Beautiful evening

We have been quite lucky with the weather, not much rain for the last few days. Tonight it was very clear and cool - just a perfect summer evening like I love. After dinner I took my boys out to get some fresh air.



Beautiful clouds:



The mountains seemed so close this evening:



Oliver now has lots of friends. They all want to play with him and try their English :)



I got to catch up with a few mummy friends too. We were out till after 7 o'clock - just too nice to go back inside.

Hopefully it will be another nice day tomorrow so we get to spend more time outside with Oliver's new friends.

See you soon daddy

Matthew was here for the last three days for work. Our boys enjoyed having their daddy back and I really loved my sleep-ins in the morning :)

We had a family dinner on Tuesday and some relaxing time at home and a little bit of shopping yesterday. This morning we went to the airport to drop him off. Time flies when he is here.



We are heading back to Singapore on Saturday so only two days apart then we will all be back together again!

Olympic fever

Gambare Nippon!

With my Rua

Luca is so cuddly and loves playing with baby Rua.





Rua is a little scared of Luca as he is always full of energy and kisses her with his teeth sometimes when he gets too excited :( Lovely to have a cousin who is at same age tho!

A visitor

Today my long time friend Yukari visited us at our house. She has been my friend since we were at kindergarten! She hasn't changed at all, we talked and giggled about everything.



Her boys are already teenagers so they didn't come along but my boys really enjoyed playing with her. It is such a wonderful feeling to have a lifetime friend :)

Grass at Japanese school

It is very unusual to have some green grass in the school yard in Japan. The main reasons for this is that the weather here is not very suitable for easy lawn grass to grow (4 seasons and having a rainy season) plus the maintenance fee is so high.

I visited my old primary school, where my nephew and nieces attend the other day. I was surprised to see this big patch of grass!



My sister told me that the Osaka City governor encouraged schools to have some more green patches and gave some grass for each school in Osaka to plant. Unfortunately they weren't given enough to cover the whole school yard... but I still think it's very nice and great for kids to run on actual grass :) They have a special after school activity class called "sibafu club" = "play on the grass club". My nephew Hinata belongs to it and is loving it so much!

"mama" I can "walk" now!

I've forgotten how many development stages the little one year olds go through. Luca can now say two words, "mama" and "baaa"(for bye). He can recognise lots of routines like if I say "let's have a bath" he pretends to splash the water with his hands and tries to take his clothes off. If I put him in the feeding chair he puts his hands together for a little prayer (Japanese Itadakimasu) and after dinner thanking for the food.

The biggest progress for him this month is "taking steps!" I wasn't encouraging him to walk even though he was standing up and very close to walking as Matthew was in Singapore and I didn't want him to miss out on this big step but the other day he just stood up and took 4 steps by himself. He was very proud of himself, putting both hands up in the air with a big big smile on his face.

Now the exciting part is over! I have to concentrate on chasing a very unstable person all day! Let's see how long it will take for him to start running :)

Wishing upon stars

Tanabata is a Japanese star festival which is on 7th July. It is to celebrate the meeting of two stars "Orihime/Vega" and "Hikoboshi/Altair" which were separated by the Milky Way and are allowed to meet once a year.

It is our custom to write our wishes on pieces of paper and hang them on a bamboo tree. So right now lots of places have displays of bamboo trees.



Oliver had a go with Yuzuki the other day, well... he cannot write yet so I held his hand and helped him write his wish.



Yuzuki wished everyone free from accidents and their happy life. Oliver was very sleepy and didn't really think too hard - His wish was to get on airplanes (quite an easy wish - it will come true this weekend!)





The bamboo tree looked good with three extra wishes :)

Rubbish truck

Oliver is so excited to see rubbish trucks right outside our house. Toy Story educated him about them so well. He sits in his little chair in front of the window and waits for them all morning!



Still waiting...



Yes! They are here!!



Now the rubbish guys know we are watching their work so they wave to my boys every time they come.

