Well, I'm back in Japan now. But I had a fun three weeks in Texas. I stayed at my parents' new house, since they moved to Texas and sold my childhood home, to some weirdos as I hear it. Of course, it was really hot over there, but honestly it feels hotter in Japan because of the humidity. Austin seems like a pretty nice city. I don't think that I could ever live there, for three reasons. One, it's too hot. And sunny. And hot. Two, everything is too far apart. It was at least a 10 minute drive to get to anywhere, including the supermarket, the beer store, or anything. There was no way to walk to anywhere from my parents' house. Maybe if I chose a less-remote location. Three, the state of education in Texas makes it unsuitable for raising a child.

I got to see my 90-year-old grandma while I was there, and Hana got to meet her great-grandma. She's got Alzheimer's Disease, so she's kindof in-and-out in terms of remembering who people are and stuff like that. She's really attached to and dependent on my dad (her son) but she doesn't really seem to get who most other people are. She had some idea of who I was, sometimes. She mostly just goes about her daily routine, sometimes doing the same thing multiple times. Conversations with her can also get really circular. She could never remember how old Hana was, and asked us about 30 times a day. Every time, it was the same conversation. "Really? Almost two? She's so big!" I found her mostly harmless, although not being able to leave her by herself made it difficult to plan outings and stuff like that. But she really seemed to get on my mom's nerves a lot.

The best thing about Texas was (and is) the food. I gained so much weight while I was there. In addition to my mom's home cooking, which has improved tremendously since she got a job at a cooking store and started using bacon in everything, we also had lots of steak and ribs and barbeque and all sorts of other assorted meat products and byproducts, as well as pizza and stuff like that. The next time I go to Texas, I think that I am going to just skip my parents' house completely and just camp out at Rudy's.

The trip was also a really good experience for Hana I think. She got to go swimming for the first time in the backyard pool. My parents got her a special bathing suit with inflatable parts on the front and back so she wouldn't sink. She really liked swimming. We took her to the Austin Children's Museum and she loved running around trying to talk to the other kids. She can't really speak English or Japanese yet, so nobody could figure out what she was trying to say, but she was babbling a lot. She also enjoyed chasing the two dogs around the house, and actually got to the point where she wasn't outright nasty to them, instead properly petting them and being nice. They were still terrified of her though. You can see all the action on Hana's YouTube channel.