Our Male Model

We spent last Saturday at Shinjuku Gyoen Park and spent the late morning underneath a small grove of cherry blossom trees. We brought a lunch, and a bat & ball to keep Anthon entertained. We didn't on, however, Anthon being the subject of no less than 6 photographers.

For those of you who know Anthon, he's a very outgoing and verbal kid. He's fun loving and because of both his parents incessant picture taking, he is used to hamming it up for the camera. He knows when he's on and can be quite boisterous and entertaining...at least to his parents. We were playing around and I noticed in the periphery one lady who was ducking behind a tree snapping pictures of us. This went on for about five minutes before I made eye contact and she approached us asked if it was OK to take more pictures of our son. Literally 15 minutes later and she's snapping both film and digital pictures, directing on how to position him and how to make him laugh, etc. A bit odd. Then as I'm playing tee ball with Anthon (I hold the ball, Anthon swings the bat, and more often than not hits me in the process), another man comes up and starts taking pictures of Anthon playing ball...another 10 minutes following us around. We had two more groups of people ask to take pictures with Anthon and then two other, more shy photographers, that were more intent on either taking video of Anthon running around or taking pictures of the photographers taking pictures of Anthon. All in the space of two hours.

I certainly hope this doesn't turn Anthon into a Zoolander clone. I would hate to have him ask me, "Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking?"

Here's a picture Shelley took of one of the photographers taking pictures of Anthon.

My Son the Photographer...and Painful Lessons in Parenting

Anthon is my mini-me. I feel flattered that he likes things that I like. He likes tacos, yakitori, sports, and a lot of other things that I like. He's a morning person like me, which I think is unfortunate for Shelley.

Shortly before we left for Japan, Shelley gave him her old 35mm point-and-shoot film camera. It's funny to see him act out how he perceives me and Shelley's incessant picture taking of him. Anthon puts the camera up to his eye, backwards no less, and says, "Dad, look at me, say cheese." He pretends to take the picture and without fail says in a matter of fact voice, "cute." When he's feeling like a true photographer, he hunts for my tripod, pulls it out and pretends that's his camera.

I thought that this would be the end of my post, but unfortunately, I learned a really interesting lesson about parenthood from Anthon, his camera and my lack of seeing the forest for the trees.

We had a family outing one night and I brought my camera along to take some pictures. Anthon ran to get his camera, but I told him that he couldn't bring it along for a variety of reasons, namely he would drop it and because I said so. He freaked out of course and resisted any attempts by me to put it back in his room. I kept getting mad because he wasn't obeying his Dad and it never occured to until we were making our way to the train station that the only reason he wanted to bring his camera was because I brought my camera. It killed me to think that I was being so focused on Anthon obeying me that I totally missed the intent of his actions.


I'd like to think that I've learned my lesson. I wore a french cuff shirt to church on Sunday and I wore the cuff links that Anthon gave me for Father's Day last year. Anthon of course wanted to wear cuff links like his Dad to church. Well, I've never seen a french cuff shirt for a two year old...have you? Shelley helped Anthon put on one of my cuff links into his shirt and he was happy and showed it off that day to others.