Awesome weekend part 1

I'm incredibly pleased to announce that Ash is back to normal, only one wake up last night and he didn't drink milk, so all is good in our house! His nappy seems to not fit as well, maybe it was a growth spurt?? And he is pulling himself up at the moment... Who freakin' knows with babies, I think I'll just have to go with the flow for the next 18 years until I can throw him out of the house and go on a world trip...

This weekend was great fun, hectic, but fun. Again, I can't be arsed writing everything so I'll write about my Saturday now and my Sunday at some other time. Got some great snaps though, couldn't put the camera down!

Saturday started off pretty shitty, I was looking forward to seeing my hot hairdresser to get a cut and colour but when I got to the salon I got lots of bows and some bullshit excuse that hot hairdresser was sick. Phhhffft, sick my left tit, he's such a yankee I bet he was out on the piss all night, which actually makes me love him even more...

Anyway, I got stuck with a short weedy guy who apparently is the 'top stylist.' I was miffed seeing as though I'd booked a week in advance, and even more miffed when they stuck me with the big-haired, para-para assistant to do my colour. She was wearing white ugg-boots and that was enough to turn me off her, but then she had to ask whether or not she uses foil for mesh, even I know you use foil, twit! She didn't say a word to me the whole time and was shit scared of me I think, seeing as though I did a huge cross sign with my arms and said "No gold or orange!!!" before she put the colour on.

The colour didn't turn out too bad, despite weedy stylist sucking air through his teeth and saying the colour I wanted was very difficult. Fuck me, hot hairdresser managed it, can't be that hard! Para-para assistant was shoved off to sweep up hair and weedy stylist began to cut my hair, once he loosened up he was pretty cool. I was planning on just a trim but when he started taming my mullet I realised I couldn't handle the long bits at the back and short front bits at the front that hot hairdresser had done a few months before so I just had him hack it all off to one length, it's very short but feels good and I'm pretty happy with it.

After the haircut we got ready for our friends' wedding party. It was my first wedding in Japan and I must say it was fun but a total rip off, I was disgruntled about this the whole time so made sure I milked my $70 for as much wine as I could... How do I put this? I was fucked. Sozzled. Pissed. Drunk as a skunk. Smashed. Trolleyed. Destroyed. Loaded. More than tipsy. Smished..... It was so good!!

We also when to a bar after where I downed a fair amount of hoegarden beer to top it off, which I love!

Ryo-chan also had a skin-full after his 4(!) rum and cokes and we both stumbled home to the reality of our little monster. Speaking of which, MIL was babysitting him and he had gone to sleep but woke up just as she was about to come pick us up. Everyone else was in bed so she had to bring him with her on her back... I found this quite amusing at the time in my drunken state, but now I think about it, how safe can this really be....?

MIL driving with Ash on her back, he seemed quited content...

Cos the car just wasn't dangerous enough...

Ryo-chan drunk chuckling in disbelief at his own Mother's recklessness...

And now for some wedding pics! The couple are so lovely, Euan is Scottish. Was a great night!

Ryo-chan and the groom

Beautiful!


My favourite picture of the night.

Magic yogurt!

I really don't plan on charting how my weight loss is going as I'm scared of everyone seeing my failure, come on people, I gave you my weight, baby steps!

But I must say, I'm a huge fan of fad diets, so I may let you know how it's progress is going (AKA when I give up.) I know I shouldn't fall into the alluring trap of fad dieting because they never work and that a healthy lifestyle is the key to losing weight but I just don't have the patience for balance.

MIL is also a huge fan of fads and quite portly for a J-lady so when she gushed to me about her latest dieting attempt I was pretty much instantly sucked in, especially when she showed me lots of success stories on the Internet. I mean, if it's written on the Internet it must be true...So, as of yesterday, I am officially on...THE MAGIC IINAKA YOGURT DIET!

Grandma is originally from Tottori-ken and her last sibling, her little brother (she was one of 8!) is really sick so they made the trek to Tottori to see him in the hospital and stay with her niece for a few days. When they came back MIL was clutching a jar of what looked like bond in her hot little hands and proceeded to excitedly tell me about her new plan to lose 20kg and look like a supermodel by next year. Everyone else was rolling their eyes but in light of my recent desire to lose the blubber I was all ears.

