January 17th
Football Quotes
Thank god for the Guardian football website. Today was full of great quotes and I thought I'd share a couple with you.
By Rob Smyth in his article, 'Whistle While you Work',
"If Dennis Wise could start a fight in an empty room, then someone like Bennett could send three players off in one."
Our next quote comes from the sublime Sid Lowe in his discussion about a manager from La Liga entitled 'Spain Rocked by More Monkey Business',
"For, if there's one thing everyone knows about him it's that he really enjoys puffing his way through a packet of fags and stirring his way through press conferences, putting people down with the reckless abandon of a vicious vet with a syringe and a consignment of mangy mutts.
Pure genius.
January 15th
Japlish
'Japlish' is an amalgomation of the words Japanese and English. It refers to the amazing range of 'almost English' to be found in Japan.
One of the great homes of Japlish are slogan T-shirts. I remember one of my favourites was 'A train continues to where...' There was no question mark at the end of the sentence, just three little full stops leading to...a comment on the grammar of speaking about trains? Er,...maybe not...
I think it was meant to be enigmatic, like, by analogy your life might be something equivalent to a train journey. I used to think life was as dreary and stale as a fag-butt and gob splattered British Rail [RIP] smoking carriage, but I see things a bit differently these days. Ooops, off on a tangent again. Must keep taking the pills like they tell me.
So, back to Japlish. Today I went to a store with my daughter to buy a drink for the car journey. She went for Strawberry Milk as usual (despite watching Alberto the Frog on Bod she still chooses strawberry everytime) and I went for 'Mitsuya White Cider'.
It was the strapline 'Cider meets Condensed Milk' that really caught my eye. It at first struck me a like one of those epics battles that appear in Japanese manga and character flicks - you know, Ultraman meets Godzilla.
And thinking about the basic characteristics of milk and cider you could imagine that their meeting might be something explosive, something worthy of an epic battle in your guts.
I suppose I should say here that cider in Japan doesn't mean the same as cider in the UK (alcohol made from apples). Over here cider is closer in meaning to lemonade, but that still doesn't make it sound that appetizing. That being said it wasn't a bad drop, despite being hideously sweet, and my daughter ended up ditching her strawberry milk for a few glugs of dad's cider.
January 4th
Full On Family
When Aya was born some friends of ours, Claire and Derek, gave us the track '3 is the Magic Number' by ' Schoolhouse Rock'. It starts off with the lines, 'Man and a woman had a little baby. Yes, they did. They had three ee ee in the family and that's the magic number.' We used to dance around the house with Aya singing it.
Now we've had Kiyo we also sing the song but change the number to 4. This ends up being quite difficult to sing for all types of reasons, for example the multiples of four don't go up three times in each set of ten like the multiples of 3 do. Probably losing most of you here...
Anyway, having another member of the family has brought around some interesting 'fitting things in' problems too! For example dancing around the house now involves balancing one rather floppy and another rather heavy infant on each arm. This type of mismatch calls for a man with muscles, not a man, like me, with man breasts!
Not that I'm complaining (about having 4 in the family), having little Kiyo around is great. I'm not so sure she's exactly thrilled with the family she's been born into, but she'll get the hang of us at some point.
If time is the dust on the tatami, then children are the great vacuum cleaner in the sky. With our latest addition, life has become full to bursting with nappy changing, feedings, bathings, tantrums, jealousy issues winding, bottle-cleaning etc. on the down side; and pillow fights, tiggling fights, mammoth Miyazaki DVD sessions, rides to the park, spinning games, English clubs, football session in the car park digging up plants and mud throwing on the upside! Getting to grips with the change of pace takes time.
Somebody said, 'Having children is about enjoying time with them. If you can't do that what's the point?' I agree entirely, it's just that sometimes recently that seems to have been an act of will, rather than a pre-existing state of mind...
January 3rd
Pretty Cure Party
Went to a Pretty Cure Anime show today. Pretty Cure is a group of three high school girls who transform themselves into Black, White and Luminance. In their alto-ego's they have special powers and fight the forces of evil whilst remaining impeccably cute and just a little bit sexy.
My daughter Aya loves them. You can see the photos of the event from her perspective here.
Japan has a really special relationship with these cartoon characters. Whereas most nations would laugh at somebody wearing a cartoon characters suit and prancing around in front of children, you don't get that over here.
Along with a large group of children watching, there are a large group of adults too with an array of video camera and professional SLR's. These are the 'Otaku' the anime and collectors of anime goods - geeky train spotter folk. It may sound as though I am looking down on them. If only that could be said. Truth is I share a little of their desire to get lost in the limitless realm of comics and animated films.
When you're watching the performers you also wonder whether they are really girls in the suits or blokes. Although the characters themselves are quite sexy in a cutesy kind of way, the thought that there may be little skinny men under those masks makes your stomach turn a little!
My daughter obviously didn't have such disconcerting thoughts. She loved the spectacle and enjoyed a good cuddle and handshake with the girls after the show...
January 1st
Went to church this morning with Mari's family. Aya got a little bit bored so we went to the park. It was such a beautiful day. 
We went and bought some corn soup in a can and played on the Octopus slide. I must admit I was feeling a little fragile and I couldn't keep up with Aya's energy. She didn't seem to mind so much. Must've been something in the air.
After Church we went back home for the New Year meal. This is very much like Christmas back home, except swap the turkey for tuna and the sprouts for soya beans.
Instead of everything being on one plate there are countless boxes of goodies from which you can pick the things you like. Each dish represents a maxim about life. Wondering what the hell that means?! Well let me explain.
For example the huge prawns symbolize a long life as the chinese character for prawn can be combines the characters for old man and sea (because of a prawn's bent back I think) and black soya beans are meant to symbolize taking care of the small things in life, because you have to concentrate to pick them up with your chopsticks.
Mari's mum did a fantastic job. It was nice to sit back and absorb the luxury...