We had a first overnight trip since our baby was born a half year ago. The more family we are, the more money we need, as well as the more fun we have. This time I was so impressed by the growth of the elder kid. Taking a spa together with him, we talked about a lot of silly little things in the unusual environment.

Cherry blossoms have been coming back to Tokyo. It's still been at half bloom, but will have been almost ended at the next weekend. They have very short lives, although different types of cherry blossoms delight out eyes over several weeks in every Spring.

We enjoyed working across the cemetery near the house. It's famous for the cherry blossoms. The good news for us is that the cemetery officially bans any drinking party around there. Beside some minute banquets held by a handful of neighbors, there used to be less cherry-viewing party than in the Ueno park, which is located near the cemetery and is also one of the most familiar place for such a cherry-viewing. But for the past few years, unruly guys from a long distance seemed to come and held a lot of filthy parties in the cemetery. I welcome the ban because that brings the cemetery a peaceful atmosphere.

On the way home today, I popped in a musical instruments store near my office and bought two scores. One of which was a violin score for my kid, which I originally intended to buy it. Another was the etudes of Hanon for my own.

It's almost ten years ago when I stopped playing a piano. Before then I had attended a piano class every week for almost 20 years. I had definitely loved to play it, but at the same time, to be honest, I hated the class. The teacher had never taught me how to practice but just ordered me to prepare to play a boring etude till the next lesson. I have no idea why I could have continued to attend her infuriating lesson. Then, when I told her that I was going to quit the class within the next four months, I finally confessed that I couldn't tolerate the etudes she had made me play. I also insisted that I had wanted to learn how to exercise, instead of a mere vague sensuous instruction for beginners' etudes. Around that time I happened to know about the Hanon independently of her, and started practicing it by myself. I found it very helpful for the finger. But first and foremost, I knew, for the first time in those wasted twenty years, that what "an exercise of piano" actually was.

Since then I have had less opportunity to play a piano, but in my mind, a hunger for playing some instruments is getting stirred while my kid learns to play his violin. It's because of that I couldn't help myself and bought the etudes of Hanon together with my son's score.

Kids graduating from a nursery kindergarten is a little bit emotional for their parents. It happened to me today. And I was so proud of my son sitting up during his first sober ceremony.

His nice grown-up behavior during the ceremony was enough to make me decide to send him on his first errand. After the dinner, I asked him to go to a 7-eleven next to our condominium and buy me an ice cream. Both me and my wife felt a sort of uptight when he phoned me from the shop (I let him bring a cell phone, just in case). Fortunately, it's not an serious trouble. He just chose more expensive one than we gave him. In short, he got short on cash. I reckon he will keep hearing we say about this accident ever after.

I found a new Kindle PaperWhite has an awesome feature. It seems to be very useful for cultivating my vocabulary. I used to write down unknown words to a notebook with sentences where the word appeared. Kindle's Vocabulary Builder, which Amazon calls it, gives me the same sort of word book for free. It's created automatically within the device and whenever I look into a word during reading, it collects the word together with the sentences around which the word locates. There are already over 500 words in my device. Turning over such words vacantly will be nice way of passing time when I'm so tired that I cannot read any book.

I went to Ueno to listen to a concert. It's one of the many programs called Tokyo Harusai, meaning Spring Festival in Tokyo. I didn't know about the festival until recently. They say it has been held every year since 2005, though. Anyway, I found it for the first time, and was interested in some of the scheduled programs.

The one I was most interested in was the four consequent concerts celebrating Richard Strauss's 150 years birth. Because it would take me almost eight hours if I joined the whole program, I chose only the first part, which contained Richard Strauss's first horn concerto and the oboe concerto. I reckon it must have been a rare occasion to enjoy there two master pieces at the same time.

Both of them were accompanied by a piano instead of an orchestra. Watching the soloists had always been adjusting their instruments during the performances, I got an impression of how robust pianos are. I know it's quite usual thing for most of players to tune their instruments during a live session. But pianos never require such on-the-fly tuning. That might explain their relatively large size than other tempered instruments.

On the way home, I bought a shirt at Ameyoko where a lot of apparel shops stand side by side. I'm always annoyed with the lack of right sized shirts for my long arms.

We went to Yodobashi Camera to take a bicycle my wife had ordered the other day. She had decided to buy it before the sales tax increases on April. For exactly the same reason, I also bought a DSLR on the last month. The clerk said their items for sale are getting scarce as a lot of people hustle to buy whatever they had intended to get with the current tax rate.

The symptoms of my allergy suddenly got worse yesterday. I'll see a doctor tomorrow.

We seldom use a ticket to take a train in Tokyo these days, because there's a well-developed payment system using non-contact IC cards. But today I asked my wife to go the railway service to set my IC card up as a fixed fee pass, and I didn't bring it with me. It made me buy a ticket at the station. At first I couldn't find the fare chart letting commuters to know the fee. Tokyo has a very complex railway system so there used to be a billboard to show the freight for every stations. Also there's a limited number of ticket-vending machines, far less than I remember.

