Hello, old friend

I can't say I'm surprised that I haven't blogged in well over a year.
Chloe is almost two years old now and is a total terror. She is going to daycare once a week and I'm back teaching at a national junior high school twice a week. Needless to say, we are keeping busy.

The past few years have been a whirlwind of new experiences in parenthood. Shuhei is an amazing dad and really dotes on Chloe, they have a wonderful bond.

What have we been up to? Let's see...
We ended up moving apartments when Chloe was about 4 months old. Our old place was amazing but was on the expensive and small side. The new apartment is ok, its certainly older and further out than the old one but its close to parks and we found a good daycare for Chloe.
We have been travelling! In the winter of 2014 we went on a family trip to Bali and this past December we took another trip to Malaysia. Chloe will hopefully be quite the world traveller. We also took Chloe to Canada to meet her other family for her first birthday.
I joined and quit the gym after a year of working out and seeing NO results. Sigh!

... And you are all caught up! Well, hopefully it won't be almost two more years before I update again!

And just like that...

my mum has gone back home. I can't believe how fast the week flew by. It was such an incredible week, I can't even begin to write how wonderful it was to see my mum and introduce her to Chloe.

We spent our week together mostly puttering around my neighborhood as the weather was terrible! Hello rainy season! My mum also acted as guarantor for my passport renewal so we had to head down to the Canadian embassy to submit all the paperwork and I also picked up the paperwork for getting Chloe's proof of Canadian citizenship.
We also cooked a lot together, it has always been a favourite pastime of ours when we are with each other. We tried a new recipe she read about in a magazine on her flight over and it turned out really well! It was a salmon dish with syrup, butter and dijon mustard, sounds strange but was actually quite nice. On two of the less terrible weather days we went to visit my husband for lunch which I know he enjoyed. He was disappointed he couldn't take time off to spend with my mum.
She was amazing with helping me around the house, (I'm sure our apartment looked disgusting when she arrived as I have been quite lacking on the housework department for quite some time now) and with the baby, whenever Chloe fussed my mum was eager to pick her up and give her back rubs, walk around with her and just cuddle her. We discovered that little Chloe likes to go out... especially for lunches and dinners. Maybe she enjoys the scents in restaurants or something.
We also engaged in our all time favourite pastime of window shopping. We used to spend countless weekends strolling through the malls and streets of Vancouver, browsing all the lovely clothes and whatnot, rarely buying anything but having so much fun nonetheless. It was more about the company than the activity and hey, good exercise, no?
All in all, I'm quite sad to have to say good bye so soon to my dear mum and I really hope little Chloe has convinced her to come visit more often. Until then, we have Skype.

Mum Mum Mum Mum

My dear sweet mum is coming to visit tomorrow. I'm so excited for her to meet Chloe - her first grandchild. After becoming a mother myself, I see our relationship in a new way, probably more clearly than I used to. I cannot adequately sing praises for my mum. She is amazing. She always put us kids first. When I was younger she really wanted to be a real estate agent, studied hard and got her license. After a few years of pounding the pavement and doing her best, all the while us kids complaining because we didn't want to go to after school care, she gave it up to be at home with us. 

When I moved away to go to university, I started calling her every day and we would talk for hours. Mostly because I was lonely where I was living at first and started getting really anxious about leaving my apartment for anything and she would keep me company while I was out, it was then I realised she was (and still is) my best friend. When I moved back to Vancouver, we used to go out shopping almost every weekend or I would go back home and have dinner with my folks often. I know when I decided to move to Japan she was really sad I would be so far away but she always supported me and we still talk almost every day.  I hope someday I can see her everyday again. Now I'm tearing up thinking about her and how much I love her. 

The little lady has arrived - her arrival

So as I mentioned in my previous post, our daughter arrived on May 2nd. It took me a while to organize my thoughts surrounding her birth and figure out what exactly happened. I guess I was pretty shell shocked and the resulting fatigue didn't help me organize my thoughts any faster. Ha!

