Play Group

There is an under 3 year-old play group Monday through Saturday in our city, so I'm taking Luke and Ian to the play group two to three days a week. It is a very nice group, there are always two kindergarten teachers supervising the group and they enjoy dancing and singing with children before lunch time. It runs from 9:30 am to 3:30pm, and you come and go as you like. If you bring lunch, you can stay all day long! (I carry my camera every time, but I always forget to take pictures... next time I will put some pictures of this play group!)

Luke was very shy at the beginning, but lately he is enjoying playing with the teachers and has started showing some interest of other children. I'm hoping he will learn some Japanese from other children and make new friends (^-^)

Also, it is nice that this play group is next to the park.
And you can enjoy walking around the pond and see koi (carp) and ducks.
We usually stop by this park after the play group, and Luke enjoys giving bread to the koi.
Well...he enjoys feeding koi, but half of the bread he eats himself. Maybe because we leave the play group around 12:30pm, he is always hungry -- just like the koi!
We are thinking about having a picnic here when Dada comes back from Europe.

Journey to Lublin, Poland

I took a trip to Lublin, Poland over the past couple of days. Lublin is a city in the very eastern region of Poland, near the borders of Belarus and the Ukraine.

My friend and colleague, Stan Dylak, from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan had to attend a student's research defense at a university in Lublin on Friday, so he arranged for me to do a guest lecture that morning at the Maria Curie Sklodowska University. Stan's graduate student and a good friend, Mateusz, joined us for the trip, and was so helpful (as always) with arranging the travel and organizing the meetings. The train took 7 hours, leaving Poznan in the late afternoon on Thursday, and arriving at around 11 PM. After my lecture on Friday morning, Mateusz and I had a few hours to explore Lublin, including the Lublin Castle and Holy Trinity Chapel -- one of the few remaining well-preserved examples of Russian Byzantine art.

It is a beautiful city, with lively central square and interesting architecture. We ducked into a quiet cafe to escape the heat of the mid-day, which must have been approaching 90 degrees (30 C). There are many outdoor bistros lining the streets of central plaza, and the one where we choose for a late lunch featured local Lublin cuisine. Coicidently, our waitress turned out to be one of the students who attended my lecture earlier in the day! She kindly offered us a discount on the meal (though I doubt if my talk that day was worth much ;)

We were a bit late getting out of the restaurant, and literally had to run to catch our train out of town. Another long  7 hour train ride back to Poznan on Friday evening, but it allowed the three of us to enjoy long talks and to relax.

Mountain Vegetables

The late spring is the best season for mountain vegetables in Japan. You can find so many different kinds of vegetables after the snow has melted, and people can more easily hike into the more remote mountain areas to pick the wild vegetables.

This morning, my aunt and our neighbor went to pick a variety called 'zenmai', and they brought back a lot of them. This mountain vegetable, 'zenmai' has a few steps before we can eat it. You can't eat it fresh -- since it has to be dried in the sun first. Then you have to boil it before eating.

My aunt started drying 'zenmai' early this afternoon in front of our house on a woven mat. You can see this kind of view -- people rolling vegetables by hand out in the sun -- all over the place in our neighborhood this time of year.

Here are some pictures I took at my neighbor's house. You can see the steps how this vegetable is dried:

This is the first day. You have to boil it first (very quickly) before you start dry zenmai. Just like above, and you start rolling small bunches of zenmai with your hand -- it is very soft at this point.

You roll it every 30 minute or so, and in a few days it will be like this:
When it gets dry, you have to roll it hard.
Within about three days, zenmai will be like this:
It looks very dry, doesn't it! We keep this vegetable dry in a box, and eat it little by little until next spring -- it is a good food for winter time.
And when we eat, it has to be boiled again (quite long time) and then we often mix it with other vegetables.
It's very tasty (^o^)

While my aunt is working on  drying the zenmai, Luke and my Mom was working in the vegetable garden.

This year we are going to plant tomato, cucumber, eggplant, and okra. Luke is very interested to watch every step. He has to do the exact same thing that my mom is doing. Hopefully Luke can see those vegetable grow, and even eat some, before we go back to North Carolina in the late summer.

