Dear Onechan

So I have to write onechan a small note (literally: it has to fit in a 3" x 2" box) that's going to appear in her yochien's newsletter as part of their series of dads' missives to their kids. Here's a rough draft. I'll take a picture of the final version and post it here at Mostly Harmless later. [Update 5/21/07: Here are the final edits--we're going with the Japanese paraphrase/translation only, to make it fit; if necessary, the middle paragraph will go.]

Onechan, your sister, mother, and I love you very much! You're such a great big sister to imoto. You teach her about abunai, han bun ko, and yasashii. She really loves looks up to you! Mama loves that you're learning Japanese so quickly, making so many friends and being such an eeko at yochien, taking such good care of imoto, and getting so good at singing songs, doing mazes and puzzles, drawing pictures, and writing letters. She's so proud of you! I love walking you to yochien in the morning, and giving you a bath at night, and playing with you in between--when I'm not at oshigoto, of course. I love reading stories, making jokes, watching YouTube, and playing kakurembo, and fusen baseball, golf, and soccer, and catch with you. I especially love our pretend games, when I'm Boots, or Miroku, or Buttercup, or a bad monster, or onichan, or Rin-chan, or a kid, or the violin guy from My Melody. We have so much fun together! You even teach me Japanese. Thanks!

I think we're lucky to have had such good times together as a kazoku this year in Japan. Shopping at You-Me Town, Toys'R'Us, Kashii, and Nishijin. Visiting Dazaifu. Going to Fukuoka Tower. Staying overnight at the Maizuru onsen. Seeing the Softbank Hawks play at the Fukuoka Dome. Going to Chiba to see Baba and Gigi, Hawaii to see Grandma and Grandpa, and Nagoya to see Mama's friends. Visiting Sendai and Nagasaki and Tokyo. Eating such great food and watching such good kids' tv. Getting to know so many nice people.

You've become such a big girl in Japan. You're getting taller, your hands and feet are getting bigger, and your hair is growing longer. (Soon it'll be as long as the Pretty Cure girls' hair!) You're eating well, sleeping lots, and getting plenty of exercise. If you keep it up, you may get bigger than daddy some day! I hope you'll always be such a smart, nice, sweet, funny, and cool, and happy person.

Love, Dad.

So this is obviously way too long. Any suggestions, besides "write really small"? The box has a cartoon-style drawing of "dad" in the top left corner and of "onechan" in the bottom right (both shockingly close to how we really look), so the tsuma thinks I should cut everything that's not about onechan and me. But then I launched into a 2-minute rant about "networks of relationships" and the "form" of this letter, about 1:45 of which she tuned out. So seriously, what should be tuned out of this? I can't tell.