Author: Kurt

It seems I’m on another oyabaka (doting parent) tear, posting a lot of photos of Kaika recently. So here’s one that I think serves as a good picture-next-to-dictionary-entry for oyabaka.

Let’s see if I can peel the layers for you. First there’s my mobile phone, which features a picture of Kaika as my screensaver. I put the phone as it displayed that picture, next to Kaika’s hand and took a photo with my digital camera. Then, using the digital camera’s LCD screen, I displayed said photo, and took another photo with my mobile phone camera showing Kaika (sort of) looking at it. Lastly, I then used my mobile phone to display that picture, put that again next to Kaika’s hand, and took the picture you see above with the digital camera. Phew! Did you follow all that? It all started with the simple idea that the phone would be a good “ruler” by which to show how small Kaika’s hands are, which I still ended up doing, so if the above was too convoluted, you need not worry. Kaika’s hands are still oh so tiny, and here’s the proof.

We took Kaika yesterday to visit an uncle and aunt of Naoko’s. It was also my first time to meet any of Nako’s extended family. We presented them with an obligatory gift, as they had given us money when Kaika was born. Kaika slept the whole time, although you’ll forgive me if I tell you that at a certain point I was trying to telepathically send him the message to start crying so we could get the hell out of there. From this picture, I suspect Naoko was trying to do the same thing. The conversation was stilted, I spent much of the time trying to hide the hole I had found (too late) in my sock, and all of us tried to overcome the obvious awkwardness of the situation by staring at Kaika sleeping on the sofa, with utterances of kawaii desu ne (“isn’t he cute?”) liberally proffered in an attempt to salve the stasis. I will say this, however, they had one hell of a nice house. A few more photos from the visit are here.