September scenes

September has been and gone and, with it, the last of H's paternity leave. He will be back at work as usual again on Monday. Where has all the time gone?

We've had a few days out, and birthday dinners for Vivian and Shuko. We paid a little visit to English School, had Lisa come visit us one day, met Chieko for lunch and Miki for dinner while she was here from Vietnam. K has been back at preschool as usual and I have been teaching 2 classes a week. Generally though we have been at home this month and there has been a lot of this...



...and even more of this...


The weather has been a big factor in what we've been doing. At the beginning of the month it was still far too hot and humid to do anything - well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. After that a couple of typhoons brought strong winds and torrential rain, but nowadays the temperature is generally in the mid-20s and the humidity is low. At night-time you can even enjoy feeling a bit chilly from time to time!

T turned 6 months old last week and is enjoying his first experiences of solid food. He's now up to two meals a day and eats anything we offer him, in large amounts and with gusto. He can now roll right over; I never seem to see him actually moving from place to place, yet he can magically cover quite a bit of ground when no-one is looking.

I had high hopes of doing a lot of Sorting Out in the house this month while H was here. Are you surprised to hear that very little progress has been made? I have gone through a couple of cupboards properly but, in general, I've simply made matters worse by starting lots of jobs but, in the words of a well-known plumber, not finishing anything. Oh well.

On the other hand, progress has been made on Project New Car. I think that tomorrow we may actually sign on the dotted line!

And so to bed...

Summer 2011: Royal Cornwall Show

At long last, a post about our trip to the UK. There will be more, I promise...

The Royal Cornwall Show is a big deal in Cornwall. It's a 3 day agricultural show usually held at the beginning of June and I used to go there every year when I was growing up. Since leaving home I've only been once, when it was rescheduled due to terrible weather, so it was great to be able to go this year and to introduce it to H and the boys.

I don't think H was really prepared for the scale of it all, judging by the number of photos like this that he took...




While it's termed an agricultural show, there's a lot more to it than that. We started with the Flower Tent, a mix of trade displays and competition entries. Flower arrangements, obviously...

... but also children's classes. I remember entering collages, miniature gardens and, yes, flower arrangements when I was at primary school.

This year, with a 3 year old in tow, we mainly looked at the animals. We spent some time sheltering from the rain in the poultry tent...







... and saw other animals including (but not limited to) cows, goats, sheep...



... dogs, horses, pigs...



... bees, donkeys, rabbits...

... birds of prey, and alpacas! Do you know much about alpacas? They are like llamas, but generally bred for their wool. They seem to be the latest thing in the UK now, we saw them everywhere. They look rather comical when they've just been shorn...

I always like to visit the Women's Institute and Young Farmers Club tents. Each branch within the county competes against the others to decorate a booth on a set theme. The display must include elements of handicrafts, cookery and flower arrangement. This year the YFC theme was 'Disney' and here is the winning 'Alice in Wonderland' display:



I think that H was more interested in the 'Animal Made From Vegetables' contest though...



Of course there were also lots of things to watch in the show rings throughout the day, including the judging of the various animals, show-jumping, dog agility competitions, a motorbike display team, parachuting (sadly cancelled due to the weather) and the rather disappointing camel polo:

Now then, what else?

Well, food; all kinds of yummy and generally unhealthy fairground-type delicacies. Crafts; lots of stalls selling wonderful handmade goodies. A fairground, a collection of traction engines, displays of falconry and fly fishing, horse whispering and Cornish wrestling... and then there are all the things that I didn't see!

And don't forget the trade stands of machinery, great fun for a little boy...

Just look at the size of this combine!

K collected lots of stickers, had a go at milking a (not real) cow and even got to sit in the air ambulance...

We spent a very full day at the show and must have walked miles, but K never flagged and even ran back to the car at the end of the day.

Oh, and T was there too, poor little un-photographed baby...

Getting back into the old routines...

After more than a week back here, I think that we've finally got settled in again. Mind you, we're not really back into the old routines because H is still on leave until the end of the month and, oh yes, we've got a second child to look after now!

