We were at a store called Chambre and we found a sort of beret that looks like a Slime from Dragon Quest. Ulan tried it on. Not something she’d wear regularly though.
Ulan found a Slime hat
Ulan enjoyed drawing pictures
I was recently asked to prepare an activity for junior high-level English classes to have students use gerund phrases as modifiers for verbs. I took an idea from my coworker to have the students use whiteboards draw pictures which describe sentences that they put together by drawing cards at random. I made a stack of noun cards with pictures (Darth Vader, Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift, a pencil, etc), a verb (enjoyed, started, or finished), plus a gerund phrase (baking cookies, talking to plants, reading a Harry Potter book, etc). The picture would depend on the verb, whether its something that just began, just finished, or is in progress. I played this game with my daughter Ulan. She used her digital blackboard to draw pictures. We played several rounds.
Bananas started swimming in yogurt.
Elmo enjoyed playing the drums.
My neighbor’s stupid dog started riding a dinosaur.
Gunma-chan (Gunma Prefecture’s mascot) finished wrestling an octopus.
Anya finished hunting a Totoro.
Sponge Bob started stalking AKB48.
My cat finished building a time machine.
A muffin started stealing cars.
My grandmother enjoyed punching Luffy.
Ulan likes drawing goofy pictures, so this was a perfect way to play with English on a Sunday afternoon.
More Sega love from Shimamura, plus other game-related stuff for home
These are plush tissue covers I bought on discount at Shimamura, the Mega Drive and Dreamcast. There was also an SG-1000 tissue cover, but I passed on that because I have no emotional attachment to that old console.
One more Mega Drive bath towel!
This is a blanket of a pixelated Neo Kobe skyline from Konami’s game Snatcher I bought on Ali Express. My wife is holding it up for me to take this picture. It is so soft that Ulan got jealous. So, I got her a Dragon Quest Slime blanket from Ali Express for her as a Christmas present. Snuggly girl is snuggly.
My daughter’s self portrait
Ulan drew a picture of herself in pencil today.
Ulan is the friend to all dragonflies
We went to the trout farm in Katashina two weeks ago, and enjoyed the cool 28°C. As always, the air was filled with dragonflies flying about.
There is a trick to catching dragonflies. As you know, they like to land on the reeds standing out above the water, right? If you point your finger up, the dragonflies might land on your finger. Ulan is a master at it!
My daughter is insane
This dialogue actually happened yesterday morning after breakfast:
Ulan: “Bring me a plastic bag. Now.”
Me: “What’s the magic word?”
Ulan: “…SHIT.”
Me: “No, the other magic word.”
She’s crazy. But you know, I admire that.
She’s also LITERALLY HITLER.
Ulan’s new glasses
This week, Ulan got her first pair of glasses and she is happy. On the drive home from the glasses store, she was amazed at how clearly she could see the world. She’s wanted glasses for a long time. I took her to the optometrist about 4 years ago and the eye doctor said that she did not need glasses. She was disappointed.
She’s beautiful. Apparently this rounded-style has become rather popular in Taiwan and now in South Korea, and is now gaining popularity in Japan.
Ever since she was about 2 years old, she wanted glasses like her papa. When we went to the optometrist, she was trying on glasses and had a lot of fun.
This is when she was 2 years old. Adorable!
Automated Dalek waiter robots in Japan
Crap. We’re doomed. So in the past few years, these robot waiters have proliferated here in Japan. With all this talk of AI, maybe it’s only a matter of time before these become self aware and decide to revolt against humans.
So the Chinese restaurant chain Bamiyan (owned by the Gusto/Skylark group which also owns the Yume-An Japanese restaurant chain) has this completely FAWESOME Taiwanese fry bread topped with vanilla ice cream and smothered in honey, and it reminds me of the sopapillas back home in Arizona I miss so much (which can only be found in Arizona and New Mexico). Ulan and I discovered this on their dessert menu in April and holy crap, I just want to eat that every week now.
What scares me is this robot that served us. It’s like a cross between a Dalek from Doctor Who and R2-D2 from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (back when Star Wars was cool).
I kept expecting it to exclaim, “EXTERMINATE!” Every time it came to our table, I tell Ulan, “Ohmygosh, it’s come back to kill us again!” But really if you think of it, how delightful it would be to be murdered by such an adorable robot. It even has a cute face and what resembles cat ears. How sweet.
But just think… once these robot servers become more advanced, we’ll have to face something more frightening. This man in the picture above didn’t leave a good enough tip, so now his robot waiter is murdering him to death in the parking lot. The man is obviously not having a good day. Of course, this won’t be a problem here in Japan since there is no tipping, but who knows what the future has in store?
And of course, we ordered milk tea boba drinks (called “tapioca” drinks here in Japan, despite these actually not being tapioca). Ulan loves these, and unfortunately the Mini Stop convenience stores no longer serve boba drinks and it sucks. But at least Bamiyan serves them. Happy Ulan is happy.
She bangs the drums
Ulan-chan’s brass band performed for a street festival in town on April 29th. They played three anime songs. Mayu and I snuck around to the back of the stage to get a good view of her. Here’s the video I took. Enjoy!
Ulan-chan’s 15th birthday
Today is May 5th, Children’s Day in Japan. It’s also my daughter Ulan’s birthday! This lucky girl has her birthday on a national holiday. So the picture above is a cake for Children’s day (Kodomo no Hi) for the rest of the family to enjoy, and this was her own personal birthday cake:
Here’s the neat crap she got for her birthday. I got her a Dragon Quest Slime pillow with some Chiikawa character stuff. Chiikawa is some new cute character animation she’s really into and watches the videos on YouTube. I think it’s boring, but whatever. Happy girl is happy. We love you, Ulan-chan.
Oh yes, and while we were having cake, a mag 6 earthquake hit Ishikawa Prefecture, right on the peninsula. Klaxons were going off and there was even a countdown to what was supposed to be a mag 3 here, but we couldn’t feel a thing.