Ishikawa

Visiting some Japanese restaurant in Brisbane

2012-01-02T00:56:00.001+02:00

One of the great thing about being in Brisbane is that there are greater choices of asian.. specially Japanese food that you can experience compared to Canberra. And now there are few really great Japanese places opened up in Sunnybank area..

Introducing Mos Burger.. Japanese Burger chain that is quite popular in Japan and also in Singapore.. they have great range of your typical burgers but they also have range of Rice burger where things like yakiniku and seafood tempura are sandwiched between two thing of rice. I normally like to get Yakiniku or Seafood Kakiage..

But this time I just had to try their new Okonomiyaki burger.. Okonomiyaki is my favourite Japanese food and I just could not resist the temptation.. unfortunately it was slightly disappointing.. probably due to their generous amount of bonito flakes which made eating this very very difficult but also sauce was too over powering. Anyway I just had to try it. Shiori and Saichi shared Yakiniku rice burger and we shared ice tea together which was yummy too.

Another place that opened up in Sunnybank is Hakataya.. Japanese Ramen place. The seating in this place is very limited and place is always very busy.. there are long ques every time we were there. Well I took Shiori and Saichi there to enjoy some Tonkotsu ramen and Gyoza.

Yummy.. there are other Japanese places such as Make your own Udon and Soba place called Mappen.. which I got to try later on.

A day with Thomas

2011-12-30T11:33:00.004+02:00

Yesterday Shiori, Saichi and I went to spend a day with Thomas.. the tank engine. Ever since reading the ad on internet about the biggest Thomas the tank engine event in Australia.. I just had to take kids all the way to Ipswich to the Workshops Railway Museum ( about 1 hour away from where we are currently ) to see Thomas, Donald, Douglas, Lady, D199, Annie and Clarabel, and ofcourse Fat Controller.

I've never been to this museum before but I must say I was quite impressed with amount of scientific displays explaining how steam, diesel and electricity work, as well as some historical displays of old steam engines, trains to the newer models, and tons of interactive area for kids to play, small trains that you can ride on, large diorama set with moving trains, large play areas for kids etc. And yes we did all that but this was the day to spend with Thomas and his friends..

Every hour, Fat Controller appeared at different locations and told kids stories about certain engine, he was quite funny and both Shiori and Saichi loved him very much. So we made sure to be there for every one of his performance, while doing all those other activities in between.

We left home pretty early in the morning, only to stop by at Amelia's parent's cafe to have some breakfast and to get takeaway coffee :).. about one hour later we were there nice and early, Saichi kept asking where we are going to see Thomas and kept making the guesses like Home, Tv, Computer etc.. but he got really excited when he saw a Douglas the big black engine sitting in front of him. He wanted to go right in but we had to wait in the line to go into the museum first. Luckily since it was pretty early the place wasn't too busy.. although line behind us got quite long.

And here is the photo right after one of the Fat Controller's show.. Shiori did some drawing of him and wanted to give it to him. He really was quite funny and each show was very interactive for both adult and kids. In one of the show he took us through the museum to show us some of the exhibition.

And photo of kids with Thomas and Fat Controller..

Having a look inside the Thomas

Trying out different dials, knobs and bells.

This is inside of Donald.. one of the twin black engine from Scotland. The actual engine on display is made in Maryborough so it was nice to see the inside of the actual old engine.

And we took photo with Douglas the other twin engine.

I think Shiori and Saichi are actually driving the tilt train here.

And finally with Thomas.

I took few more photos but with my phone so unfortunately i'm not sure how to upload them from here but once I go home.. I'll probably post them in the separately. We had so much fun that I could bring Shiori and Saichi out of one of the play area to even have lunch. In the end we had quick lunch at about 2 and left around 3:30. It was pretty long day but kids had so much fun, and it was all worth it. Besides I do like visiting different type of museum and I do like old trains and steam engines.

I may bring them back again next year as Shiori was requesting... Saichi wanted to go back there the next day.

Japanese Speech Contest

2011-12-22T13:31:00.002+02:00

A while ago, Shiori participated in the ACT primary school's Japanese Speech Contest representing her grade from Farrer Primary school. I was really happy that she wanted to participate in this, and though her Japanese name and half Japanese background, they allowed her to participate in the contest.

She introduced herself in Japanese and then sang "Ookina Kuri no Kino Shitade" (Under the Giant Chestnut Tree). She practiced quite a bit at home and school, and she did very very well.

And at the end of the contest, all the grade one and lower student received prizes.

Here Shiori receiving her prize.

And most of the people representing grade one or below from several schools in ACT.

And Saichi just had to join the party and pose for the camera :)

Cherry Blossom Tree

2011-12-22T13:15:00.003+02:00

Wow.. well this is from long time ago, but just managed to post it.. And I remember that when I posted some photos for the signs of spring time.. I told myself.. I better make sure to post some photos of the actual Cherry blossom..

Well I kind of forgot all about it, and not even sure if I took the photo of Cherry Blossom in full bloom.. but here is the closest I found. Still very lovely.

And here is where that Cherry tree sits.

And view from our Japanese room.. it was lovely to just sit there and look at the ever changing view of this cherry tree.

Some photos from Brisbane

2011-12-22T12:32:00.004+02:00

Here are some photo from our last Brisbane trip.. This was in September, as you can see the clothes that we are wearing.. there is no way I'll be wearing that jumper right now. I can hardly wear that jeans here at the moment.

This was taken when we all went to visit Coochiemudlo Island.. just a quick ferry ride from Victoria Point. It's a pretty small and quite island.. not too much to do there but people just go there to relax.. and relax we did. We just walked around a bit and spend rest of the time

Just laying about, watching blue sky and ocean.. Shiori and Saichi had great time playing in the sand and looking for some sea shells.

And here is a photo of Saichi having a fun ride with Agha Jan (Amelia's grand father) who is giving him a push. Pretty sweet photo so decided to post it. Saichi is doing exactly the same thing this time around.

Visiting Cafe Green Bean

2011-12-22T12:15:00.004+02:00

We are currently visiting Brisbane at the moment, and one of the great thing about coming here is that we get to visit Cafe Green Bean, own by Amelia's parents :) This place has great coffee, food and all free. Great atmosphere and friendly staff.. and most importantly they love our kids to visit and we can relax a bit. Shiori and Saichi loves coming here and they talk about it all the time when we are in Canberra.. and you'll know why when you see the plates of food they get. They used to love getting big mug of babycinno..

And most importantly, this cafe hangs one of my university painting.. At least that big thing has somewhere where people can look.. certainly doesn't have a place for it in my house.

We did bit of a decoration on this wall.. as some people may know that this resemble very much of few of our wall.

Enjoy bit of Watermelon :)

And some breakfast with great cup of coffee!!

Introducing : Yes, We Afri-Can

2011-09-21T08:21:00.000+03:00

Our dear friend Tenille and Hayden are smack in the middle of Africa having great time, volunteering at Cotlands working with HIV affected children in South Africa and trekking across Africa, and still have time to update on their blog.. They are witty, touching, full of amazing photos and little insight into the life of this amazing couple. Some of the story is hilarious and quite a lot of them very touching.. they cover from general adventure they are having across different countries to the health care system and serious problem that is HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Yes, We Afri-Can: Zanzi zanzi zanzibar

Yes you have now officially inspired me to update more on this site..

Shiori's Birthday continues

2011-09-11T02:52:00.001+03:00

September is actually very very busy month for us.. with Shiori's birthday is on the 2nd of September.. we are constantly reminded that her birthday is coming up soon, her birthday is coming up soon.. and this year, we had lovely dinner together and on her birthday morning, we got together and she opened the present she received from us and also grandparents from Japan. We didn't host party, but she gets to go to plenty of them anyway so we thought it was nice to just spend it with family.

Shiori showing off the present from us.. Saichi eyeing on Shiori's pearl necklace for some reason.

And she opening up the present she received from her grandparents in Japan.. actually these came couple of days earlier but we told her to only open on the day.

And her trying out the present.. This thing is called Shu Shu maker and apprently received kid's toy of the year.. it just let you make creative hair tie yourself. I think she tried every combination she can on that morning..

Father's Day at Farrer School

2011-09-11T02:50:00.003+03:00

This is bit old but just wanted to make quick post..

For Father's day, Shiori's school had fantastic program.. They had hosted Father's day breakfast for all the wonderful dad to attend with their kids.. enjoy some breakfast together..

It was also dress up day for favorite cartoon character for some reason.. I have no idea what Shiori dressed as.. nor these two friend of hers.

And as a reward for being a great Papa.. kids read book for you.. I was proud that she could actually read a book to me.

I thought this was a great idea and hope to attend next year as well!!

Sign of Spring at home

2011-09-10T09:54:00.005+03:00

Finally.. weather seem to be turning, we are enjoying some lovely days here in Canberra, our heating is off, windows are open and enjoying some bird chirping and lovely breeze that coming through... Exciting time of the year, and what make is even better is that we are spending our first spring here in the house.. and there are little signs of springs everywhere. We can just go outside, and be happy to see the little buds poking through..

Saichi wattle and muji the rabbit

We fixed up the middle part of our backgarden.. turn it into some stone garden where it used to be full of weed. Can't wait for the Cherry blossom to open up.

Some cherry blossoms opening up.. and irises under the tree are going really well.

Not sure what the name of this flower that Amelia planted but it's really cute along our front steps

Planted flowering quince, looking forward for this in the next winter.

Cherry blossom bud just opening up.

Irises

Daphne's

And here are some picture of plum blossoms just around my work place..

Always attracting pretty birds.

And this is our backyard before we fixed up the middle bit.. bird must be waiting for the flowers to open up

Tsuyoshi and Kyoko's honeymoon, from Canberra to Sydney

2011-07-26T06:46:00.007+03:00

So, after two days in Canberra, it was time for me to take them to the big city of Sydney. We first visited Market in Canberra just so that they can look for some handmade gifts for their friends.. and we left Canberra around noon to head to Sydney.

We stopped by briefly at the Lake George, just to show them this very interesting lake without any water. They found the view spectacular, it's not everyday you see view like this in Japan.

And we had another brief stop at Goulburn to show them the big Merino sheep, but also more importantly quick stop to get some lunch at McDonald.. Tsuyoshi and Kyoko enjoying Australian Angus beef burgers.

And enjoyed Big Merino...

And then we hit bit of a road block.. about 1hour left to go to Sydney, we hit this road accident involving two fourwheel drive cars and horse trailer with two horse. Luckily there were no one hurt in the accident but because horse trailer got tipped with two horses stuck in it.. we had to wait for the vet. We were there for about 1 hour just waiting and waiting.. it was pretty surreal to have so many cars just stopped in the middle of highway.. everyone walking about.. checking to see what's happening. Tsuyoshi and I both made comment that this kinda felt like scene from Independence day.

And we finally arrived in Sydney.. about two hours later than expected.. so by the time we got there it was pretty late, and not much shops were open, but we still walked around enjoyed the famous Sydney harbour view.

Just taking it all in.

After some lovely dinner at the harbour.. we decided to spend some time here for lovely hot chocolate.. before heading back to the hotel.

We got up nice and early and again stroll around Rocks area and then on to the harbour.. it was great day and they were doing some promotion for Northern Territory tourism with few camels. I'm not sure if they've seen Camels before but they were pretty excited.

Again just taking it all in..

We then took ferry to the Taronga Zoo, great thing about going to the zoo is that you get to enjoy the ferry ride, view of the harbour and seeing australian native animals all in one go.

Tsuyoshi having some relaxing time with Kangaroos.

And seeing Koala

We must've spent good several hours there.. we had lunch there, and then headed back to Sydney.. we walked around the city a bit, seeing shops, QVD and Martin Place, and then headed down to Chinatown for dinner, walked up to the Darling Harbour and then caught ferry back to Circular Quay.. enjoying some night view of the Harbour bridge etc.. I think they had really good time in Sydney, and unfortunately early next morning they left Australia. We hardly had enough time to enjoy Sydney.. or Canberra for that matter but I hope they had a good time..

It was great for us to have family from Japan visiting, and they can now share their experiences with everyone there. Hopefully we'll have few more visitors in the future too.

Tsuyoshi and Kyoko's honeymoon, Sydney to Jervis Bay and then to Canberra

2011-07-26T06:28:00.007+03:00

As I previously mentioned.. my brother Tsuyoshi and his wife Kyoko came back with us to Australia to spend about 5 days here together.. I had pretty difficult time trying to fit as much of Australia as possible in those 5 days.. and yes that did include coming to stay at our place in Canberra for 2 of those days. it was pretty fun trying to fit different activities though..

