Barack Obama

I know this isn’t really on topic, but was compelled to share this with you all.

It’s not election day yet, but I am going to frank with you: Obama makes me wish I could vote for him every time I hear him speak.  I just donated, for the first time ever in my life, to a politician.

“Why?” might you ask, well I will tell you why, because when I watch videos like this I honestly am filled with an emotion so powerful, so palpable that I cannot do something to support a person as passionate and intelligent as him.

Honestly McCain, good luck to you big fella.

This was quite the experience.  The day started off with some of the lesser known dudes fighting, then ended with a fight for the top spot of all the wrestlers, which doesn’t happen to often.

I forgot to explain the rules: Basically the first guy to step out of the ring, or touch the ground with any other part of his body than his feet loses.  Oh yeah, and no biting.

Sumo Slideshow (17 pics)

This is the opening ceremony where all the Sumo wrestlers are called by name into the ring (hand-made from clay new, for every tourney) in their formal gowns which have their sponsors written on the front.

3 videos of fights after the break.

This next video was one of the good mismatches.  This little dude kept false starting, I think on purpose, cause he was trying to intimidate the dude who was twice his size.

Here is how the whole buildup to the fight works.  They size eachother up, go in and out of the ring three times, and each time they enter they throw salt to purify the ring.  Then on the third squat down its smack down time.

And this last video is the bout for top Sumo: Yokozuna.  The guy in the brown belt was fighting for the top spot.  Check it out to see who wins.

Tokyo Slideshow (56 pics)

Come take a ride with me, on the shinkansen (aka the bullet train).  This is what it is like to be moving at 200mph on the ground.  For a more smooth ride let the video load up first, and/or play it twice.

Two more videos after the break.

This is another video, which kinda gives you a feel of really just how fast the train is going.

And here we are doing our favorite activity in the whole wide world: Dancing!

Here she is, the best speech I’ve ever heard at a wedding hands down. Sorry it is a little stretched, it was that or watch it sideways, so I decided to save you all the crick in the neck.

Wonderful speech Connor, it has already gone down as historical.

More vids after the break.

George Dancing it up with Ma-Dukes

Brian’s Speech

So we had a nice Christmas, and Kai made out pretty well. There were lots presents and many a video iChat had by all. The day started off with me making (sub-par) eggnog, then followed up by a trip to mass with the Hignetts.

7 gh7h7g8^.-^@¥90-ijd
6+++++

(Kai got a hold of the keyboard there. If you look closely you can see a little smile face he meant to draw; I guess he just wanted to spread his Christmas Cheer.)

Ok so after mass we had to do a little shopping for the Christmas Dinner. We bought the cranberries for the sauce and our friends brought the Brazilian Chickens. I made the stuffing, Maki made the cranberry sauce and Aya made the rest. Dinner came out great and it was nice to spend it with some of our good friends here in Nagoya.

Kai seemed to love his presents, which included a lot of clothes and books from Nanny and Poppie. Aya and I decided to get Kai the Ampan-man Rocker Paino, because Kai wants to be a rockstar of course. He started jammin’ as soon as the batteries were in the thing, and I need to get some video of this; watching Kai dance to the drum effects on the piano was just about the cutest thing yet. I did get a video of Kai playing some tunes, but he turned in to Destructor at the end, which I couldn’t help to laugh at, as I am sure you can probably see.

Also to follow up on the onsen (see previous post), I provided a walk though video of the place we stayed at. Usually the bathing areas are free to anyone who is staying at the hotel, but we were lucky enough to have a private bating area as well. Therefore I was able to do a video without some naked samurai popping outta’ the bushes.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Slideshow of the Onsen and X-mas

Okay, so just a little FYI post for you all. That video window you see on the right there is called vodpod. Not really sure about the name so much, but it does make it extremely easy for me to post videos, past and present right to the main page here. So of course I will update it with all our favorite Kai-vids, but also if I find something interesting I think you all would enjoy (lying out there in the interwebs), I can throw it right up there quick.

I put up three of my most recent videos, which I am sure you have all seen before, but just in case you were wondering how it works, click on a video to see. It is really great because it won’t redirect you to a different page; you will just have a little video pop up that you can close at anytime. Go ahead, check’er out.

My vodpod homepage is amontice.vodpod.com and that will basically contain the whole library of movies I have decided to mark as interesting.

In other news, I finally got the okay from work to take off for the Hawaii break this Spring. I think we will be going from March 14th to March 28th. Who’s with us?

I have a lot more videos of Kai that have been shot in the past few weeks. I am going to be uploading them in the coming days, so stay tuned for all the new action.

The big guy has been doing a lot of interesting things as of late, the standing was only the start of it I guess. The other day he initiated a game of peek-a-boo with me by hiding behind the curtain and popping out again, and again. I was completely stunned that he could do it, and he knew exactly what he was doing too. I was lucky enough to catch it on video, so I will throw that up soon. In the meantime, check out this funny video I would like to call “Boing!”  (^^Posted Above^^)

I just made a new page on this blog here. You can find the link right above this post, called Videos and it contains all the movies from the past in one neat and tidy place. Go have a look-see and enjoy a lost Kai episode when you have some time. When you’re done, let me know which one is your favorite. I’d love to get more feedback from everyone out there, then I will know what needs to be done to make the next video better.

From here on out all new videos will be placed there as well. No more searching through the old cobwebs to find that video you were looking for.

Enjoy.