Family News ...
In the early years of my life here in Japan, I was so busy with work and family life that it was very difficult to 'get away' and travel overseas to visit my parents. In recent years I am no less busy, but my life is somewhat more simple, and I have made it a habit to fly over to Canada sometime each summer for a family get-together. My brother and I coordinate these visits, with him arriving in Vancouver from the east (Germany) and me from the west (Japan)!
A couple of weeks before I got there, my eldest daughter Himi arrived from Romania with husband Ioan and my grandson Alex, and as my sister Sherry lives in Vancouver and second daughter Fumi is at university there, we were able once again to have a 'full house' for the reunion!
Grandma insists that at least once during the reunions we have a dinner with everybody on hand, and this year we enjoyed Japanese food up on a rooftop patio of a nearby restaurant. Deciding what to order is easy; we just leave it up to Fumi, as she has lots of experience handling food for large groups - for the past year or so she has been working as a waitress in a high-class izaka-ya many evenings each week!
Little Alex is just on the edge of being able to walk by himself. He still needs support, and he's getting it here from his mother and aunt Fumi, as they enjoy a plate of barbecue prepared by 'Uncle Simon'. He has been visiting Thailand, and it has become a habit for him to try out a new Thai recipe on us each year. This year's 'Lime Chicken' was the best one he has done yet!
Here's the little guy, together with his grandad and great-grandad. I have to say that I still don't really feel like a grandfather. I suppose that if I were living near to Alex and seeing him regularly, it would feel more 'real' to me, but as I only get to see him during one week a year, it still all seems a bit unreal.
And speaking of 'grand-fathers', I got a bit of a shock on my final day in Vancouver. A bunch of us were having breakfast together before I headed off to the airport, and as I was browsing the restaurant menu, I found that there was a special page of items for 'seniors' ... and that the qualifying age was shown as 55 ... which just includes me!
Here in Japan, Sadako and I qualify for a slightly reduced price when we go to a movie, but this is the first time I have found myself really included in a 'Senior' designation. So did I order something from that page? Well, yes I did; the photos of the menu items on all the other pages showed huge heaps of food, and I just can't eat such large volumes. The senior items did actually suit me perfectly ... Sigh ...
We all had a most pleasant week, and Simon and I then flew off to our own homes. Before we left though, we convinced my parents to upgrade their computer, and they now have a new iMac that can handle video telephone calls. We tested this as soon as I arrived home, and it was great fun to sit at my desk here in Ome, talking with the folks back there in Vancouver. Little Alex will never know what it is like to be completely separated from his family ...