Baby on his baby mat.

Really, he's a teenager.
But even so he can't walk properly on the flooring so Y found him these soft tiles that will hopefully give better purchase (but still be easy to clean in case o wet accidents).
Hopefully this doesn't lead to neon-colored poop from eating the mat.

Wedding Fraud

Today we're heading out to pose as prospective wedding celebratees.
That is, we will claim to plan a wedding feast, and let a wedding halls give us free food in an effort to get our business.

If it's not to painful to deflect the sales pitch that will surely accompany the food, we might do this many times.

Native Check

My job, at home and at work, is to perform native checks.... of English....
It's such a fraud. But Y is aware of the fact, and says I'm performing 50% of a native check.
At work, I think I'm rated higher than that. My judgment is called for, not only concerning English, but also French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish and various other languages.
Great fun.

Harness on!

That didn't take long (the indoors photo is from last night).

And, this morning we could take Vitgris to the university grounds for a walk!

First comes the saddle

or the harness as it were.

We are trying to get him used to the harness so we can take him out to the park, but it's not easy.
He refuses to put his legs through the holes. So as a first step I'm trying to get him to accept on his back.
He doesn't.

But I'm more persistent then he is.

Soon, we'll post a picture of Vitgris on a leash munching fresh, green grass.

Words of gratitude

for the delicious lunches this week.

The writing however was done by the corny staff at Tsukada Noujou, a restaurant in Chofu a couple of train stops away from us.

The food is delicious, but the staff would do well to not be so obnoxiously loud. The salarymen here are loud rowdy enough without encouragement.

But the was not to point of this post.
The point was to say thanks for the lunch boxes that has allowed me to be productive through this week.

Kram!

The Last Shift

Today is my last day as a member of the university IT support staff and also my last day as a university student.

I have three hours left on my shift and then it will be over - nine and a half years of university education. Doing something for almost ten years should mean that I'm an expert at it now but I guess I put in too little effort for that. Expert before 40 is my new goal!

On Monday at 10 a.m I start my new job as a systems developer. My employer is Feat Limited ( http://www.feat-ltd.jp/ ) where I will be employee numero uno. Up until Feat has had no employees and the good workers of its mother corporation Silk Laboratory ( www.silk.co.jp ) have done all the work. If I do a good job maybe Feat will have more employees in the future.

Last September when I got my offer I was told that my primary responsibilities would be to edit the dictionary of the speech translation application Naritra ( http://www.narita-airport.jp/en/whats_new/111226_naritra.html ) but in the fast changing world of software, who knows what I really end up doing. Right now I'm just praying that I'll get some period of acclimatization before I'm expected to show results (the company (Silk that is) is too small to have the several months of in house training common at other Japanese IT firms. On the other hand, I was told I will probably be shipped of to NICT ( http://nict.go.jp/en/index.html ) for some period of time to learn about the science behind Naritra. That's an exceedingly exciting prospect (albeit probably also humiliating because of my poor math knowledge).

My tasks today are much better adapted to my level of skill and knowledge - answering questions about printing stuff, replenishing printer paper, cleaning up som directories on a server, cleaning up some real world trashcans. But, mostly reading. Front line IT-support at a pretty well run institution during spring break this is heaven.

Oh, now it's time to count the number of students using the facilities. Off to work!

At last, matched again!

Towards the end of last summer we took a trip far to the north east (or East-north as we like to call it in Japanese) to visit Matsushima in Miyagi prefecture.

Matsushima is an excellent destination for touristing. They have been perfecting their skills of welcoming, entertaining, and parting you with your money for at least 400 years.

The view from the shore out over the archipelago is one of Japan's Seven Views and has been the subject of haikus since the Middle Ages.

Anyway, tourists are drawn to temples and Matsushima has them in ample supply. In one of these, the burial place of at least some members of the powerful Date family, we pounced on the opportunity to make matching bracelets.
We used turquoise, yellow, red, and white to make sort of a combination of the Swedish and Japanese flags. We also included a black stone (a plastic stone, like the rest) because we're cool.
Oh, they were wonderful bracelets. Colourful and, due to the principles of construction, imbued with potent superstition.

Alas, are matching wrists were not meant to be. Before long Y'e bracelet was lost to her. A stupid oaf was at fault. A pox upon the oaf!
So, for many months I was alone in having a cheerful wrist. But today! Today we went to closest north-eastern destination available, Ueno in Tokyo, and among the many trinkets and knickknacks in the shopping strip called American Side Street, Y spied cheap bracelets of turquoise (coloured?) stone that she immediately knew were perfect raw material for new matching bracelets.

