Kai by the sea

We are back at the west coast for the weekend to visit Maki's relatives. At the age of two months we thought it was time for Kai-kun to see the sea. Also, after last weeks announcement about our office in Kista closing it was good timing to get away for a while and think about the future. Little bit unlucky with the weather, again, but fantastic as always to be back in this small fisherman's village by the japanese sea.

Almost famous

I haven't had my photo on any printed material since 2001 when I was on the front page for a technical weekly paper in Sweden. The other day we got a pamphlet in the post making advertisment for one of the long distance marathon races I ran last year, Fuji five lakes challenge, and it had a photo of me and Ohta-san from last year. I assume it will only be sent to the limited number people that have run the race before, but it was a fun surprise and will be a good memory to keep.


Kai has kept us busy the last couple of weeks. My work is quite busy from time to time so Maki has a tough task at the moment. But time goes fast and already it feels like we have got some competence in the area of childcare. But then again, some days you are completely lost. No problem filling up the days at least, if you get out of the house for a 2h walk with the stroller on a weekend you are more than happy.


Just now on the way to stockholm for a few days work, back to tokyo on thursday already.

Sad goodbye

After one year and many nice trips to the mountains and surroundings of Tokyo we have now taken farewell of the motorcycle a.k.a. "the black". It was a quick process of just calling an agency to come and pick it up right outside the house and getting money directly in the hand. The amount of yen was however a lot less than we expected and even more disappointing when the man in a truly japanese honest manner admitted that the bike was in a very good condition and that he only paid us about 35% of what the price will be when they sell it in the store. However a quick check told us that the price would be roughly the same when selling to any store in Tokyo and selling a motorcycle private in Japan is too much hassle to be worth the effort so we let it go anyway. Kai indicated that he was not happy at all about this decision so I had to promise him that we will get another motorcycle (bigger of course) as soon as he grow up a little.

A little boy came along...

Last week, thursday 17th of September, our baby boy was born. It was 17 days before the expected due date of 4th of October but everything went well and both mother and boy are healthy.

We were off to a bit of a bad start though. When the water broke in the early morning 18 days before the expected due date Maki didn't manage to wake me up. I had hard to believe this later when I heard it but then realised that I am one of the few people that during sleep have fallen out from the top of a bunker bed without waking up so I take it it is close to impossible to wake me up some times. So Maki took off to the hospital together with her Mother.

When I got up 09.00 in the morning to go to work I found this note on the kitchen table, important part circled: "I'm in hospital. Kai is coming".

Just as an extra spice, when I slightly panicked reached for the mobile phone to call Maki, of course, the battery had run flat during the night...

At the hospital I found a happy "soon to be mother" and surprisingly enough not at all angry wife of mine. Still labour had not started so we were up for a long wait.

24 hours wait and some hours of non-pain-killed-labour later: A tired mom, a surprised new born baby and a happy father desperately trying to fit in to the photo.

The hospital has a policy not to give pain killing drugs during the labour or delivery work, this is quite normal in Japan ("natural birth" policy). Partly for this reason Maki wanted to give birth in a pool as the warm water is said by many people to reduce the pain. However due to the water broke so early before labour started the hospital wouldn't allow giving birth in a pool this time so it had to be the normal way. I'm very much impressed with Maki for giving birth to our baby without drugs and without as much as a sound.

A few hours old and sleeping like a baby.

Trying out the vocals. No problem found.

I was born on September 17 in the year 21 of Heisei period at 17:06.

We were happy that many friends came to visit Kai in the hospital. Here some of the "animals" friends who came by on Monday.

Getting ready to go home from the hospital in the nice dress hand made by Maki's mother.

On the way home from the hospital. First tour with the compact bugaboo bee stroller that was hand carried from Sweden by Erik (many thanks for that!). There didn't seem to be any complaints from Kai-kun about the comfort as he was sleeping all the way.

Mmm, after 5 days in hospital finally home in my own bed, feels nice. Here I can sleep for a long time.

Maki's mother brought ice cream and presents and arranged a welcome home party for Kai. As you can see in the background, the swedish flag is up for the celebration. The ice cream was really good, thank you Kimiko-san for the party!

And this is how we see him now most of the time - sleeping. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it!

We have now been home for a couple of days and are trying to get use to the new life as a small family. Just some new things to learn and right now all time is used for diaper changing, cooking, eating, sleeping. He is sleeping a lot - is he ok? He is so quiet - is he ok? He is crying - is he ok? It's fantastic!

If you want to see more pictures of Kai-kun, have a look at this web album or click the Picasa link to the right.

