Happy Birthdays, Happy Boy's Day, Happy Golden Week

The presents continue to come in. I think these were all from my mum.

Well this week featured 3 consecutive holidays, known collectively as 'Golden Week'. Real sharp people also take off the other two days to get an amazing 9 day holiday. I, of course, couldn't do that as my school has no one to fill in for me if I take a day off. I also had a heap of weddings during the holidays so I was very busy indeed.

Seigo & Keiko & Yuka paid us another visit. They were nice enough to bring by a small koinobori (a fish-shaped wind sock) for Jotaro as it would be his first Children's Day soon.

Jotaro checks out his first koinobori.

Yuka & Jotaro, happy cousins.

My former Japanese teacher, Tomita Sensei, hosted a barbecue at her house in Seishin Town, in West Kobe. She's got a really nice house with a reasonably big backyard. Big enough for about 10 people to sit around tables and eat together, quite a rarity in Japan. As we took Jo we decided to drive to her house. This is the farthest I have driven in Japan and after a few early mishaps we made it -- on time even! I was using the car Navi to guide us there but it had us going way up north through Takarazuka before we finally decided to turn around and take the highway we figured would be best. Of course the Navi had it's heart set on this route and was continually telling me to take a U-turn and return to the original route for most of the drive. Only later did I find a way to select different 'routes' to a destination. We also ended up on Rokko Island for a short jaunt by mistake.
Besides a group of former and current students, Tomita Sensei's entire family was also there. I'd met her husband before but not her sons and their families. They had a baby and a little girl with them as well. Cliff and Tomita Sensei's husband had the barbecue roaring and served up a bunch of great eats. More than we could possibly eat but we sure put a dent into it.

Kissa-chan and Jotaro



Sara hovers over Kissa-chan.



Babies have the right to wear polka dots; look it up if you don't believe me.

Tomita Sensei's son & granddaughter

Tomita Sensei & her husband

All 3 kids staging a sleep in.

Me, Yukiko and Cliff.

The whole gang

The invariable 'Who's Baby is Cuter?' challenge.

Thanks to Sara and Cliff for most of the great photos above.

May 5th is Children's Day, but it is actually a celebration for boys. Girls get their own day sometime later. The 5th is also Yukiko's birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY YUKIKO, so we had double the reasons to celebrate. To kick things off I gave Yukiko her birthday present, a new digital camera to take all of the pictures of Jotaro she can. It's a nice 6.1 megapixel Sanyo. Less than 1/3 the size of my old clunker, it has a beautiful, large display on the back. So from here on out I should have some really good pictures to post.




Yukiko's friend Hiroko and her little girl Miku-chan also came by to wish Yukiko a happy birthday.



Jotaro & Miku

Yukiko's dream come true, to push her stroller alongside her friend.

Jo and Miku. This was Jo's first time in his stroller.

Strapped to his stroller is a funny little bug that Rob & Ann sent us.



Sara gave Jo this cute little elephant.

On the 6th we had another bunch of visitors, Peter & Naoko & Zen from Singapore, and Matt & Mami & Yoshi & Naomi from Tondabayashi. Peter used to be my neighbour in Kurakuenguchi and Matt runs the great film festivals in Osaka. My buddy Craig also showed up a little later.

Naoko, Mami and Yukiko with the babies, Naomi & Jotaro.

What a scary bunch this group looks like. Matt on the left looks like he just wandered off from the set of a zombie movie. Peter, on the right, looks like he's been waiting to go the bathroom for far too long (love the homemade Doraemon shirt though :).

There's Yoshi in the spiderman shirt.

Naoko with Jo.

Baby Naomi, who's a whole month older than Jotaro.

That's Zen in the funky yellow Thomas T-shirt.











Jotaro lying down with his papa

Yukiko's new camera takes great short videos too.

Jo, Yuuki & Miku in a baby triangle.

Jotaro playing with his chimes again.

The sleeper must awaken... sometime.

PS - I've also finally figured out why some of the pictures are turned sideways on the blog. Seems blogger.com doesn't like pictures with a width of more than 1200 pixels. So I'm going to resize all those sideways pictures and make things look a bit better.