To make bracelets like these you need a longish, thin, strong, elastic cord, and some spherules with holes through them.
We bought plenty of the latter, but for the former we had only the cords from the bracelets we slaughtered. This still work out fine for Y who has appropriately slender wrists (although I managed to cause all the stones to slip of the cord a couple of times), less fine for me.
It took until the sixth or seventh try before I managed to close the bracelet using only my hands, my feet, a pair of pliers, a pincette, super glue, and Y's hands. Kind of makes me wish my home was equipped with some kind of vice. Or that we had bought cords of proper length.
I ruined Y's half-dried nail polish in the process too.

Anyway, now we have, at last, matching bracelets again. The Sweden-Japan theme is not very obvious anymore, but in its stead we a little bit of well earned plastic bling. I hope it visible in the photo.

Apart from stones Ueno offered the National Science Museum and a dingy eatery called Torahachi. Both of them terrific places that calls for another visit. At the latest I want to go to the science museum because then they'll have two new short films screening in the spherical movie theater. I can hardly wait.

Singing Contest

We rode over to the next prefecture to get free dental care for Y.
Except for dentists obligated to treat Y for free, our destination also featured a cheap karaoke place so we sang for a couple of hours.

Karaoke boxes are definitely among the things I'll miss most when we leave Japan. Going singing works as an icebreaker for getting to know new people, as a filler when you have some free time, as a main event, and as a sort of night cap; the last thing you do before you head home.

Since there were only the two of us in the karaoke box today we could experiment without disturbing anyone. Today we experimented with the scoring function of the karaoke machine. The setup was simple enough, stay in tune and on the beat or else you can't sing the song until finnish.

It was a humbling experience. Songs that I sing everytime got cut short after just a minute. Y on the other hand completed everything that didn't require her to sing falsetto. Awesome sense of beat.
Now I have to reconsider my self image as  quite musical person. Do I have a nice groove that machines unfortunately can't appreciate? Or am I just off beat all the time...

My hard homework

I'm trying to learn how to be supportive without being controlling and pushy.
How to give advice without making demands.
How to not add to stress.


I am terrible at it.

Friday highlights

We didn't see much art in Sweden and we weren't able to trek out to the immigration museum in Fittja either.
Today we made an effort to remedy the situation (albeit in Japan) by going to an art exhibition held as a "pilot project" for the establishment of The Tokyo Immigration Museum http://www.immigration-museum-tokyo.org/.

On our way to the venue we happened upon a cafe that served really cute coffee.

The exhibition itself consisted of works by three non-Japanese artist living in Japan and three Japanese "locals".

The work that resonated most with me was sound collage (put together by one of the locals) with everyday city sounds that apparently stick out to foreigners.
This quite simple installation brought back lots of memories from my first years in Japan.
Y's favorite was a series of anecdotes from non-Japanese about toilet visits. It sounds much ruder than it actually was - six texts illustrated by pictures you viewed through a small peephole.

After seeing the exhibits we had chat with the staff who asked where we had come from (in Japan) and so forth. We in turn asked about how far along the establishment of the museum had come but were answered that it wasn't certain whether the would ever be a physical Museum of Immigration. For the time being they seem to be satisfied with just an organization and annual exhibitions.
Also, they are more interested in art and dialog than fact distribution, so the museum will be a place for reflection rather than study.
Anyway, I signed up for the mailing list wo well see what they'll do in the future.

We continued our outing with a visit to a friend with a child. The poor boy of ten months wailed as if stung when we came but took too Y after a while. I was not accepted at all. Quite shocking to me considering I played with him for hours the last time I saw him. Apparently I've grown terrifying these last few months.

5 meals a day keeps the doctor away.

Today we were able to keep a solid food schedule with 5 meals spaced 2 to 5 hours apart.
Combined with training this would be superb.

Tried 3 different variations of our avocado salad during the day: bulgur, quinoa, couscous. Bulgur was the best.

The base recipe

• one avocado
• about a liter of finely cut cabbage
• one carrot, minced
• half a cup of diced cucumber
• a table spoon of minced leek
• ponsu (citrus soy vinegar)
• salt and black pepper

Mix the vegetables in a bowl and pour over some ponsu.

Cut the avocado in half and make some cuts in the face of each half. Then use a spoon to scrape out the avocado over the vegetables.

Add some more ponsu and mix vegetables and avocado until the avocado is evenly distributed in the mix. 

Add salt and black pepper after taste.