Last night Hiroko and I took Masa to yakiniku and gave her a good feed. We were all meat-bloated and loving it. Nothing like excessive Korean BBQ to get the juices flowin'. Last I saw as I headed to bed was Masa slumped against the couch, controller in hand, deep into demon battles in Onimusha 2.
Just in case you really want to carry around me and momo, here's some wallpaper for your cell phone.
Finally got the rest of the various photos out of Kevin's digital camera. Ended up just putting his 1GIG microdrive into a PCMCIA adapter and sticking it into my laptop. Had to squish the photos down to a reasonable screen-viewing size, but anyway more photos from Joel & Aki's wedding and shots from the BBQ back at Hiroko's parents' place in Ibaraki. Hiroko's friend's daughter Momo was their and I just absolutely love her. I gave her a couple of English books; a book with all kinds of cool stuff to color and draw because last time she came over we were playing with coloring books alot, and a Dr. Seuss book: One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. She speaks not a word of English...well that's not true she's been watching Sesame Street and she had free English lesson from some local cram school so she says "thank you" and "hello! ren" and "cucumber" (cucumber?) and her mom was like "Oh great, thanks ren now I have to learn how to read these!"
She's only five, but she acts much more like an old man, which in it's own way is really cool. Unlike every other little kid, she doesn't like Sports Day; running around all day playing games. Ask her why and she sighs and says "tsukareru" ("it's tiring"). We always grill cloves of garlic and when I was showing her how to peel and eat them she looks up and goes "miso", asking for bitter-sweet miso bean paste to dip the roasted garlic in; just like an old man at a yakitori bar snacking on a little something and washing it down with a cold beer. We got into much mischief that day, but luckily we didn't get caught.
Got schooled again in aikido -- weather's getting warmer and it was a non-stop sweat-fest. Can't wait for the real summer practices to start; 35 degrees C and 90% humidity.
Only 5 people in iaido last night, and K-sensei's wrist was pretty bad so she practiced with a lightweight wooden sword. But we got seriously schooled on the first 5 seated forms, which I still can't memorize, so it was good (except for the exploding blister on my left palm.)
Got some good advice on's web forum boards about sword bags so I went ahead and ordered one from Bujin Design. Also thinking I should get another hakama as mine's kind of long...well actually the hakama's fine it's just that my legs are really short.
Had lunch with Jeff, showed him how to do bank transfers at the ATM (only withdraw and deposit are in English), and FX'd with him so I can save away some dollars...some day we'll get a 401(k) plan...
Spider-man was, as expected, a sucess. Spike didn't like it, but he was outvoted, so my record is now 2 for 3.
Studied for the RR exam for a few hours at Starbucks with Rika, then went home, grabbed my wooden practice sword and walked up to the park to practice. Walking past the Korean embassy was a bad idea: stopped every 10 meters by a different cop. The third time I'm going "You got a radio! Tell the dudes up there I'm coming so y'all don't have to keep questioning me!" I guess it's better than being able to walk by a bunch of cops with a sword and not get stopped.
Jeff and Kev came over for some traditional home-cookin' and Hiroko whipped up enough food to even put those two into chicken-coma. Ericka's still in the states so we took the opportunity to feed Jeff non-meat foods: tofu and veggies and rice.
Also, he got a car now so we're gearing up for some Costco runs!