My wife and I used to grow our own vegetables, herbs and fruits, but since our son was born we haven't been doing much. Recently, we've decided to start growing again and are thinking of hiring a plot of land for the purpose (our garden is tiny and ground rental is pretty cheap in our city).
Growing your own food is brilliant. Not only does it save money, it tastes great, you know exactly how it's been produced and there's an enormous sense of satisfaction when you've done it. Hopefully, if we do get a plot of land it'll be relatively close to our house so that we'll be able to go and pick things that will be on our table pretty quickly. Smaller stuff like herbs we plan to continue growing at home and we also plan to plant a couple of fruit trees, probably satsuma and persimmon as these are the two we seem to eat the most of. Plants are OK to have on a hired piece of land, but it would be nice to have the trees at home - if only for the fact that I love trees.
I plan to record our progress, or lack thereof, and recommend growing food to anybody. Even if you haven't got any land or you're not particularly green-fingered, herbs like mint and basil are really easy to grow and can be grown in small pots.
I love books, always have. I also love reading
books to my son, especially as he is taking a lot more interest in
them. How much he understands I don't know, but he is certainly getting
into some books – he loves Thomas the Tank Engine and Roary the Racing Car recently – and when I ask him if he wants me to read him a book, he
goes over to his book box, chooses a couple and then comes and sits on
my knee, which is lovely!
I've said before – and I will probably say many, many more times again – that watching him develop and grow is as amazing as it is pleasurable.
I know I've said this before, but it's amazing watching a baby learn to walk. They start off like little drunk monkeys, with their arms in the air and their legs seeming to operate by their own free will; shooting out, whizzing off to the side or jerking slowly forward.
Give them a few more attempts, though, and the coordination comes. My son is not about to attract the attention of the Bolshoi Ballet just yet, but his walking is coming along very nicely and he loves doing it. He walks between my wife and I across the living room floor, sometimes with a look of grim determination on his face, but mostly with a massive grin - nearly as big as ours.
Which brings me on to shoes. We've been given a couple of pairs of shoes for him, but he seems to prefer being barefoot, which I think could be for the best to strengthen his feet and legs. Obviously this might not be such a good idea outside, where there's more chance of him hurting himself or stepping on (or in) something not very nice. We went to a big baby shop recently where they had a massive selection of shoes on offer, including a series of shoes which are apparently designed to 'introduce the baby to walking in stages.' There are, they say, five stages, which I am sure is in no way a money-making scheme. Of course not.
Well, of course it is a money-making scheme. Nobody wears shoes in the house in Japan, but the first shoes should only be worn in the house. And the flimsy uppers wear out in about ten minutes. The next stage didn't seem much better. Luckily, we've been given a pair of Nike Sensory Motion shoes which have thin rubber soles designed to help the foot move as nature intended it to. Hopefully they'll be better.
Did I mention that this is all amazing to watch?
We've been looking to buy a bike to carry our son around for a while, but the law changed recently regarding these kind of bikes, so we waited (I don't know the details of the changes). They are affectionately known as 'mama chari's' (mum's bike) here in Japan, although the 'official' name is 子供のせ自転車 (bike for carrying children).
So we finally bought one - a nifty looking Dellica Duo, which set us back ¥40,000. It's not exactly the bike I wanted, but it's great fun to go riding together as a family. Although our son spends half the time trying to take his helmet off, he does seem to enjoy riding. I heartily recommend getting one if you've got kids as you can get fit, save money (on petrol/train fares), help the environment and have fun at the same time!
In case you didn't know, Japan has a new government after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was voted out after an incredible 55 years in power. Politics doesn't interest me - I wouldn't trust most politicians further than I could spit them - but as a parent in Japan, I do have an interest in what the new government, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) headed by Yukio Hatoyama ,right, has in mind for child-rearing support.
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing policy put forward is to raise the monthly child allowance the government gives to parents. Under the LDP, child allowances are currently only given to
households with children of elementary school age or below and are
weighted on parental income. Families receive up to ¥10,000 a month for
children up to age 3, after which it is ¥5,000, except for the third
child, who continues to receive ¥10,000. The DPJ promises to raise this to
¥26,000 for every child until the end of junior high school regardless
of parental income, starting with half the amount for the 2010 academic
year. Sounds good to me. (Although these payments claim to be monthly, we actually receive them quarterly. I'm not griping, I just thought I'd point it out.)
Another policy put forward by the DPJ, and applauded by
observers and me alike, is to reinstate financial support for single-parent
households on welfare - amounting to about ¥23,000 a month in Tokyo - which the LDP scrapped in April.