When we arrived, we rent 8 seater car and then drove to Jervis Bay.. which is where whitest sand beach apparently is... The drive from Sydney to the Jervis bay was lovely, stopped by at Wollongong to take some scenic photos. They were really impressed with the landscape of Australia and just how big this place is.. about 3 hours later, we arrived at our rental house.. about 5pm bit too late to go and check the beach, so while we settled down, Tsuyoshi Kyoko and I just went to check out the town, had some fish and chips for dinner..

Next day, we were up early, went to this nice bakery for some Aussie breakfast and then off to the beach!! Took me awhile to find this place but we were really impressed and it really felt like it was worth while trip. We spent good couple of hours just walking around, enjoying the view and just playing in the sand which was very very white. Unfortunately day was little gloomy but fortunately we didn't have any rain.

Tsuyoshi writing something on the sand while Kyoko filming.

Kids playing on the sand while Amelia is just soaking in the view and lovely sea breeze.

After we left this beach, we found out that apparently the whitest sand beach was indeed elsewhere so we decided to visit that beach just to see how much whiter it could be. Well we were little disappointed.. compared to the first beach we've been it was much smaller and seems too many people where there, where first beach it was just us. But something nice happened, we got to see the group of whales just swimming by.. lucky we didn't pay to go on the whale watching.

We left Jervis Bay about mid day, and another 3 hours later we were getting pretty close to Canberra, we decided to stop at Bungendore just to check the place.. we went to the antique shop that we liked and also we took them to this leather shop :) I think Tsuyoshi bought few Kangaroo related gifts from here. Unfortunately we didn't have time to visit the woodwork place before it closed.

That night in Canberra we took Tsuyoshi and Kyoko for some nice steak at Hog's Breath Cafe.. this has become bit of tradition as when my other brother Seiji came over we also took him there. I think they enjoyed the food.. and since it was Friday night we stroll around the mall for awhile just to show them the amazing Woden shopping centre ;)

Next day I tried to fit in as much of Canberra as possible so we went to the new and old parliament house.. Tsuyoshi, Kyoko and Shiori making love heart.

And then visited my work place.. National Film and Sound Archive.

To the War Memorial,

After war memorial, we visited Gold Creek and went into the Walk in Aviary because they really liked Australian native birds. Kyoko attracted many birds as soon as she walked in.. she was never alone.

Then we visited Adore Tea, nice tea shop that we like at Gold Creek.

I wonder what they are saying..

Leaving comments on the tea that they tried.. And Tsuyoshi filming.. yes they pretty much filmed everything they experienced.. I'd love to see that.

That night, Amelia had made some dinner, roast chicken and some shepherd's pie. Nice Australian meal. They were so impressed with the roast chicken.. I think it was first time they actually had the whole chicken as a meal at home. Thinking about this now.. I think it's true, you never really see the whole chicken cooked in Japan.. infact I don't think you can actually buy the whole chicken. It's always cut into pieces already.. so what we think are pretty standard meal was so impressive for them. Later in Sydney I asked what was the highlight.. they both said it was time we spent together at our home and this meal.

Next morning, we woke up early to see if we can stop some wild kangaroo which ofcourse we did.. though pretty hard to see in this photo.

Then we went to get some coffee at Bites to Eat, another one of our usual place to visit.

And we visited Canberra Bus depot market to see if we can buy some gifts there and about noon we left Canberra to go to Sydney!!

Our trip back to Australia with Tsuyoshi and Kyoko

2011-07-26T06:22:00.006+03:00

Two days after the wedding, it was time for us to say good bye to my family in Japan.. lucky for us this time we are going back to Australia with Tsuyoshi and Kyoko the newly wedded couple as we are being the guide to their honeymoon in Australia. Apparently Tsuyoshi and Kyoko did some research and found that we could drive to Kobe, park car there for free and catch ferry to the Osaka airport which is only about 15 dollars... it worked out much cheaper than all of us taking train there and besides Kobe is a nice place to visit and haven't been there for over 25 years. My other brother Seiji decided that he too would like to stick around with us for a little longer so we all hopped on the car and left to Kobe together.

Kobe is famous for many things but one of the major attraction is many of the old foreigner's houses on the hill.. they are all once occupied by different foreign families that came to Japan in early days and settled in the port city of Kobe. They are all nice looking houses and many of them charges entrance fee so we didn't go into any of them but hopefully next time we can visit inside the house.

We dropped off Seiji at the train station and then we were off to the Kobe port to catch ferry.. it was bout 1 hour ride and very comfortable and convenient, they even had a shuttle bus waiting for us to go to the airport. The whole airport adventure went pretty smoothly, no problem at the passport control, we stocked up on food and drink for the plane, Tsuyoshi and Kyoko bought air cushion for their travel.. and we were off to Japan!! Great thing about going from Japan is that we could stuff our bag with so much yummy snacks and rice balls, bread etc... we were very happy not to pay for any of the food and drink on the plane.

Tsuyoshi and Kyoko getting ready for some serious sleeping. I think this was their first time travelling overseas together.. and Shiori and I tried to keep to ourselves as much as possible so that they can just enjoy each other.

Before you know it, it's a morning and looking at beautiful sun rise

We arrived at Gold Coast airport for brief stopover and then caught plane to the Sydney airport. I was slightly worried about different food we were carrying but custom didn't have any problem with them which was lucky as you can see later.

Another short flight later, we arrived at Sydney airport.. picked up rental car and then went to meet Amelia and Saichi who were staying at friends place. It was a very very happy reunion for everyone.

And we surprised Amelia with the present we brought back from Japan.. Amelia's favourite donut from Mister Donut.. yes we carried that all the way from Kobe, thank God it went through custom.

After wedding

2011-07-20T12:30:00.002+03:00

After the wedding was over.. Shiori got so inspired with what just happened and decided to make her own wedding dress... with bits and pieces of left over wedding stuff.. She made bouquet, veil that somehow managed to stay on her head.. and then she walked and danced around the rest of night.

She was so sad when I told her that she can't take them back to Australia.. I told her that she could make another one to which she replied.. But Australia doesn't have any nice paper and things to make these lovely things with.

I agreed.

Food at the wedding

2011-07-17T12:32:00.006+03:00

Okay.. so I know that you wanted to see the wedding dress, which you saw on the previous post, and only thing I left to show is the food. And there are lots of the dishes to brace yourself. I managed to take photo of every dish that came out, but I can't possibly remember what they were in details. So let the photos do talking.

First plate of the day

Followed by nice sashimi plate

And then Sushi plate

And I'm not exactly sure what this was but it was pretty tasty.

Salad

And main dish was this rib eye steak.. and I thought Sushi was the main.

And then fruit for desert.

And ofcourse not to forget.. wedding cake for everyone.

The food was great but, kids had their own special kids meal and I was way too busy making sure that Shiori doesn't put stain on her new dress to enjoy my food.

Wedding of Tsuyoshi and Kyoko

2011-07-17T11:40:00.004+03:00

Finally, after two weeks in Japan it's the big day.. the main reason why we went back to Japan. It's wedding of my brother Tsuyoshi and Kyoko.. We had really early start that day, ate breakfast quickly, got changed, and on to the cab and off we go!

Shiori, Ryoto and Yuuki ready for the big day.

When we arrived at the wedding hall we were taken to the waiting area where both sides of family waited.. they served drink and snack for us while we waited. It was pretty relaxing and you can see different family members just having a nice chat. My mom and dad sitting and waiting.. looking pretty happy and relaxed.

While there, we had an opportunity to take family shot.. with my brothers Tsuyoshi and Shuya and sister Yachiyo with Shuya's wife Kunie. Yachiyo and Kunie are both wearing Furishode kimono.

And here are the bride and groom, They are both wearing traditional Japanese wedding attire. Kyoko's dress is pretty heavy and she had this lady constantly with her fixing as she went.

From there, we were transported to the shrine where the actual wedding took place. This photo was taken at the waiting area at the shrine.. looks like there are lots of waiting areas in japan. While here, each father introduced their family members to each other. Our family comprehensively outnumbered hers.. and that's with my brother Seiji missing and Amelia and Saichi not attending.

We also had chance to take some official photograph and this one is of our family.
Unfortunately we were not able to take any photo during the ceremony but it was some what of traditional nature, with lots of vowing and sake drinking exchange, and bowing...

Lucky for us they had AC in all these places.. since the day was pretty hot and very very humid. I don't know how Kyoko survived.

Once that's done, we were back at the wedding hall and onto the assigned table.. Shiori taking picture with my uncle and aunt.

And once everyone was seated, and drink was poured.. it was time to welcome the newly wedded couple. Tsuyoshi and Kyoko made interesting decision to first enter together in the some what casual dress (using that phrase rather lightly here) and then later Kyoko would enter with her father in the white wedding dress.. Kyoko by the way designed and sewed the pink dress herself. She is a very crafty and talented lady, she had designed many aspect of this wedding including Shiori's head dress, flowers, and welcome sign.
Pretty happy couple.. "Kanpai"

After many many dishes of yummy food later (i took photo of every food so I'll be putting that one separately) Ryoto and Yuuki in their chef's hat that Kyoko sewed, brought wedding cake.

Kids with Kyoko's two younger sisters.

Once they had their cake, they left the room to change into the wedding outfit.. They had asked Shoiri to hold the train of her dress.. She was rather nervous but she did great job. Kyoko entered with her father while Tsuyoshi waited at the front.

Making the walk with Kyoko's father looking very happy with Shiori.

There were few entertainment, including some dance number by Kyoko's school friends, and some video showing their childhood photos.. they then went around each table and took group photo. yes and we all had to hold the sign saying Happy.
And then you know when you are getting near to the end of wedding ceremony, when there are some thank you message to your parents, giving of flowers and speech by the groom's father. It's always quite emotional part of the ceremony, and quite formal as well.

After they gave present to each other's parents, they all waited outside and greeted the guests as we left.. except most of the people decided to stay in the area because it was hot outside, and cab wasn't there to pick us up anyway. Shiori was really happy through out, and particularly proud of the way she held the dress. Kyoko's family really enjoyed Shiori and she had some nice chat with many guests. Okay.. i'll post some food photos then cause I know that's what people really want to see anyway..

Some more photo of japan

2011-07-12T15:48:00.002+03:00

Here are few more photos of our trip in Japan, mostly taken before my brother's wedding but some were taken after.. is it coincident that most of the photo involves food? They are not in any order at the moment, so I'll just explain it as I go.

This photo was taken when Kyoko's (my sister in law) family came over to see our family, sort of a formal occasion, and took place exactly week before the wedding. Very lovely family.
This I think was taken on one of the last night at our house.. we ordered sushi and we all got together and ate together, unfortunately my brother Shuya and his wife Kunie could only come after most of us finished eating but we still got to talk a bit. Sushi was great and Shiori had fun choosing different Sushi. She is pretty good at trying new ones and she loves salmon roe.
This was also taken after the wedding, we decided to have a BBQ since my mom and sister doesn't eat meat much, and my father shouldn't be eating much meat.. they don't cook red meat all that much.. I love BBQ in Japan, and since Tsuyoshi and my other brother Seiji was there.. we finally outnumbered non meat eating people to have BBQ at home. I know Tsuyoshi was pretty happy.. he said it's been a long time he had beef at home. I know that my mom was very happy to be serving something that we all enjoy eating. I know my father was happy, although he really shouldn't eat too much beef.. I don't think my sister was too keen but she cooked separate meal all together for herself and my mom.
Shiori playing with her cousin Ryoto.. I think she is wither superman, batman, plane, or some other flying object.
Shiori with her great grandmother at her shop. It was great seeing her.. we tried to visit her as much as we could.
Shiori playing with fireworks with Ryoto and Yuuki. It is still fine to do fireworks in Japan and it's quite big during summer month.. you can buy sets anywhere and I bought one so that Shiori could enjoy it.. now that we can't do it in Canberra anymore.
My brother Tsuyoshi and Kyoko couple of days before the wedding. Looking pretty relaxed.
Shiori with her cousins.. looking pretty relaxed.
Shiori holding one of Japanese sweets.. it was delicious.
This was taken by Shiori.. of us eating my favourite food.. Okonomiyaki. I wonder if I took actual photo of Okonomi yaki.. I had it maybe 4 times? It wasn't enough, I could eat it for every meal of the day and be very content.

Shiori and her friend

2011-07-12T15:39:00.004+03:00

Like I mentioned in my previous post.. I tried to find as much opportunity as I can for Shiori to mingle with some other kids. This way she is really encouraged to speak Japanese and japanese only if she wants to play with them. We found there is a new bus service in my home town leaving near my place and does loop of all the places that we'd like to visit.. I took advantage of this bus service to visit many places with Shiori. One of them is this building that has all the kid's play stuff.. We must've visited this place at least 3 times..

