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 million dollars is the hardest to get; it’s all downhill from there.

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 tell if it is a Honda Fit until I see the “Fit” letters on the back of the car.

Yesterday when leaving the hospital, Makoto shouted, “Baba’s car!” and pointed to the car parked in front of us. Baba and I both thought we had caught him in a mistake. It didn’t look like a Fit from our vantage point.

Masaka, Makoto machigaeta?

We needed visual confirmation. I walked around the car and sure enough, the back of the car had the three letters F I T.

He is still the Honda Fit reigning champion.

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 also repeated many times—”Hosptl iku”.

Yumi checked into the hospital yesterday morning to get ready for today’s main event. Makoto was none too happy about leaving her at the hosptl. “Mama doko?” was Makoto’s #1 phrase of the day easily beating out the previous champion: “bus!”

But eventually, he fell asleep learning a new word—hosptl.

This morning Makoto wasn’t nearly as genki as normal. We walked to the garbage collection spot (about a quarter of a mile from the house), but he insisted I carry him the whole way. Normally he loves to walk. We thought he just missed mommy.

But… arriving at the hospital, we stopped at the gift shop to buy today’s newspaper (since it is Megumi’s birth-day). In the gift shop, Makoto threw up his breakfast dirtying his shirt and pants and my shirt and pants (I was carrying him). This wasn’t good. The hospital staff were very helpful and we left for the house to get a change of clothes for both of us. It was a stinky twenty minute drive.

Going back to the hosptl, Makoto seemed to feel better. He walked a little this time and was excited to see mommy. But he soon slumped over onto Mommy’s hospital bed and fell fast asleep. So fast in fact, he wasn’t about to be bothered when they came to take Yumi in for the c-section.

Makoto Riding with Mommy for Surgery

The nurses were kind enough to let Makoto ride with Mommy on the way to the operating room. He stayed asleep through the hallways, in the elevator, out of the elevator, down several other halls, and while I picked him up so Mommy could go in for the surgery. I placed him on a couch in the waiting room and he slept probably close to an hour.

About forty minutes in, Megumi and a few nurses came out. She was healthy and everything looked fine. When Makoto came out two and a half years ago, the nurses rushed him upstairs. He had to stay in an incubator for almost a week because some fluid got into his lungs. We are very thankful to God this wasn’t the case with Megumi.

Makoto has slept all afternoon. We’ll see how he does in the morning.

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Correction: I wrote Megumi Jo Boutwell 無事に産みました last night (it was late).  This would mean Megumi safely had a baby.  Of course she is the safely had baby, so it has been corrected to 無事に産まれました.  haha

We managed to get home with a (eventually) calmed down Makoto.

Tomorrow morning we will go to the hospital and I’ll take my laptop. If the Internet works, I’ll try to let friends and family know what’s going on as it happens.  Last time (with Makoto), I didn’t have Internet access at the hospital and it took twenty minutes to get home.  There were a few complications and I couldn’t really leave. So hours passed without anyone in the home front knowing what was going on.

Unfortunately, even now the hospital doesn’t have a wifi spot (why?), but I am renting a router to plug in to my laptop.  We’ll see if it works tomorrow!

Chuumon no Ooi Ryouriten
The Restaurant with Many Orders
by Miyazawa Kenji

We’ve been working feverishly to get this e-book reader done before Yumi enters the hospital (tomorrow!). It took longer than I anticipated (Can you say ぎりぎり?), but it is done–and I think (read: hope) done well.

You can get a preview of the MP3 and learn about the PDF and Flash e-Book at the link below, but briefly, $5 will buy you 49 Megs of:

• An E-Book in Flash for interactive reading and listening (listen to the entire page (21 pages) or click on individual paragraphs to hear just that)
• A 33 Page PDF (for printing)
• A full MP3 recording by a professional native Japanese speaker
• Works with PCs or Macs (PDF, Flash, and MP3)

I will add it to this blog soon, but I want to wait until I can organize the downloads page better. It was fine when we had less than five downloads, but now that page is… a mess.

Learn more or purchase 注文の多い料理店 at TheJapanShop.com for only $5.

(Take a look at the above link page–it has example pages and an example sound file.)

It had to be important because the way he said, “telephone repair truck” sounded like it was  Pheidippides telling the Spartans, “Νενικήκαμεν” (we have won!) after running the first marathon.  “The Persians are defeated!  Telephone repair truck!”

It was a new phrase he had only recently learned from a book we bought for him about working trucks (はたらくくるま). (the picture below isn’t the book, but it is representative of that genre)

In other news…

A few months ago I received a book in the mail from Amazon. The only problem was I hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon. It turns out it was a gift from a friend of a friend who found my ‘wish list’ and bought it for us. It was a book on using a tablet to do artwork on the computer.

I had totally forgotten about my wish list, but luckily it was something I still wanted. Well, just in case there is a friend of a friend out there wanting to buy Clay (or Makoto) a book, I have just updated the wish list. (see button to the right).  Telephone Repair Truck!

Today’s post is brought to you buy the word:

新発売
shin hatsu bai
New Product!

新 shin new
発売 hatsubai release (for sale); offering for sale; put on the market

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Hmmm… I wonder if my iPhone can get the software update now since I’m in Japan… Probably not. But I’ll give it a shot.

This story is great. Not only is it interesting to read, but it also repeats certain themes and grammatical patterns and has a few fun word plays.

I wanted to share one sentence with an interesting (and new to me) usage of なに.

Two city-slicking, gentlemen are in the middle of the mountains on a hunting expedition. They have lost their expert guide, their two dogs (that look like polar bears) have mysteriously died, and they haven’t caught a thing.

Depressed over these events, one of the gentlemen says:

そいじゃ、これで切(き)りあげよう。
Well, let’s call it quits.

なあに戻(もど)りに、
Hey, on the way back

昨日(きのう)の宿屋(やどや)で、
at the inn we stayed at yesterday

山鳥(やまどり)を拾円(じゅうえん)も買(か)って帰(かえ)ればいい。
it would be good to buy a 10 yen bird and go home

“Well, let’s call it quits.  Hey, on the way back, we can buy a 10 yen bird at the inn we stayed at yesterday (to show off as a hunting ‘trophy’ back home).”

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I haven’t done any serious translation so I really don’t analyze words much.  But the なあに （なに） in the なあに戻りに  line got me.  After a talk with Yumi, I found this in the Kenkyusha J-E:

【なに】

２）　（懸念を軽く打ち消す） (to lightly dispel concern; lighten the mood)
「悪い病気でしょうか」「何、ただの風邪ですよ」
“Is it serious?” –”Oh no, just a cold.”

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So I decided on ‘Hey’ in the above context.  Maybe that lightens things up a bit.

If you want to read the story now (all in Japanese), head over to Aozora here.  (Or you can wait until we release our next $5 product!)

Yumi told Makoto this was “papa no hige” (Papa’s beard). Then she asked Makoto,

まこちゃんのひげはどこ？
mako-chan no hige wa doko?
Where is Makoto’s beard?

As the photo shows, he tapped his head and said, あたま atama (head) while brushing his teeth.

“Makoto’s Beard”

Essentially, it transforms bland vertical comments with a bulletin board style setup. You can add fun things like comment widgets to show off how many or (in my case ) how few visitors chat with your blog and you can organize your blog discussion threads into categories.

To see what it is like, take a second to leave a comment at the bottom of this post.  Undoubtedly it will be so much fun you will want to spam my blog!  Well…