• The Week #281

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    • ๐Ÿ›น We made another trip to the skate park. This time Leo had an intro to skating class. They went over the basics like the parts of the skateboard, identifying the tail vs the nose, and riding and pushing. Leo's riding stance is much cleaner now that he had an authority (not me) tell him how to ride it.
      My skateboard with Enoshima

      While Leo was taking his class, I rode around the park. I taught myself how to ride up the quarter pipe, turn around, and come back down. Being able to ride on the ramps a bit unlocked the real fun of the skatepark. Growing up skating it was always street and shit ollies at best, so I finally get the real fun of skating. New life achievement unlocked ๐ŸŽ‰!

      The middle-aged skate/surfer guys looked like they were having the time of their life shredding the pool. My new goal in life is to be able to shred it in the pool with them.
      The pool I intend to shred
    • ๐ŸŽ“ We visited another local international school. It was nice and offered the education that I'd like Leo to get. Try as I might, I cannot quite figure out how getting there and back 5 days a week would actually work. Maybe it's something we can consider again after things settle down a bit. But it is good to have at least done the research and visited the schools so we know what they're about.
    • ๐Ÿ’ˆ I went with Leo to get haircuts in the evening (which is the time to go, zero waiting). I went first and had an uneventful cut and shave. After I finish I look over at Leo as he's now getting his haircut, and he's laid back in the chair getting a shave! I wish I had taken a picture. They don't usually give 7 year olds a shave, but he knows his barber and he asked for one.

  • The Week #280

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    • ๐Ÿ›น Leo and I skated both days on the weekend. And for 5 minutes after school on Monday. While he is frustrated that he can't ollie yet, he is getting better control over the board. I expect he'll smoke me at skating in a month or two time. Still the dream of riding a half-pipe together persists. Unfortunately it rained on Sunday, so his skate class was cancelled.
    • ๐Ÿ‘€ Last week when we went to the beach the wind blew some sand into my eye. Usually you wash it and at most the next morning at the latest you're better. It wasn't the case for me this week. My eye felt like it was getting a bit better each day until it didn't and, being American, I am (still) not in the habit of just going to the doctor. I went. And it turned out there was a tiny piece of plastic or something hooked itself into my eye. 30 seconds with some anestheticย  eye drops andย  scraping of my eyeball the doc got it released. Instantly my eye felt better. Microplastics, the gift that keep on giving.
    • ๐Ÿฅ” Since teaching Leo how to make instant mash potatoes and him writing down his recipe, I feel like he's gained a super power. When he's hungry and or has a craving, he just gets on with it and makes them. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

  • The Week #279

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    • ๐Ÿ–๏ธ We had the first of long weekends in November. Despite it cooling down, we decided to visit the beach with Sophie, the popup tent and some coffee.ย  I've resolved to get some decent pegs that can hold in not just grass at the park as the thing nearly blew over (but it still provided shelter).
      Coffee with Fuji
    • ๐Ÿ›น While at the beach we had the idea of walking down to the skate shop directly connected to skate park. I had been thinking off-and-on for about a year about getting back into either skating and or blading, so I was quite keen see what the selection was like.
      Part of the selection

      Absolutely massive selection of decks and trucks. Larger than any of the skate shops I visited as a kid. Leo had mentioned wanting to get a skateboard a couple of times and I am keen to find another physical activity we can do together. I also think learning to skate will be good for building one's frustration tolerance up. And that it's a sport that has a large degree of freedom will be good for him (unlike, say, baseball).

      Which is to say, we got Leo a complete (early Christmas present) and paid for entry into the skatepark. Watching the kids (and adults!) shred it on the pipes and ramps was really great. So great that we went back the next day and I bought got a complete for me and we skated for 3 hours. I now have a new life goal to ride the pipe next to the ocean. ( Also what a fantastic place to learn to skate. And the fact that skate parks exist today generally. And to have parents that will take you to the skate park. What a lucky kid.)
      Flat area of the park
    • ๐ŸŽง The only unfortunate happening of the week was that while we were at the beach Yumi's AirPods left the case somewhere. We had a bit of hope because they showed up on FindMy 2 days in a row, and despite our best efforts looking for them, we could not find them. It will cost almost as much as a new pair to get replacement buds... maybe it's worth getting wired headphones...

  • Checkin to ้ต ๆฒผๆตทๆตœๅ…ฌๅœ’ ใ‚นใ‚ฑใƒผใƒˆใƒ‘ใƒผใ‚ฏ

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    in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan

  • The Week #278

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    • ๐Ÿ“š We made a visit to our local Yokohama city library and I think I want to make it part of our weekly routine. There is a English books corner in the kids section which is nice (though I think we'll read them it in no time). It's amazing the transformation of people by place, incuding boyo. While he didn't suddenly sit down and start reading heaps of books, his mind seemed to open up towards reading. In some ways, we're clones of each other, me and Leo. In others he's entirely different.ย  I was always stuck in books, organized a library in my room, and read the most number of books in my class at his age.
    • ๐Ÿ‰ One of the reasons why this could be is the format of a physical book. When you're struggling reading a book it can be quite discouraging. Turning each page you see how little progress you're making. Realizing this I experimented by putting the Kindle app (where we had a Dragon Ball manga sample) on his iPad and Leo sat down and read the entire 33 pages. Success!