First time we visited, I guess since it was week day, there weren't too many people around, but it was actually good for Shiori as she sometimes get overwhelmed when there are lots of people.

She was playing by herself for awhile, but she quickly found a girl probably little younger than her to play some cooking game..

Sharing some food that she made, and then started to share toys together. I stayed away from them observing from far..

And then they started to play some hide and seek and catch.. going down slides together
After awhile I spoke to this kid's mom.. just to explain that we live in Australia and that I am just encouraging Shiori to play with other kids and speak Japanese.. just in case she was wondering why Shiori's Japanese wasn't as good as kids at her age should be.. or why this girl is always hanging around and I'm not doing anything. The mother of this girl was so nice, she was really happy to see her daughter playing with Shiori.. and she was also constantly involved in their game. She said Shiori's Japanese was fine.

I took many things back from this trip with Shiori.. and confidence in Shiori to speak Japanese and ability to make friends with what little Japanese she knows is one of them. One of those moment that I'm glad I stuck with speaking some Japanese with her though it was very hard.

Shiori and her head pieces

2011-07-12T15:09:00.004+03:00

One thing we discovered in Japan is that there are so many party goods, random funny items, dress up goods and many many head pieces.. or Kaburimono in japanese.

Another thing I discovered is that Shiori loved trying all of them.. here is the proof.

Shiori as a bomb head

Shiori as a Tai yaki head ( japanese sweets in the shape of fish)

Tako yaki head (octopus ball with little octopus leg sticking out) I actually saw a guy making octopus balls with this on his head.

And some kind of detective/private eye/gangstar head.. I think this might be a character from TV but I wasn't sure..

I also have a Shiori with toilet head but it was little too graphic so won't post it here :)

Our Trip to Japan Part 1 - arrival and initial thoughts,

2011-07-11T12:22:00.005+03:00

Sorry for not updating this site for long long time.. I'm not even sure if anyone out there is following this blog oh well that's what happens when we are lazy. Anyway we had pretty eventful last month, Shiori and I went to Japan to visit my family and also attend my brother Tsuyoshi's wedding. And then Tsuyoshi and his wife Kyoko came to visit us for their honeymoon. so there will be plenty of photos to update from our trip, from wedding, and also their trip to Australia. So brace yourself there will be lots of photos to post :)

It was a very good trip, it was a special trip for me as I got to see Japan and how people there are coping right after the succession of disasters.. I really wanted to see how it is in Japan and my first impression was that place was much quieter specially at the airport and surrounding hotels. It was also a special trip because it was the first trip I made with just Shiori. The trip there was pretty smooth, we both enjoyed some movies and tv shows on the plane.. ate lovely sandwiches. It was pretty exciting to finally arrive in Japan though, and Shiori was pretty excited.. probably because I promised her that we'll get some yummy food.

So first place we visited was convenience store at the airport.. as usual we picked up some of our old favourite as well as tried some new product. This is pretty typical of our trip in Japan.. first visit, Combini, buy some Rice balls, Coffee, milk tea, bread, sweets. Aaahh great time ahead. Shiori wanted to find hello Kitty burger that was there last time we visited but unfortunately she had to settle on the regular one. See some yummy sweets here.

We stayed in Osaka for couple of days, just doing some shopping and exploring some of the shop that we visited before.. Feeling in the city was pretty similar to the last time we were there, and you just get the feeling that people are just coping and trying to live as normal as possible. I probably didn't see as many tourist as I used to though.. and some of our favourite shops were closed. Anyway we took customary photo of big crab :)
And some more photo of Shiori and Food. This is Tenpura don with Kitsune udon.. it was about 15dollars for the set, so I had Tenpura don and Shoiri had udon.. pretty good for 7 dollar meal. That's another thing that people don't realise.. It's so much cheaper to buy clothes and food in Japan than in Australia.. you pay same amount here and maybe get one jeans, over there I was able to buy two jeans, and 2 t shirt.. plus about 5 new clothes for Shiori. Great time.. and best thing was that they hemmed my pants for free in about 1 hour so we just went around for more shopping and then picked up already hemmed and ready to wear jeans.
We also visited Kyoto, mainly to visit this famous market and also to find famous traditional knife shop to buy few tools for my work as well as gift for Amelia. This market was pretty interesting, lots of people just buying groceries, mainly older people but then you'll see lots of tourist as well.
Another thing we did a lot was going to the shopping centre and let Shiori play in these play area.. Whenever she had chance, she made some friends and ended up playing together.. it was great to see as she had to speak japanese to communicate, and I really encouraged her to do this and try not to interfere. Here she made some food to share with these lovely mother and daughter. They were really nice to her as well.
After visiting Kyoto, we finally arrived back to my home in Hiroshima, it was great to see my parents, brothers, sister and nephews. Shiori was pretty excited to catch up with her cousins also and they were able to just pick up from last time they were together.

This is Shiori and Yuuki.

Shiori doing some drawing with my sister in law Kunie

My brother Shuya, his wife Kunie and nephew Ryouto.. shiori is pretty happy to be surrounded with her Japanese family.

Layla and William visits Canberra

2011-04-26T06:02:00.003+03:00

During Easter School holidays, Amelia's best friend Sita with her two kids came down to visit us in Canberra. Sita and Amelia grew up together, and they both had their first daughter about 10 days apart Amelia had Shiori and Sita had Layla and then had son Saichi and William in the same year also.. It was great that Sita was able to come down and visit us, to give our kids some time to get to know each other, as their mommy did.

It didn't take too long for these four to bond.. Specially both Shiori and Layla got bonded pretty quickly, they both liked similar things.. and they both like to chat. I think they became best friend through just chatting.. soon they started to call each other twin sisters. Boys had their ups and downs as boys do.. they were in general good with each other but I think they got in eachother's way quite often also.. and made sure to let us know all about it.

All kids having picnic in the cubby house.
Shiori and Layla playing on top of the secret garden.. photo taken by Sita with her new Iphone.
Yes having 4 kids took it's toll on everyone..
At work we run a holiday programme of puppet making.. so all four were able to participate in that.. it was great for them and Sita to see where I work but also participate in some craft activities...
Going for a walk behind our house..
Sita and Amelia at the garden
And Layla and Shiori dressed like twins.
It was great that we were able to spend good 10 days together, i hope they'll stay in touch and see each other again soon!!

Autumn Bliss

2011-04-26T05:52:00.002+03:00

One of the wonderful thing about living in Canberra is that you can really enjoy the change of season.. and we are doing that fully in our house. I thought our grape vines were pretty in the spring and summer time with light green leaves, but that's nothing compared to how it looks right now with bright red and pink leaves. And much to our delight... our maple tree did change its colour as well... so we are surrounded by beautiful red leaves.. unfortunately soon we'll lose these leaves when winter hit.. Perhaps we need to get some evergreen trees. or winter flowering trees.. any idea?

Winter is near.. and Kotatsu is here.

2011-04-07T12:35:00.002+03:00

Yes.. Autumn is here.. and Winter is near.. but one thing is different this year from the previous miserable years of long cold winter...

Well first, we've moved into our own house.. and recently installed ducted gas heating.. but we were so prepared this time that we managed to buy Kotatsu for our Japanese room..

Kotatsu is another ingenious Japanese invention, where there is a little heating element attached inside the table.. you then cover it with the nice large blanket.. and you have instant warmth around you.. It's so comfortable and cosy that Amelia once said.. while sitting in Kotatsu reading, and looking at gloomy outside.. "Frankly.. colder outside the better".

Yes it's that good.. only thing though is that once you are in it. it's really hard to get out :) You will enter some black hole of Kotatsu that you will never come out. One day.. I'll bring out portable gas cooker, and we'll cook up some Mochi and eat oranges.

Birthday Party at Kid's Pantry

2011-04-07T12:02:00.003+03:00

Last weekend, Shiori was invited to one of her Montessori school friend's birthday party, it's very nice that she still get invitation from her friends there now that she no longer goes to the same school.

This party wasn't the usual kids' party however, it was held at this place called Kid's Pantry, with small kitchen, small work bench, and impressive veggie garden in the front and chicken coop at the back. The whole kid's got together, made some Pizzas and Apple turnover, got to decorate their chef hat, played some games, and enjoyed meal that they just cooked. Best of all, each kids took home the best party bag I've seen.. little rolling pins, cookie cutter and some chocolate.

So here are some photos from that party
Saichi enjoyed hanging around with Shiori's old classmate again.. They had great time hanging out with friends that they haven't seen in awhile.. and I got to spend some nice time with parents which is always nice.

Each kid got their own paper chef hat and got to decorate them.

I think they are learning how to make pizza... each kid had their own pizza with topping of their choice. Parent's weren't allowed to be inside with the kids, but they all did great job listening to the instructors making lunch.
Meanwhile, I kept Saichi busy with the craft table.. decorating his own paper towel... he was really good on the craft table, sitting by himself.. sometimes he wanted to go in and see what Shiori and friends are doing but most of the time, he just sat there and did his work.
Look how he is focused.
I think kids must've moved onto making apple turnover by then.. they were all chopping apples and adding some brown sugar.
They then played some memory game, where lady showed them 7 ingredients, they then had to draw each one from memory.. Saichi didn't know what just happened when all the kids came and surround his table.
They then went outside for some more games.. and all had wonderful Dinosaur looking cake together with some fruits and apple turnover that they just made. Meanwhile all the parents were sitting outside enjoying eachother's company but slightly hungry from looking at kid's meal.

It was a great birthday party, one of the best that I've been to so far, kid's were so busy and focussed, and we could just relax and chat :)

Nuclear Boy gets sick...

2011-03-23T11:51:00.002+02:00

This is so simple.. so Japanese.. trust them to create this little animation to explain this very serious problem so simply. And trust Japan to come up with animation that has poo and fart in it together with cute main character Nuclear boy.

I hope that he gets better soon!!

New addition to the Japanese room

2011-03-02T09:10:00.001+02:00

Finally.. Shoji door that we bought arrived here and I spent last night removing the existing sliding door and installing our new door. As you know Shoji door is made out of wooden lattice and paper.. It matches nicely with the lamp we have in the room. And let in lovely light from the other room.

Ah.. finally I think this room is near complete.

Shiori and Saichi at Beach

2011-03-02T09:09:00.001+02:00

One weekend we visited this little place called Pine Island. Since kids were missing going to the beach and playing in the sand.. we went all the way south from our house.. about 15min drive to this place.

I heard that there were few beaches in Canberra but I couldn't believe it until i went there. This place is built on the bank of this river.. and apparently it has been there for long time.. enjoyed by the early settlers..

I guess you can call this a beach.. I mean white sand and water.. people swimming... I wasn't too comfortable for our kids to go into the water but was happy to see so many people enjoy cooling down.
Kids probably wishing that they could go in.. or not.
They still had a good time playing in the sand, building some castle.. It was a nice day out.

Saichi and Mona

2011-03-02T09:03:00.002+02:00

Saichi loves Mona.. Mona is our very good friend and overtime she is over Saichi get really excited.. Here are some photos of them...

Saichi and Mona contemplating on what to do...
Ah.. I know,

One more time?

Saichi saying Mona

Random photos

2011-02-13T11:40:00.003+02:00

Here are some photos that I've been meaning to post.. with some in-depth analysis and expert commentary... but unfortunately I am not capable of neither of those.. so I'll just post them.

At my work at the National Film and Sound Archive, they run a series of kid's program where you get to make instrument.. We were so excited that I signed up Shiori and Saichi for one morning.. and then when we talked about some of Shiori's friend and their moms.. they decided to join in as well.

Anyway the whole thing was a great success, kid's had so much fun, and at the end of the session, Shiori made guitar, bassoon, and little maracas... My favourite was Bassoon, it actually made really deep soothing sound for something that made out of cardboard tube, rubber globes and hose... Here Saichi and Shiori's friend Ella playing bassoon..

And another great performance this time with Shiori and co..
This was taken awhile ago.. I can't even remember if I posted this picture already before or not.. but anyway I find it cute how Saichi is really trying to do the peace sign.. and the fact that these two are sitting nicely together makes it worthy addition to this blog.. even twice.. maybe.
And this is the photo of little babushka doll that Shiori painted for me.. When I came home from work..she gave me a present wrapped up in a paper that she had painted.. when I carefully opened.. I found these babushka dolls that she painted.. so now it's sitting in the bookshelf..

