Rikuto Gets Vocal

Rikuto is still a long way off speaking yet, but that doesn’t stop him trying to communicate. In this video, he gets quite vocal on a number of important issues. I don’t know what he’s trying to say, but it’s fun imagining. Maybe he’s giving his thoughts on Japan’s new prime minister, or perhaps he’s surprised at the fall of the U.S dollar! At the end of the video, I’m […]

Learn About Your Name with Baby Namer

Choosing a name for a baby can be a difficult task. I wrote about how we decided to call our son Rikuto before, but I was surfing the web and found BabyNamer.com, an interesting look into the background of names you might be considering. There are currently 23,000 names, mostly English, in their database, and the front page lists some of the more popular ones. Naturally, I typed in my […]

Motivate Yourself with FutureMe

A year ago, I used a free service at FutureMe.org to send an email to myself in the future. I had completely forgotten about it until it came through the other day. Here it is, with obscenities and personal info removed. Dear Nick, It’s Sept. 24th, 2006. Hopefully when you read this you will have achieved the goals that I’m setting today! 1) Be earning (deleted) 2) Have saved (deleted) […]

Rikuto – Is That My Hand?

The other day Rikuto turned 2-months old, and I posted about some of the things we can expect from him this month. One of those things is the realization that he has his own hands. With that in mind, and considering how these videos of the baby seem to be pretty popular with my family in England, here’s another one of little Ricky called “Is That My Hand?” If you […]

Half Japanese or Half-Blood?

When I lived in England, I was never particularly concerned with whether people around me were completely English, half English, or just a bit English. I mean, what did it matter? I myself am actually half Scottish, a quarter English and a quarter Italian, but nobody made a big deal of it. Before I rant about Japan’s obssession with geneology, here’s the concept of blood purity in the world of […]

Planning a Lifetime in Japan

Our third visit from Mr. Life Planner was by far the most interesting. Mr. Life Planner works for Sony Life Insurance and part of the sales pitch includes a detailed “Life Simulation”, which is really intended to prove the need for their life insurance. Previously we had given him details of our monthly expenses, earnings and expected future purchases, and he came back with a variety of graphs, charts and […]

Happy Birthday LongCountdown!

Today marks the first anniversary of starting this blog. Can you believe it’s been a year already? The first year saw Mami and I buy a house and have a baby, and while that will be hard to top, the next year should make for very interesting reading, particularly if you’re following the progress of our son, Rikuto. There have been exactly 153 posts and 300 comments so far. I’d […]

Rikuto Turns 2 Months Old

Rikuto is two months old today, and I was over at BabyCenter.com reading up on what to expect this month. Here’s the gist of it: Week 1: Rikuto should be able to recognize colors, rather than just seeing things in two tones or depending on brightness. They recommend we break out the stuffed animals, soft balls and plastic cookie cutters! He should also be able to differentiate familiar voices and […]