People who were here all summer tell me that it was particularly hot this year and that the weather at the moment is much cooler, but I'm not convinced. To me, it's a question of comparing 'extremely hot' and merely 'very, very hot'; I can't see that today's temperature of 32 degrees, with high humidity, can be any great improvement. When I leave our air-conditioned living room to go out into the corridor, it feels like walking into a greenhouse...

Broken nights and extreme climate notwithstanding, we've done quite a lot over the last week I think. K went to school on Tuesday and Thursday and I taught one class on each of those days too. We visited H's grandmother (his grandfather passed away while we were gone), took T for his BCG vaccination and a rather belated 3 month check-up, visited several car showrooms, took the boys to the play centre, popped into English School, broke out the paddling pool, ate out a lot and even made the tiniest start on Clearing Out Cupboards...

The next big challenge is to rustle up enough energy to tackle the thousands of photos from the UK. Wish me luck!

We're back!

You may have noticed that I didn't quite manage to follow my plan to post once a week during our trip to the UK.... But, if there is still anyone actually out there reading this, I thought that you might like to know that we went, had a great time and have arrived home safely again.

We got back here on Thursday night but so far have managed little more than unpacking, laundry, going out to eat and avoiding the typhoon. We've all been hit by jet-lag and of course when the little boys don't sleep, neither do I. K is fast asleep in bed now though, so keep your fingers crossed for a good night tonight.

And as for our actual trip? Well, I do intend to show you lots of pictures and tell you all about it in excruciating detail but just in case I don't (imagine that eh?), here's a little summary...

We spent three months based at my parents' house in Cornwall, visiting lots of friends and family and showing off lovely baby T (and his big brother too of course). While we were there, H, T and I went on two little mini-holidays, to Edinburgh and to Prague, leaving K at home with his doting grandparents. We also spent a few days in Wales visiting my sister and her partner, stayed with friends near Oxford for a while, and met up with another old friend in Gloucester. We had lots of lovely days out with Mum and Dad, H and I went out for dinner together a couple of times without children, I went to my school reunion and sometimes the weather was even good enough for a barbecue! And of course there was lots of shopping: clothes, toys and books for K and T, and an extra suitcase to try and get some of it back to Japan...

Paternity Leave - Week 2

So, what did we do with ourselves last week? I know, it's already Thursday of this week, but I'm doing my best...

We went to an amusement park! It was the first time K had been to anything like that. The place is pretty small and doesn't have many big, scary rides, so it's perfect for K and for his scaredy-cat parents too! Going on a weekday in May was great. It was warm and sunny, and there were hardly any other people there; a few other families with small children, who we'd see at all the same rides, and a couple of busloads of retired people there to see the rhododendrons in flower. There weren't even many people working there. Each person was operating a couple of rides and would come running over when they saw you heading towards one and start it up for you. Apart from the Big Wheel, there was never anyone else on any of the rides at the same time as us! K especially enjoyed 'driving' Thomas the Tank Engine, riding a horse on the carousel and spinning round in the tea-cups (that was my favourite too...).

We went to the farm park in Mount Daisen that we've been to a couple of times before. K was a bit more wary of the animals this time, but I think he enjoyed watching them even though he didn't want to touch them very much. In the dog enclosure he insisted that I stroke various dogs, while he just observed... We had a picnic lunch while we were there, and the playground went down well too.

We spent time with friends. On Saturday we had lunch in Matsue with Scott and Carmella, and on Sunday Jason and the girls and Lisa came over for lunch. Plan A was to have a barbecue but the weather looked bad so we scrapped that idea. Of course it stayed dry all day... K really enjoyed playing with Hana and Rika, especially running around in the garden and picking flowers (weeds actually...) and strawberries. Yeah for the fence! We also visited H's aunt and uncle who live conveniently near the amusement park.

I did some sewing, but no crocheting... As well as the scary baby toy, I made a pair of shorts for K, which can be glimpsed in the photos of him playing in the garden I posted yesterday. If I get time I'll show them to you a bit better later on.

