considered his first girlfriend. This cute little girl ran right up to him and was playing with him the whole time we were at the Immigration office. At one point Kai went to lean in and kiss her (with a little encouragement from mom and dad), but she was embarrassed and ran off.

This other video is Kai just laughing and playing again with the cute little girl.

And finally a slideshow (15 pics) of our weekend out.