Anthony's hair can get wild, but it doesn't grow very fast. He was over a year old by the time he had his first haircut. Here's a screen capture from the video:

More than two and a half years later, he's had only a few more haircuts, twice in the place down the street where Fumie and I often get our hair cut, but mostly by me. Yesterday, we went to a kids-only haircut shop with racecars for chairs and videos of trains and such in front of each station.

It was a very smooth experience (unlike any [...]

My arm hurts, but I had a fun day today.

This morning, I played real, indoor volleyball for the first time in 10+ years. (I'd occasionally played sand volleyball at Yahoo's corporate headquarters during my 8-year stint as a Yahoo, but that doesn't really count.)

Apparently, there's a little Mommy League for volleyball, of moms at various Kyoto preschools. I don't know many details except that I'm not allowed to actually play in the games (I lack appropriate Mommyness), but I can still practice with them. Anthony's preschool doesn't have a lot of volleyball moms, so they [...]
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Starting preschool is a big deal in Japan. It's a "big kid" step, and as such can be a mix of excitement and stress for the kid, Anthony included. It puts parents in a difficult situation, because while you want to play up the excitement, you do so at the risk of playing up the stress. He gets, for example, the excitement of a new backpack and thermos, but then has then has the stress of having to carry them. Of course, just going can be stressful in and of itself.

One big difference to Anthony between daycare and [...]

Anthony had his first field trip with his preschool class on Thursday, to the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Gardens. Fumie had come down with a cold, so I got to chaperone. I took 420 photos. Here are three of them...

Monday saw the Aoi Matsuri festival here in Kyoto.

"Aoi Matsuri" is 葵祭 -- Aoi means "hollyhock" (a kind of flower), and matsuri means both "source of great traffic congestion" and "festival".

This particular festival, held on May 15th ever year, dates back about 1,000 years, making it the oldest festival still held today. It's a "festival", though, only in the sense of the hoopla surrounding it is festive -- it's really more of an "event".

People dressed in period costumes leave the imperial palace and walk a path to some shrines a few kilometers away. People line the path [...]