My son brought back his drawings from the kindergarten. Some works are really admirable in their creativity, I think. One of the best drawings is of a wrecked ship under the sea. It has some holes pricked with a pen. He says it represents the damages the ship had gotten in the battle. Pretty cool, isn't it?

I visited a concert hall in Ueno to buy a ticket for a concert to be held tomorrow, but was said by the officer that I couldn't buy it because they have already closed the reservation. And that I have to come tomorrow without a ticket and wait on the line just before the concert starts. It made me lose my enthusiasm toward the concert. Apparently, I won't go there tomorrow.

Yesterday we received a pack of Buntan -- a kind of orange but has more stiff peel and juicy pulp. You will find it rather expensive at a fruit shop, but we got them as moderate as apples as we ordered them directly from the farmer. I happened to be able to spend the afternoon alone without children. There generally are a lot of things a man can't do with children, like making a kit model, going out to a movie, or enjoying a spicy hot restaurant. That is, it was a rare opportunity to do such grown-up businesses. But I chose to use the free hours to focus on the works which have been a burden to me for weeks. I reckon that the decision turns out well because I managed to finish them! I then offered the family who were at home dinner. There must be no more fascinating moment than unwinding after a load of work with the family and glasses of wine.

I spent most of the day with my daughter as my wife and son went out here and there. She slept well during the daytime, and now she's reluctant to sleep in her bed.

I went to dentist with my son and ate dinner on the way home at a ramen shop. There I had to scold him because he could't stop watching TV during the dinner. Watching TV in itself is not a bat habit. But losing the precious time unawarely is not good. That's what I want him to see.

I argued with my colleague about how tactful the thought of children are. She said she's always impressed by somehow conscious answers made by children, and they must be more deliberate than we adults imagine. However, I was against her view. No matter how deep they think, it can't be measured along with our way of "thinking". There are a sort of framework in our thinking which differs by age. In fact, it's also differ by each people, although the most affecting parameter should be age. In other words, children never think in a way adults think. We can't think in children's shoes, even though we all used to think using the same frameworks with which now children see the world around them. In my opinion, she confused children's precocious answers coming from the framework they are using to think and which are different from ours, with some thoughtfulness.

Writing is a habit. The more you write, the easier you can write. I know that's true in my native tongue, Japanese, so I'm trying it in English too. That's why I have started to do it here. However, there's few thing to be written every day, especially on weekday, because I don't want to write anything to complain about my ordinary life. Anyway, trying to be able to write about nothing using any foreign language should be another interesting, big challenge for me.

Anti allergic medicine makes me feel so sleep during this season. It's far better than without it, but I can't wake up in the morning everyday. So I'm going to the bed now.

I finally wrote the income tax report of the last year. We can get a good amount of money back, because we still have mortgage loan and the amount of medical bills exceeds one hundred thousand yen.

There are a few still working steam locomotives in Japan, but we don't have any in urban Tokyo. No wonder they have already disappeared from this super overcrowded and hectic city. It means, there would be no rarer opportunity than today to be able to enjoy their dynamic sound and smoke along with the Yamanote Line, which links cities in central Tokyo circularly. Fortunately, we could look down at it from a building on the railroad. If we were to wait it within other viewers in the cold weather, I would go home before it showed up at last.

I visited the new Kabukiza in Ginza for the first time. It was reconstructed the last year in order to strengthen against the earthquake. It was also aimed to utilize its estate more effectively. So they said it would be a skyscraper having an exterior much like the one of the original Kabukiza theater. I was afraid that any skyscrapers with clean lines shouldn't be match with such a traditional Japanese architecture having rather ornate exterior. However, it seemed to turn up well. From the pathway, in fact, the higher part was almost out of sight and it still looked like the original one.

My wife is now struggling with writing the farewell cards to the baby minders of our son. They have also been his teachers for several years, so we really want to say thanks to them, but it's always difficult to write these cards.

My daughter becomes six months the next week. I feel the time has gone faster than six years ago when we were bringing up our first kid. Back then, we used to wash diapers everyday after coming back home at midnight, while now we are using disposal diapers for our daughter. We must have had more nursing works than now. Nevertheless, time seems to pass through so fast that I hardly be aware of the process of bringing up the newborn, sadly.

I love trailing mountains covered with snow. To my dismay, however, I will not be able to go hiking in snow mountains this winter. Our family have a lot to do this month, especially because it's the last month for our son before his schooldays. In addition to the preparations for which the elementary school asks, there's a series of events relevant to the pre-school. If my wife hadn't been taking maternity leave to care our newborn daughter, we would fail to do something we have to do for him.

We are going to rush to stash the hina-doll into the box as soon as morning comes around, because it's an old saying that daughters whose hina-dolls remain in displays after March 3 must have a hard time to get married. I usually hate superstitions but this one is interesting.

My mom came over and cerebrate the first March 3 for our daughter. The actual March 3 is tomorrow, of course, but there's a kind of festival to cerebrate a growth of a newborn daughter around the day. For guys, like our son and me, it's a day for eating sakura-mochi.