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thankfully, my labour and delivery didn’t turn out like this:

deerhoof :: “kidz are so small”, music video by animator alex fellows.

i’ve been trying to record a video of poko-chan in action inside me. every time i feel some movements, i grab the camcorder. but as soon as i start aiming the camcorder toward my belly, poko-chan stops moving. it looks like this person is like his/her mother — a bit shy. i’ve been trying to trick poko-chan by playing music with a good dance beat (that usually starts the womb dancing) and grabbing the camera secretly, but i still haven’t caught the best kicks and dance moves.

anyway, here’s a video of the “top 10 kicking babies” that i found on videosift.

one thing i was surprised about with my pregnancy was that my belly button got stretched out flat. i knew my belly would get big but i didn’t expect that. this pregnant woman found a way to use her belly button to make a music video.

this is the world’s fastest pregnancy: 20 seconds long.

here’s what usually happens at the end of pregnancy. the cello music is relaxing — i hope i can hear cello in my head when i’m delivering poko-chan.

i got my first driver’s license yesterday. i avoided getting one for a long time. i preferred walking and taking public transportation to driving a car. in kyoto, i used to ride my bicycle to work, 40 minutes each way. my bicycle was my favorite mama-chari (mama style bicycle, with only one gear, like this one from muji). in japan the trains are very convenient, so you can go almost anywhere easily. but in canada, it’s hard to get around without a car, and so many of the shops are in the suburbs along busy roads. now that i have a baby coming i’ll need to be able to go somewhere in the car without waiting for paul to come home and drive.

so i took some lessons and practiced my driving. i expected that i would have trouble paying attention when i’m driving, because i always get distracted so easily. but i found i can do it, even though sometimes i’m nervous. the hardest part of the driver’s test was parallel parking — it took me 3 tries. but it got it!

here’s a rapping lesson for all of you drivers. watch out for the NO ZONES!…

part I

part II

amazing… i especially like part I.

giovanni sollima is a cellist and post-minimalist composer. part I is his song “Terra Aria” and part II is “Concerto Rotondo”.

this video was directed by lasse gjertsen, who is famous for his homemade youtube videos, like “amateur”:

i love this — it’s a great song. he says he can’t play the piano or the drums, but he’s an amazing musician anyway, just from editing.

you can see more lasse gjertsen on videosift.

the video for fujiya & miyagi’s song “collarbone” uses animated child-style crayon drawings. there’s a soccer game and some friendly animals, but then everything turns… violent. i didn’t see that coming!

fujiya & miyagi are from england, even though their name is japanese. they do krautrock stereolab groove music. i really like this song…

i posted this to videosift but it didn’t get enough votes…

i’ve gotten monkeyed up this week…

here are a couple of monkey videos from japan.

pan-kun is a chimpanzee who has many human adventures with the bulldog, james. in this episode, pan-kun and james experience firefighter training and an earthquake simulation.

pan-kun… please stop eating grapes or i can’t stop laughing at you…

pan-kun and james go to an elementary school and do sit-ups. the average 10-year-old japanese boys can do 19 sit-ups and average japanese female adult can do 18 sit-ups in 30 seconds. how many sit-ups can pan-kun and james do?!

okay, i shouldn’t call pan-kun a monkey, he’s a chimpanzee — a kind of ape. i call him a monkey because i have monkey-chimpanzee confusion. in my japanese mind, they are all “saru” to me…