Nicole’s JLPT #3 results

February 27th, 2010

Nicole got her JLPT #3 results back and it was an excellent 72%! Congrats to her for doing such a good job! She sure studied hard and worked hard on it and I’m very proud of her! So we are now both on the same level!

Back on the blog

February 27th, 2010

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally back on the blog. There has been a lot of activity since the last post, so I will try to go back in time (ie alter the post timestamp) such that it fills in the part of our lives.

Our last post coincides with the computer being packed up in Japan. I don’t like to make posts from the office, since it’s not work-related, and we’ve had plenty of problems with the computer and internet here, but finally things look to be sorted.

Our car has been stolen

February 16th, 2010

Today our car was stolen! I can’t believe it, I’m so furious! I decided to take the car into work because I had meetings with a couple different customers, so I parked next to the customer in a Wilson’s paid parking lot ($10 for the day) and when I came out after my 3 hours there, the car was missing. I was quite confused, since I was sure I parked it in the spot that I thought it was (there was an empty car spot there). After lots of checking etc to see if the car was towed away and if any of the security guards patrolling the area saw anything, I called the police and registered it as stolen.

This evening, the police called to say they found the car, abandoned in a pack-and-save grocery store parking lot. They said it was too dark to see if there was any damage, so we don’t really know what the state of the car is. At least it has been found! Still, the buggers who took it really annoy me.

The police said they found some passports and some backpacks in the car, so I wonder whether some thiefs broke into a backpackers or something and used the car as a getaway. Anyways, still, very annoying – my 3rd or 4th time driving the car only. :(

Lauren and Evan – before and after

December 23rd, 2009

Today we went to Sankeien gardens for the last time and took a picture of the kids at exactly the same place we took photos when we first arrived in Japan. Sort of a before and after photo shoot, 4 years apart. The first photos were taken on the 1st of November 2005. My, how the kids have changed!

First rugby game for the kids – Japan vs Canada

November 22nd, 2009

I stumbled across the information that Japan would be playing Canada in the footy this weekend, so we went to the game in Chichibunomiya in Tokyo.

The weather was absolutely brilliant – with perfect sun and not too much wind. It was actually so warm I was in a t-shirt for some of the game.

We had a brilliant spot – 5 rows from the front, right down the middle, in the sun.

Evan was really quite interested in the game, but Lauren wasn’t so interested. We bought lots of food from the stadium, and Nicole came just before half-time, but we all had a good time I think.

The Japanese team played well, beating the Canadians 27-6. Both teams are coached by New Zealanders, both sides having some Kiwis in the team playing!
At the end of the game, they a few kicked rugby balls into the stands, and Evan was keen to catch one, but they were all too far away. Then we met some of the players and got to shake their hands. We didn’t bring any pens for an autograph, but we took some photos with the Japanese team mates.

First we met Ryan Nicholas, an Australian-born Kiwi, who had a fairly good game.

Then we met Alisi Tupuailei, a Tongan-born Kiwi, who had a ripper of a game.

genuine cialis canadaThe kids were really chuffed meeting the rugby players and I think Evan will remember this game for a while.

Yunessun in Hakone

November 22nd, 2009

Since the kids had a day off on Friday, I also took the day off and we decided to drive out to Yunessun in Hakone, the big onsen we’d been to once before.

The day was a beautiful day, sunny and clear and cool. The trip out was really lovely and driving along the ocean was terrific. Even the kids were well behaved. We left the house just before 10am and got to Yunessun just before 1pm – a bit longer than we anticipated.

The autumn colours were out in full force and we had some terrific momiji views!

The kids had a great time going to all the different baths. The kids didn’t like the fish tank so much, Evan said the fish were biting him, but I thought it was pretty interesting!

The favourite baths seemed to be the coffee baths and the wine bath – the wine bath was my favourite. I remember another flower bath from last time, but they didn’t seem to have it this time.

Evan quite liked the dead sea bath, which was easy for us to float in.

The outdoor slide was great for Evan and Lauren managed enough courage to go down once, but I don’t think she enjoyed it too much! Evan and I had races to see who could get down the slide the quickest!

On the way home we stopped at Denny’s and had a nice dinner. The trip home was against traffic and I think we made it home in around 1.5 hours! Pretty good!

The family had a great time at the onsen – probably the last time we’ll be going there.

