We had a most wonderful day yesterday.

It was a combination of:

My cold finally getting mostly better. (It turns out it was a common upper-respiratory infection, for which antibiotics seem to be working). It was shorts-and-T-shirt weather, the first such day this year. It was the first day in ages where no school event was scheduled or on the immediate horizon.

We celebrated by venturing out to a place we'd heard of but had never been, a small (180-acre) 30-year-old man-made island in the south of Lake Biwa with the imposing name yabasekihantou (矢橋帰帆島 – website).

Perhaps a third [...]

View full post »

Anthony has almost doubled in age since he started preschool, and today his tenure as a kindergartener ended. He graduated preschool today, and starts first grade next month.

Anthony looks sharp in a suit, but a kid should look like a kid, so the shorts Fumie selected maintain that perfect balance of "dressed up" and "still a kid". It's the same ensemble that Curious George modeled a few weeks ago, with a real necktie and all.

The ceremony wasn't too long, with some speeches and songs, but eventually the kids were called up in alphabetical order, and soon it was [...]

View full post »

The Japanese school year ends in March, so he graduates from kindergarten in a few weeks. It seems like only yesterday that he started preschool, but that was three years ago, and he's doubled in age since then. (Sometimes I think that I have, too.)

Like his recent his first solo outing and losing his baby teeth.... more signs of growing up.

View full post »

Yesterday morning, Anthony was all excited to tell me some "good news for everyone!". He had discovered adult teeth poking out behind his front-lower incisors. Many of his classmates have already started losing their baby teeth – a big step toward being oniichan (a "big kid") – so he's been eagerly awaiting the event.

For my part, I was shocked at how far behind his baby teeth the adult teeth had come in. I don't know what's supposed to be normal, but it just felt very wrong. I didn't let on to him about that worry, of course, so I [...]

View full post »

Suddenly this week, for reasons that I don't know, Anthony has an extreme interest in soccer. He doesn't know much about it other than you kick a ball into a goal, and that the goalkeeper can use his hands, but he's started to "practice" with enthusiasm at kindergarten and in the livingroom (the latter with a Nerf-type ball). Today, for the first time, we went to a park to kick a ball around.

After playing together for a while, I remembered that I had the camera with me (I brought it to a school event but ended up not using [...]

View full post »