Ella's Movements

Shelley took this video of Ella copying my movements. I would put my hand up and she would put her hand up. I would put my hand down and she would put her hand down. She was so tired, but thought that this little developmental milestone was so funny.

She's been shaking her a lot, as if to say no. She teases her Dad at the 45 second mark by shaking her head "no" when asked if she could indulge me by saying "Dada!" She's a tease!



I know the quality of these videos may not be better than what I've posted in the past. Youtube does allow you to watch uploaded videos in "higher quality." If you're interested in seeing that, click on this link to take you there.

With church callings, what comes around, goes around.

If you're not familiar with the LDS church and how it operates, local churches operate because everyone takes on various responsibilities - from local church leaders to teachers and so on. I was just recently asked to be the teacher for seminary - a daily religion class attended by the high school students in our congregation. For me, and for the kids in Tokyo, class take place before school...starting promptly at 6:00 AM. In a very real way, this is the fulfillment of the proverb that what comes around, goes around.

The reason being, when I first went to seminary, I was a rather squirrely guy with equally squirrely friends. We created a group called the PFLLC, or "People for Lying, Laundering and Cheating"...this is a church class mind you. Anyway, we got "seminary money" for attendance and participation to be spent at an auction at the end of the year. The PFLLC found where the money was kept, photocopied this money, and seemed to have deeper pockets when it was auction time.

Other times we liked to push the clock ahead to get out early. Nobody ever accused us of being smart, because none of us had drivers licenses so we just sat there out in front waiting in the parking lot for our rides to school. Our class even drove our teacher to tears once, as she subsequently ran out of class long before it was over for the morning.

So, to my future students, I'd like to say I'm not proud of this behavior, but I readily accept whatever comeuppance is due to me. But, if you can, please go easy on me.

Anthon's Christmas Concert

Anthon has been in school for a few months and to top off his very first semester at school, they had a brief Christmas concert. It was very cute. The kids had practiced "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" for the better part of a month.

I'm toying with the idea of hosting these videos on Youtube. Let me know what you think.

A Special Visit from Santa Claus

Anthon had a big Christmas Eve - receiving not only a phone call from Santa en route to Japan from the North Pole, but also getting a chance to see Santa deliver his gifts.

My Dad tried out his best "Santa" voice and waited up till midnight, his time, to call Anthon on our Christmas Eve. Anthon was surprised to hear Santa on the phone, but didn't hesitate to tell Santa that he wanted a Buzz Lightyear. He was so concerned that Santa might forget what he wanted, that he took the opportunity to tell Santa about three more times in the short conversation. So cute.

Then, our upstairs neighbor, Walt Ames, offered to dress up as Santa and deliver Anthon's presents. After Anthon went to bed, Santa snuck into our front room and began to lay down the gifts. Shelley ran to get Anthon, who was still awake and looking out the window for Santa's sleigh. Though Anthon was told to be so quiet and not make any noise, he couldn't keep his excitement in and said, "hi Santa!" Walt played it cool and pretended not to hear him. He laid out all of the gifts while Anthon watched and whispered his hopes for a Buzz Lightyear. Santa then took the cookies and carrots Anthon left for him and his reindeer.

Naturally, Anthon had to see what Santa left him. Luckily, the local toy store had one more English Buzz Lightyear or else I would have been the Christmas goat. Anthon played with Buzz for a few minutes before taking him to bed and eventually falling asleep. Of course, I have video.


Shelley and I felt so happy seeing the sheer joy and excitement coming from Anthon's face talking to and peeking in on Santa. Naturally, we feel so grateful that Anthon has a grandfather and a surrogate grandfather who sacrificed sleep and time with their own family to create a memory that I think Anthon will remember for the rest of his life. I still remember when I got to talk to Santa on the phone. So, thanks Dad and Walt. You guys are the best!

Ella has a tooth

Ella finally has her first tooth. It popped through her lower gums within the last ten days without a lot of the tell tale signs of teething.

This obviously doesn't come as great news for Shelley, who still is nursing a baby girl who doesn't like taking a bottle. Let's just say the two of them have had a few "talks" about not biting.

Santa Claus

The Santa Claus in the picture to the left is one lucky guy...kissing my wife like that.

I've dressed in a Santa suit one other time in my life, also in Japan. I was a missionary and as "service" to a local school, the missionaries had agreed to dress one of us up as Santa to address the children. It was very surreal coming out onto the stage with a dry ice fog, spot light, techno music and screaming children. I felt like I was at a rock concert.

I bring this up because this is the first year Anthon has really been able to grasp the concept of Santa Claus. Despite this, he seems to have developed an incredible ability to spot a fake. As skinny as I am, I'm sure it wasn't hard for those Japanese school children to spot me as a fake. But twice in the last week Anthon has seen "Santa" - once at a church function and once at his school Christmas concert - and he's outed them both as 1)his upstairs neighbor; and 2)a female teacher from school.

Nevertheless he's bought into the whole Santa thing, and he's excited about making him cookies and leaving carrots behind for his reindeer. He's even honed down his list of "wants" to a singular, easy to remember item: a Buzz Lightyear toy.