Okinawa trip

November 11th, 2009

The kids had a mid-term school break this year from the 26th of October until the 30th, so we decided to take a trip somewhere. We thought about Bali or something, but we’d always wanted to go to Okinawa and see what that was like. I ran the idea past Hideo and he was very keen, since his kids also had the same holidays.

Hideo knew a travel agent who put together a package for us. It was flights, 4 nights (5 days) accommodation and a rental car. Actually, the price was quite good and the hotel we planned to stay at looked like a 5 star hotel! We we jumped at the opportunity and took the big flight out.

The flight was rather early in the morning, so we left the house at around 6am (let the kids sleep as long as possible) and drove to Hideo’s house to pick them up as well. We got to the airport before 7am which meant we had a cheaper rate to park the car.

The kids were all in good spirits and keen on the trip! Evan and Julia were cuddly as usual and Lauren was just happy to be there!

The flight was a reasonable 2.5 hours and we were all very excited when we saw the islands from the sky. It had been raining in Yokohama until then, so it was nice to escape the rain! In fact, a typhoon had recently passed through the area, so we knew of some people who had to cancel their flights because they were leaving earlier and got caught in the path of the typhoon, with canceled flights and all. So we were all very relieved to arrive safely and to warm, sunny weather in Okinawa.

We got our luggage quickly and easily made our way to the car rental place. The kids were being goofy as usual and unfortunately were making goofy faces for pictures, but we convinced them only that day could they do that.

We got a nice Honda rental car – it was small, but perfect for us, since we only had the 1 suitcase and I had plenty of headroom.

The drive out to the resort was lovely, around a 2 hour drive or so, where we got to see lovely coastal areas and a feel for Okinawa island. We saw some American military vehicles around, some in convoy and wondered what they really had to do there.

We got to the hotel around 3-4pm or so. The resort was beautiful! It was a bit remote, but it was very expansive and the place was spotless. The landscaping was wonderful and we had an amazing view over the resort and to the open ocean!

The hotel room was very nicely laid out, with both tatami with futon and two double beds. So we could choose where we wanted to sleep. Evan and Lauren slept on the futon the first night, but seemed to get stuffy from the mats, so they slept in the beds after that.

The room also had a great balcony, with a lounging chair, patio table and chairs, and a jaccuzzi outside! On the first day, the kids all got naked and jumped into the jacuzzi! It was great fun!

We wandered around a bit, went to the pool and the decided we should go out for dinner. We went to a lovely Okinawa-style restaurant in the resort area. The resort is so big, people use golf carts to get around. There’s also a free trolley that comes around and picks people up and drops them off at various places.

That night we were all pretty tired from the trip and the early rise, so we all went to bed pretty early.

The next day we decided to drive out to the aquarium area. I’d heard about the aquarium as one of the largest in Japan, so I was quite eager to see it! When we made it there we weren’t disappointed. There were lots of things to do there, not just the acquarium, but a dolphin pool, a garden centre, an historic old Okinawa town, a sea-turtle area and a bunch of others. It was quite a big area and one could take a trolley around for 100 yen for a trip, or 200 yen for the day!

We went to the aquarium first and it was really great inside. They have the Guiness book of world records for the largest glass/plastic viewing area. The glass is something like 30 cm thick! Amazing! We saw some cool fish, including the whale shark like we saw in Osaka. The kids liked the shark area and there was a petting area where we could play with the sea cucumbers and starfish! Very neat.

After the aquarium, we went to the beach and the kids, Hideo and I went swimming, which was great fun. The sand at the beach is made up almost entirely of pieces of coral and shells, so it was a very interesting feel. It turns out there’s a lot of coral around Okinawa and most of the beaches are made up of that. The boys had a great time jumping off the pontoon and Lauren got cold pretty quickly.

After the beach, we took the trolly one-way to the restaurant area, had some food and then went quickly to see the dolphin show, which had just started.

The next day we had breakfast in the terrific western breakfast restaurant and then went down to the beach area to play a bit of mini-golf (the kids were asking for golf continuously). The kids were ultra competitive, but I think they had a good time. We also spent the rest of the day down by the beach collecting shells and looking for crabs. There was also a pool down by the beach which was rather cold, but nice and clear and fun for the kids!


We decided to have a late lunch in the golf club, which had an amazing view over the whole resort and the golfing holes nearby. The food was terrific and the kids had a good time playing with the things in the area.