      Building on this, I've taken an ancient iPad Mini that's been sitting around discharged and loaded some manga into the Books app. This will become Leo's e-reader for now and I hope it will enable him to enjoy reading more. I also started loading kids books on to my Kindle so we can read them at night before bed. Surprisingly, it's the first time he's actually listened to chapter books in English when I've tried to read them. I think it's the format. We shall see if a new routine and an easier way to read without the discouraging affordances get him over the reader hump.
      Captain Underpants

  • Checkin to ๅ—่›ฎๅฑ‹ ๆน˜ๅ—ๅฐๅบ—

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    in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
    Refilling my coffee stock

  • The Week #277

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    • ๐Ÿƒโ€โ™‚๏ธ We had sports day this week and Leo's school. Similar to last year he had a dance and a race. The weather played along where it wasn't super hot, which was nice as well. I took this opportunity to pull out my actual camera and, like every time I stop carrying it for whatever reason, I was reminded how much better the photos look from it than from any cellphone.ย 
    • ๐Ÿ› We went to Chigasaki Satoyama Park, a favorite huge park that's only accessible by bus/car. It's been far too long since we went out to large park (i.e. has grass) with our sunshade and junk hung out for 4 hours. Now that it's cooler, we plan to visit more of the big parks around Kanagawa.
      Big skies

      Fresh off of the sports day the previous day, I brought my actual camera. I tried fiddling with the settings to take a shot when Leo was bouncing on the giant white bouncy thing that showed the motion and I was quasi-successful. I versions of him being nothing but a blur, but the best one has Leo jumping with his arms a blur and his face not blurred. It would have been better if he was at the very top of the bouncy bit so there was a distinct gap between bounce and the blur.
    • ๐Ÿ“บ I started watching Only Murders in the Building and I think it will hook me. Steven Martin and Marty Short โ€“ you can't go wrong. They've been a favorite of mine since Three Amigos.

  • Checkin to Starbucks

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    in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
    Post park latte and half-a-sweet. Been ages since Iโ€™ve been to this one, itโ€™s huge and has a drive thru like America.

  • The Week #276

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    • ๐Ÿงš The tooth fairy made another visit to our house. Finally. This last tooth has been hanging on by a thread for (what feels like) weeks. With 4 front teeth missing, now is the time to make sure I get extra photos of that smile.
    • ๐ŸŒฝ Japan has a unique scheme called "hometown tax". Most people in Japan, regardless of where they're born, end up in one of the big cities because that's where the jobs are. This shift in population is making it difficult for rural municipalities to function without a tax base. Hometown tax lets you redirect a portion of your resident tax to any municipality in the country and the receiving municipality sends you a "thank you gift" in return. There's entire shopping sites setup for this โ€“ even Amazon runs one.

      For years I've meant to do it, but find myself on December 31st in analysis paralysis and miss the deadline. Finally, this week I took part. By supporting a few different towns around the country I am getting in return a year's supply of tissue, toilet paper, and a monthly delivery of seasonal veg.ย 
    • ๐Ÿ’ฉ I started reading Enshitification and am finding myself nodding along. It really does explain the shift in computing from being useful utilities to always seeming to get worse. I looked at buying it on my Kindle, but besides being locked in to the platform (especially with the title of the book), it was a 1 dollar cheaper to purchase it directly from the author. While I won't need a new PC any time soon, it has started the "Ugh, I kinda don't like what macOS is becoming" andย  and desktop linux threads in my head.... One day....

  • The Week #275

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    • ๐Ÿฅฐ Most kids sleep in when there's no school. Not Leo. He usually wakes up at 5:30 - 6:00. When his mom asked him why he likes to wake up early he responded "because I want to be like papa". Melts my heart a bit, but also, yikes I should start doing more things worth emulating.
    • ๐Ÿ‡ฏ๐Ÿ‡ต More on Leo โ€“ his English has been getting better lately. More small phrases here and there. He set a timer on the HomePod with Siri by himself (while adults weren't in the room). One mark of fluency when you're bilingual is to mix languages or code-switch. The other day he was asking something about Japanese and when referring to the Japanese language he said "Japanese-go" instead of "Nihon-go". We've never said this around him, so its neat to see him mixing his languages as he gets more confident.ย 
    • ๐Ÿป I watched Season 4 of The Bear. It was far less intense than previous seasons. I didn't notice it while watching, but I think they tied up most of loose ends where it could be the last... but reddit tells they signed for a 5th season, huzzah!
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