Here are some pics of the new apartment, Hannah, and my new office at work. Comments will be added later, as it is very late and I need to wash the dishes before going to bed. Actually, work pictures will be in the next post. Sorry.

**Note: Yes that is a picture of a 30 foot gorilla in a rocket ship. It’s the first thing I see every morning as I leave the apartment.

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I’m not even going to apologize for not having posted in over a month. I’ve been busy, and that’s the story I’m going to stick with. I’ve written three posts simultaneously, so there are two more following this one. A few days ago we went into Tennoji to the zoo. It was a nicer zoo than I had imagined, but I still thought the enclosures were a bit small for the animals. Of course, ten minutes after we got there, Hannah fell asleep. Rie and I walked around for an hour or so until she woke up. Hannah was indifferent to a lot of the animals mainly due to the fact that they just sat there like pieces of furniture. She did respond to the birds, and was terrified by the pelicans because they were making strange pelican noises. Here are some photos at the zoo as well as some other recent ones.

Hannah started eating “solid” food this week. Here she dines on mashed rice

We also bought a baby walker, which she took to immediately. This has helped us immensely, as it now eats up an extra half-hour of the day’s repertoire

I’ve been on vacation for about two weeks now (although last week was spent submitting final grades for my classes). The last week of classes were spent testing, so that was a fairly easy one to get through. On Tuesdays I teach CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). During the last week, while my students were diligently finishing up their coursework, I was naturally surfing the Internet trying to amuse myself for 90 minutes. I happened to discover that David Byrne was going to be performing in Osaka that Friday night, so I told my colleague in the next room (also surfing the Net), who is a huge Talking Heads fan , about it and we ended up getting tickets. The concert was at Namba Hatch, a cool looking performing arts center in south Osaka.

Having no idea how many people would be at the concert, or even where our seats were, we got there about an hour early. As it turned out, there were only about 600 people, and it was festival seating. We ended up in the third row about ten meters off to the right of the microphone. The show was incredible! The concert was promoted as a showcase of the music Byrne and producer Brian Eno have made together. I wasn’t expecting a lot of Talking Heads stuff, but there were quite a few of the classic hits. He did three encores, which is unheard of in Japan, due to the subdued nature of Japanese audiences. I was especially surprised to see only a handful of non-Japanese there. I was anticipating a large number of western ex-pats to fill the auditorium. I’m not complaining. It was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in about ten years. I also highly recommend listening to the newest Byrne/Eno album, which you can do here.</pnd wh

We went to Saitama for ten days  to visit Rie’s family over the New Year’s holiday. It was the first time for Hannah to take the plane.  There were no problems going there or coming back. To be fair, the flight from Osaka to Tokyo is less than an hour. It takes us longer than that just to get from our apartment to the airport. Still, it was good practice for when we do the marathon flight back to the States this summer. Rie’s brother picked us up and dropped us off at the airport, which was great because it saved us the trouble dealing with the train going to Saitama. The trip consisted of the usual things (visiting friends & relatives, going into Tokyo and  losing a lot of money at pachinko). This time, however, there were a few additional highlights:

Rie, her sister and I went to see the Blue Man Group in Tokyo. It was the same show that we saw in London, but still worth the price of admission. The only problem was that the show relies a lot on audience participation, which doesn’t go over very well with a Japanese audience. I cannot express in words how much of a difference there was in atmosphere between the London show and the Tokyo show. Actually, I can express it in words. Four words to be exact.

London: electrical excitement

Tokyo: confused tranquility

After the show we went into the Ginza district to eat at a famous Indian curry restaurant. As we sat down, Rie asked me if I knew who the man was sitting in the corner. I didn’t. Turns out he was the biggest Kabuki performer in Japan. I’m aware that this man is a huge celebrity here, but my level of enthusiasm was that as if I had been in France and someone told me the man sitting at the counter was the country’s top chocolatier. And believe me, my knowledge of chocolate far outweighs my knowledge of Kabuki. The curry was very nice, but bordered the limit of spiciness that my palate can endure.

