November activities

It's been a very busy month here. My mother and stepfather came to visit (her 5th trip to Tokyo!) for a few weeks. Blaine traveled to Australia and South Korea and covered Obama's visit to Tokyo and Seoul. I had an interesting corporate assignment, to research, conduct interviews and write a report about Japan's foreign aid policies.

Also this month, Lucinda really learned to ride a bicycle and sang karaoke with several friends and their moms (including me). Arno turned 5 and will have his birthday party this weekend. Blaine took the children to Mizuno, a huge sports store, to buy baseball mitts. Both schools had parent-teacher conferences in recent days, when we get a vague sense of how much Japanese the children are absorbing. And today, the last of a 6-day school vacation, the children and I went to see Cirque du Soleil.

Based on this month alone, they seem to be the luckiest children alive, though I don't think they've realized that... yet?

Another cute photo of Blaine and Arno

Riding down to the Azabu Juban shopping street last weekend.

Blaine's latest...

... was in the Sunday, Aug 31 paper, squeezing in some front-page real estate despite a flood of stories about Sarah Palin and Hurricane Gustav. Which is no easy feat.

This cool story - valuable to US cities and transportation agencies - is about an increase in bicycling for commuters "from Berlin to Bogota" (and including Japan). By doing so, they thwart high gas prices, get some exercise and - not kidding - save time on bike lanes that bypass traffic jams.

Blaine also made two videos for this story. This neat video is about a bicycle garage where robot arms grab each commuter's bike and store it underground. It's pretty cool technology, and some nice editing, too.

The second video is from Blaine's trip to Taiwan and a visit to the Giant bicycle company. Take a look.