Last week my two sons had their Christmas piano recital. I couldn’t go because I had to be the parent in charge at the ping pong club that Ahn still belongs to though he couldn’t go…
Anyway, they brought these cookies home with them, and I thought they were really cute and interesting.
While Bynn and Ahn are away, we still wanted to go hit some balls (golf balls, okay?) and thought we’d take this chance to try out a different practice range.
We usually go to Arcadia out near Seto, and we like it. It’s just a little far from our house and the last couple of kilometers of the road are very narrow, so it’s a little inconvenient. Mostly, that road feels awkward at best, even dangerous especially at night, which is when we go most of the time.
Anyway, we went out to Tenpaku to a new place for us called Kohnosu.
It’s only 15 minutes from our house, a definite plus. The road is a main road, right up until you arrive. Also a plus.
It’s a little small though it is 2 floors. I think there were about 25 stations on each floor. It’s also narrow and only deep in the exact middle which is about where we were at No. 16.
Speaking of narrow. I’m pretty sure the individual stations also felt a little closer together than Arcadia. A smaller knit pick was the smoking area was almost directly behind us and it wasn’t a filtered room but an outside place.
Also you could only pay by the ball. It’s usually 12 yen per ball on weekdays and 14 yen per ball on weekends. No ‘uchihoudai’ (all you can hit on a time basis) which is the route we usually take. On top of that, you pay first for a set number – 100, 150 etc but the numbers were sort of odd. We got 247 or something like that. You also have to pay a 300 yen user fee.
On the positive side the atmosphere is very high class, and everyone who was using the range looked fairly serious, and of course, much better than me. Sulseob decided not to even hit because she felt a little uncomfortable with all of that though we originally intended for us both to take turns hitting.
They also had auto club speed and distance gages for hitting off the tee, but they didn’t work for when you were hitting irons off the mat.
Oh, there’s also water right out in front of you. That was kind of interesting. There were pitching targets on both sides of the water, and that was pretty interesting. Funny how just having that water there has such an effect. Of course, I think I was the only one hitting into it 😉
I’m glad we went and it was nice, but we probably won’t go back. I prefer the wider areas and ‘all you can hit’ fees at Arcadia.
Here are a couple of photos of the range, the equipment, and the desert 😉
Today was hot.
Today was also the last day for Wednesday classes for the spring semester at the Hoshigaoka campus.
I’ve been having lunch with a group of students who took my Web English class last year. We can’t always meet because of their schedules, but we usually get together and today was the last chance for the semester to have lunch, so I’m happy we could do it.
Also, since Bynn and Ahn finished school last week, it’s a little difficult working out our family schedule. There’s only me and my wife (no grandma or aunts around) so when the boys are out of school it can be a little of a problem.
Bynn of course went to the states yesterday, but Ahn is still here. That means, yes, it was ‘take your son to school day’ today, for me anyway.
It’s not our first time, and he’s really good about it.
Of course it didn’t hurt that this group was particularly interested in having him there 😉
Here’s a photo we took right after eating:
Thanks you guys! Hope we can get together next semester, too!
My younger son has been sporting what we call a Padiwan braid for a while now. It’s really starting to get pretty long.
I am the one who braids it, and we usually rebraid it about about every 2 or 3 weeks. Sometimes if the band comes off it’s more often, but usually not.
He started this at the same time Bynn got his mohawk. Ahn also wanted a mohawk, but due to a large cowlick in the front of his hair, that really wasn’t going to work out very well. So… this what he opted for. It took some time to get going, but I’ve been braiding it for about 2 years now.
Here are the latest photos from that:
Bynn and Ahn made these masks at their art school this week. Of course, serious person that I am, I could not resist trying them on and taking pictures of them 😉
Since I know not everyone cares about or wants to see photos of me, I included more of the boys modeling their creations.
Maybe I mentioned this before, but they’ve been attending an art school for maybe 6 years, or more. They’re not learning to be Da Vinci, but they enjoy it and the teacher is really wonderful. He’s kept them interested and happy and eager to go each week since they were in daycare, so he must be doing something right.
Remember that when you start learning anything, it’s really more important how fun and interesting the teacher makes things than how much you’re learning.
Each week they do different things. Sometimes they do projects that take multiple classes to complete, and they usually do some seasonal, holiday related stuff, but it’s not the same every year or for the same holiday each year. He’s a very good teacher and very prepared as well.
Anyway, here are some fun pictures of the masks they painted:
