The box sets have even been released here in Japan and I have been keeping up with the releases, season 9 at time of writing. And as far as I could tell the releases here in Japan are the same as the US releases with (removable) Japanese subtitles. This was true up to season 5 of the Japanese releases, from season 6 onwards Fox Japan has decided not to included the audio commentaries (the best feature IMO). I called Fox Japan to inquire about this. Was it a pressing mistake? Accident? What? It turns out it was a deliberate decision not to include them as customers in Japan "didn't want them".

Sorry guys, search Japanese message boards and you'll see lots of messages from Japanese customers commenting about the lack of commentaries. And with no plans to "re-do" the box sets with no audio commentary and not apparent plans to include them in future releases Fox Japan will not be getting another penny/yen from me from the Simpsons.

Thank goodness you can get the US releases through Amazon Japan.

Cheers - Amazon Japan for the US releases
Jeers - Fox Japan for not including audio commentaries

Last year we had one hour to transfer planes and in doing so we had to pretty much walk from one end of the airport to the other, this year we had two hours to transfer which would be more than enough time to get from one end to the other. We found however that our connecting gate was right next to our arriving gate - we had literally 50 metres from one gate to another - distance wise cool. Time-wise how on earth do we kill 90 minutes at an airport? Luckily we found a "kids play room" for Maia. Inside we saw heaps of kids playing on the slides and bouncing around - Maia's first word to one child who came down the slide a little too fast was "careful" :-)

From Korea to Brisbane we didn't get one wink of sleep due to Maia crying and not being able to sleep herself. Arrived in Brisbane where my parents picked us up.

-- David

Maia has been learning new words at a fast rate of knots. She'll point and/or tap something she doesn't know and either look at us or say "ga wa" which is her baby talk for "what" (is this)? We tell her and she picks most words up after a few goes. A quick learner - let's hope she keeps it up.

Lucnh time today wasn't a good time, had opened some tuna and the lid wasn't removed properly, so I decided to remove it and cut my middle finger, it's not so deep but it hurt like hell. Felt like the finger came off. Took a while to slow/stop the bleeding too. A bit deeper and it would've been fish fingers! gulp.

-- David

-- David

It was - We now have the option of burning at either 8x or 4x. WooHoo. Half the time to do a burn. Burn went quickly - could see the files in the DVD-ROM after burning - great.

Wrong.

It was only later that I realised I should've checked - just because the drive/firmware and disc themselves are all "ok" for an 8x burn doesn't mean your PC hard drives are. The drives on this (now by current standards) old PC just weren't able to keep up at 8x (11,000k/sec) and ended writing "rubbish" in some areas - it seems it couldn't keep up at times.

*Sigh* - it wrote, but wrote rubbish - back to burning at 4x until we get a faster machine that can handle DVD-R burns at 8x.

-- David

So after the previous storm, we removed two ceiling panels (again) and got up into the ceiling - doing what we had to do both inside and outside the ceiling and roof and putting the ceiling panels back - I hoped that it'd do the trick. Crossing our fingers (once again), it seems to have held, every time it rains, I check the ceiling, and it's dry.

Let's hope this time it stays dry.

-- David

-- David

Recently we've been reading Richard Scarry's Busiest Firefighters Ever! to her and she picked up the phrase "Oh dear." and has been saying this all the time in her little baby voice "oh de-ar, oh de-ar" so sweet. Kiyomi was reading the book to here and got to the page where "oh dear" is mentioned and as soon as she had read the line before "oh dear" Maia said it (oh dear). It just proves that she's listening to the story and knows what's coming up and is following along. It wasn't a one off either, she's done it a number of times with both of us now.

-- David

Yesterday we made an effort to finish all the yard work, grass, soil and fertilizer, everything had to be done and it was - the reason was that according to yahoo weather it's going to "bucket down" today and there's not much point in it raining if it (the water) has nothing to water. So with all the grass and fertilizer just waiting to grow, let's hope the rain helps (a lot)!

-- David

In the afternoon Maia and Kiyomi come out and watch. Maia wears her new shoes, she seems to like walking in them and has started getting used to them - she can now sit down on the step and her feet reach the lower step. She seems to like it and looks like a little small person (which she is!) Watches me for a while, laughs, and then wants to go back inside.

-- David

-- David

Here are some pics, of course you can see more in the gallery.

Images have been resized here - the gallery has slightly larger pictures.

-- David

A lot has happened this last year - born, smiling, turning over and around, getting up and crawling, trying to stand, taking your first step and falling, starting to walk, standing up and walking, getting your first tooth (followed by 4 more), speaking your first words. What a busy and interesting first year!

-- David

We then had to drive back to nagoya Customs (a 60 minute drive) and the boxes were x-rayed - one box was opened because something "metal" was in there - baby nappies and Guess Who and Guess Where games - resealed - boxes loaded back into the car and we were off. That was it.

The above sounds easy - and now looking back it would be easy the next time as we know where to go, in what order and what to do. Only down side is all the driving around, but it's gotta be done if you want to save some money by doing it yourself.

-- David

Fingers crossed

-- David