Indoor playground

It is so nice to have Shinobu (my little sister) at home with her baby Rua. We can go out anytime in her car (she has a big car with three baby car seats!) and boy she knows so many good places to take the kids. 

Today we went to one of the indoor playgrounds I have never been to before. The mall is quite old so only us and one more family were there. And you only pay $7 for the whole day! I wish Matthew was here to play with the boys while I shop!

Luca looooved the ball pool - Yes he had a haircut!!!

They were both fast asleep on the way home in the car :) Such a great way to get rid of their excess energy!

Bento fever

Apparently making pretty Bento/lunch boxes is very popular in Brunei at the moment. Oliver doesn't go to nursery at the moment so I don't need to make one. But when I went to the 100yen shop the other day I saw lots of cool tools so I bought some and made Oliver a special lunch. Cute ha?

Looking for some trains

It was such a gorgeous summery day - I think the temperature was up to 29 degrees. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to take the kids for a walk on this hot day but... we decided to go and see some trains. Oliver hopped onto his scooter which made the walk much quicker!



We live 10min from the international airport, 45min away from the center of Osaka but we have lots of rice and onion fields.







Our train station is one of the major stops for this area as they have a depot where they park the trains at night. So Oliver could see so many different ones.





I really love living in the area where we grow up. I hope Oliver and Luca will appreciate what we have here too.

Smells good

It is supposed to be the rainy season here in Japan but we have had such beautiful weather so far. It makes me feel like I should be doing something outside. So today I spent an hour or so doing some gardening.

Oliver came out and enjoyed smelling my little orange thyme bush. They smell so sweet.

Birthday cake

We waited till Matthew arrived in Kansai (for work) to have Luca's birthday cake. Everyone in the family made it to a nice sushi dinner and a special monkey chocolate cake!





And more presents!!



Happy birthday one more time Luca!

Dragonfly park

Mako took all of us to a huge park near the strawberry picking farm. This was my first time to visit this park. It had everything, flying foxes, big playing frame, ball playing zone and a big pond with some ducks, swans and fish. We spent most of the afternoon there.

Mum and Aunty Kyoko:



Both loved the flying fox - they couldn't stop giggling!





These kept the kids going forever!





Mako told me this place is normally super packed. Luckily when we went the weather hadn't cleared so not many people were there. It was perfect for us, not too sunny but nice and dry :)







We walked over to the pond to feed some swans and ducks.





I found some toi-toi like plants:



And some beautiful white roses:



It was a very nice and relaxing afternoon. We all had so much fun!

Fruit picking weekend

We don't normally come back to Japan at this time of the year. We tend to come over in mid summer or winter. It is lovely to be here right now, wonderfully fresh air and just perfect temperature for the kids to run around outside. Plus lots of yummy fruits are ready for harvesting.

When I was 8 years old or so my friend gave me a bunch of biwa/loquat on the way home from school. They were so delicious. I took the seeds home and mum and I planted them in the backyard at our apartment complex. So many years (I think 8-10 years) later it started to fruit and now we have this huge fruit tree!

Mum has been watching and protecting the fruits from birds and a raccoon (someone must have had it as a pet but let loose) for us.











They were so sweet and juicy!!

In the afternoon we got in the car and headed out to the strawberry picking farm we visited in March. This time Aunty Kyoko (mum's little sister) joined us :)

This time I was very careful not to pick too many and ate very slowly. They had some cakes you can add strawberries you just picked, tea and coffee, ice cream etc etc. So great afternoon tea for us!

Mum was super happy!



Oliver knew exactly what he was supposed to do!





I am not sure why but they had lots of soft toy dress ups - I guess you dress up while you eat strawberries???

Mum:















Yuzuki and Runa:



Hinata and Oliver:



Luca and Aunty Kyoko:

Luca is so good at feeding himself - Yuuuuuummmmmyyyy!

Well in the end, as usual I ate way too much. I almost got strawberry flu! (flu-like symptoms I get when I overeat ...) Sadly the strawberry season is already over here, we just have to catch the next one down under!