All in all, it does seem like the DPJ have a more realistic idea of what it means to raise a child and they do seem to be supportive of people who want to have children, which is a good thing. It's sad when financial worries persuade people who want children not to have them. Let's hope they stay true to their word and help current and prospective parents in Japan.
Our son has gone from eating virtually nothing to building up quite an appetite for a variety of foods, his current favourite being grapes. He sits back and relaxes while either me or my wife feed him from the bunch, Roman Emperor-style.
He also seems to like other fruits, such as bananas, pears and apples, which is good as all of them are good for him. The other things that he has taken a shine to include udon (Japanese noodles) and some kinds of fish, which he also eats with rice.
All of this, naturally, depends on his mood - sometimes he'll pester us for more to eat, whereas other times his jaws remained tightly closed. Still, that's what makes kids so interesting and fun, isn't it?
I was lucky enough to spend the weekend with my family on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba this weekend, which gave me a chance to go surfing for the first time in over a year!
We also took our son into the sea, although the movement and noise was a little bit scary for him, so we took him back to the swimming pool outside the hotel where he was a lot happier. Hopefully the saltwater (it was also a saltwater swimming pool) will do his skin some good, as it always seems to help mine.
It was great to get back in the water again, even though the waves weren't that great and, happily, I found that my new exercise regime has given me more stamina and made me more supple, whereas Muay Thai seems to have improved my balance. The net result was that I even managed to stay upright for a few seconds!
That is not me in the photograph, needless to say...
Last week was a bit of a shopping-fest, not that we bought much, with visits to Costco and the new(ish) Aeon Lake Town operated by the Aeon shopping group.
The shopping centre is split into two parts, Kaze (Wind) and Mori (Forest), which are connected by a walkway resplendent with airport-style travelators. There are far too many shops to list here, but suffice to say that you can probably find whatever you need. For me, one of the best things was finding a Kua'Aina, which makes probably the best sandwiches available in Japan: their avocado sandwich is a dream for a vegetarian like me. There are also very clean facilities for changing and feeding babies, which is nice (our local shopping centre has the baby facilities located close to a smoking area...).
The size of Lake Town is both an advantage and a disadvantage - it is massive, which means there's loads to see, but you'll be knackered trying to see it all (or perhaps that's just old farts like me!). Plus it is very, very crowded, especially in and around the connecting passage, which isn't so nice when you've got a baby with you. Just to conclude on an even more moaning old fart-type note, the music from some of the shops is so deafeningly-loud, it's uncomfortable to be near them, let alone inside them.
Right then, time to go outside and moan to the young folk for playing outside my house..
We went out to the new Costco in Shin Misato, Saitama Prefecture, the other day, which is very close to Ikea and a yet-to-be-completed Lalaport. It was our first time to visit a Costco in Japan, or anywhere for that matter, so we were interested to see what it was like. We paid the ¥4200 yearly membership, which covers both my wife and I, and then set about navigating the warehouse-style shop.
In case you didn't know, Costco is cheap - in many cases very cheap. I like Perrier, but don't like paying ¥270 for a bottle too often. At Costco I got a box of ten bottles for the equivalent of around ¥170 a case of non-alcohol beer for around ¥110 a can.
There is a catch, of course, in that you have to buy in bulk. Until relatively recently, we didn't have a car and we were living in a small apartment without much storage space, so buying things in bulk would present a problem both in transporting and storing the goods. Now that we have a car and a bit more space in our house, there is less of a problem.
All in all, I'm glad we joined and we will be shopping at Costco regularly. There are loads of things that I like on sale there that are difficult to find in normal shops in Japan, plus the nappies (diapers) are cheap for as long as our son needs them.
Only the other day I was thinking that I hadn't felt an earthquake recently so, naturally, last night one struck.
I was standing in my bathroom when I literally felt the ground move beneath my feet. I rushed into the living room to my wife and son, but my wife hadn't noticed, so they were merrily playing on the floor. We both thought it had finished when suddenly the light fixtures started shaking and the windows began rattling. It didn't last long, but it felt strong enough for us to take shelter under the table.
The earthquake was measured at magnitude 7 and level 4 on the Japanese shindo scale, which ranges from 1 to 7. Shindo one is a slight earthquake felt only by people who are not moving and shindo seven is a severe earthquake. Shindo two to four are still considered minor earthquakes, while objects start to fall at shindo five and heavier damage occurs at shindo six and seven. Nothing fell or was broken - thankfully - although a few books moved on the bookshelves upstairs.
