Sports Day 2008 - Part 2

Theo's school had another Sports Day last Saturday (October 25) specifically for the 3-5-year-old children, and as part of that, we took a photo of him in this pose. "Gambarre" means "Do your best!"

To warm-up, the children did some calisthenics while following some kids up front who acted as exercise leaders. In this photo, Theo was captured gazing at his father's camera while the other kids were in full motion.

The first kids to join the sprint race were Kano-chan, Theo, Emma-chan, and Futaba-kun (from left to right). If I'm not mistaken, I think Kano-chan won the race...for the 2nd time!

At the end of the sports day, the parents gave each of their kids a medal. Here, Sota-kun shows Theo his medal...

...while Theo shows us his by covering his face with it. On the medal, which his mother made, is also a photo of him.

The US presidential elections will be held in a few days, and although we're not part of it, we're rooting for Barack Obama!

This shot was taken just this afternoon when I took Theo to a nearby park so that he can expend some of his excess energies.

"Theo Loves Japan" - Dancing in Akihabara

October 13 (Monday) was a national holiday in Japan, and for lack of something else to do, Theo and I decided to hang out in Akihabara (where else?, hahaha...). And on that day, there was a street performer who dished out some great songs just in front of Yodobashi Camera.

If you've been following this blog for quite some time, you'd know that ever since he was a toddler, Theo's body easily moves with the beat, esp. fast ones, and he has absolutely no qualms or inhibitions about dancing in public. This is one of the photos taken on that day when he danced in front of this performer for about 15 min (roughly 4 songs). Actually, he didn't want to stop dancing; I just had to drag him home because the people's attention was no longer on the performer but on him.

I've uploaded a sample video of him dancing on that day in 3 formats: MPEG4 (roughly 23.6 MB, for those with high-speed Internet connections and with Apple QuickTime installed in their PCs), WMV (roughly 14.2 MB, for those who prefer using Windows Media Player), and compressed MPEG4 (roughly 6.67 MB, for those with slow Internet connections; note that the size of this video is also very small).

I took this photo of him on the same day at a nearby shrine near Yanaka Park. Obviously, after all that dancing, he still had the energy to run around and climb some structures built for kids.

Sometime last week, Mommy D took Theo to Arakawa Yuenchi, where he enjoyed playing with some small, furry animals such as Guinea pigs and rabbits.

Obviously, he enjoyed this Guinea pig very much, whereas...

...this rabbit was a bit shy.

Another festival is being held this weekend (October 18-19) in the neighborhood, and this afternoon, I took him to a nearby park where he enjoyed running around with his yummy cotton candy.

At Nezu Shrine later in the day, however, he had his second serving of cotton candy and met his classmate, Emma-chan. At home, when we ask him who among his female classmates is his favorite, he would quickly say "Emma-chan daisuki!" (Translation: I like Emma very much!) We believe that he considers her like a younger sister although they are roughly the same age.

Motherboard and Matsuri

As friends and relatives know, one of my hobbies is assembling and repairing computers. Thus, ever since he was born, Theo has been exposed to various computer parts scattered around the apartment. This one's a broken motherboard that I bought from a junk shop for 200 yen (roughly US$2); the Pentium III processor that I attached to it is also nonfunctional. Hence, it was okay for Theo to touch and play around with this board. I intend to keep it for demo purposes in the future -- actually, to demonstrate some things to him when he's at the right age.

There was a festival (matsuri) in our neighborhood over the weekend, and this float carrying a number of women playing traditional Japanese drums caught much of Theo's attention. So much so that...

...he wanted to join other kids in pulling the float for quite some distance along the main road. This experience will surely form part of his memories in Japan.

He also watched these ladies performing a traditional Japanese street dance.

This afternoon, we went to Costco in Kaihin Makuhari together with Dr. Parida Yamada,a former labmate of mine at the University of Tsukuba, and her daughter, Emina. Theo and Emina bonded quickly and enjoyed some shopping together as well as...

...some soft Hokkaido ice cream!

This photo was taken last Sunday when we passed by Ueno Park for a brief afternoon stroll. As always, Theo likes to play in the water...or what's left of it.