Ps. We haven't really decided name yet but always call the boy for Kai so this is the likely name he'll end up with. What does Kai mean?

In Japan: 海 Sea (same kanji character as "umi")

Latin: Earth (from Caius)

China: Victory, triumph, eternal

Burma: Strong, indestructible

Navajo: Willow

Yoruba: Love

In several languages the name Kai can also mean safe harbour or pier. It can also have the meaning the key bearer or great man. Lastly, Kai is s short form of the germanic name Gerrit which means strong spear.

Last summer week?

Yesterday and today heavy rain has been falling over Tokyo. This might be a sign that hottest part of summer is over and we are approaching typhoon season before the autumn is coming. Last week was on the other hand very nice with temperature around 30 and a lot of fun with Jonas and Anna who came visiting from Stockholm.











Last weekend we found a street festival close to Yoyogi park where we could enjoy watching break dance battles and graffiti artists. Good fun, these guys were pretty good.











At the same street festival with cousin Jonas and his wife Anna, just hours after arriving in Tokyo.











One night at a festival in Azubadjuban we met this guy, Yohei, outside his store Hejsan. It turned out he spoke Swedish and the reason for that was because he went to an art school in Sweden. Far up north, outside Skellefteå town, in Solvik School just a couple of kilometers from were I grew up. What are the odds for that... I'm not even going to mention that saying about the size of the globe.



















One night at Maki's friends bar in the fantastic traditional bar area golden gai in Shinjuku (Shinjuku 3 chome).















Of course. Karaoke.











We also made an overnight trip to Hakone to see some nature and go to hot springs. This time we tried going with the famous pirate ship on the lake and it turned out to be an relaxing activity, and not as crowded as I've heard it can be.











We found a nice art gallery just off Harajuku street close to Ometesando. It was a fun place where the apartment building has been kept as it was (except for the repainting) and each of the small apartments in the 3 floor building contains a different exhibition. There is a small nice cafe as well if you are not that interested in art.











Cool painting on one of the walls of the art gallery.



















Print club. A good way to finish off the week. And gives you funny stickers as memory.

Chiba surfing

On the way to work with muscle pain in various parts of the body but with a fun weekend fresh in memory. We went to one of our friends house by the sea in Chiba again for surfing and relaxing on Saturday and Sunday. This was the second time trying to do surfing for me and I'm not sure it went any better than last year, but I would like to think so. Could catch the wave a few times and got up standing on my feet two times - for about a second or so. Not quite there yet as you can understand but good fun and some serious exercise!

Tokyo bay fireworks

Yesterday it was time for Tokyo bay fireworks again. We decided to go and to try to get there in time to get a seat close to the launching area. Together with many thousands of other people we squeezed in on an area close to the bay dedicated for watching the fireworks. It was a hassle to get in there and especially to get out, but it was well worth the effort. Again we could see an amazing light show and this time from close enough distance to feel the vibration in the body from the largest rockets exploding.

Some photos below and more in the webalbum, you can find a link from the right hand side column or here. All the photos are taken with a 50mm fixed lens (no zoom), so the photos of the fireworks with no background are not zoomed in, just too big to fit in in a photo with background without using a wide angle lens.

Tomorrow the one and a half week summer holiday is over and it's back to work again. Luckily there are some national holidays coming up again soon and still I have some 30 days holidays to use this year. It's so warm and humid now in Tokyo so the idea of spending the days in an air conditioned office is not so bad, just the work part of it...

Roadtrip in Kyushu

Maki did her last working day last wednesday and I've had a week and a half summer holiday off work so we made a trip to Kyushu where we haven't been much before. We flew to Nagasaki and took a rental car for six days and drove from west to east and back west again in the north part of Kyushu. We brought the tent and camping gear and pretty much made up the route as we went along. I love to go on road trips and think this is one of the best ways of exploring new places and it was great way of seeing north part of Kyushu with all its beautiful nature.

More photos can be seen in our webalbum:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pedroso.mobile/KyushuRoadtrip2009?feat=directlink















Trying to swim in a shallow and amazingly cold river!















We went to many great onsens (hot springs) and this is one of the best ones. We were alone at this place and could enjoy the onsen for ourselves. I went into the cold river to get really chilled down and then straight into the hot spring, fantastic! Just like coming in to the sauna again after rolling in the snow.















Nice breakfast in the camping. After two nights of camping we thought it would be nice to stay at a japanese hotel. In a way it was of course, but after that one night we agreed that camping was much more fun and by the fourth night we were back in the tent again.















And I guess one reason is that it's difficult to do things like this in a hotel!















