Makoto has been enjoying watching
となりのトトロ tonari no totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) over and over again.* It is a famous anime that you can buy in the States on DVD through Disney. It is set in rural Japan some time in the fifties or sixties.
Yumi mentioned the atmosphere of the movie reminds her [...]

I haven’t had much blogging time less because of the baby but more because of our updating theJapanesePage.com. (the baby sleeps a lot!)
At the beginning of this year, we moved the site to a new server and did major upgrades. However, many things went wrong and the upgrades turned out to be very haphazard [...]

Here is my friend Gary Noland going Beyond the Sea with Bobby Darin:

From time to time we get really nice emails from customers. Here is one about our $5 instant downloads for Beginners:
Thanks Clay and Yumi. These $5 downloads are by far, the best help a beginner can get! And for the price I got way more than expected. This is something I was looking for [...]

We just came back from the hospital.  Makoto was happy to see Mommy and Megumi (whom he calls Megu-chan) leave the hospital with us.

Makoto *almost* stayed long enough for the shot, but oh well–We’ll get a family photo later.

I found a GREAT deal at iTunes. I’m not a big fan of iTunes: it seems buggy at times, it is VERY sluggish, and Apple requires it for the iPhone (I don’t like being limited like that even though I understand why)
But if you are a Sinatra fan (who isn’t?), you can’t pass up this [...]

Megumi Update: She is still sleeping.
Megumi (and mother) are doing well. We will go to the hospital in a few minutes, but this is from yesterday.

She seemed very contemplative with her hands (before this photo) in a ‘thinker’ pose. Perhaps she has solved life’s greatest mysteries (e.g. How can vending machines in the [...]

On February 4th, 2008 I proudly announced that our Youtube account had 1000 subscribers. Today, we just got our 2000th subscriber. (see Youtube Account)
Let’s see, I joined Youtube in December of 2006, got 1000 subscribers in February 2008, and 2000 in July 2008.
First 1000: 1 year 3 months
Second 1000: 6 months
They say the first [...]

Here is a short video from yesterday.

And…
Baba’s (grandma) car is a Honda ‘Fit.’
For the past month or so, whenever Makoto sees another Honda Fit on the road, he shouts out, “Baba’s car!”
He never makes a mistake. I don’t know how he does it, but with a mere glance he knows–and he is right. I can’t [...]

Megumi Jo Boutwell

Megumi was born July 15th, 2008. Makoto is officially a big brother now.
The morning started at 6AM with Makoto asking, “Mama doko?” “At the hospital,” I replied sleepily. Makoto said, “Hosptl iku.” “After we eat and have a shower” was the final word repeated many times to the final command [...]