So this yogurt she got from the country bumpkins is truly magic, it's like a packet of tim tams that never run out... except it's a jar of gross tasting yogurt that never runs out!
I think it's like those 'bio' yogurts or yakult that has the bacteria that's supposed to be good for your tummy and clean out your insides, but on a large iinaka style scale. You put a bit of the yogurt from the jar in a new jar, add milk, wait 12 hours with the lid off and you have new yogurt! Magic!

So we're eating it for breakfast with loads of 0 calorie sugar because it tastes pretty foul by itself and then some before dinner with loads of tea so we don't eat too much for dinner. Keep you updated on the progress anyway!

Tomorrow we will have a new addition to our family, her name is Tay-chan and if anyone can guess who/what she is you get a gold star! Or just wait till tomorrow when I will post pictures...
And if anyone can guess why she is called Tay-chan I'll post you 10,000 yen!

Thank you for all the lovely encouraging comments on my weight loss post, our little monster is keeping me too busy to reply to them all individually but it was very nice to have such positive influence, it makes me want to Ganbaru more!

Boooooorrrriiiinnnnngggggggggg!

First of all, a big congratulations to the 'Niigata nimpu,' (thanks gaijin wife's hubby!) Sarah on finally giving birth to her little girl Sakura, we were all eagerly waiting!

I cannot wait to start working again, this get up, wash, feed, play, cook, sleep routine is getting old quickly and it will be nice when I start working, Ryota won't have to work on Saturdays poor thing.

Things have been much too quiet for my liking lately, there's nothing really to look forward to, although I am embarking on a girl's day field trip this weekend in the car. I'm picking up the girls and we're off to Nishinomiya gardens for some shopping and lunch (and cold stone ice cream, singing woohoo!) I'm a bit nervous about driving on a Saturday, especially in Ryota's whale of a car. Ganbaru!

My little Ash is 6 months old today, half a year! Go team! It's gone quickly in a way but in other ways it feels like a lifetime ago that I was in Aussie giving birth, and even longer when I found out I was preggers. I should count my blessings really, life is boring at the moment but at least there are no shocks like that one was!

I'd known Ryota less than 2 months when I found out I was pregnant, crazy! I remember being in Starbucks with him one day and thinking it had been a while since I'd had a visit from auntie Flow, thinking out loud (in English seeing as though I thought the Starbucks customers might not appreciate that kind of information with their cherry chocolate latte) Ryota gave me a big hug and said he didn't care if I was pregnant, he'd love to have a baby. I stored that away in the memory bank for the time when I told him I actually was preggers!

When I took the test I thought I was reading the kanji wrong and asked him to read it for me and he was like "Errm, no, your kanji reading is spot on..." Much freaking out later we just decided to deal and make the best of it, and we have!

I'm currently addicted to toasted sandwiches, sounds healthy doesn't it, toasted? But I'm talking put in a frying pan with oil and butter until the cheese is all melty and the bread is all crispy, yummy! I dread to think of the calorie content. Must rodeo boy extra hard today. Rodeo boy is still keeping my interest surprisingly, (probably because I'm so bored with everything else!) but I've lost weight on my upper legs not my tummy, who cares, I've lost somewhere, that's all that matters!

The in-laws haven't been pissing me off too much recently either, there was a slight incident this morning, I went to the post office loaded up with packages for my sister's birthday and two friends who wanted happy town and hi-chus to send off. As I was leaving this was the convo I had with MIL:

MIL: Where are you going with those?!
Me: The post office.
MIL: Do you know how to send them?
Me: Yes, I'll be fine, thank you. BAI BAI!

If I had any balls this is how the convo would have gone:

MIL: Where are you going with those?
Me: To the moon you twit, where do you think I'm going with 3 post boxes with big posting things stuck to them??
MIL: Do you know how to send them? (You dense gaijin)
Me: How fucking long do you think I've lived in this country? I'm not a moron, and I'm more than capable of sending a box to Australia, stop fucking asking me if I can do things like I'm 5 fucking years old! If I need your help I'm not mute either, I'll ask. BAI BAI!

She's just being nice but it really does make me feel like an idiot when she does it. Whatever, if that's the biggest problem I have I'm doing good right.

Hoping this week goes fast, looking forward to the ice cream and 3 clucky 30-something-year-old women to take Ashton while I shop my little heart out!

Slight MIL tiff or maybe just my bad mood

Thank you for all the get well wishes! They worked, or at least the antibiotics did! My tonsils are about half the size they were and only the bottom of them are covered in white muck, they still hurt a bit but nothing compared to what they were. As I type I am actually patiently waiting for little Ash to wake up so I can dump him drop him off at the in-laws and go for a run!