Australia Day BBQ at our place

2011-02-02T14:33:00.006+02:00

This is little old now.. but if I don't update the blog just because it's almost a month old news.. then I'll never update the blog so.. here it is.

It is great Australian tradition to have a BBQ party on the Australia Day.. and it has been our little tradition to also enjoy Triple J's Hottest 100 count down on this day.. so this year, since we've moved into the house which has radio built into the wall... And we have kindly received BBQ from my friend Amanda.. It was perfect opportunity to open up our house, to have a little party, and try out the BBQ.

It was one of the hottest day this year... and when we had a house pretty much packed with people.. our luck of Air conditioning really hit us hard.. but I think everyone had a great time. And BBQ was really good :)
Here Anisa and Robin testing out the BBQ. great thing about BBQ party is that as a host you really don't need to prepare much, we provided some meat, some bread and sauce, salads.. And everyone else just brought some meat of their choice.
Lovely ladies in the kitchen..
Nika, Amelia, James and Sara just relaxing
Yup.. we run out of chairs long time ago.
Yes we run out of chairs.. poor Nika and Mitra who is standing and eating.
Nura and Shiori in the kitchen..
And ofcourse we played some game.. this one is called Time's Up.. great party game sort of combination of Charades and Taboo.. but much better.
Oh and we even had some chance to take some family photos :)
Saichi asking for more tea :).. How could you say no to that face..

Towards the end of the day.. just relaxing in the Japanese room.. Apparently the towel in the head is how ladies in Korea wears them while taking a bath.. Not exactly sure why everyone is wearing it right there and then.. but it made a funny group picture :)

Shiori in uniform

2011-02-02T13:49:00.003+02:00

It's almost a start of the new School year.. and from this year, Shiori will be going to our local Farrer Primary school..

She is very excited about wearing uniform to the school.. so she had a trial run :)

And these two didn't waste any time for a photo opportunity.

Visit by Katie, Alan and Socha

2011-02-02T13:44:00.002+02:00

On Friday afternoon, we had a lovely visit from Katie, Alan and Socha..

Katie and I studied together doing the conservation degree at the uni of canberra, and she is now married to a Scottish comedian.. yes scottish comedian, and living and working in Scotland. Every now and then they come back to Australia for a visit.. and she is such a nice person that she actually do make it all the way to Canberra to catch up with few of her friends living in canberra. It's really nice when someone makes an effort to stop by Canberra.

Last time we met, it was a very brief meeting at the lunch.. it was when Amelia was pregnant with Saichi so over two years ago, Katie and Alan were just getting married. This time we have Saichi to introduce, and Katie and Alan had a little baby girl.. It's amazing how our lives changed in the last two years or so.

This time we were able to invite them to our new place.. and Saichi and Socha immediately became good friend..

Saichi's mother instinct ( God knows where it was hidden before ) kicked in when he saw Socha and he just made sure she was well hydrated :)
Katie and Socha..
And the whole family. It's lovely to catch up with them, and it was great to see Alan and get to know him better.

Hopefully one day we'll be able to visit them in Glasgow..

Just because everyone is doing it..

2011-02-02T13:42:00.003+02:00

Taking picture using the Hipstamatic on the Iphone seems to be he new things.. so I tried few photos

Here is the one of Shiori
And Saichi

And Shiori and Saichi

Overall impression... I like it. I always liked the aged look in the photos and I used to play around with photoshop trying to recreate this look. Well now you don't have to. Only downside is that you never really know how the picture will turn out.. or how much of the image will be in the frame. But that reminds me of why I liked Etching and printmaking so much.. I always liked that unexpected surprises in your own art.. and this is kind of like that.

So yeah looking forward to trying it out a bit more. I wish it had more film and lens types... and wish my phone had a nifty flash.

Our Veggie Garden

2011-02-02T13:23:00.002+02:00

We started on a small veggie garden.. nothing too complicated, just bought few seedlings, some seeds.. planted cucumbers, corns, eggplants, tomatoes, some herbs like corianders, basils and mints.. just to see how it'll grow, besides it's just nice to be able to plant something and think that one day you'll be eating your own grown food...

Well.. soil in this garden bed must be so good.. before no time little seedlings of cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants double in size and little corn kernel had become small corn plant.
And every day we noticed the change in size for these veggies.. Corianders and basils just doubles in size.. eggplant and corns just kept on getting bigger... and we noticed several flowers on the cucumber plant. And before you know it, we saw many little cucumber growing. Both Saichi and Shiori has been pretty diligent in watering the garden :)
And this is our first harvest.. very good looking cucumber.
And this is what our first harvest turned into.. nice evening meal of Japanese cold soba with our fresh cucumbers on the side.
And several days later.. we harvested few more cucumbers and some mints.. I think they turned into a salad.

We've now spotted some flowers on tomatoes and eggplants.. so looking forward to see what would happen with it.

Now I just can't wait to see what happens with our corn plants. They are getting bigger pretty quickly and looking forward to the first harvest :)

Introducing Blog... Yes, We Afri-Can

2011-01-21T00:57:00.004+02:00

Our dear friends Tenille and Hayden are about to depart Canberra for South Africa where they'll be volunteering several month at Cotlands (http://www.cotlands.co.za/) a brilliant NGO offering shelter for abused, abandoned, HIV-positive, orphaned and terminally ill children,

Then they'll head off to other parts of Africa then come around back to Australia via America.

Tenille and I have been working at NFSA together for last 3 years or so and she'll be very much missed around here. She is a wonderful person who is making the difference wherever she goes. She certainly made our work place a lot more positive and fun place for sure.

Lucky for us she did promise to keep us up to date with their blog.. Which Saichi featured already.

Yes We Afri-Can/

Hope to read all the wonderful thing you guys get up to in Africa and US!! Have a safe journey and enjoy your time!!

Many faces of Saichi Ishikawa

2011-01-01T11:37:00.005+02:00

Here are some funny pictures of Saichi that I've compiled in last 12 month... There is nothing to explain or describe here.. let the images do the talkin : )

Visit to Adore Tea and Cockington Green miniature garden

2010-12-31T02:43:00.004+02:00

We had a lovely day going to visit Adore Tea, the place we love.. full of teas and goodies.. such a relaxing atmosphere.. We knew Amelia's parents would enjoy the place so it was lovely that we were finally able to bring them there.. Kids had a great day also.. each having a kid's milkshake.. while rest of us enjoyed tea of our choice..

The day was to get even more relaxing for us.. after Adore tea.. Amelia's parents decided that they'd like to go into the Cockington Green Miniature Garden and take Shiori and Saichi with them... so we set a time to meet up and we spend rest of time just walking around the area..

It's so difficult to pick your tea out of 300 in the menu...

We've been inside the Cockington Green couple of years ago.. while Shiori was much smaller and Saichi wasn't even around yet.. I don't know if Shiori remember the time she was there but I think they had great time riding a miniature train..

Visiting fairly land

And enjoyed a day with Mambo and Baba Joon in this miniature land... full of fun thing to look at..

Mean while Amelia and I just relaxed.. but we don't have any photo to prove that.

Some more updates on the house

2010-12-31T02:09:00.005+02:00

It's been really wonderful having Amelia's parents around.. we've been pretty busy working on the house and garden... it's been great. We are pretty much finished with inside the house, except for few more pictures that I want to eventually hang.. but outside, specially in the front garden needed lots of work, so we hired a skip, and went mad with pruning and weeding.. We also planted few flowers, veggies and herbs.

But quickly, I'd like to introduce our neighbour.. he is a blue tongue lizard and we call him Sunny. He lives in that hole and he occasionally comes out when it is sunny outside hence the name. We planted few veggies and herbs just his front yard so hopefully he can protect them from snails and slugs... I found a large slug in the garden once, so I put it right outside of his house and boom.. he came out, took a bite, and then carried it to his dinning area for lovely supper. Saichi was so excited to see it that we've been looking for more slugs or snails to feed him. Thinking of putting a little water bowl outside for him to drink out also..

Another addition to the house is that we've finally made a mandar, a long bench with cushions that we see in Haifa everywhere.. we loved it so much, we were always going to make one in our house.. just nice extra seating space, and fits well in the room that it is now. Amelia sewed the skirting and covered the foam cushions she also made the cushion covers.. she'll probably make few more.

Over all picture of the room now.. the bookshelves are on the left hand side.. this room now has so many seating capacity.. it's great!!

Our neighbourhood has such a lovely garden that we were pretty sad to see the state of ours.. after being rented out for a year.. it was to be expected but we knew we had a lot to do.. So while amelia's dad is here.. we've made quite few changes..

Some before pictures.. full of weeds and hard to tell what's planted and what's growing wild..

There are lovely flowers, and some wild garden type thing was happening.. it had good potential but just require some tidying..

And this is the after.. we put sleepers in the front just to define the edge between where car can park and where garden starts.. we removed most of the weeds, pruned back some wild flowers.. and filled the area with red bark chips.. while clearing the area.. we also discovered there are so many nice rocks in the area that we made sure they were exposed as well. Now i'm looking forward to seeing how this would look in the middle of spring.

Another close up picture... we planted some rose bush and sweet lemon tree there also.

Christmas Lights

2010-12-23T14:07:00.000+02:00

I knew that some houses spend lots of effort into making these Christmas lights displays.. and there are some houses that goes even further. We discovered just such house near our house.. Apparently they are so popular that often buses comes by full of people to see the display. It seems though for all good cause as they have a charity donation box for local charities.

The lights display outside is very very amazing, but once you go through this gate.. the garden was covered in snow and lights from top to bottom... there were full of moving bits, lights, musics... it really felt you were in the snow.. Amelia even mentioned that we felt little colder in there with all the fake snow and blue lights. I did feel it was cooler also.. and wouldn't surprise me if they had some kind of cool breeze blowing there.

I've never seen anything like this before.. and Shiori and Saichi couldn't believe their eyes when we arrived here.. Shiori screamed that this is a best day of her life... while Saichi couldn't believe his eyes when he discovered that there is a moving train inside all of this.

I took some photos but it just doesn't do this place any justice.. I also took general video of the place and Saichi's excitement when he saw the train. Enjoy!!

Shiori and Saichi 's first performance together

2010-12-14T08:12:00.000+02:00

When I came home, Shiori insisted that I should film this performance that Shiori and Saichi has been practicing.. she then asked me if this video is going onto Youtube.. I said yes.. she asked me if it's going on Facebook.. i said no. But she was very happy that it's going on Youtube... Gee kids these days.

Anyway I love the little performance they performed.. Saichi did get distracted halfway through but he caught up just in time to exit the stage :) Enjoy!!

First dinner party in the house

2010-12-08T12:26:00.004+02:00

Couple of weekends ago.. we had our first dinner party at our new house.. and who else to invite but my lovely colleagues, and our dear friends Tenille, Nathalie and Steph and their partners. We also invited Rose, Sophia and Lachie but for different reasons they couldn't make it, but they were very much missed.

We've been wanting to invite them for long long time.. probably for the last 3 years.. and now that we actually have a space to entertain, and they were pretty curious to check our new place after I've been going on and on about it during the planning and renovation for the last year or so.. it was perfect opportunity to have a dinner party/open house.

Great people, great colleagues.. Both Nat and Tenille will be away next year and will be missed.

With Michael, Steph's husband

Nat and Tenille enjoying some tea in the Japanese room

Hayden and Saichi.. they had great time together.. actually both Shiori and Saichi had great time entertaining the guests.

And everyone at the table..

Amelia was busy all day preparing delicious meal, she made entree or several dips, two mains, and a dessert. Unfortunately I don't have any photo of the actual food.. One I was too busy eating, and two food disappeared pretty quickly..

It was great night, and hopefully we'll have many more nights like this in this house.

Some videos of Shiori and Saichi

2010-11-30T13:33:00.004+02:00

And here are some videos of kids that I've been meaning to post for long time but haven't had chance to.

Last weekend, we went to Shiori's very first ballet performance.. as any proud parents do.. I took some video of it. Took some photos too but they didn't turn out that well.. The theme of the performance was Under the Big Top, and Shiori was part of the marching band.. or was it tight rope walker? Can't remember.. it was little hard to focus with saichi in my arms asking for some drink...

And this is Shiori and Saichi playing in the park.. they loved this spinning thing, and I had to use my leg to keep spinning it.. pretty tiring. They loved it though, and I think at one point Saichi tried to stand up so I quickly had to stop filming...

And kids enjoy playing piano..

Update on our new place : Before and After

2010-11-26T23:49:00.009+02:00

Sorry for not updating long time.. we've been pretty busy with the house, and also we still cannot find a place to put our computer.. so it's not plugged in most of the time.. hopefully soon we'll find a spot for it.