4 months

Ian is 4 months old today.
I thought it will be nice to put in some of the highlights of things that he is doing at this moment:

Ian has been working on rolling over for about a week now. He had a little difficulty for a few days, but he is such a hard working kid (just like his brother!), these past few days he is now easily rolling over. In fact, it is difficult to stop him rolling over now!

He found his own fingers, and he now enjoys sucking four fingers usually (^V^)
But yesterday he learned how to hold toys, so now he is enjoying playing with his fingers AND toys.
Also Ian's neck is getting strong. He can sit on a baby chair now and we think he is enjoying his new view!
I can't believe how fast he is growing up!

British food

I enjoyed a few good meals in England and Northern Ireland this past week. First of all, I found a nice restaurant in Ballymoney, NI and had a huge shepherd's pie. Of course, shepherd's pie already includes mashed potatoes on the top, but that doesn't stop the Irish from adding a side dish of more potatoes. I finished the meal with a couple of slices of fruit cake -- good, but not quite as delicious as my Mom's ;)

In Belfast, at the Old Rectory Bed and Breakfast where I stayed, I noticed this bowl of goose eggs in the lobby with a sign, "would you like to try a goose egg?" At the time, no, I wasn't game to try one. But after talking to the hosts, they offered to add one to my Ulster Breakfast the next morning. That breakfast also included black pudding, which I believe is blood sausage... And it is very nice!

Cambridge

I flew in from Tokyo to London on May 9th on Virgin Atlantic Airlines. What a nice flight! Not even half full, and I even managed to get a nap during the 14 hour flight. Then after a 2-day conference in Northampton, England on the 10th and 11th of May, I (Paul) enjoyed a short visit with our relatives John and Lorna. We spent an afternoon on a walking tour around their neighborhood in Royston. England was so smart to create public footpaths all across the country, evidently over 140,000 miles of footpaths in England & Wales. Then on Friday we enjoyed a day in Cambridge, walking among the colleges of Cambridge University, and enjoyed a nice lunch at Jamie Oliver's restaurant in town (Yukari would have loved it!).

Fun package!

We got a package from my cousin today. She and her husband have a bakery, and they sent us a package that was full of delicious bread!!!!
They sent couple of cute bread shapes for Luke. He was so excited when we opened the box!
He found his favorite one -- "Mickey Mouse" bread!
I will miss Japanese bread when I go back to US for sure (*0*)

Rolling over

Ian has been working on rolling over for a few days now...

And today he did it for the first time!!!

He rolled over only once today, but he is a very hard working boy! He has been trying to do it again whenever he is awake (^V^)

New haircut

Luke got his haircut today. He was excited to get haircut since last night until I asked him to sit down on the chair at the hair salon... then he started crying... So, he end up sat on my lap and got haircut--hahaha

I enjoyed watching him during the haircut, first he was very nervous, but then, when his hair is getting shorter and in style, he starts smiling, touches his hair and make pose. I asked him if he likes his new hair style. He said "I like it. Do you like it, Mama?" I said " I love it!" He had big smile on his face and said "I LOVE it, too! love it, love it!"

What do you think?

Arrived in Tokyo

We all arrived in Tokyo on Friday, May 6th, after a long flight from Charlotte. The boys were really good on the plane, thought the flight was packed -- as usual for US-based airlines. Luke was in a good mood after arriving at Narita (Tokyo) Airport. He found a big "Hotdog Man" in front of a food stand in the arrivals lobby:

After a night in a hotel near the airport -- where neither Luke or Ian slept more than a couple of hours -- we met with Yukari's Mom and sister for lunch at Yodobashi Camera in the Akihabara area of Tokyo. Akihabara is well known as the "electronics capital" of Japan, where you can find the latest gadgets, cameras, and computers. We weren't interested in those, but the train station there was convenient to all of us meeting at that time. 

Also, as is common in Japan, there are always a wide selection of restaurants on the top floor of many large department stores. Luke got to know his cousins Yuma and Kie a bit better, and enjoyed seeing his aunt Nobuko and Grandma "Baba".