Peek-a-boo!

Ian loves playing peek-a-boo right now. He'll play it with pretty much anything he can find...including his own socks. That's right, socks. The sock barely covers his eyes, but that's enough for him. He'll sit by patiently covering his eyes until you notice he wants you to find him.

Here he's playing with a book. (which, by the way, was an excellent book recommendation from my dad)

Where's Ian?

There he is!

In this picture you can see his bottom tooth sticking out.

Birthday Boy

I meant to post this earlier, but it will take forever for us to edit and attach a video. So, for now you'll have to settle for pictures.

It's still hard to believe that Ian turned 1! We celebrated his birthday a little early so my parents could celebrate with Ian. Here are pictures of Ian eating his cupcake.

First bite:

Pondering on the goodness of chocolate:

Does life get any better than chocolate cupcakes?

On Ian's actual birthday he got to open a few presents. We had opened most of his gifts already (don't tell Ian), but thankfully we still had a few wrapped gifts from Aunt Britta and Uncle Dave. Although he definitely enjoyed the wrapping paper, he also was excited about the actual gifts as well.

Ian is chaneling his Great-Grandpa Wally's present opening skills:

Grandparents

Ian has had such a fun time with his grandparents over the past month. I thought I'd post some of my favorite pictures:

Geisha

During our time in Kyoto we managed to spot some Geisha. Most of them were likely Maiko, which is an apprentice geisha. However, it's also a little tricky because tourists can pay to get dressed up like Maiko. Usually you know you've spotted a real maiko when you see a photographer with them (to pose for promotional pictures), but you can also tell by the quality of the hair/make-up.

We joked with my parents that my mom and I should have paid to get dressed up like Maiko. I'm sure the Japanese would never guess that our 5'10 and 6'0 frames were not actual maikos!

Boy's Day

May 5th is Boy's day in Japan. While it's not as fun as Cinco de Mayo (in other words, no alcohol involved), they still do a good job of decorating/celebrating here. Homes that have boys hang carp windsocks, which are called koinobori. They're also displayed in public places as well. Here are some koinobori in Kyoto:

A friend of ours brought over a mini-version for Ian. He got to play with it for a while and then we also displayed it for the 5th.

Note the huge camper in the background. I don't know how they do it, but our neighbors park it in the most incredibly tight space I've ever seen. ...and they do it on average 3-4x/week. I hope at some point I'll be able to watch it in action.

Huh.

We took Ryan's parents to our favorite okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancake) restaurant in Tokyo last week. As we were leaving, they brought over a gift for Ian. It was wrapped in a package and looked like this:

We waited until we got home to investigate. Ryan has the hiragana characters memorized, so he read the words ton-katsu on the package. Ton-katsu is breaded, fried meat or veggies. It's similar to tempura, but definitely a thicker breading. It's pretty good. Upon opening it, we saw this:

Needless to say, we were a bit confused. Ryan took the first bite and had an awful face. It was basically a fried stick without any meat inside and awful seasoning. After Ryan's reaction, I chose to lick it. Yuck! Ryan then proceeded to bring it to Bill to taste. Here was Bill's reaction:

I cannot imagine why they think this is a good gift for an 11 month old, although I do appreciate the gesture. Ah, the things we parents do to protect our children.

Hanami

Hanami (or "flower viewing") is the Japanese traditional custom of enjoying the beauty of flowers, specifically sakura (or "cherry blossoms"). On Easter Sunday we traveled to Ueno Park in Tokyo to take part in Hanami with a few people from our host nation...

It's a fairly popular tradition.

Yes, she is balancing a bottle of alcohol on her head. Huh, I still don't know what she is doing.

On Saturday we enjoyed Hanami at a local park with a group from work...that managed to pick a park that overlooked work, errr (the shipyard is in the background).

If you would like to visit us during Hanami in the next couple years, the best bet is the last week of March and the first week of April.

I thought this was an interesting sign in the sakura park at the top of a hill. There is lots of Kangi on the sign but the message seems clear enough, if you are driving in a slot canyon, which, is no where near here, watch out for kids.