A sign that you definitely should not have more kids any time soon...

I can safely say, I'm bon odori-ed out. Done. No. Fucking. More!

On Friday night we went to the bigg-ish bon odori a bit away from our house, and it was pretty good actually. MIL, BIL, Ryota and I all went looking like a Thai family: Ryota and BIL on the bike together, me with Ash on the bicycle, although he got scooter jealousy halfway there and insisted he ride on the front of MIL's scooter at ridiculous speeds. (Lucky Japan doesn't have an equivalent of DOCS...) We were all packed together as well because they felt bad I had to ride the push bike, but I actually would have rathered that they just go ahead, I felt the pressure to pedal really hard and got all sweaty before I even got there!

When we got there, the obligatory flashy shite was bought for Ash, the obligatory Yakisoba for BIL, and the obligatory beer for me. Ash was fully getting in to the dancing and having a lovely time running in front of old ladies dancing their bums off. Very funny to watch. I met a few of my students and of course I got all the 'OHMYGODTHERE'SAGAIJINOVERTHHHHEEEEERRRREEE' stares and occasional pushes from old men for me to dance.

It started to piss me off a bit, MIL kept saying, "YOU have to dance!!!" And I was all, "Why me? I'm not even freaking Japanese, if anyone should be dancing the traditional Japanese dances, it should be you fuckers!!" Her response was that I would look cute if I fucked up, where as she would look like a dick with no respect for her own culture! Fair play MIL, fair play.
MIL's sister was one of the dancing ladies and she'd been to lessons and all, so I decided next year, I'll go to the lessons with her and shock all of them with my great dancing skills. (Well at least I'll have some idea of the steps anyway)
After everyone had had their kakigori fill we made our way home, again with the Thai-like influence, except this time I made BIL ride the bicycle so I could joyride on the big bike with Ryota.

The next night, Saturday, we had awesome yakiniku (or yakki-nakki as my mum would say) with Sassymoo and her King N. The meat was awesome and I had about 6 beers which got me pretty fucked up, lucky we went home pretty early or else I would have been vomiting all over the shop the next day! Ryota kept ordering copious amounts of food every time the waiter came with something, I think we possibly ordered about 33 servings of yaki-shabu, not joking either! I'll definitely be going there again though.

Yesterday was a pretty quiet day, was at FIL's house all day parading Ash around for them. I was insanely bored though, Ryota went to sleep and Ash was keeping FIL and his mistress-turned-wife busy so I was left to either watch bad TV or sleep too. After many hours of twiddling my thumbs I actually did have a nap and woke up with Ash asleep on my leg and everyone else passed out too. Sunday night was sushi for dinner, but not just any sushi, was seriously the BEST sushi I've ever had, the bill came to about $250 so glad I wasn't paying, but god damn it was awesome! I can safely say, this weekend, I must have eaten about 4 cows and 50 fish!
And speaking of fish...... The reason I am soooo over the bon odoris... Last night, after the orgasm inducing sushi, we could hear the indian wails of music coming from the local primary school down the road, and Grandma was all, "I might die before next year, let's go!!" Inspiring grandma, thanks for that morbid thought!
Anyway, Ryota and I junkened and I lost so I had to go too, despite just wanting to fall in to bed. When we got there, there was no place for a gaijin to hide, it was a full on attack from various neighbourhood heavy weights who kept asking me random questions, and one lady even got me to write down the kanji of our name so she could research us, I was impressed though, 5 minutes later she came back and told me our complete family history and that she actually knew MIL! We also ran into a man I call 'the pineapple man' because he told me a story about a pineapple for over 20 minutes that I understood about 10% of once. He's very old, and does the farming in our little neighbourhood. He kept wanting to touch my arms and was practically forcing beer down my throat. I was hoping SIL would save me at some point but she just didn't get the pleading looks I was throwing her, or was enjoying my pain, one of the two.

I managed to escape the pineapple man for a few minutes using the excuse that I was going to get Ash a toy, which was complete BS because I hadn't even brought my wallet, but as I should have known, halfuuu kids really don't need money at bon odoris. Ash walked away with a balloon, 7 bouncy balls, a flashy thing and 10 goldfish.
Now this is where the title of the post comes in, as Ash was shaking the bag with the goldfish in it, I got all panicky and got the distinct feeling that I didn't want the responsibility of keeping 10 little fishies alive. I tried to pawn them off to the in-laws saying we didn't have a tank, but as I was making excuses, Grandma pulled a tank (out of her arse it would seem) complete with fishy food and all. I was still anxious though and seriously got scared that I was going to kill one of the poor little things!

Ryota told me that if they die from baby shaking or other such festival related illness they usually die by the next morning so I made him check the tank this morning, I couldn't look. This is how our conversation went:

HIM: They're still alive, all of them!!
ME: Are you sure, none of them are floating, can I look now!?
HIM: Yup, they're all fine, and they even survived with this shit Ash must have thrown in last night, (it was a straw) they're tough little buggers!

I was very relieved that they survived, but still have fears one of them will die under my watch. Even today, I think they need a bigger tank, poor little things keep running in to each other! I started thinking that if fish made me nervous, another baby is DEFINITELY going to freak me out, so no more children until I can confidently keep fish I think!