Shika Kenshin – Stage Two

Posted on December 24, 2010 by MThomas

Click here for STAGE ONE.

STAGE TWO START

Some time after the dental advice (maybe ten or fifteen minutes), we were called to see the second advice consultant.

Sitting down at a small cocktail-size table with my daughter in a high chair next to me, I remembered seeing the same woman about half a year prior. At that time, she had given my daughter a set of tiny wooden blocks to see if she could grasp them easily and hand them to her when asked.

This time, my daughter was given a piece of laminated paper with six images on it: a pair of sneakers, a car, a dog’s head (not the whole dog), a fish, a train car, and a glass of indeterminant liquid. The woman showed my daughter the laminated paper and placed the paper on the table, saying without pointing (in Japanese), “Where’s the dog?” (wan wan ha doko?) Continue reading →

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Shika Kenshin – Stage One

Posted on December 9, 2010 by MThomas

The first stage of three

A few days ago, I took my daughter to a scheduled dental checkup (shika kenshin), sponsored by our local municipal citizen’s welfare department. Like all the other health check ups (at seven months, a year, and a year and a half), the dental check up was free (well, paid for by our taxes!). Unlike the other health check ups, I was on my own this time (my wife had work).

My daughter and I arrived just after the doors opened at 9:30 and at the second story window I handed over the post card we got in the mail, along with my daughter’s boshi-techo, and was asked to fill out a questionnaire. This took me some time. I couldn’t read about half of the kanji (Chinese characters), so I started looking up some of them on my cell phone dictionary with trying to prevent my daughter from grabbing said cell phone.  Some of the questions were very specific: Continue reading →

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On the Pond

Posted on November 15, 2010 by MThomas

"Hango," for boiling rice over an open fire.

This past Sunday, my wife, daughter, and I joined in an outdoor barbecue at a prefectural park originally built for a Japanese emperor. Sounds impressive, I guess…Taisho Tenno wasn’t a particularly long-lived emperor by modern standards, and was in poor health, so as a result many parks were built for him as recuperation areas away from the smog and pollution of industrial Tokyo. The park near us named after him comprised a giant pond in the shape of the palm of a human hand, and a ring, whose symbolism escapes me (there was a sign written in incredibly ornate Japanese to honor the late emperor, but I was too busy running after my daughter to read the sign carefully).

There were about a dozen or so families at the BBQ, all of which had members of our Shorinji Kempo training hall. It was the first time in three years that the “recreation” had been held (as the event was called), and the first time for my Shorinji Kempo training partners to meet my daughter. And of course the first time for their children to meet her, also.

Continue reading →

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