Yo! Yo! In da' house!

OK, sincere apologies for the title, as we all know, I am WAY too white to ever be thinking about typing such hip and happenin’ (FUCK I did it again…!) things unless I’m referring to a child’s toy being in an actual house.
However, this is Japan, and this white girl can actually go to hip hop dance classes and still get away with it! Woohoo!

So yes, I am officially signed up with a local dance studio and am taking hip hop lessons on Saturday nights! The first lesson was pretty hilarious, I was late as my last lesson at the school finishes at 7:50 and after shutting up shop and riding the 20 minute bike ride in 10, I was only a few minutes late, but still, late enough for every single person in the room to spin around mid-stretch and have a good stare at the sweaty, panting white girl that rushed in the room. As I tried to blend in and started stretching and pretending to look all professional the music came to an end and the teacher took the liberty to say “Ohhh new face, HELLLOOO!!!” Giving every fucker another chance to hone in on me again, like I didn’t feel rare enough at a fucking hip hop class, my balance is dodgy at the best of times! Then, we moved on to the really fun part of the warm-up: “Quiz the foreign girl in the room!” Love that part! I got questions from all sides, but as the questions came thick and fast, I actually started to relax a little, because I’d say 80% of the girls in there, could be scientifically put in a category of: dumb as dog shit. I feel I have the authority to make this sweeping and somewhat shocking statement as I would probably include myself in the 80%.

It’s a guy’s dream though, boys, if you want to pick up hot J-girls that aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, seriously, go to hip hop dance classes. Lots of bending and jumping, boobies flying all over the place! The reason I came to the conclusion that most of these girls were pretty dopey was not only the abundance of orange hair and make-up caked on to a level that is just wrong when you are sweating so profusely, but some of the things they came up with while grilling me was very indicative…

Dopey girl 1: So, where are you from??

Bewildered white girl (AKA me): I’m from Australia…

D.G.1: Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!
(seriously, it was a long one, and I’m usually immune or participating in long “ehh”’s)

Me: Ahh, yup, that’s right…

Dopey girl 2: Ehhhh, wait are you halfu??

Me: Huh? No…

Dopey girl 2: So neither of your parents are Japanese?!?!

Me: (Thinking- You fucking twat, I couldn’t look less Japanese if I tried) Yup, my parents are from England and then I was born in Australia..

Both dopey girls: Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

I shot the teacher a pleading look at this point as I was keen for the questions to cease and the ‘bopping’ and/or ‘popping’ to begin. We started with some insanely painful stretches and holding of positions that made me think I was going to ahem, split my difference, if you get what I mean… for 2 minutes at a time. Trust me, when you feel like your vagina may come apart at the seams, 2 minutes is a very long fucking time. I gotta give it to the dopey girls though, they are extremely bendy and didn’t seem to be fussed or breaking a sweat at all by the stretches that had me screwing up my face and holding my breath willing it to be over. Perhaps this is why they can afford to wear so much make-up?! After the stretchy hell was finished we went through some basic moves and I was thinking “Yeah! OK! I’m good with this!!” I’m somewhat famous for being unco-ordinated so my ability to stick to a basic rhythm was impressing me, a smile spread across my lips as I glanced in the mirror wall and then at the teacher, I even also gave a resounding “YES!” when the teacher asked if everyone was OK!

Another good thing was the fact that I didn’t feel self-conscious (despite sticking out like a sore thumb) at all. None of the girls or the teacher made me feel stupid when I fucked up, and for me this is very important when I’m learning anything. Of course after the basic moves were done it was on to actually learning a routine and I gave it a good hard crack but my brain was over loaded by the end of the hour and a half and I ended up just doing steps that resembled what everyone else was doing when actually I had no fucking clue.

This week’s lesson was much better, the routine we learnt was shorter and we practiced it more, making the dopey girls almost collapse with “EHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” and other such noises of surprise as they informed me it took them at least 6 months to get the routine down. I’m sure they were just trying to flatter me but I’ll take it anyway! The teacher had obviously studied how to explain the moves in English as well, but she must remember to also say it in Japanese because she said “Push back!” and I was the only fucker who did it, the rest of the class were scratching their heads going ‘What the fuck did she just say!?’ She failed in the English department when it came to explaining the body wave though, and quite right, that shit is hard in any language! There was also a guy there for a trial lesson this week who had NO idea, like much more than me, he couldn’t even clap to a beat, but again, everyone (including me) was nice and encouraging to him. In this respect I really like the ‘team effort’ approach to classes in Japan, of course there are a lot of bad points about it too, like Junior high school kids being robots and stuff, but for me and my hip hopping adventures, it works great!

