Posts Tagged ‘japan’
Wow! It’s been over one month since my last blog post! Ouch! Same old story- busy busy busy. My excuse this time is a PhD proposal I’m trying to write over the summer break. Anyway, a lot has happened in the past weeks, so I’ll redouble my efforts at getting you all caught up.
First, lets go back to early May- Luke has just started elementary school, and one of the first big events in the school calendar was soon upon him: Sports Day. What is Sports Day? Well, imagine the Olympics, only held within one school. The student body divides into 3 or 4 teams, each of a different color. They paint this elaborate mural of a team mascot, usually of some ferocious animal. Then, everyone practices practices practices for weeks leading up to the big day. There are “real” sports like relay sprints, and more game-like events such as chicken fights, an obstacle course, and tossing bean bags into a basket. It’s all rather surreal to my eyes. I managed to capture a bit of this experience and have edited together in a rather cheeky way. I hope you like it!
I have some more video projects nearing completion, so I hope it won’t be another month before I can post them! I also want to get you all caught up with family news, so I’ll be posting about that soon.
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Hey! At long last, here is the video I promised that covers Luke’s entrance ceremony into elementary school. This took place on April 7th, 2008, and it was a big deal, as all these ceremonies are here. Parents came all dressed to the T, including many women who dolled themselves up with expensive haircuts and kimonos.
The ceremony was supposed to start at 9:30 am, but as you can guess, were were “late” again, like we were for Luke’s recent kindergarten graduation. Actually, we were half and hour “early”, but somehow managed to be the last ones to arrive! Oh well. 15 years in this country and you’d think I’d get the timing down one of these days…
I had my camera in hand, of course, and was able to take some good video. I hope you enjoy this little clip. I tried to keep all of the interesting parts (cultural things) and cut out the boring ones (overly long speeches).
Anyway, I’d appreciate a quick comment below if you can see it. I really like getting comments on our videos. It’s a fun way to stay in touch. For example, do you have any questions about Japanese customs after watching this? Or any observations on how they do things over here? I’d be very interested to know what you think. Finally, feel free to share this clip with anyone you think would be interested.
Bonus question: Can you find Luke in this picture?
Finally, as always, if you’d like to see a higher quality QuickTime version of this clip, just click here.
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Well, here’s another skiing & snowboarding video for you! A few days after our first time out, the weather became simply fantastic, so we had to go out to Cow Mountain (Ushidake) again. Shinobu’s father was able to come with us this time, and Luke was really good. I also had a chance to cruise in some powder snow, which was quite nice up at the top of the mountain. There was not enough snow at the bottom, however, so I wasn’t able to take out my new swallow-tail powder board (next time!). Anyway, here you go- more Toyama winter family fun!
Here is a higher quality QuickTime version of this video that I hope you will watch.
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Hey all, long time no post. I’m back with another video podcast episode, this one focusing on our first time skiing this season. Our little adventure took place during the annual new year holidays, which lasts for three full days. New Years is the biggest holiday of the year around these parts, the time of year when everyone gets together to watch TV, go shopping, and if the weather is good, head out to the mountains for some skiing. 
This clip sees our family head out to a sports shop to get Luke some new skis, as he has already outgrown the stuff we got for him two years ago. After that we headed home and tried out his new gear with our Wii Fit, this amazing balance board gizmo that allows for some amazing balance-related gaming. Finally, on January 3rd, we managed to head out to Ushidake, a small family ski area only 25 minutes drive from our house. It was Shinobu’s first time out in two years, since last year she couldn’t go due to her pregnancy. It was a cloudy day, and the snow wasn’t great, but we had a blast. Luke took a while to get the hang of it, but soon he was zooming down the mountain. How cool is it to fly down a mountain with your children? Totally way awesome cool.
As usual, I to see a high quality QuickTime version of this clip, click here.
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Hey, I know I said that I didn’t have time to do any more new videos due to my need to study, but what do you know- I managed to find a spare 20 minutes to put this one together for you. Max has been eating “hard” food for the past 6 weeks or so, but most of that is processed heavily for babies. We’re trying to introduce “real” food bit by bit, as this clip shows. Here we feed Max a banana, but we’ve also been giving her ground up apples or other fruit. Anyway, no big deal; I just want to show you all Max’s progress. She’s doing real well overall, apart from some chronic sniffles and runny nose that seem to come and go daily.
As always, I would love for you to see a higher quality version of this clip. To do so, just click here.
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