Month: December 2015

こんばんわ! Are you all doing well?

Today was a really fun day! At work we had an “Ugly Sweater Day” where we were encouraged to wear funny holiday-themed sweaters. When my wife found out about this, she decided to make a sweater for me! Sorry, it is a blurry photo, but my sweater had small xmas ornaments sewn on, and a real stocking! But on the stocking is a Santa with a photo of me as the face! It was so embarassing! But a lot of fun. About twenty of us took a group photo outside which turned out good. I have to photoshop a couple people into the group shot, but it is coming along!

The next fun thing was that my new camera strap arrived. It’s a dark brown leather strap, and it is perfect! Exactly what I was looking for. It’s the same size as my old one, but more comfortable and feels great to touch. And the leather smell is nice too! I think that is the last thing I needed to complete my X100T. I’ll take a photo of it on the camera tomorrow when the lighting is better.

And lastly, one of our free Google Cardboard Star Wars editions arrived in the mail today. We downloaded the app for Bay’s phone and had a lot of fun trying out the VR stuff. The best thing was checking out several short Star Wars video scenes. Cardboard is a neat concept and I am looking forward to trying out more!

The weather here is warm today, but rain is on the way tomorrow. Stay safe, and good night!

-B

Hi everyone! It’s Sunday evening, and I am sad that the weekend is almost over. But it’s been a nice one for sure!

This morning we had a pretty strong rainstorm, starting in the early hours… maybe 3 AM. The rain was hitting our bedroom windows very hard and it kept me up for about half an hour. But then it turned into a nice soothing gentle rain, and I fell back asleep. Hope the weather is treating you well, wherever you are!

As mentioned in the title, we watched a lot of Star Wars this weekend. We viewed Episode 1 yesterday, and today we watched Episodes 2 and 3. The first one was really awful… I had forgotten how bad it was… Episode 2 was a bit better, but still had a lot of goofy scenes, especially surrounding the love story.

I really enjoyed Episode 3, though! The special effects were really good and the connections to the later movies were pretty cool. It was neat to see the Rebel blockade runner! Also, the acting improved a lot… maybe it was because the dialog wasn’t as bad? Episode 3 was also where Obi-wan turned out to be a bad-ass (except when he got thrown like a rag doll by Dooku) and took down Anakin at the end. That was a pretty good scene and a good end to a decent movie. But now that we have watched the prequels, I’m really looking forward to seeing the original trilogy. It’s gonna be great!

Good evening! How’s it going?

Well, today was a busy one for us. Saturdays usually are, but today had even more on the schedule. As usual, the kids had Japanese school in the morning. However, this time I was scheduled to help out with security duty. But before I started, I had a small walk around the neighborhood near the school. I found this cool flamingo! I love it!

But then I had to report for security duty. It’s pretty easy. I just sit at the end of one of the hallways and make sure kids don’t wander down the halls during the breaks.

Another thing I have to do is ring the bell at certain times during the morning to signify when breaktime starts, and when it is over. Today I wasn’t the main security officer, so I just had to follow the lead of the main person and ring my bell when she rang hers.

Sounds pretty boring, right? So I had a few hours to read (The Martian), Instagram, and of course take some photos of the school. And my shoes.

Security duty was uneventful as usual. For lunch, we went to In-n-Out Burger and brought the food home so we could begin our Star Wars marathon. Yes, we are going to watch all six Star Wars movies in preparation for Episode VII. That meant starting with The Phantom Menace. It was awful! Wow. I couldn’t believe how bad it was. It was tough to make it all the way through. But at least that is over with. There’s nowhere to go but up!

The big event of the day was Bay’s piano recital. He has advanced pretty far in his piano. This time, he was third from the last spot! His performance was super today. I am so proud! I didn’t get a photo of him playing, but the picture below is of him (wearing the jacket) and the other three final pianists.

After the recital, we went to an udon restaurant named “Daito” that I had not been to before. It was delicious! Besides udon, we enjoyed donburi, saké, and sushi. Yum!

Now it is about 10:30pm and I am exhausted. But, I wanted to write a little about my day. It was a fun one!

おやすみなさい！Good night!