baby diaries: our sweet

It’s been a while since Mom had one of these diaries, baby. We’ve both just recently recovered from fever/cough/colds (and Dad too!) albeit Mom still has “residual” cough. Mom can only hope you won’t catch this cough again otherwise we’ll be on a cycle again – you’ll catch the virus then Mom (and Dad) will catch it, und so weiter.

You’re growing up really expressive anak and even your senseis are commenting so. You have that happy pride look whenever you achieved a new feat (and you’ve been having some almost everyday, recently!) and even led your baby classmates on eating well – one which your sensei wrote (in renraku note) as something you took a pride on. I can just imagine the look you had then. πŸ™‚

You also tilt your head whenever we say ohayou gozaimasu/konnichiwa/konbanwa/hi/hello similar to the one below, whilst showing a big (and now, toothy) smile.

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You’ve also been very hyper recently, so much so that it’s been a bit difficult to calm you down at bedtime, even after having a bath. One way to calm you down was to have you sleep on Mommy’s arm.

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Whenever Mom picks you up at daycare, the moment you see Mom, you immediately put on the floor whatever toy you’re holding and spread your arms. This afternoon however, right after hastily dropping your toy, you had on a laugh and crawled towards Mommy really fast. It was more than enough to bring happy tears on Mommy’s face, Yui Moirraine. Thank you.

Yet even when I already have the jackpot with that alone, Mom still got some bonus. All your baby classmates and some of your older schoolmates also come to Mommy to either give/take a hug to/from Mommy. Thankfully, you’re not the jealous type, you just let the other kids crowd around Mommy, sometimes even smiling at them.

Grow well baby, we love you so.

 

 

daycare Summer Festival

The daycare staff picked a good day and time to have the summer festival/natsu matsuri. It started off at 5:30pm so when we left our house, there was a cool breeze blowing, not humid at all.

At the registration table right before the entrance, Yui was given a sling that would keep tab of all our “purchases”.

Yui keeping tab of what we've ordered so far ^-^

Yui keeping tab of what we’ve ordered so far ^-^

The first floor was where we could buy festival food – frankfurts, yakisoba, choco banana. It’s only for the older babies and adults though, we had to bring Yui’s food with us. It felt weird to bring food at the daycare since they usually provide food for Yui. With a couple of the senseis.

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We ate our fill at one of the rooms of the second floor. Dad and Yui while Mom eats her yakisoba. It was the most bland yakisoba I’ve ever had though – naturally, because it’s also meant for kids.

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Yoyo ball pool!

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We didn’t get one for Yui. Turns out she wants one for herself!

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We had this for Yui though.

Please tell me what to do sensei

Please tell me what to do sensei

Art time! Design-your-own-fan.

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Mikoshi time! For the older kids. Sorry for the blurred photo.
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Obon dance time.

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Thankfully, the time was right for Yui’s sleeping cycle that’s why she didn’t have a meltdown. A lot of kids had a meltdown however towards the end of the program (it lasted about two hours). Hubs and I could understand. Both of us were actually tired after the activity, to think we just looked around. How much more overwhelming it would be for the kids, and the teachers for that matter!

Instilling culture right at a very young age. Very nice. Thankful.

 

 

 

natsu matsuri

Tomorrow’s the Natsu Matsuri/Summer Festival at Yui’s daycare. ζ₯½γ—みにしています‼

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Above is the announcement posted right at the daycare entrance. The white block is for us to enter the PIN so we could enter the premises. I like it how the arrangement of the number changes after every input.

Kanagawa hanabi 2013

Today (again, technically, yesterday) was the Kanagawa fireworks festival/hanabi. The past years, we just stayed at the office to avoid the crowd – we’re lucky that the fireworks display is easily seen from our office windows so we can enjoy the beautiful fireworks sans the crowd but also sans the sound. I wasn’t able to watch it this year though as I had to get out of the office at 5 to pick Yui up. Nor was hubs able to watch it because he went home early to avoid the crowd. And boy was there a crowd!

The yearly hanabi always attracts large crowds that the police/city government had thought of means to ease the flow of people. For one, they’ve set up these dividers to separate people going to the Minato Mirai area and those going to the station back to their homes.

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Obviously, I’m on the wrong side and against the tide of people. My bad! There were police around announcing where people should go but I couldn’t understand them.

I haven’t been able to take photos of the fireworks yes, but thankfully, these ladies in their yukatas happily agreed to pose for me!

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The yukata is much less elaborate and much cheaper than the formal kimono but it’s still pretty nonetheless!

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Company family day

Today (or technically yesterday since it’s now past midnight) was our company’s family day – a day in which employees’ kids could get a glimpse of their parent’s workplace. The program is open for those who have kids from 4th to 6th grade in elementary. So for those colleagues who have kids around that age, they had their kids tag along with them for most of the day.

You couldn’t just bring along your kid on an impromptu whim however, your kid has to be registered ahead of time. The program is very well organised, I think, owing primarily to security reasons. The kids even have their own IDs with their photos on it – with the card coloured a pretty pink! whilst employees generally have blue or green – which they can use to open the glass doors for certain floors of the building.

If I were the kid, I’d be really wide eyed the whole day. First they had an orientation which took most part of the morning. One of the assistant area lead of our project had a kid who was part of the program so we all had lunch with him. The early part of the afternoon his Dad took him to meet our Clients who shared that they too have the same program in their country. After which the kid stayed on the vacant desk beside his Dad and “helped” by filing some outputs. Yet even with the simple task, he was very serious with it.

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I’m really glad there’s such a program in the office. Sometimes people work so hard the work-life balance is often off-balance, and leaning always on the work side. Excited for our little one’s turn some 9 years from now! Haha.

elections in Japan

As what yesterday’s Japan Google doodle had shown, yesterday was Japan’s national elections.

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I wouldn’t dare explain here how elections and politics are in Japan – every time Hubs explain to me, I end up having more questions.
What I’m amazed with though is how clean the campaign season is. And no I don’t mean the part wherein no politicians are handing money to voters but how there is minimal garbage during campaign season.

Back in the country where I grew up, practically almost all vertical space are taken up by posters and flyers bearing politicians’ names and faces. What you could see here though are temporary wooden structures mounted up every block or so. Each structure has a wall wherein candidates from each party are allotted a certain space.

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Hubs said that posting in places other than these allotted spaces are prohibited in Japan. Very impressive. Think of how the flyers could have ruined this beautiful riverside walk had Japan didn’t ban random posting of election flyers.

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I just find it funny though how some of the flyers are so advanced. Some of them have barcodes that you could scan with your mobile phones to take you directly to the candidates’ website.

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Elections ended at 7pm but as early as 8pm, almost 90% of the results were already out! Impressive. But not nearly as impressive as how cleanliness is kept despite the intensive campaigning.

Kudos Japan for keeping your beautiful country clean!