sister sledge would be proud!
we are fallamis!
2 Comments
Author Archives: taisuke
rainy days
its been a very chilled out couple of days over here. mid-august is supposed to be the hottest part of the year, but instead there are clouds, cold and more than a bit of rain. we’ve been staying close to home and taking it easy. for some reason almost all of the photos we’ve taken during this time involve eating.
nayou’s favourite thing to do when its wet outside is to go and look for snails. he likes to keep them in boxes, but we are teaching him about the concept of catch and release. everyone understands that when its night time everyone wants to go back to their mama and papa! it was cool observing the snails with him. i don’t think i’ve paid a mollusk that much attention since i was his age.
photo dump
yep, its that time again where i’ve left it too long and have lots of photos to post, so i’m just going to whip through them and let the pictures do the talking.
first up some photos from august 1st, swiss national day. nayou has been really into each peach pear plum, but couldn’t quite relate to plum pie since he had never seen or tasted one. so grandma made one!
that evening we went to the village get-together, but went home before the fireworks because of poor weather. on our way there i noticed that my parents and i were all wearing these earthy tones, as if we had coordinated or something. it reminded me of the outfits that the vampires wear in the twilight movies, so we did a little photo shoot to commemorate this amazing coincidence.
we also had the privilege of having a look into my mum’s two beehives. because of errant weather her honey harvest this year was dismal, but apparently its a lucky thing that the bees are even alive and healthy. we still managed to get 2+kgs out of one hive, although it wouldn’t last long if nayou got his hands on it!
last week we did an overnight trip to grindelwald, a town three hours drive from geneva. its classic swiss setting has made it a huge tourist attraction, especially for the japanese, but it still looks more or less like the village it has been for centuries. its located deep in a glacial valley which affords spectacular views, but unfortunately we were greeted with clouds and rain on our first day and more greyness on the second. still, it was fun to check out the town and its environs. this place is truly stunning, even when you can’t see much!
here we are in the gondola on our way up the mountain. we were planning to hike along a trails famous for its marmots, but had to cut it short 15 minutes in because of torrential rain.
our clothes got absolutely soaked, and since we didn’t have any spares, my mum and i hit the town in our sexy wear, reserved for only the most special occasions.
at least nayou had some proper rain gear, courtesy of our neighbours.
thankfully the beds in our hotel were warm and cosy!
the next day we voluntarily got (a little bit) wet when we hiked along this rather precarious path bolted into the stone. it was cool though – it was a reminder of how powerful the force of water is!
this weekend brenda and i went up to montbovon, another town up in the mountains where my friend layth lives. layth and i know each other from high school and there were a couple of other friends from that era there. it was very awesome to see them again! the only bummer was that i forgot to take a photo to commemorate the occasion. got some nice ones of our hike though.
the view of mont blanc on the way home was gorgeous too:
grandma found these fairy wings and she has been playing fairies with nayou for a couple of days now. we also found a matching tunic to go with it (at h&m no less!). soooo cute!
nayou and jiji discover the joys of the ipod touch:
and that’s about it for now. time for bed!
U 2074
aya’s latest short movie, shot for a meager $1500 in four days! amazing creepy work. she made it for the philip’s parallel lines competition, where film makers have to make a three minute short using the same five lines of dialogue. i think there is going to be some sort of online voting once the entries are up so we’ll be calling for your support then. in the meantime, enjoy!
three generations of tanimura
handsome boy modeling school
brenda’s best creation models her latest creations. the top and bottom were made out of my mum’s old shirts. this was the first thing we did this morning and nayou still scrubbed up ok. adorable!
yvoire
today we went to france! … which sounds like a bit of a big deal, but really all it took was a twenty minute ferry ride across the lake. we rode the ferry to a small medieval village called yvoire, which sits right on the lake, but on the french side. its famous because the village looks pretty much the way it did in the 17th century, albeit with more tourists and all the trappings that go along with it. its still an absolutely gorgeous place though!
as is usually the case, nayou packed his bag to take with him. this dude is a real packrat – every time we go somewhere he spends ages stuffing his backpack with all kinds of things. cars, twigs, leaves, books, it all has to come along! pity he forgot to change out of his pjs 🙂
we left from nyon, which is the next village up the lake from where we are. we come to nyon quite a bit to play at the park, see friends and hang out at their amazing market. nayou has been jonesing a ride on the ferry ever since we got here so he was very exicted.
once we got to yvoire we couldn’t stop ooh-ing and aah-ing at everything. you realise where disneyland got their inspiration from when they were making their attractions – its almost too perfect!
of course since we were in france we had to have a baguette with cheese and pickles. or rather, nayou had a baguette with cheese and pickles, and his parents scrounged for the crumbs.
aaaand, here are some other random photos from the last couple of days.
here is an example of something positive that facebook has done for me – this photo is of me and olivier. we used to play together when we were living in geneva waaay back in the day. i was about four years old! he found out we were in geneva on facebook and got in touch. that resulted in the whole family coming over for dinner on sunday for a very happy reunion! we’re pretty much the same, just hairier.
inception
just went to see inception with my parents and we had our collective minds blown! we might have been a little biased though 😉
amazing job, aya! we’re so proud of you!
the good life
we are approaching our one month mark in geneva which is hard to believe. this place is so relaxing time just seems to slip on by. its not like we’re going out and doing all sorts of crazy activities – the bulk of our time is spent in the house and garden, with sorties to the nearby park or soccer field to break things up. in writing this seems pitifully boring and yet in reality its a very peaceful and fun time for us. nayou in particular has been loving the smaller pleasures that life has to offer, like walking nekkid:
hiding in boxes:
collecting leaves (note appropriately manly work overalls augmented with fishing rod):
terrorising the neighbourhood on his bike:
and driving trains:
there have also been what he would consider more major events, such as getting a ride in a tractor that was baling hay:
and getting a visit from his newly minted five month old cousin charlotte (technically first cousin once removed, but who’s splitting hairs? baby charlotte is the daughter of my cousin adam and his wife marion. they live in london and popped over last weekend to hang out. nayou was very enamoured with charlotte, giving her cuddles and asking for her first thing in the morning. we did detect more than a hint of jealousy though once he realised he wasn’t the center of attention anymore! it was cool to see adam as a dad. especially to admire his aussie feeding style. no amount of time in london is going to take that out of him!
charlotte is really alert and super curious. she’s also very friendly. we all had good cuddle time with her and she responded with coos and dribbles, just like a good baby should!
on sunday we all went on a hike in st. cergue, which is possibly one of the most gorgeous spots on earth. i mean seriously, you wouldn’t even find a postcard that looks as good as this place.
so those are the haps in our corner of the globe for now. i’ll leave you with one of those pesky chickens that nayou loves to chase around.
spanglish
since we’ve left mexico brenda and i have been amazed at how much english nayou has picked up. about a month ago he was speaking about 90% in spanish, but now that he’s been around english speakers he has adapted at lightning speed. in general he does an amazing job at keeping the languages separate. for example, he only speaks spanish to brenda and i because he knows that we’re the only ones who understand him when he does. it goes both ways though – he’s definitely starting to get into spanglish now that he’s figured out we understand both. it would be sad if he forgot how to speak spanish, but i suppose that’s the nature of the game at this point! hopefully when we settle into our next home we can find some spanish speaking kids for him to practice with.
excuse the poor video quality. i have to edit the video in premiere because windows movie maker doesn’t understand quicktimes, and the export settings are too numerous and try my patience. i just went with the first one that worked 🙂