Anyway here is the update

When I watch some of those home renovation shows.. I like to see before and after shot just to compare how the room changed.. So I'd like to do one here as well..

I'll put photo of the rooms before we moved in.. in fact it was taken while previous owner was in it still... And put photo of the room now. Hopefully you'll see the vision we had when we first went for a inspection come true... almost.

This is the Family room.. with the slate floor that we knew we had to remove. We always thought we'll make this into a cosy sitting area full of books, ornaments from Israel and other places..

And this is the room now. I think it's pretty close to how we wanted it.. there are few things we liked to do still but they'll take time.

And this is the Rumpus room.. We just hoped that our comfy couch would fit here...

And this is now.. with our couch fitting just.. we picked darker carpet and dark brown couch.. so putting white fluffy rug just to lighten up a bit. Our chandelier from our bedroom finally made it in the public space.

And this is the Dinning room.. because the view from this room is quite nice, facing the backyard and also with the drooping cherry tree, so we wanted to make this into a Japanese style room.. so the brick wall had to go, floor had to be changed, and light fixture needed to be changed..

Again, this is the photo of now.. actually looks much better than I expected.. with the tatami mats and wall and light all fixed. Again there are still few things we need to do.. like putting in something to cover the window.. and also changing the sliding door from this room to kitchen.. Looking for some nice art work to put in this room also..

This is the Living room... we knew we wanted to remove the gas heating unit.. And didn't want to have a TV here..

This photo doesn't quite do the room justice.. looks too bluish because of the lighting.. so I should take better photo next time.. We probably need some coffee table, and there are always idea for few changes but that'll take some time... I love our painting in that spot.. I think it looks nice there.

Just few more photos.. This is Kid's playing room..

And this is our dining area, since we got rid of our dining room.. we put dining table next to the kitchen which we like anyway.. we are trying to create salon style wall decoration, so that wall is still work in progress. Again we need to install curtain or blinds for the window, those dining chairs are quite sentimental since it belonged to Amelia's Grandparent's cafe in Karachi.

And other picture of the living room from different angle.. We have really enjoyed putting some of our friends artworks and photographs and it fills our house with many happy memories from friends around the world. Special shout out to Negeen, Ryan, Nancy, Elena, Dean and Jean, Mr.Dunbar. Now we hope to entertain many people here.. and fill it up with many new memory.

Our new place update : making of bookshelf and transforming the family room

2010-11-26T23:22:00.004+02:00

Ever since we bought this house.. we always wanted to have a bookshelf covering the entire wall in the family room. And when money is tight.. you gotta try to do it cheaply and try to get the best effect you are after. We pretty much settled on few options, done some measurement, some calculation and figured out the composition that would cover most of the wall. Luckily, few of the Ikea's Billy system would done the job and create the look we are after.

To decorate this house, we were sure of two things.. we wanted to turn Dinning room into Japanese room.. and family room into middle eastern, or close to the look of many of the lovely cafes and places we loved in Israel. And we wanted floor to ceiling bookshelf to go there.

We quickly placed order from Ikea.. since we don't have one here in Canberra and company who does the Ikea pick up and delivery to this area once a month... and they finally arrived.. so here is the transformation.

Before, we placed our old bookshelf... just because we didn't know where to put it.. but beginning of trying to create the feeling we are after with the screen, carpets and chair

Slowly creating the bookshelves and fixing it to each other and onto the wall.
The whole thing was made with 5 Billy bookcase and 2 Benno cd and dvd tower
And finally the entire shelf is done.. almost covering the entire wall, couldn't believe how perfect fit this was.
And image of after with books, ornaments and decoration.. great thing about having this huge bookcase is that we are now able to display many of our ornaments, and also other rooms are somewhat clatter free.. we have one bookcase in the living room with my games, and one more in Amelia's room with her sawing staff.. two cabinets in japanese room.. and that's it. We'll be posting some more pictures of inside the house since we finished decorating most of it.

And we are moving!!

2010-11-08T12:09:00.003+02:00

This past Saturday was a big moving day.. big moving day, basically means that's when all the big stuff gets moved... and hopefully many of the smaller stuff.

We tried to arrange some helpers, and lucky for us, we had lovely friends to look after Shiori and Saichi all day.. or otherwise they'll be trying to help the whole day.. which isn't ideal..

here is our house just before the moving day.. still so much to do.. and Saichi is way too excited already.. We got so much done once we sent our kids to friends that were looking after.. It's amazing how much you can do without kids.

Just doing the final packing and checking...
The whole move went so smoothly, the two guys and truck came 30min earlier, but we managed to load everything into their truck, plus all the other boxes in 4 other cars.. and made the whole move in less than two hours. We then moved all the boxes into their own room.. did bit of unpacking.. We still have few more things in the other place, but we were able to sleep for the first time on Saturday night. The lovely thing about the whole move was that it didn't rushed at all.. we were able to still relax at house.. We set up the Japanese room first, so we could relax there... Here our friends relaxing Japanese style :)
And then some times later, we moved to our rumpus onto our comfy couch and just relaxed some more.. Different room... different relaxing style.

On Monday, we finally got our dinning table delivered and had our first meal there, no more eating food while sitting on the carpet ( we called it our picnic)... Tomorrow our living room couches should be delivered.. We are thinking about putting different pictures on the wall, and do some more unpacking, we feel though our life is slowly going back to our normal pace, of course we have so much more to do, and we'll be doing them slowly.. We haven't even touched outside yet.. that'll probably be during the christmas holiday.. :)

Our new place update - Floor

2010-11-08T11:58:00.003+02:00

So as I mentioned in the earlier post.. our floor is done, and in fact we have just moved our house.. sorry for this delay post.. I just hooked up our computers in the temporary position, we cannot seem to find suitable place for it just yet. Anyway here are some photos I took during the floor laying process.. Richard spent two days laying the floor.. it was much harder job for him since our house is in some strange angles...

Here Richard just getting started.. starting off on the angle wall was never easy for him.
The family room is now nearly finished..
I love how the floor board seem to continue through the wall.. I think he used the same piece on either side just to get that effect.
And this is our old Dinning room with Japanese Tatami mats.. it's still bare and we'll have few more things to do to this room.
And our family room.. looks much warmer and nicer with this floor than when it was with slate tiles. The colour absolutely is perfect for us, and with fresh coat of paint.. this place looks so different from what we saw the first time. We are slowly slowly unpacking things, and putting few things in place now.. so looking forward to posting some more pictures soon!!

our new place update - Floors

2010-11-04T12:34:00.002+02:00

Today our floor was finally started, it's more than halfway there and the job should finish by tomorrow... we'll get new carpet in the rumpus room also.. and we are getting the new toilet to replace the old one that plumber broke...

Gee our floor looks nice..

We picked spotted gum for our floor and it has slightly different shades and marks on each board.. different colour seems to be enhanced at different light.. it has warmth, but it's not too red, each one has different colours but doesn't look too busy..

Gee our floor looks nice. I love it and can't wait to see it finished!!

We are enjoying West Wing

2010-11-02T09:06:00.003+02:00

We recently got into West Wing.. There are few reasons for this...few of our friends had DVD set, I've been wanting to watch it for long time.. we don't like what's on TV at the moment and we needed something else that we can really get into and relax, and most importantly, this show is very very well made.

There are so many reasons why we enjoy them, good fast pace show, well written script, serious but funny.. but for me.. it's the characters. Every character are likeable in someway and if you ask 10 people.. they often come up with 10 different characters they enjoy. I really like every main characters but some occasional characters are so well developed as well..

And maybe because each one of them really tries to do good thing in their own way.. their intention are always good.. even though some of the outcome may not be all that great. I just wish and hope that many in our government are like that too.

Our new place update - New paint on the wall and just a sign of things to come.

2010-11-01T14:49:00.004+02:00

Finally.. painting is done!! Inside the house still smells like a freshly painted home but everything is dry and we started to put the curtains back up.. It's great to be inside the freshly painted house.. It's like a brand new place.. except floors still looks like a construction yard.

Floor guy came last Tuesday to fix up some of the slate floor.. and also did the stairs in the living room.. It's really nice to get a glimpse of what the floor may look like. Right now we just can't imagine that we'll be actually be moving in this weekend.. 4 days from now. You wouldn't know it by looking at the place.

I am still busy trying to put up some venetian blinds in some areas.. and would need to install washing machine and dryer pretty soon.

We are getting bit held up with the plumber, first they broke a part of our new toilet that they needed new part.. several days later, they came back to fix the problem but apparently they need another piece so they will be back tomorrow.. meanwhile we are left with two toilet that we cannot use.. they better fix them up by Thursday or we'll have an unhappy floor layer.

So here is the slate that was accidently taken apart and then put them back together, at the entrance.
New and improved Dinning room.. It's amazing how bit of plasterboard, plasters and paint can change the room completely.
We got ceiling painted white, and rest of the house painted with Hogs Bristle Quarter, which is pretty neutral light white colour.. We wanted something neutral that would go with wooden frames that we have everywhere. It looks little darker in the photo but you'll get the idea.
Picture of family room.. we love that windows are so big and everywhere.. we never noticed how big these windows are until we removed curtains.. too bad we need to put them back.
And photo of what to come throughout the house. We picked floating engineered floor of Spotted Gum.. lovely floor board.. each one has slightly different tones and marks, they look quite different under different light.. and has warm feel to them. Can't wait to see the floor finished!!

Photos from Floriade

2010-11-01T04:19:00.002+02:00

Just taking a break from updating on the house and posting some photos that was taken a while back.. These are photos taken when we visited Canberra's annual Floriade. This is a yearly flower show in Canberra, and we visited there on the first day it was open. Just before Amelia and kids went to Brisbane during the school holiday.

Because we were there early, there were hardly any people around which was nice.. but many of the flowers were not yet open, it was still quite pretty, and kids had a good time. Shiori and Saichi were particularly interested in the large hot air balloon that was there.
Shiori and Saichi
View of the lake..
And saying hello to the old friend Zebras from Lake George.. They even had a new addition in small baby Zebra.

Our new place update 3 - just quickly

2010-10-27T11:08:00.002+02:00

Just quick updates.. we were able to remove two wall gas heater which was pretty old, ugly, and frankly we didn't trust that it was safe.. Which left two large hole in our walls.
Hole in the wall one. You can see four chairs that we used to try to measure how big the dinning table can be.
And hole in the wall two... We are getting these two patch up by the painters.
And while we were at it.. before painter came, we got this guy to help us put plaster board onto a bare brick wall.. in the dinnint room.
The room is looking much better already with the brick covered up.

We are getting the house painted right now as I type this, and also soon we'll get the new floor laid... soo exciting!!

Our new place update 2 - Floor take up

2010-10-25T13:12:00.000+02:00

We've been moving quite fast with some of the things we need to do.. The day after we got the keys, we had one guy to come and took off carpets and slate flooring, to replace them with some wooden floor.

Here are some before and after shot.. before the carpet is removed..

After.
This is hallway towards the family room.. quite bare, and some gap is showing.
We had one guy doing the whole thing in a day.. poor guy, apparently they had few guys sick on that day, and he ended up doing the whole job.. as some may know.. removing slate isn't the most attractive or clean job.. but lucky for him and us.. they seem to come off quite easily.
So this is before

And this is now... with nice pile of slate in the middle... reminded me of some installation art.

And trailer full of broken slates...

Now that most of the floor is off, we want to get the painting and other odd jobs before we get our new floor in.

I've been watching quite few episodes of Grand Design on DVD, I always enjoyed the show.. but watching it now really put things in perspective. We've had hard enough time trying to juggle few odd jobs with few people..... I just can't imagine what it would be like trying to build the whole place... and some people do it all on their own with kids. Amazing. Hopefully we won't brow out our budget like most of them do in the show :)

Our new place update 1

2010-10-24T11:41:00.005+02:00

Last week we received our keys to the new house.. and I think we've been going there almost everyday since. It's just nice to finally be able to go in and out... last year while it was rented out, we often wanted to drive by, and see how it is inside.. but obviously we couldn't. Amelia and I were just saying how you forget the little detail of the house.. well now we are there with tape measures and thinking about the furniture etc.

Since we wanted to do some work before we move in, I took some before pictures... And I think I'll be posting the progress of our projects as it happens.

This is our kitchen which is bit more spacious than we remembered which is a good thing.. and so we won't be doing much to this space, unless our fridge doesn't fit, then we'll be losing some of the cupboard space.