Yesterday was not the best day. It started by the big glass framed picture of Ash that I have been asking Ryota to put on the wall for at least 3 weeks smashing because it was resting against the wall. It really freaked me out because the night before, MIL dropped her mobile phone smashing the screen, so now we have her phone with a picture of Ash as her background all smashed and his little face behind the smashed glass frame, freaky!

Anyway, after the glass incident I accidentally fucked up SIL's camera somehow, not deleting the photos when I copied them to my computer, but for some reason they don't appear on her camera anymore when she switches it on. Then it all went downhill because we went to SSOK, or ソック　in Japanese.

Has anyone been there?? It's in Mino, which I guess is about half an hour, 40 minutes from Osaka. There are lots of warehouse type shops but they are all waayyyy too swanky to get any real warehouse shopping bargains. I should have known.

5 reasons I don't like SSOK:

1) It looks exactly like a department store
2) It's really not that cheap
3) They don't allow bags of any kind or strollers, it's wallet only.
4) They don't allow strollers and I happen to have an incredibly heavy 4 month old
5) The name SSOK annoys me and sounds like sock

WTF is with the no stroller rule?! Discrimination much?? I wonder if they allow wheelchairs? I'm guessing not. Is it to reduce shoplifting??? Because if it is, they are sooooo silly, they have double the staff at the registers so they can seal your bags up with 400 meters of tape. The money they save on shrinkage from shoplifting is nothing compared to the overheads from staff salaries they must be paying.
You also need a card to get in and the lady informed us that only 2 people could enter on one card, so MIL went to register for another card but the lady got distracted and about 20 people strolled in without being checked if they had a card. Not. Happy. Jan.

On to the 'I was annoyed with MIL to the point my face flushed red.' Note that because I'd taken a disliking to SSOK I was probably cranky already.
Luckily for us, we have one of those BabyBjorn holdy thingies that we could have shoved Ash in. But nooooo that would be way too easy, becasue my family-in-law like to show off with Ash, BIL decided he would hold him. I grumbled that the baby sling had no meaning, but whatever, if he wants to get a backache from holding him on one side that's his choice.
After BIL complained about said backache (try doing it everyday wimpy!) MIL took over with holding him. when MIL's back got sore she said she would hold him in the sling. This is when I got peeved.
The sling is pretty annoying actually, it's not one of those nice, hippy, one piece of material ones, it's one with all kinds of hooks and belts on it, and me being a big boobed giant, it's set just right for me. I explained this to MIL and said I was fine to hold him, as the sling was already on my back and ready for him just to slide in.

MIL protested. I said I'd hold him. She said she would hold him. This went on for I swear about 5 minutes until I said strongly and with my flushed face that it was easier if I held him. Put. Him. In. Now.

There was no argument and it is a tiny thing, but sometimes I feel like my voice is lost in translation somewhere, I shouldn't have to say something a million times before I'm heard.
I appreciate all MIL's help, I really do, and I need it living here. But they sometimes forget that lived in Japan for 3 years by myself and did just fine. If I can do something, I want to try and do it myself.

I overreacted a bit to the holder thing but I really think it was a build up of a lot of things lately where I'm starting to feel like a baby who can't do anything by herself.

Anyway, Ashton boy is hollerin' so I'm off for a run! That 10km isn't going to run itself in November!

Our house...

So here are a few pictures of the outside of our house, I'm trying to depict just how close it is to my in-laws' house!

This is MIL's house with the bike out front-

And this is our house-

And this is how close they are, MIL's bike, our stroller... ya get it.

Here's a further away view

And the view from my front dooor, yup, you guessed it, their front door!

Making an excuse as to why I was taking photos was interesting, I had to say my family are interested in Japanese houses! I have to laugh, or I might just cry. As I said before, good days and bad days.

Today was a bit of a bad day, possibly TMI but I was up on and off all night last night with little Ashton and his amazing vomit so when I sleepily stumbled to the toilet this morning and let out an extraordiarily loud fart I certainly didn't expect my brother-in-law to burst out laughing.

Red-faced, I quickly jumped on the internet and explored the option of us moving back to Aussie, where neighbours are at least a fart away!

Happy effing Monday! Hope you all have a good week!

Think I pissed my mother-in-law off...?

But this is Japan where nobody will outright tell you they're cheesed off with you, so I can't be sure.

