May 27th, my 40th birthday

WOW 40. It does make you take a look at yourself. Amazingly, I'm pretty happy.
This year, I decided to have a nice little birthday celebration. I took my kids out to the park and we made sandcastles.

We then went to a video rental place and got 6 DVDs for a week. The shop lets you rent them for 80 yen which works out to be a dollar each. Beauty and the Beast, Madagascar 2, Alien, Alien3, Glory, and ET

And I then got 2 large Dominos pizzas. Best part was, Emi really liked the Dominos deluxe. She could pick off the stuff she didn't want.

(yes this picture was up before)

Now that it's a Monday morning Japan time, I have to go to work. Oh well. The sun is shining and its warm.

(the beer is a non-alcoholic type as I no longer drink any alcoholic beverages. I've been dry for 10 years!)

Now it's Friday, and man am I tired! I was so busy, I didn't get a chance to post this until now.

10th Wedding Anniversary and Sports Field Day

Sunday, May 18, 2003 was the day I, Roderick Duncan Redden married Emiko Takeda.
It just so happened that today, Saturday, May 18, 2013, was Ian's school's Sports Field Day.

my lovely wife relaxing at our bbq.

 

A happy weekend here in Kamagaya

I have been informed the I will be granted an MA in TEFL/Applied Linguistics from the University of Leicester, having successfully completed my dissertation!
Also, today (May 12) is my son's 8th Birthday!

Today started off with us going to Toys R Us for Ian to get his present, a DS game system, then he got a haircut, then we went to another mall to get him some school supplies.
And surprisingly, Baskin Robbins 31 had a special event. If you gave a donation to the Japanese Earthquake recovery, you could get a free scoop of ice-cream.
We then went to McDonald's for his favorite lunch, cheeseburgers.

We then got him a strawberry shortcake birthday cake.

All in all, pretty darn good.

Golden Week, 2013

This years edition, consists of a movie day, a day at the park with a picnic, and a bbq.

The movies I rented were Titanic (1997) Aliens (1986) going for a James Cameron double feature, and Pocohantas (1995) to give my kids a little bit of our culture, although filtered by Disney.

Kung Fu Panda 2 also featured in the bill.

Our trip to the park was once again to our favorite place, Big Hill Park in Inzai. I decided to go ethnic by makin Hummus in Pita, though I had to substitute white beans for chick peas.
I then made a peanut sauce to go with it. Quite tasty.

We played with our dart guns, then came home to play kick ball in the street. Followed by our Saturday night ritual of watching House MD and Dexter.

Sunday was our bbq. It was a little quiter this year as I just had my family. I also started my BBQ with some gel fuel, as well as a nice little metal helper which burns the charcoal faster. I began my fire at 10:45 and it was rearing to go by 11:15. By noon, we had cooked half of our food. 5 big sausages, 10 sticks of yakitori, or grilled chicken on skewers, and 3 steaks. I also made 8 baked potatoes.

Yakitori on the grill

By 13:00 we had finished. The rest of the afternoon, we relaxed and played.

Ian takes a try at roasting marshmallows

I got the BBQ going early

Mrs. Redden relaxing

The Redden ladies bbq marshmallows

 

Monday saw us take back our DVDs, and go out to a park in Chiba Newtown, however as we began walking through the park, we noticed that there were grass areas roped off. There were warning signs up that there was still residual radiation from the meltdown of the nuclear power plants from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
We then waked around the AEON shopping centre, and went into another camping store to look around, then had a late lunch at an Italian all you can eat restaurant.
All in all, it was a great 4 days. Sometimes the best fun is when you don't plan stuff, but just go out.

Well said Daddy.

 

British Light Dragoons 1775-83

(plasticsoldierreview.com)
Specifically, the 17th Light Dragoons served in North America during the American Revolution. After many years, I found a box of these figures in Japan. I have painted them and used them on several different occasions as shown in previous posts.

(photo courtsey of The Brigade of the American Revolution)

The 16th Light Dragoons (photo courtsey of artist) eventually became dismounted and acted as light infantry.
(plasticsoldierreview)

No smorking?

Ah yes, once again, we see Japanese attempting to use English, but failing to do a spell check!

Ian places third in Funabashi Spring Karate tournament, 2013

He was pretty suprised as he thought he didn't do so well. He placed third in his Kata age group (funny thing was, all three participants were from his dojo) but in sparing, he placed third, which really suprised him as his second fight was a long drawn out match, about 3 minutes. Proud of my little guy either way. Leena was a good sport too as she never fussed at all during the whole 5 hours we were there.

Guilford Courthouse, 1781

For my last battle during my holidays, was this Southern Campaign battle. This battle was refought by myself on April 10, 2013. For the scenario, I used the www.juniorgeneral.org rules, with some modifications from Gentlemen of France Fire First (GOFF).

The first line of the Americans

The second line of the Americans

The third line of the Americans.

The British right wing.

The British centre

The Guards Brigade.

The British left wing.

Our Napoleonics figures

As with my other post today, I am putting up about the figures we have in our collection.

This version is of our 1800-1815 period. Most of these figures were bought in Halifax, Nova Scotia between 1975-1999, 2003-04 and a few have been bought here in Japan since 2008.

Le Grand Armee:
, , ,  (all box art courtsey of plasticsoldierreview.com)
, ,  
, , , , ,

British Army:
, , ,, , ,, , , , , ,
, ,

Russian:
, ,
Austrian & Prussian
, ,

Barvarian:
,