Our living room, again won't change much.. except for new coat of paint.
Our Dining room, this room will have most change in the house.. so we are very very excited.
Our Rumpus room
And our family room.. we'll be replacing the slate floor to wooden floor, so we are looking forward to see how it'll look.
And then I took some photos of outside.. there is no plan of major changes, just some weeding and general tiding up. I would like to put fences to make our back yard enclosed if possible so that kids can play without us worrying about them. This is the picture of our backyard, with lovely cherry tree.
Front garden... major weeding zone.
Out front lawn, I guess... I'd like to build deck eventually so we'll see.
Looking forward to posting few more photos of our renovation progress.. We need to try and get it done as soon as possible so that we can move in soon!!

We are Moving!!!

2010-10-19T00:31:00.002+02:00

Yes we are moving to our new house!! Should be soon.. hopefully soon.. We started to pack our current house already, we received stuff from Brisbane untimely early (they were meant to come to our new house when we've moved already.. now we have to move them again)...

Our house looks like some kind of warehouse, we managed to have one clear table space, enough chairs for us to sit around it but no leg spaces...
We can sit in our couches only if we can get there..
And just enough space to get from entrance to the kitchen..
Hopefully by end of this month we can be clear and completely moved, but it all depends on how everything else will go in between. We are getting some work done on the house beforehand so hopefully they won't take too long.

Meanwhile, I can start moving small items out of here and to the garage of new house.

There will be more updates on what's going on at our new house and situation at our current house soon :)

Pictures of Kids adventure with grandparents to Coochiemudlo island

2010-10-06T01:57:00.002+02:00

Kids went to the Coochiemudlo island with grandparents. Since we are landlocked here in Canberra, it's really nice to see that they take advantage of being in Brisbane, visiting beach.

Saichi and babajoon on the boat.. Saichi loves anything to do with cars, bikes, buses, trains.. so I can just imagine how excited he must have been on that boat.
Shiori and Mambo.. being sun smart.
Shiori probably showing off some of her ballet move :)

Nice to see Shiori and Saichi playing at the beach.. at last they got to wear their swimming suits.
Saichi probably pondering what his life will be like in 30 years time... Or probably just spotted some moving shinny things.

5 great photos of Saichi

2010-10-05T00:18:00.002+02:00

5 great photos of Saichi.. playing with Shiori's sunnies.

Some stuff my kids are up to in Brisbane with grandparents

2010-10-02T00:26:00.003+02:00

Since Amelia and Kids are visiting family in Brisbane during the school holiday, they've been up to all sorts of fun things... I sit here in Canberra and enjoy seeing the photo Amelia's parents sent me... gee kids are having fun with grandparents.

Here Shiori visited Queensland museum and they have this display where you can stand and flap wing.. I guess to experience how hard it is to fly? I'm not sure what's going on with Shiori's head piece but I think it'll be awhile til she can fly.

She then went up to Brisbane Eye.. I don't even know where this is.. but Shiori loves Ferris wheel looks like she is really enjoying it. Maybe tiny bit scared as well.
Here is Saichi with his Babajoon.. next to the little cherry tree they planted a while ago. tree seems to be doing very well.. and Saichi looks little too grown up in this photo.
Riding a car is his favourite activity.. probably after eating beans. He loves beans.
I'm looking forward to see some more.. and I'll post anymore photos that comes this way. Mean while I'm being busy getting our place in order... some exciting news to follow!!

Visit to Zoo

2010-08-26T16:43:00.005+03:00

Yes.. another couple of weekends ago post.. where I took Shiori and Saichi to the Canberra's zoo while Amelia was running her first workshop.

I haven't been to this zoo for awhile.. I think we came once before when we first came to canberra so that was before Saichi was born and Shiori was much smaller.. It was also a very hot day, and I remember we spent most of the time indoor in the Aquarium and lizard area.

Well this time it was cool sunny day, and perfect weather to go out and see some animals. Canberra zoo isn't the largest zoo but still has few very interesting animals. It was nice to see couple of white lions, snow leopards, moon bears (that was apparently rescued from illegal enclosure) couple of tigers, some interesting monkeys and giraffes.

Both Shiori and Saichi loves to see animals, and Saichi in particular really enjoyed watching monkeys. Shiori really liked Giraffes, llamas and alpacas.

White lion.
Brown bear.. while we were there, they were doing feeding of the bear, where you can pay extra to basically let bear lick your hand.. I think Shiori wanted to try it but unfortunately it was too late then.
So Shiori fed wallabies instead..
And watched giraffe feed
and tiger walking around
And mother moon bear teaching her young moon bear how to climb
And snow leopard relaxing in the sun.
It was a lovely visit, and I think we'd come again.. Kids and I had great time, and Amelia was able to run her workshop in peace.

Kids City... birthday party madness

2010-08-26T16:40:00.004+03:00

couple of weekends ago... (see the trend in our blog? We must post more up to date or at least couple of days old stuff soon...) Anyway couple of weekends ago.. probably about month ago by now, we were invited to attend birthday party at Kids City. The way we were invited to this birthday party and how we met this family is an interesting story in itself and that's another story all together.. Well might as well mention it here now, we attended somebody else's birthday party in one of the park and while I was talking to Shiori in Japanese this lady were sitting just behind me on the miniature train (yes we were at the miniature train park for the birthday party) and she noticed that I was Japanese so she started to talk to me, she is a japanese lady married to Vietnamese guy and living in Canberra, she had a two young boys and we talked about being in Canberra, raising kids etc. Couple of month later we were invited for the birthday party of her oldest.. we were all ready to attend the party but at last minute we had to cancel, we were then invited to her youngest's party... and this time we wanted to really make sure that we can attend the birthday party.

So this was held in this place called Kids City, which is a large warehouse like place full of toys and slides and just place that kids would go crazy... And yes our kids also went crazy.

Shiori pushing Saichi in this crazy car place.
Moment Saichi saw this car area, he didn't want to leave.. basically we were there the whole time making sure that he won't injure anyone.

Cute little cafe/shop

2010-08-26T16:32:00.002+03:00

Couple of weekends ago, we visited this really cute little cafe/shop in Queanbeyan, town next to Canberra. We've never been there before, but it used to be an old mill that turned into a cafe/ antique and gift shop. We had our drinks and breakfast in the courtyard, but later we discovered that upstairs had all the second hand books for sale with tables and chairs.. and cosy fire place... we could've actually sat here and enjoyed our breakfast surrounded by old furnitures and bookshelves full of books.. umm... I think I would enjoy that a lot. Kids got excited just thinking about all the books they could pull down.
But instead, we had our meal in the courtyard which was lovely still but little bit chilly.
I think Saichi enjoyed his babycinno.

Our new Tatami mats

2010-08-26T16:22:00.002+03:00

By this December, we should be moving into our new house.. this is very exciting time for us, our first home. This is first time that we are in the position of being able to decorate the place just the way we like it...

and I've already decided that I'll turn one of the room into Japanese style room.. And to aide this process, we found this wonderful shop just outside of Sydney called Japanache which sells many antique and interior Japanese goods. So we made our first purchase from Japanache.. 6 tatami mats, some zaisu (those chair minus legs) and some cushions. I'm sure we'll be buying few more items from this store but we wanted to make sure that we get these mats beforehand.
Close up of the mat... there are 6 of these and that should cover most of the room. I'm sure we'll be posting some more picture of our new house, and how our decoration etc is going... Very exciting time for us right now.

Japan Trip part 3 Family trip to Miyajima and my cousin's wedding

2010-07-21T11:12:00.006+03:00

The next day, the whole family including the newly wedded couple, went to Miyajima (about 1.5hour drive) to attend our cousin's wedding. We ended up hiring a mini bus and asked our neighbour to drive it for us. It was really nice for all of us to be able to go together.. bit of a family trip... mini bus style.

We made few stops on the way, and one of the service station we stopped had these lovely food stalls.. that I enjoyed very much. This one is selling variety of Mochi.. glutenous rice sweets
And this one is selling a rice ball wrapped with thin bbq beef strips.. so sad I didn't try it.

And you can see Amelia, Shiori, and my father in the middle... I'm sure I can spot some of my brothers if I look carefully.
This is us in the bus..

Okay, so after arriving in Miyajima, we caught up with my aunt and uncle.. and then were there when bride and groom was taken by this rickshaw to the very famous shinto shrine. The guy who was pulling the rickshaw had very traditional costume on with even authentic hair.

And here is the picture of Miyajima Shrine.. it is very very famous for it being built in the way that during the high tide, the whole building including the torii gate is in the water appears to be floating.
View of Miyajima city

And another view of the Shrine... it was getting close to the hightide but not quite.

Only my parents were actually invited for the ceremony, so we witnessed the ceremony from outside.. together with several dozens of tourists. On the right hand side is the bride's family and left hand is for the groom's
Bride and groom exiting after the ceremony.

Looking onto the gate from where we were standing.

And they had this special dance performed for the newly wedded couple.. and I must say I've never seen this in real life and was one of the highlight of the day. We also got to sit down with the family.

My cousin Megumi and her husband looking onto the dance performance. She was wearing such a heavy traditional wedding kimono.. and it was quite a warm and humid day.. she did well just to keep herself up. She also had one lady constantly following her, just to fix her kimono.

This photo with my brother Tsuyoshi and his fiance Kyoko.. just after wedding ceremony. We had about two hours to kill in the island while wedding guests had a lunch together. We just walked around the main street, went into some cafe etc. Since this island is very popular tourists spot.. there are always many shops to visit. We even went into Hello Kitty shop and bought some goods with Shiori's name on it. Oh and we also bought Hello Kitty fan which she was very proud of.

This was taken after the wedding reception, my cousin had change of cloth and wearing much lighter dress.. and she was feeling more comfortable i'm sure.

This island has lots of deer, and kids had pretty good time with them until one of them tried to snatch Shiori's bagful of snack.. that was so funny I wish I had video of it.

Another picture with my aunt, parents, brothers, cousin (sister of bride) and her husband

And this is with all of our family.. Since we didn't have chance to take official picture at my brother's wedding, we decided to take one here... and once again our driver/neighbour came to rescue and took this photo for us.
It was just a great trip, lovely to see my cousins again, and great that we were all there together. It was also nice to spend some time with my brother and his wife as well as my other brother and his fiance.. just to get to know them better. I don't know when was the last time all of us were all together, and certainly our number is growing and growing.

Trip to Japan part 2 My brother Shuya's wedding

2010-07-21T11:06:00.005+03:00

On the first Saturday of our stay in Japan... about 3 days after our arrival was my brother Shuya's wedding. It was held in the Shinto shrine close to our house, and it was a very traditional Japanese wedding.

In traditional Japanese weddings, the bride and groom's guests wait in two separate rooms.. my mom and I had brought in some refreshments for everyone to share while we waited. I was doing the greeting at the front entrance as people went into two separate rooms.

Here Shiori and her cousins waiting and playing.

Then we all went upstairs to take some wedding photos.. this is all done before the actual wedding. Being a traditional wedding the bride and groom to wore traditional wedding clothes. Normally the bride would have the hair done up in the traditional style also but she decided to add some modern touch. Her white kimono would have at least 5 layers and this was a pretty humid and hot day...
Walking up the stone steps in the rain to get to the shrine.

We all wash our hands to cleanse ourselves before we can enter the shrine.
This photo below was taken during the actual wedding ceremony, it involved a speech by the chief priest, some bowing to the shrine, and then couple would share cup together to drink some sake. My brother then made a speech to the shrine and they exchanged rings (i'm sure that was probably not traditionally done but it is now very common to have wedding ring exchange)
After the wedding ceremony, we all went to the restaurant for a lunch together.. Kunie (bride) now changed from white dress to something bit more colourful and casual...and by casual, I mean, in comparison to the wedding kimono :)

We all sat and waited for the newly wedded couple to enter.

They are showing off their wedding ring...

Shiori, Saichi together with Ryoto and Yuuki gave flower to the newly weds...

And they each received Teddy and bag full of snacks.. no wonder they are looking very happy.
The food at the wedding was very nice, traditionally in Japanese banquet we receive many many plates of yummy food.. it starts with some entree type foods made up many dishes with little amounts of delicacies on each. Then slightly larger dishes filled with lovely things like fried shrimp, plates of sashimi, plates of sushi, beef steak, many different types of seafood including lobster and different fish. The food just kept coming and coming. It's so exciting to wait for the next course to see what arrives. For dessert there was a most delicious apple sorbet made from fresh apples with a beautiful poached apple and a fancy version of a childhood favourite : pudding. For those of you who have been to Japan, you'll know what I'm talking about, and yes, it was as awesome as it sounds.