In the afternoon, we drove to the nearest town (30 minutes away) and went to Pineapple land and a couple of other places. It turns out we had coupons from the travel agent which essentially got us in free to all the things we went to! So that saved us at least 600 yen per person per place! Nice!

Pineapple land was quite interesting, with lots of things to see and do.

The next day, the kids were keen to do some pottery and the creating of a local figure called シーサ (shi-sa) which is found on most rooftops and in front of houses, and is intended to ward off bad things and protect the house. It looks like a Chinese lion figure, but was specific to Okinawa. We found a place where we could make the shisa and also paint them. Evan and Eric made their own shisa and Lauren and Julia painted shisa that had already been made. The kids loved it! Then there was a 3d movie which the kids could watch, which was an underwater scene and the kids tried their best to jump up onto the stage to “catch” the fish!


After the pottery, we went to a few places around, like Fruit-land and a local zoo. The fruit-land was quite interesting with a description of various fruits and how they are grown. There was also a butterfly exhibit, that Lauren particularly loved. The chrysalis was a golden colour, which the kids thought was interesting:

The next day we checked out of the hotel and made our way down to Naha, where we would catch the plane out. On the way, we stopped off at some caves which the kids thought were interesting, as well as watching a traditional Okinawa dance.

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All in all, a terrific trip to Okinawa!

Ekiden 20k

October 18th, 2009

I ran the ekiden 20k run today, which is a relay race of 4 people running total 20k (ie 5k each). It was a fun time with all of us running a bit better than we did when we were practicing on our own. I got in at around 25 mins for 5km, which is better than I normally do, so I was happy. Nicole and the kids came too, which helped me to run faster and I felt I was really running quickly when I started. I was in a fit mood today, so it all went very well! Overall, our team of 4 was sort-of in the middle of the teams we had (we had 5 teams in total), so I’m pretty happy. My team consisted of Petter, Sanuki-san and Niclas. Good job team!

Nicole, Evan and Lauren came along and gave me such great support! Afterwards we went to Yoyogi park, where we’d never been before and had some very yummy ramen and gyouza!

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October 18th, 2009

I wanted to get one more set of shichi-go-san pictures before we left Japan, so we arranged for some photos on Saturday at 9:30am. It was so great seeing the kids all dressed up, and we decided to be part of the pictures this time as well.

It’s not very normal to have a 7-year old boy in the shichi-go-san pictures, so the kimono he wore was quite short – around 15cm on the arms short! But with the lower part of the kimono, it looked quite good in the end. There was a picture of a samurai helmet on the back, and the traditional Japanese wave on the front.

Lauren looked picture perfect as usual, and this time she had more hair to do things with, so the people at the studio did some really neat things with her hair and we were all set.

Here’s a youtube clip from the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co9_qVdTqG0

Canada trip

September 28th, 2009

This is rather late, but better late than never!

We made a trip to Canada this summer and here’s a bit of a write-up about it.
We arrived in Vancouver mid-day on a Saturday and we were still fit enough to go into town and explore a bit. The kids handled the flight very well, got a bit of sleep, but not too much and had enough energy to see the town. We arranged our car rental and the tourist things the next day at the tourist info centre. We were able to get a discount on the car and the events and a lot of good information about vancouver and Banff.

Around Vancouver there were a lot of statues colourfully painted in different designs around Vancouver and Evan and Lauren wanted to have pictures taken with them, so we have a lot of shots of the kids all around town!

On the Sunday we took the ferry over to north Vancouver and went to the “CARLIOTA” tree bridges, which sounded interesting for the kids. There were a number of rope bridges connecting trees and a large bridge across a valley. There was also a tree-top bridge circuit, which made me feel a bit like an ewok in the last Star-Wars movie! It was very cool, but Nicole was a bit frightened of it all – not liking heights and all.

On the ferry back we met some nice british tourists, who really took to Lauren.

We then went to the Telus Science Centre which the kids really liked. They had presentations on phobias and bubbles and Lauren and I went to reptiles section where we got to hold boa constrictors and other snakes, lizards etc. They also had a very hands-on section with pulleys, sounds, water etc which was really great. The kids were really into the experiments and we closed the centre which was great!

On the way home, we went through Granville and took a small boat to get over the water, but couldn’t find any restaurants open to eat (it was Sunday night and most places seemed to be closed) so we ate in the hotel, which was surprisingly good. The kids got to eat for free too!