We live VERY close to our in-laws, as in 2 leaps away, however I do have quite long legs so I'm going to say 4 steps. Those of you who live in Japan will understand how close houses can be, in Aussie terms the only way I can describe it is like a block of townhouses where the one directly in front of ours is the in-law's house. (I'll try and take a photo and put it up here)
I was very worried at first, but seeing as though we are paying only 30,000 yen a month for quite a nice two-storey house, we really couldn't pass on it.

It has good and bad points, the good usually outweighing the bad, for example, as I type this I am munching on 'happy town' snacks and sipping coffee, Ashton boy is off with MIL on a shopping trip, so having them so close by is a big help to me. It's also good if i run out of something or need to borrow something, things like that.

My MIL really isn't the interfering type and is not old school medalling at all but we do have our differences.
In the past, whenever we have been out in public she refuses to let anyone else hold Ash, even when she's busy filling out forms or whatever, probably just grandchild pride but does irritate me a bit. Another thing that irks me a little is the fact that if Ash is crying, (as babies will do) Grandma-in-law will be over to our house in a flash asking what's wrong with him....Err, he's a baby...? hehe But overall, they are great and I like living so close, I'd probably get lonely otherwise.

So I think I may have pissed MIL off a bit with the issue of giving Ash a bottle. From the beginning I made it clear I wanted to exclusively breastfeed until he was about 6 months old but be up for starting solids/other liquids from about 4 months or if he seemed ready. From when I came back to Japan, (Ash was 6 weeks old) MIL would subtly slip in how much easier it would be to give him formula, how I could sleep better blah blah blah. I smiled and nodded, then got my boobies out.
I'm very happy I'm still able to breastfeed, I have nothing against bottle feeding but it was just what I wanted to do.

As soon as I got back to Japan, MIL brought over some of those little mugi-cha for babies drinks. What is mugi-cha?? Does it have caffeine?? Because as far as I know, in Aussie, tea is a no no for babies. I told her this and even though it says they can drink it from 1 month on, I pretty much told her straight out that I didn't think he needed any other liquids yet. All good, mugi-cha goes in the cupboard.
Not much mentioned, until the other day when the mugi-cha came out again. It's been quite hot lately and I was thinking of giving Ash a bottle of water, so I agreed to try him with the mugi-cha but I really wasn't all that keen and the look on my face probably showed that.

Ash took the bottle no problem, but as soon as he started drinking his face screwed up with a 'this isn't freakin warm, sweet milk!!' look. I must say, I got a bit of satisfaction knowing that he didn't like it, if he had gulped it down MIL would have had an oppourtunity to shove other stuff down his throat, and there's a nice warm fuzzy feeling from your son needing you and only you. After Ash showed he clearly didn't like it I wanted to stop but MIL kept persisting until I said in a pretty shrill voice, "Stop it, we don't give kids tea in Australia!!" I really didn't mean to come out the way it did and I think MIL was alittle bit shocked, I'm not usually so straight.

Anyway, after that day she was a little bit distant...funny, I don't know, just not usual, so she might have been pissed off. I'm not that bothered though, it's really the only issue we have had so far so I think we're doing pretty good! I am a bit concerned about the future though when Ash is eating solids, I can see him eating all kinds of stuff I don't want him to when he's over there, I'll just have to put my foot down I think.

Another thing I found funny with the in-laws was the whole, 'I can't fight with my family' thing. Recently my SIL and BIL went to Thailand and stayed with a friend of the family who owns a guest house there. SIL got offended at something that was said and basically went mental at the friend in Thailand (friend is Japanese). I was really shocked at this, SIL is always very polite and quiet, I didn't expect it. She told me that she can be angry at friends no problem becasue she can just wipe them from her life, but she can't be angry with family because you can never get rid of them!
haha I thought that was funny, and realised my family is kind of the opposite, I can fight with my mum, dad and sister because I know we'll forgive each other, but I'm more reserved with friends, I'm not really sure why! Maybe because I know I can lose them quite easily???

Anyway, we're having dinner over there tonight so MIL couldn't have been too angry with me! On the driving front, I've now driven the nice smooth family car, been scootering like an Osaka Obachan pro and even been out AND parked the big whale of a land cruiser. Driving here isn't that hard eh! Everyone goes much slower and is much more forgiving when changing lanes etc. So I'm getting pretty confident! (Scooter will take a while though!!)

I best go collect my son, MIL might be giving him black coffee or vodka shots or something!