Below is a photo of me with Saichi who had not had a nap yet and was getting tired from all the eating and laughing that was going on. On my left is my younger brother Seiji and my grandmother on my right.

This is a photo of my uncle and aunt. Konnichiwa!!

My dad was enjoying himself and so was my little sister Yachiyo...but I think my nephew Ryoto was having the most fun of all.

Towards the end of the wedding there were a few more speeches and then the bride and groom presented the parents with lovely bouquets of flowers. This photo was taken during Shuya's speech. He gave an excellent speech and I was very impressed.

It was a beautiful wedding and we were very grateful to be there for this happy union. We wish the happy couple all the good things from life.

Stay tuned for the next post about the very next day...when we attended yet another beautiful wedding :) As you can tell by our posts so far. This was one fantastic trip home!!

Visit to Japan part i

2010-07-21T10:59:00.006+03:00

Recently we've been back to Japan visiting family, attended two weddings in about 10 days and had a fabulous time.. It was really nice to see my family again specially for such a happy occasion of my brother's wedding. It was first time in very very long time that all of the family were there together... and it is getting bigger and bigger.

Our journey there was just as expected.. not too easy on the plane with Saichi but once we arrived in Osaka, and spend the night at our favourite little hotel near by, we were ready for another day of traveling to Hiroshima.. my home town.

Here Shiori enjoying her train ride and some yummy drinks and snacks

My family was very happy to see us and specially seeing the kids... My father and mother together fed Saichi.. Very nice to see.. and my mother was very very pleased that Saichi just loved her special brown rice.. I think he had that rice for every meal.. and my mom even packed a little for our trip home
There is a park near my home.. so we'd often walk there and just play there.. I used to play at this park as I was growing up and it's pretty surreal to see your own kids now playing with the same thing..

We ofcourse did some shopping.. not too much as our time there was very short.. and did visit afternoon tea store that we like. Amelia had a tea and I had an ice coffee.. we shared this dish that has sample of 3 or 4 yummy cakes

Shiori and Saichi having fun at one of those amusement area of the shopping centre.

We can't talk bout Japan trip without mentioning our favourite doughnut shop.. Mr Donut. We were actually quite good and we only visited once there with my brother Seiji.. and just had one or two of the doughnut we really liked. Shiori had one strawberry grazed doughnut.. perhaps she wanted some more?
And this was taken in the front garden of my parent's house.. this photo is dedicated to Faraz and Arman... and titled "Nature First Shiori in Japan"
And her just posing..
We'll be posting some more photos.. specially of the two weddings that we attended pretty soon.

My walk to the office

2010-06-01T16:02:00.004+03:00

For health reason.. and also parking situation around NFSA is getting pretty ridiculous so I decided awhile back that I'll park my car bit further away where I can leave it for a day and just walk to the office.. it's about 15min walk there and back so it just gives me an excuse to do some excise for the day.

When I started this walk.. I just didn't realize how pretty the walk around this area is.. in one spot you can look both way and see the lake.. pretty amazing. I also notice some odd things here and there where I didn't even see when I was driving. So oneday I took some snapshot of some of the odd thing I see or things that I saw and I appreciated. here is the journey from my car park to the office.

My carpark is at the National Museum which has this interesting loop thing.. well the whole building is pretty interesting anyway but what I didn't realize is that you can see the parlament house just behind it.. you can even see the national flag inside the loop if you stand in the right place.

Still at the National Museum.. pretty interesting wavy paper looking structure with the Telstra tower just behind it.

View of the lake..

Another image of paper roll like structure.

I'm not sure what this sculpture represent.. but it's there..

Another sculpture I'm not sure.. but looks like bunch of large metalic forks stuck on the tree.

And close up of the tree

Car used as a flower bed..

And there are series of exercise you can do along the rode.. Chin up

Step Up

And ring

And inner courtyard of my work place.. It was so pretty with maple leaves.. I just had to take this one.

Another birthday, happy sewing :)

2010-05-07T11:14:00.002+03:00

It's such a luxury to enjoy taking out the sewing machine every day whilst the children are happy playing with their grandparents. Happy days. Tonight we're going to enjoy a birthday dinner with our dear friend Mitra. I made her a little note book cover with a matching pencil case. I tried to buy a pretty standard size note book so she can use the cover again once this book is finished. I've been making quite a few gifts recently out of the same cuts of fabric. It will be funny if friends meet and find that the purse of one matches the pencil case of another...matches the pyjama pants of another :) Ah well, these are the risks of sporting home made goods.

Parents are visiting....can you tell?

2010-05-05T10:47:00.002+03:00

With mum and dad visiting for the next couple of weeks I'm having some luxurious sewing time on my hands. Today I sewed a three piece set for a friend of ours who has recently had a little baby girl. I thought I'd make a set that can grow with her. The little zipper bag is for all those little creams and potions we use on babies, the pouch with the button can be for face washers and the like and the third piece on the left is a pencil wrap.

I know a baby won't need a pencil wrap, but a two plus year old very much will. At that point the zipper bag can be used for fun things like erasers, sharpeners, stickers and glue sticks and the pouch can hold any number of things that little girls need like note books, letters, stamps and other very important things.

I've had so much fun this afternoon. It's enjoyable to have my usual sewing adventures while trying to keep the kids busy, cook dinner and keep the household under control....but doing these things with the luxury of time and mum and dad taking care of the aforementioned takes it to a whole new level. Lucky everyone who have extended family living close by!!!!

Bliss

2010-05-05T00:54:00.002+03:00

So we're at the time of year when we swing from warm to chilly in a heartbeat and the leaves are starting to drop. The most beautiful thing is the glow that we enjoy in the afternoons. This is also the perfect time to burn off a bit of post nap energy before bath time :) Here are two photos from earlier this week.

They're looking so lovely to me this morning as today it is so cold and wet!

With the colder air coming to town we are spending a little more time indoors. Here is the latest offering from some afternoon sewing yesterday. It is a little handbag that we made as a birthday present for Shiori's class mate. She is having a fairy party this weekend. Shiori of course wants to go as 'Kiki' from 'Kiki's delivery service'....hopefully there will be some photos of that after the weekend.

superhero - amelia style

2010-04-17T09:57:00.003+03:00

Anyone hanging around me of recent times would know that I've taken a bit of a liking to capes. I've always had cape tendencies but recently they've come to fruition. I don't know what it is exactly, but I can't get enough of them. This is my latest cape. I made it for a 'let them eat cake' 21st birthday we're invited to tonight. I'm hoping that I get time to make a matching clutch before the party, but looks like Saichi had a short afternoon nap, so that's a bit of a stretch. We'll see :)

Flower broach to hold it all together. I chose to close it with a broach because it can be worn with the lining side out as well, and also the collar can be made bigger and smaller, so the broach allows for more flexibility. Can't wait for the next cape :):)

It started with a button

2010-04-17T03:26:00.005+03:00

There is a really rad fabric shop close to where we live that has become a regular haunt for the kids and I. I can spend a long time there, browsing around and chatting with the ladies about double muslin and all things gorgeous. Usually Shiori hangs around in the buttons aisle looking at all the fancy buttons and often I allow her to choose one as a reward for being so patient with me. Her most recent button is this cute little apple. Being the school holidays we have a lot more time and home and this is how we spent Saichi's nap time yesterday afternoon. I was so excited by Shiori's stitching and her ability to understand (very approximately :) how it all fits together in the end.

Step one: sewing on the button

step two: sewing the pieces of felt together
step two is pretty long. I took this shot to show you the absolutely beautiful voile I bought for myself as a reward for....as a reward for the sake of it :) While Shiori was busy I took the opportunity to make myself a quick scarf. It's so soft...I have it on right now!
Step two complete!!

Step three: I cut a button hole for the button, and there it was, Shiori's very first hand made wallet/purse. Of course, being Shiori she immediately filled it with her 'fancy' chapstick and a hair tie ("for emergencies")
Step four: afterall, she is my daughter so there will be always an extra step after the fact. This morning she asked me if she could 'embellish' her bag. I was so excited that she's already talking about embellishment-one of my favourite things- that I dropped everything to accommodate the request.

She sewed the little handle on all by herself. It is amazing to have this little baby and then in four short years they're talking about embellishment and sewing handles on bags!!!!
Finally here is me and my scarf, just for kicks. Sorry it's such a close up, I have never been good at taking photos of my self.

mini projects

2010-04-17T03:02:00.003+03:00

There are so many on going sewing projects, keeping me happy. Here are a few from February. I think by December I can get around to putting current projects up.

I uploaded the photos in a random order, so unfortunately the flow is not very logical. Below is a little cloth folder with a pencil wrap. Lower down there are photos of them opened up.

This one is a little travel document folder, good for tickets and passports :) The front of it is the photo with the panda....told you it was illogical order.

The exciting thing is that Shiori has been really getting into sewing recently and has been making some really cute things. I think I'll have to make her a sewing post of her own :)

Shiori's Craft

2010-04-15T15:00:00.001+03:00

Shiori borrowed some tape, paper and scissors and started to create something..

When she finished, she showed me these.. Apparently she learned it them from TV.. Wow TV is good for something.

Anyway it's a very good effort for her to do this all by herself. She even wrote her name on one of Elephant's ear..
Elephant and Cat that she created :)

Stephanie and Michael's Wedding

2010-04-15T12:20:00.007+03:00

Last Friday, we were invited to our friend Stephanie and Michael's wedding. Stephanie and I work together and we've been talking about this day for quite some time now, talking about the venue, food, dress, honeymoon.. And couldn't believe that the day was actually here now.

It was such a lovely weather, and day was just perfect.

Here are some photos from the wedding.

Lovely church ceremony
Shiori and Saichi all dressed up and happy
Happy family shot
Shiori posing with the fan
These are some of my friends from work.. Nat, Tenille with Saichi and Sophia
Amelia and kids sitting down at the Boat House by the lake where reception was. Shiori is busy doing her activity book that was bought and prepared by Stephanie.. what a nice thing for her to do for her own wedding. She told me earlier that she prepared some present for shiori and it was sitting on the table next to Shiori's name :)

Amazing cake made by Stephanie's sister

Tenille, Sophia, Steph and Nat (yes you all made it to our blog :)
And this is Rohan also from work with kids..
Steph with her sisters who are also her bridesmaids.

And Steph and Michael about to cut their wedding cake.
Congratulations!!! and looking forward to seeing you back at work.

Benjamin's Birthday party

2010-04-02T02:51:00.004+03:00

On Saturday, we all went to the birthday party of one of Shiori's classmate Benjamin.

They had this amazing cubby house/treehouse in their backyard and all the kids had really good time. Needless to say, Saichi loved the sandpit and all the trucks and cars and balls. I was telling someone that this might be the happiest day of his life. In fact he probably didn't realize that this much fun could exist in this world.

Hope he didn't get too disappointed when he came back home with no sand pit :)

Shiori's first Disco Party

2010-04-02T01:57:00.005+03:00

Last Friday, I took Shiori for her first Disco party at her school, she actually didn't know what Disco party was about so she was asking me about it on the way to school, I just told him we'll see when we get there.

Once we got there.. It was slightly different to the normal Disco party I was thinking.. first it was outside, then there was a jumping castle, face painting, sausage sizzles, balloon making, and bunch of parents sitting and chatting to eachother while many kids were just running wild.

Oh they did have a music and dancing area with bubble machine and smoke machine.. can't remember any lights as it was daylight.

But Shiori had a very good time dancing, running around, eating with her friends.

This is with her classmates Penelope and Kanae
This was just after she got her face painted.. I think she asked for Angelina Ballerina on her cheek.. so not sure exactly why she came out with butterfly. Oh well.
And kids dancing

And then few video of shiori at jumping castle and also dancing floor!! Enjoy

Pixies Doolittle Concert in Brisbane

2010-03-19T02:52:00.005+02:00

Pixies first broke out in late 80's, and in '89 they produced one of their most successful album "Doolittle" with hit songs such as Monkey Gone to Heaven, Debaser, Wave of Mutilation, and Here comes your man.

That's about when I discovered them also and my love just grew and grew. I absolutely loved the Doolittle album and I loved their previous album Surfer Rosa even more. Pixies made two more albums and then called it quits... without having toured to Australia. Although I was in Canada when I first discovered them.. I've never had opportunity to see them live.. and this was just looking very unlikely with bitter break up of the two main creative talent, Black Francis and Kim Deal.

Lucky for me, and for many Pixies fan, they have reunited and finally made World tour including Australia, unfortunately we were in Israel at the time and yet again missed out on the opportunity. So you should've seen me when I first find out that they are doing yet another tour to Australia, and this time to celebrate 20th aniversary of the album Doolittle's release.