The next day Evan and I went to pick up the car. Fortunately they upgraded us, so we got a nice Lincoln car instead of a Nissan, which was very nice to drive.

The drive out to Banff was terrific! We planned to drive about half-way, which was around Kelowna or so. The drive was terrific, albeit wet, since it rained most of the way. The mountains around Vancouver were terrific and despite the mid-summer time, lots of snow on the peaks. Kelowna was really nice and by that time it was pleasantly sunny and warm! Really nice environment.

We didn’t arrange any accomodation and by 7pm we decided to stay in Salmon Arm which looked nice. We tried a few places that were listed in our accomodation guide we picked up somewhere along the way but they were either full or didn’t appeal to us, so we found a place which was a bit expensive, but really super! The rooms were beautifully laid out, with super-soft duvets. I really enjoyed the place, even though it was very expensive. They also had a terrific pool, which we didn’t go into because it was raining. The lifeguard there (we think) was a rugby player who lived in NZ for a while.

We moved on to Banff which was really beautiful. The kids were quite good during the trip, despite them being very bored in the car. Evan was quite annoying in general, but good enough that we didn’t have to stop and discipline him.

Coming into Banff we saw a moose eating in the bog area. We didn’t get very close and we drove past pretty quickly but it was neat anyways. We checked into out hotel (quite nice) and wandered around Banff town. We had spotted a place that does fondue so we went there. The kids really enjoyed playing with the cheese, but they didn’t like to eat it. Evan started out well, eating it nicely, but soon decided he didn’t like it. For dessert we got a chocolate fondue, which everybody liked, but I didn’t eat much of, since I was over-full from eating the fondue that nobody else wanted.

Nicole fell ill that night – perhaps the Corona she drank, or maybe something in the fondue, but she was better fairly quickly.

The next day we went to Safeway and bought some breakfast and then planned our day. It was raining so we tried to find indoor things, so we went up the mountain (it stayed dry long enough for us) and we went to the caves and then we also went to the hot-springs, which everybody really liked. It was quite a bit cooler than the usual onsen and it was wierd being surrounded by gaijin rather than Japanese people but nice. Evan also found some money (25c) which he then lost but in the process of recovering it, he found $2.20. So he was very happy with the hot springs!

We took the gondola up the mountain in Banff to the top of Sulphur mountain. There were great views of the Rockies and a bit of wildlife. Lauren particularly loved playing with the chipmunks that lived near the peak.
That night we went to a lovely Korean restaurant and we could use our Japanese there, which was fun.

On the way home, Lauren somehow dropped her stuffed toy cat in the flowerbed and the next morning we made a search for her. Strangely, when we mentioned it to the check-out person, she said she noticed a teddybear sitting in the flowerbed next-door, so we looked but it wasn’t there, however when asking about it in the office, they said they had it! So a tragic ending to Lauren’s favourite toy was averted!
We wandered around Banff a bit and saw the Bow Falls (which we said was named after Lauren’s pet cat “Bow”) and saw the Banff Springs Hotel which looked really great. We saw some gophers outside the hotel and the kids really took to the gophers.

On the way home, we drove via Lake Louise which was lovely. It would have been nice to spend more time there, but we had to go. We drove to a place called Creston which was a lovely small town and we stayed in a nice motel that had lovely owners and a great pool which we used in the morning and evening!

The drive through to Vancouver was really nice and I felt it was nicer than driving up to Banff via Kelowna and Salmon Arm. We drive through great mountains on smaller roads with fewer people (it was Thursday so I guess that helped), but the mountains seemed a lot nicer. So many trees everywhere! Amazing! We also drove through some nice orchards etc.
We also drove through a town called Erickson which I thought was funny – also an “unincorporated” sign!
We got back to the hotel (Holiday Inn Downtown) quite late and had food in the hotel again, which was good. Up early the next morning and drove to the airport and dropped off the car at the airport. Evan almost forgot his money he found in the car when we left, but it was there still when we went back to check it (thankfully it was a domestic flight, so we could easily go back to the parking lot).

The flight out to Toronto went quite well and Grandma was there to pick us up.

Our time in St. Catharines was very restful and the kids had a great time with Grandma helping with the lawn mowing and shopping. There is a children’s pool nearby and we went there a few times to escape the heat.

We also spent some time at Shah and Ellie’s who have a terrific pool and backyard area.

Evan and Wesley got on like houses on fire – they are around the same age.

Evan also made friends with the boy across the street – Bryson