Maika's stood for 5 seconds by herself a couple times in the past few days. If she's distracted by a toy, she seems to forget that she "can't" stand by herself, and so does.

Mia's been having a good time with naoto playing outside, etc. (as we are in golden week vacation). We went to church again today, and she was absolutely an angel during the service. sometimes I look at her and wonder who this angel changeling is, and what did she do with my daughter?

My own speculative fiction involvement has been intense this week. Not only have I been given a chance to do some translation for a Japanese Lovecraftian Horror Anthology, but also I got to interview a big name in Japanese genre fiction translation and fandom. I went into Shinjuku and met Yoshio kobayashi, along with an up and coming U.S. specfic writer (who happens to be from ohio) currently teaching English in Japan, named Chris Barzak. It was really interesting hearing an outside opinion on the state of u.s. publishing. My favorite thing he said was:

"You have a very oppressive government right now. Under tyranny, people have to use a lot of imagination. SF or SF-like literature will prosper, like Russian SF in the Stalin era. "

whoo-boy, if this interview ever gets published, I wonder if the censors will object to comparing Bush to Stalin!