So I shall continue and see how I go, there are dance shows every year so I may just get ghetto-ed up and dance my way across a stage, in front of *gulp* an audience! Must make sure my muscles recover before then, my legs are fucking killing me, as well as my elbows, who fucking knew elbows could hurt so much!?

Yo Yo! Peace out!

(sorry...)

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!

Weighing it all up

I'd hate to turn into a weight loss blogger, I mean I've already got so many stereotypes covered with 'mummy blogger' and 'person in Japan blogger' but why not go for the hat trick eh!?

Since I can remember, I've had issues with my weight. OK let's cut the shite and tell it how it really is; ever since I've been old enough to scoff tim tams behind the pantry door I've been a lazy, lard-arsed, tub.

And I know people tell you that how big you are shouldn't affect you if you're comfortable with yourself and that being skinny isn't the key to happiness blah.. blah.. blah. Bullshit, for me, being skinni(er than my usual whale-like self) solves most to all of my problems and makes me feel better. Much better. Without sounding too 'pro-ana' or anything, I personally am a much happier camper when I'm not so much of a lard-arse. I actually envy those people who are happy with being overweight.

I think this mentality comes from my dad, he's what we call a 'fatophile,' he judges people if they're fat. He thinks they're lazy, and not as intelligent as other people. Of course easy for him with his super speedy metabolism and all. I don't think that at all, but it may have had some effect on me as a child, I'm banking all these things for when I'm crazy enough for therapy. My mum and sister are also consistent yo-yo dieters too so I was bound to have issues.

Here are a few photos from when I was pretty big, I may have been bigger in Australia but I only have photos from in Japan, I think I'm probably over 100kgs here!

About 2 years ago I decided to actually do something to make my life better and lose a shitload of weight. This was how my days were:

6am- Run/Jog/Walk/Bike for an hour. Big breakfast.

9am-5pm- Work. No lunch.

6pm- 1 hour run.

7pm- Dinner.

8pm- Sit-ups/ weight training/ Some form of resistance training.

10pm- Bed.

I also drank nothing but green tea, oolong tea or water.

This was incredibly boring but it worked, and I got to my happy place, 77kg. It's not thin by any means but it was good for me, I'm tall so 77kg was great for me.
It was great. All going to plan. Losing weight, feeling healthy... Then I got preggers! Which is good too, but basically made me put back on a ton of weight and totally lose my losing mojo.

I gained at least 20kg when preggers, I tried to keep the jogging up but my friends told me I was killing my unborn child with all the jiggling (until they saw the Sex and the city movie and decided if Charlotte could run then so could I). But by that time I was tired all the time and just couldn't be arsed jogging. I did try preggo yoga but it wasn't very strenuous and the doctor told me my I'd done too many kegel exercises while I was giving birth! WTF?!

Anyway, not sure of the final weigh-in figure because thankfully Australian doctors don't weigh you at preggo check-ups unlike my Japanese clinic where they paraded me out to the weighing machine which printed out my weight so I couldn't even fib and knock off a few kilos, bastards! But I know it was close to or over the 100kg mark (despite consistent bollocking from J-Docs).

I lost a bit due to mummy/ Japan stress when I got back and am now at 86kgs.

Phew, that took balls! I'm one of those 'never tell your weight' people but fuck it, if I'm going to get anywhere I need to get it out there!

I'm aiming for my happy place 77kg but really would like to be 70kg, nice round number. 80 is a little too round and 60 is a little too bony, although wouldn't knock it back! So giving it a crack! let's see how I go...

Around the time of my happy place!

EDIT: Ryota saw this post and told me he hates skinny Japanese bony girls and that he loves my squidgy bits. Awwww. He also told me I look a little like a rat in my happy place picture!!! God bless him.
WTF is with all the comment word verification craziness?? I want one that says 'fatcow' when I leave a comment...