Click on any of the pictures to see a few more pictures with various Santas. Even Ella seemed to think Santa was a pretty interesting guy.

Shichi-Go-San

Sometime in mid-November marks the shichi-go-san (7-5-3) festival, or rite of passage, for Japanese children. Girls aged 7 & 3, and boys aged 5 dress up in formal attire, usually kimono, and come to their local shinto shrine to be blessed, by the priest, for a long and healthy life and to drive away evil spirits. This ritual has been around in some form or another for at least 1,000 years.

The family made our way to Meiji Shrine to see all the little kids dressed up and to take some pictures. Plenty of foreigners like us were playing paparazzi and stopping people to take pictures. Whenever I see kids dressed up in kimono like this, I can't help but think they're tiny adults, not kids. They look so grown up. The funny thing is whenever Japanese see western kids dressed in formal wear, like a suit, they think the same thing of us.

A hodge podge of updates

Yokohama Triennial 2008

The family spent the day in Yokohama a while back, and I reaffirmed my belief that me and modern art aren't really that good friends. Every three years the city hosts the Yokohama Triennial, where modern artists from around the world show off their creations. My personal "favorites" include a wall of print outs of emails and newspaper articles talking about "NoMo phobia" or the fear of having no mobile phone. Another had a saddle ridden by a Vietnamese Catholic bishop just lying in the corner with the rental agreement tacked to the wall. Are these artists really trying? Where's the art in all of that? I really don't get it, and at this point don't care if I do. And don't get me started on the short videos. What happened to the whimsical and fantastical side of modern art? Why does everything have to be so dark and cynical? Well, at least I took a cute shot of Ella.

Fall Colors at Shinjuku Gyoen Park

Growing up in Southern California, it's well understood that there are really only two seasons, spring and summer. Winter is really two weeks of Autumn, and anything cold or wet would be treated as massive newsworthy events, not seasons - like when it rains the news is always on "Weather Watch!" for hours. So while I'm not complaining, I am stating as fact that I never knew the simple joy of making a pile of fall leaves and jumping into them. We had a large liquid amber that dropped a lot of pretty leaves, but twice as many of those really prickly balls. If you jumped into a pile of that, you'd come out looking like you'd been a victim of really poorly done acupuncture. So, at a local park Anthon and I gathered up as many leaves as we could, and he had fun jumping into them, as well as picking up arm fulls and throwing them at me.

Setting up the Christmas Tree

And finally, here is the video of our setting up the Christmas tree in mid November. It's a bit long and the video size is a bit big. So have some patience with it while it downloads.

Seeing the lions at Tama Zoo

Our first major excursion with our new car was to the Tama Zoo, a rather large zoo on the outskirts of Tokyo with an impressive array of animal exhibits. Certainly the highlight was the lions. There were probably 10 lions inside a large enclosed area, half male which is odd since I didn't know male lions got along. Inside their habitat are roads upon which a plexiglass encased bus drives visitors around to see the lions. Now to make sure that the visitors get their money's worth, parts of the bus are covered in meat so as to ensure that the lion will attack or lick the side of the bus to wow the guests. If you didn't know any better, you'd think the lion was going to reach in and attack you. We took a short video of us offering Ella up to the lion as a sacrifice in return for the bus' safe passage. As you can see from the second picture, Ella does her best imitation of the lion in attacking Shelley's chin.

The other interesting thing we found at the zoo was the number of people there with high powered telephoto lenses - we're talking professional ones that cost thousands of dollars. Shelley jokingly asked if I would rather have the camera and be left only with enough money to take pictures at the zoo? Or go to Africa and take along my current camera. There are evidently people who choose the former. One such guy shot a lot of the orangutans. He pulled out two magazine editions that featured his work - saying that he had visited this zoo over 150 times in the last year. Wow. People really get into their hobbies here. Even if it means they have to come to the zoo to get their fix of wildlife photography.

For those in Tokyo, Tama Zoo is well worth a visit. There's a huge insectarium with butterflies everywhere. Shelley felt like she was in a princess fairly tale land. Orangutans aren't caged up, but are allowed to swing free through a tall network of cables over the zoo. Lots of cool stuff at the Tama Zoo.

Grading a three year old

I came home last night and Shelley showed me Anthon's first report card. Really? In Preschool? At age three? He was being "graded" on things like being able to count to 10 for memory, understanding and following the class routine, listening to others, and participating in Japanese class. The grading scale is as follows: C for consistently meeting the learning objective, S for sometimes meeting the learning objective, and P for progressing, but not quite there yet. Or in other words it's a nice way of saying FAIL!

I am sad to report that our son got a P on the ever important learning objective of "enjoys dressing up."


I remember being reminded consistently in my elementary school report cards that I "needed to avoid unnecessary talking." Clearly I thought all talking was necessary as a child. Conversely, Anthon must think that most forms of dressing up is UNnecessary. As his parents we sadly have to agree. We couldn't even get Anthon to dress up as a pirate for a pirate-themed birthday party this weekend.