H did some painting. Yeah! The fence is all finished now, and looking good.
And that's about all I can remember... I really ought to start writing this week's report, ready to post on Monday, while I still remember it...

Paternity Leave - Week 1

H has officially been on paternity leave since last Monday, even though he was home most of the previous week too due to public holidays. I want to keep some kind of record of what we do with this special time, both to remind me in the future and to encourage me to use it wisely by putting it up for public scrutiny! So what did we do in Week 1?

We celebrated H's birthday. K and I made a card and baked a cheesecake on Monday and then we had a little tea party after K's pre-school on Tuesday. K insisted on candles and 'switching off the lights', even though it was the middle of the afternoon and there weren't any lights on in the first place... In the evening we headed to H's favourite restaurant but it was closed. After finding several other closed restaurants, I remembered a place I'd been to twice before and liked but since forgotten about, and things all worked out beautifully in the end.

We got rained on a lot, and sunburnt. After record-breaking downpours from Tuesday to Thursday, the sun came out at the end of the week and the weather is finally more seasonal.

We sorted K's toys, books and clothes. While he was at school on Tuesday and Thursday I went through his things, getting rid of (or storing for T) old and small things, reorganising what was left and sorting out the Secret Supply of toys and books that we have in stock for him.

We had some days out. We visited H's grandfather in hospital, had a couple of picnics, felt ill at the sloping 'Mystery House' at Ryokusui-ko (well, I did, H and K enjoyed it) and had a guided tour of a new museum in Yodoe with Vivian and Masaki.

Apart from all that, we went to the play centre one morning, had a few meals out, and got K out of nappies! There have been one or two little accidents but, overall, he's 'a big boy now'...

(Sorry, no photos to accompany this list of antics. It's taken me 3 days to write this, we'd be here till Christmas if I took the time to sort out photos too...)

Golden Weeks

Last week was Golden Week, a string of 4 public holidays in the space of a week. It's my favourite holiday time in Japan because of the weather; usually warm, sunny and great for being outside, unlike hot-and-humid summer holidays or cold-and-snowy winter ones.

This year though, we didn't really do much. We met up with several friends - a barbecue in the park one day with Cian, Yoshi and gang, visited the Oyamas in their 'new' house (which was finished at least a year ago but it was the first time we got around to going there) and met up with the Kuchitas yesterday for lunch at a new child-friendly restaurant. H has spent 3 days out in the garden staining the fence (nearly finished now!), and we had the one month ceremony and photo shoot for T. Actually, when I write it all down, it seems like quite a lot!

Anyway, I don't mind if we didn't do that much, because we will have lots more days like that this year. H is taking extended paternity leave, a very unusual thing among employed Japanese men! The rules at his office have changed since K was born; previously, a man could only take extended paternity leave if his partner was working, but now anyone can take up to a year off even if their partner is at home. I think that many men are still put off by the idea that they will be inconveniencing their colleagues and may be considered lazy (not to mention the substantial drop in pay, gulp), but H's boss reassured him that he is entitled to take this leave and he should go ahead and do it. H works hard but he also always takes all his holiday each year and generally comes home on time; definitely a work-to-live rather than live-to-work kind of guy!

So, as of Monday, H is on paternity leave and, throwing in summer holiday and annual leave too, he'll be off until the end of September! One of the reasons he's doing it (apart from the simple fact that he can) is so that we can all take a long trip to the UK together. When K was a few months old I took him to the UK for 2 months in the summer but there's no way I could manage the trip with K and T without another adult. It's the only time that H will be able to make a long trip, probably until he retires!

We've got T's British birth certificate, his passport should be ready next week and the plane tickets have been bought. We leave here on May 31st (in 3 weeks time!) and come back again on August 31st, making the most of that 3 month ticket... So if you are in the UK and would like to meet up over the summer, let me know! I'm now, very slowly, getting in touch with friends and trying to organise some get-togethers. I know that, unless I take action, even 3 whole months in the UK could easily pass in a blur of lounging on the sofa eating salt and vinegar crisps and watching The Weakest Link...