In Yufuin we found a guy selling these interesting creatures. For 10.000 yen (800skr) you could bring one home as a pet.
















In Yufuin we also came across a place were you could try to stick your feet into a pool with doctor fishes. The small fishes will eat your old skin off while giving you a tickling feeling. Here Maki get a treatment.















Along the Yamanami highway, well known for the nice scenery it passes, we found a nice place for a brake in the grass.















We visited the museum of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki before returning to Tokyo. This is the fountain of peace in the peace park, dedicated to all the victims of the atomic bomb crying out for water.

Hanabi season started

Now the fireworks (hanabi) season has started in Japan and roughly every week in august fireworks will be arranged in some area around Tokyo. This weekend we went to see the fireworks in Sumidagawa, the biggest arrangement in Tokyo during the year where different companies are competing with each other to arrange the best fireworks.

It is really amazing fireworks going on for more than an hour straight and they launch the rockets from two different locations a few hundred meters apart along the river in the Asakusa area. We didn't go very close to the launch scene to avoid the massive crowds that gather for the hanabi but even on a distance enough people came to have picnic in the street to get the right feeling for the occasion, similar to how people gather in the spring for watching the cherry blossoms.











For all becoming fathers it might be worth to consider that the stroller you buy should be able to carry your own weight, so that you can always use it as a comfortable chair when watching fireworks. This little guy didn't seem to happy that his father occupied the stroller for him but it wasn't much he could do about it. Just wait a few more years.











On sunday we went to Yokohama bay area for a relaxing day. The temperature was some where over thirty degrees when I noticed this "Ice World" house keeping a temperature of just as many degrees below zero. I couldn't resist to try the sudden 60 degree drop in temperature even if it cost me 500 yen (40skr) and it was well worth the money. Mostly young kids were running through the house screaming "samui! samui!" (cold! cold!) when I took a break in there to try to get as cold as possible. It was really nice to come out cold as a block of ice into the burning hot sun. Even Maki appreciated a cold hug.

Kamakura beach

Today we finally got ourselves to a beach. It has been a few weeks with warm weather but it's like I just keep thinking how nice it would be to go to the sea but we never get to it. The last summer I kept complaining that the sad thing about Tokyo is that it's so far to go to a beach, and we only went once in the whole summer. Today I realised it's only 50 min by train from our house to the beach in Kamakura so it's not so bad after all. It was a fun day and I kept trying to body surf in the quite high waves. Until the next time I'm thinking about buying a body board, a lot of people using them today and looked like lots of fun.











The beach in Kamakura is quite long. Closest to the water the sand is i bit hard but further up it's pretty good. All along the beach there are bars and restaurants and even some small concert halls. Today we stumbled in to a Jamaican reggae concert by accident. Concidering that we were walking on a beach in the middle of the day it was a bit surprising - but fun.

Back home I noticed to no suprise that I'm just as red as always after the first day on the beach.

Wind charm festival

Yesterday we went to a wind charm festival in Kawasaki daishi, located in the middle between Tokyo and Yokohama.











The festival was arranged in the tempel area in Kawasaki daishi and on the open space in front of the tempel there was traditional dancing by a group of women.











All japanese tempels have the place for washing hands and mouth to prepare for entering the tempel.











The thing that has given this festival its name is the wind charm that is being sold in thousands of different models - made of glass, china or metal. Here is some models made of painted glass. We got one with us back made of metal so now there is a constant ping-ping(!) sound coming from the balcony.











All festivals include the typical fast food restaurants where you can get grilled chicken, pancakes or other traditional food.











And we got to meet the japanese "grännapojkarna" chopping up what would best be described as a kind of polkagrisar made of rice. Sounds awkward but was indeed very tasty candy.











To finish off the day we continued down to Yokohama with Eric and Caroline to meet up with Paul at a beer garden located on the roof of a 10 storage tall department building. Nice feeling to be outside in a garden located high up and surrounded by tall buildings.

Summer time and BBQ

Summer is approaching and now temperature is normally around tirty degrees and humidity around 75%. The warmest period is yet to come though.

With summer comes the traditional BBQ season in Japan and last weekend we had our first big BBQ party with the team from work. Despite alarming weather reports showing thunderstorms the days before it was a very nice day by the sea at Nojima park, approx. 30 mins south of Yokohama.














Some of the people in the happy group of around 20 people from the team with friends that joined the BBQ.











The grill was constantly loaded with good stuff like chicken, lamb, shrimp, squid, veggies etc. After using up all 10kg of char coal we had to go get more to be able to finish all food!

The group that stayed till the end.