Six or seven years ago, on another trip to Tokyo, Rie and I had bought keitais (cell phones). To have the same cell phone for seven years in Japan is roughly the equivalent of using the same toothbrush for the same amount of time. Our keitai phone provider finally sent us a message saying that our phone service would be discontinued in February unless we bought new phones. When you buy a new keitai in Japan, if you buy with the same company, you get points depending on how much you use it and what you do with it. These points are then converted into cash to go toward the new keitai payment. Since most people renew their phones every two years or so, they get maybe two or three thousand yen ($20-$30). My total came to over seventeen thousand yen ($175). My head filled with images of a new iphone, all black and shiny with a crystal clear screen ready to transmit my entire collection of “The Family Guy”. Oddly enough, Rie’s head filled with those same images, which is why I now have a keitai  that, by Japanese standards, is only a few steps up from the old Motorola cell phones of the 1970s. To be honest, I am very happy with it since I don’t use it for anything but calling and texting.

Another grand moment came when we found a shoe store that sells nothing but big-sized shoes. Before, finding shoes that fit was nearly impossible. I had always had to wait and buy shoes on my trips back to the States. This store has a huge selection (although some were not to my taste). They also have a website, so I can order over the Internet and they will send them to Osaka.

I swear that I do have hair. For some reason I look bald under bright lights…as well as 10 years older

Some other pics from New Year’s:

Ginza District

Shinjuku District

Shinjuku District

Ueno District

It’s been awhile since I last updated due to my inability to remember to click the “Publish” button after composing a post. I had a feeling it was my fault, and not that of the system. It’s so frustrating when you know there’s a reason why something isn’t working, but can’t figure out why. Anyway, I finally sat down and went through everything, step-by-step, and caught the mistake. So, I decided to put my posts together into one big “megapost” that tells what’s been going on.

It seems strange that it’s only been four months since Hannah was born. At the same time, however, it also seems like an eternity (especially at 3:00 a.m., when she wakes up crying). She interacts a lot more with us now, and is developing her own personality. She’s starting to laugh more. Yesterday, she got into a laughing fit that lasted about ten minutes. Of course, that was the manic stage before the intense crying that precedes her falling asleep. She “talks” a lot now, and likes to play with her toys and her play gym. She received her first set of shots with no problems, and celebrated her 100 day mark (something that is very important in Japan). We have submitted her documents to become an American citizen and are waiting for her passport and Social Security card. She will be a dual-citizen until she is twenty, at which time she has to choose which nationality she wants to use (although I have a friend who is 40, and still has dual nationality).

In Japan, many families celebrate the baby’s 100th day by going to have pictures taken at a photo studio. In the evening they eat a special Japanese dinner (see pictures). Our trip to the photo studio lasted about three hours. By the last few shots, Hannah had given up entirely and just fell asleep on the set. There are two styles of photos offered for this occasion: traditional Japanese and western. The traditional Japanese style involves slapping an oversized kimono on the baby and taking pictures with various Japanese-style backgrounds. My personal favorite is the one with Hannah and tray of food containing, among other things, octopus and a whole fish. The western style photos basically dress the babies up in a wedding/baptism gown and put them on a fluffy pink (or blue) cushion.

She starts out pretty good, enjoying the whole situation

This is the shot of her with the traditional dinner that families eat to celebrate. Note the octopus and fish (the octopus is a bit hard to see, just to the left of the fish)

By the time they switched her to the western garb, she was getting a little tired

She finally gives up and goes to sleep, despite the prodding of the photographers

Our dinner that night, minus the octopus

As I said before, we’re waiting for her passport. I also needed to replace my passport, which I lost somewhere. It was quite an ordeal trying to get the right photo taken. Either the shadowing wasn’t right, her hands were in front of her face, she wasn’t looking at the camera or she looked just plain freaked out. Finally, we gave up and went to a photo shop to have them done professionally. Here are just a few of the pictures that led to our having them done for us. You decide for yourselves why we didn’t use these:

Here are some other random pictures:

Her new favorite toy (the ball, that is)

This picture was taken just as she rolled over for the first time. She hasn’t done it since.