So this was my dream 20 years in making.. pretty hard to believe really.. and I made sure to get a ticket, came to Brisbane and left kids with Amelia's family so that Amelia and I can go and enjoy it together. Here are some of the photos.

Amelia with the Pixies bag.. just before the show

I'm pretty excited!!

This is us in the hall. we got a seat pretty close to the stage.

Pixies getting ready for the concert

And the whole things was just amazing..

Here is the Setlist of our show, obviously they've covered all of the Doolittle album songs, including complete B sides which they've never done before. they did two more encore songs and then they came back again to do some of the old favourites. I was pretty happy with the selection of last encore songs. They were just amazing, sounded just like they did 20 years ago, and Kim was constantly talking to the audience and smiling. Their sounds were accompanied with some interesting visuals, they even had filmed themselves doing the vow and mexican wave and projected at the end of the show while they are doing the same thing.

Edit this setlist | More Pixies setlists

And here are some of the video I managed to film during the show :) so that you can get the feeling of it.

Short clip of Monkey Gone To Heaven

Short clip of Debaser

And short clip of Wave of Mutilation... sorry about few people walking in front don't know what they were doing.

Hot Air Balloons

2010-03-18T05:29:00.002+02:00

Now that we are entering the end of summer, beginning of autumn, we see lots and lots of hot air balloons in the sky. Specially early in the morning when air is cold. There is this big event where we launch many many hot air balloons, I think it happens during the Canberra day weekend.

Anyway one morning, when I went outside.. I saw sooo many hot air balloons that I just had to call Amelia and Shiori outside. We've taken few photos..

Such a wonderful sight.

Visiting Brisbane

2010-03-18T05:18:00.002+02:00

We are back visiting our family in Brisbane, and tonight Amelia and I are going to Pixies "Doolittle" tour..
So excited and can't wait.

We are also getting closer to the end of this year's fast and It's nice to be here celebrating it with the family.

This is a much too short of a visit, but we are all really enjoying being together.

Shiori was so excited to come here that she packed her own suitcase couple of days ago and insisted on dragging it everywhere. She woke up about 6:30am yesterday with so much excitement that we are finally going..

Our flight went pretty smooth, and since we were flying Qantas this time, it was nice to get some drink and food in flight.

I'm sure I'll take some photos from this trip, so hopefully I'll be able to post it soon.

From Shiori, with love.

2010-03-06T10:03:00.003+02:00

It's a bit late, but what better proof that you have more time on your hands when you're fasting? :) Shiori was inspired last week to compose her own Ayyam i Ha song and she asked us to shoot it for the blog. Here it is. From Shiori, to you all.

Funny kids

2010-02-25T11:13:00.001+02:00

While we were in Sydney, we went to this Persian restaurant.... and while we were waiting for food, kids entertained themselves being silly... Needless to say, the restaurant people were pretty happy when we finally left this place... with huge mess on the floor.

Picture for the Locket

2010-02-25T10:49:00.003+02:00

Shiori likes to wear her mommy's Locket.. it's very shiny and pretty. But when you open the locket there is no picture inside. She wished there were picture of her mommy and papa in there.

So one day, she drew the picture of her mommy and papa and wanted scissors to cut the drawings so that she could put it in the locket.

Well... I think the drawing was too big for her locket. Next time you should draw us smaller and little bit prettier Shiori.

This past weekend

2010-02-22T12:12:00.003+02:00

It seems like every few months we start a post with 'so, it's been a while since our last update.' Ah well, you blog your life, not live to blog... :) Sometimes life is just too full (or we're too lazy...) So this past weekend we had a fun and busy time. The first few photos are from Sunday in the park with the Hatami's. It was such a gorgeous day that it would have been a criminal offence to just stay indoors. We thought the best way to celebrate the good weather was to pick up some delicious duck laksa from Asian Noodle house and head to the park.

Earlier, on Saturday we spent the day in Sydney celebrating the marriage of Jenna and Vafa. It was such a beautiful wedding, simple, elegant, heartfelt and joyous. We loved it. Congratulations Jenna and Vaf.
Shiori whispering her thoughts to Aunty Feebs above and below, the elegant bride and beaming groom.

Shingo and Saichi sharing a high five above, and Anisa the only one without a double chin below :):) Photo of course taken by Shiori, who is a little shorter than we are, for now.
Family shot, I love how Saichi and Shingo are dressed the same, I only noticed now when I looked at this photo. I'm also super excited as this was the first time Shiori wore the new outfit that I sewed for her.
The photos are a little bit on the poor quality side, but the view was gorgeous. Looking over the beautiful bay.
Check the view, pity the bride and groom got to just look at us looking at them...and the view :)

Long time... so some quick photo update.

2010-02-17T06:06:00.004+02:00

Sorry for not posting anything for very long time.. I am saying sorry to all those people who check this site every day only to find same old post... Well hope you are still checking, cause I just said sorry to you.

Anyway quick slap on my wrist.. and I'll post few photos just to get this thing going again.

We do have few trip plan.. Brisbane (pixies concert) in March and then to Japan in June.. so we'll have something interesting to say then at least.

These are some old photos that I got and they are good ones..

Here is picture of Shiori and Saichi playing on their little car.. happy together for now.

And this is after shot where it went all sour for Shiori.. but Saichi is still very happy.

Photographs of Saichi and Shiori

2009-11-22T12:48:00.002+02:00

These are some of the recent photos I took with my phone that I love...

Saichi wearing his Jinbei for the very first time..
And Shiori posing to show the nice hair styling that was done by Amelia.

Saichi Turned 1

2009-11-20T15:12:00.002+02:00

Saichi just turned 1 today, we haven't done much exciting thing for his first birthday but we've received lovely gift from his grandparents from Japan... And shiori enjoyed some gift for her own also.

He received several toys and considering that he doesn't have much.. he was soo excited to see them. He particularly loves this little talking and rolling and flashing toy ball. It actually talk to him in Japanese and if he doesn't play with it for awhile.. it'll say, hey what's going on in Japanese.

Here is the video of him playing, it's bit long but you can see excited Shiori at the end as well.

Shiori really loved this large Ampan man thing and also she got little doll that she calls her baby.
And here are some of photos of Saichi enjoying his day.

LIttle stroll down by the lake...

2009-11-17T13:57:00.000+02:00

On one Sunday afternoon, we decided to go for a little stroll down by the lake... Shiori wanted to bring her little baby and push her little stroller while we pushed Saichi on ours. It was a lovely day for a stroll, nice cool breeze, lovely afternoon.

Like mother like daughter.. pushing the stroller together.

At one point.. Shiori had to take a little break because her baby was hungry.. so she is nursing the baby.. while we waited.
Still nursing..

Oh, now she is trying to make baby burp

With such a content smile.. looking into the water.. holding her little happy baby.

Wedding of Nathalie and Chris

2009-11-16T13:05:00.000+02:00

Last weekend I attended the wedding of my good friend at work Nathalie and Chris. It was held at the park by the lake, and it was a gorgeous day outside. The whole ceremony was a small and simple and very beautiful one. She looked amazing in her wedding dress and just perfect setting for the wedding.

Here is Nat and her father walking down along the pass

The reception was held at this lovely place by the lake, just short walking distance from where wedding took place. It had lovely large deck and nice view of the lake.

Nat chatting with guests.

The view from the deck.
Another friend from work, Tenille and Hayden.. (here Tenille, you made it onto our blog :).. )

And another good friend Stephanie and her fiancee Michael

Just enjoying the cool breeze before the formal part of the reception .

And group photo with the people from work.. Everyone is just getting ready for the photo..

And nice one with everyone..

It was a very very touching and lovely reception, and the whole thing was just a relaxed and happy gathering. Congratulations Nat!!

Introducing.... Adoretea

2009-11-15T14:09:00.002+02:00

Just this past weekend, we decided to go for a little drive. Sometimes it feels so cramped to be in the same place, go to the same places all the time, so we hit the open road (which is pretty easy to do in Canberra since pretty much as soon as you leave your area it's a open road... according to Amelia, my definition of open road is road with the view of mountain in the front which is basically accurate spot on :). Anyway so we hit the road, and after about 20 min drive, we got to this little area north of Canberra called Gold Creek.. it is an interesting area, full of little gift shops, craft shop, and shop for kids. Probably being very close to the miniature gardens, there are lot of shops that sold miniature items and doll houses as well which Shiori was very excited to find.

In this area though was a place called adoretea shop.. the destination for real tea lovers. So we had to go and visit considering that the whole purpose of the trip was to finally find this place.

This place is pretty amazing, apparently it just moved to the new and bigger location, and it has nice clean and relaxing feel.. it has over 300 teas in their menu as well as some interesting creation such as Tea based milk shakes... There are few munchies like typical scones, apple pies etc.

Here is the amazing selection of teas and tea pots.
Amelia and Shiori enjoying the comfy couch
Me and Saichi.. Saichi was pretty happy to be out of the house finally.
Shops has many seats, selection of teas and tea cups and pots, comfy couch and relaxing fire place, friendly staff... And only after we left we found out that this place had a baby seat.. which would have been very handy during our stay.. Oh well next time, we can just imagin sitting there enjoying many teas and relaxing a little bit.

Apparently you can order the teas online and they even do a catering etc. You can click the link here

Some random pictures of our kids.

2009-11-15T11:01:00.002+02:00

Here are some recent random photos of Shiori and Saichi...

Here is Shiori enjoying the afternoon sun with the view of Lake.. I think she is holding one of her baby doll. She has pretty content and satisfied look.. wonder what baby doll is telling her.
And here is Shiori with her fried Sana.. petting our little Muji.
Meanwhile Saichi was learning alphabet with this toy.

Shiori and Saichi sailing away!!

2009-11-09T12:51:00.002+02:00

Just the other day, Shiori constructed this sail boat on our living room.. equipped with two sails, baby seat for Saichi, steering wheel... And packed bag full of.. i'm not too sure but I think she packed some changes. And they were ready to sail away..
Shiori taking the charge of the steering wheel and saichi just looking on.
Saichi is now looking through his plastic bucket and shiori is still trhying to steer the boat.
I don't remember where exactly they sailed to, or how they came back but I think it ended when Saichi broke free from his seat.

Shiori dancing at Landspeed

2009-11-09T12:44:00.002+02:00

Just the other day, I took Shiori out to town for some fun.. while Amelia and Saichi stayed home.

We went to few different shops but the one that she enjoyed the most was at this music store where she could listen to the music on the big headphone.. She kept bringing different CD she wanted to listen, but unfortunately it was the type that I couldn't change the CD... anyhow she listened to some songs and did some nice dance..

When music changed she stopped dancing and said she doesn't like this music and put the head phone down.

She liked this adventure with her papa so much that she kept on saying we had so much fun, but mami and Saichi didn't have any fun at home.. well I'm sure they had their own fun time.

Anyway here is the video.. enjoy!!

Shiori and her green thumb

2009-11-09T12:26:00.003+02:00

Now that Spring time is here, we've been enjoying doing some gardening work around the house, we bought some fruit trees to plant in our new house as well as planting some flowers and greens.

Shiori recently got beach toys from our friend Nika, and she is using them to plant some flowers of her own.

Shiori planting nice big Iris... actually she just cut off some flowers from our yard and planted into her bucket.
And here it is.. it was so cute, we left it as it was, and Shiori remembered to water it every day. Amazingly it survived for couple of days.

My Hoya Tree

2009-11-02T00:49:00.002+02:00

I've been slowly growing a little Hoya tree for a while now since we've moved to Canberra.. trying to see if I can recreate the Hoya garden we had in Haifa.. ofcourse we had much advanced start in Haifa with our Hoya trees mostly grown by lovely and knowledgeable Andrew and Malinda Blake. So with this one I had to start with small pot.. but looks like it's finally growing nicely. It is sitting in the entrance where we it is protected from the frost and wind during winter. During warmer month it is really taking off and hopefully it'll give us lovely flower soon.
Only thing now we need to do is to put some strings so that it can grow upwards with some support.

Our house

2009-11-02T00:07:00.003+02:00

Recently we bought a home. For the time being we're happy to continue living at the centre and maintaining the property here, but it's been wonderful to go and enjoy the gardens before the tenants move in at the end of the week. It's also a lot of fun to imagine moving in and all the extra space that we'll have! Today we're going to go and plant a few trees so they can start growing and getting big for us to enjoy in a couple of years. We are planting a pomegranate, a lovely creeping rose and some wisteria.

A quilt is born

2009-11-01T01:22:00.000+02:00