My original due date was May 1st but then was changed to May 6th due to her growing slowly. So the weeks leading up to her birth I had the pleasure of going to the hospital on a weekly basis and getting checks to see what, if any, progress had been made. Every time the doctor checked me, there was only the slightest change and I was still carrying her really high. All my pregnant friends were talking about these "braxton hicks" contractions which I never had throughout my pregnancy which made me think labour was very far off. Needless to say, I was getting frustrated. My doctor recommended long walks and squats. One week I did over a thousand squats - no progress. I read online that eating dates helps prepare the cervix for labour - I ate hundreds, little progress. Yoga, squats, Pilates, walking and stairs - nothing.
So on May 1st (I was 39 weeks and 3 days going by my May 6th due date) I went in for another check up and was only at 1.5cm and still carrying high, I left the doctor's really frustrated and sobbing to my husband that the baby would never come and I would be pregnant until she turned 20. We made jokes about seeing the baby move a couch into my belly and that she was opening a night club. Getting comfy. We went home and decided to go for a long walk - so long that I actually changed into athletic clothes and runners for it, on the walk we stopped by our favourite asian market and bought some drink that is supposed to help jump start labour so we bought four of those. That evening we did our nightly ritual of rubbing all the labour inducing pressure points and using this type of acupuncture that uses fire and wicks instead of needles on the same pressure points. Feeling frustrated, I went to bed.
At one in the morning I woke up to the first contraction, I assumed it was gas until the next one came three minutes later, and then another. After about twenty minutes of quietly laying there with contractions steadily coming every three minutes I decided to wake up hubby and let him know. He jumps awake and we both wonder if it's the real deal or just false labour, since our hospital was a good 45 minute drive away and we were going to be taking a very expensive taxi, I didn't want to make the trek unless it was the real thing. So I looked online how to make sure - I took a shower and tried walking around (which can make false labour stop) and the contractions kept coming steadily every three to four minutes and lasting for a minute. Our hospital had told us since I was a first time mum I should head to the hospital when contractions were 10 to 15 minutes apart with this in mind I naively thought I might be having my baby quickly. At around 4:30 we decided to head to the hospital, hailed a cab and texted some family members to let them know.
Once we arrived at the hospital I was hooked up to monitors to check the baby's heartbeat and my contractions, this lasted for an hour and then finally they checked me to see how I was progressing. 3 cm. Bloody hell. They gave us the option of going home and labouring there for a while or staying and labouring at the hospital. We decided not to trek home and eventually back again and stayed at the hospital but were warned I would probably not be having the baby anytime soon. My labour was slow going and by 9 am I was only at 4 cm. I was getting really frustrated and started panicking because if contractions at only 4 cm felt that bad, 8 cm must be unbearable! At this point, my husband saw my despair and really stepped it up a notch. He remembered what our mid wife had taught him during our birth classes about coaching me through the contractions. From then on, he helped me remember my breathing and was invaluable. When he wanted to pee or go to the vending machine, I got really worried and even walked to the vending machine and back with him - much to the shock of the midwives. The midwife told us that even though my contractions were really strong they weren't making much progress - ouch, how discouraging! The pain was getting really intense so I asked for suggestions on how to manage it better (at that point I had just been crying) so the midwife suggested the bathtub. Before I could get in, we had to wake up the baby and monitor her heartbeat - lucky girl got to sleep through contractions. For a while I laboured in the bathtub which is when contractions got so intense I broke down and asked for pain medication which I luckily never ended up getting!  My husband said during this time I went crazy and had a weird look in my eyes - very intense and crazy. At one point while he was coaching me to "breathe, breathe, breathe" I growled at him "what the fuck do you think I'm doing?!!" and then true to Canadian form, apologised profusely.
Soon after getting out of the bathtub, around 11 or 12, my water broke and contractions felt very different. My urges to push came but I wasn't fully dilated so I had to try not to push which was tough. During this time, my husband says I regained my sanity and was cracking jokes with him and the midwife and apologising for all my foul language.
Around 1, I was wheeled into the delivery room and started pushing. The baby was still really high up and I ended up pushing for two hours with almost no progress. I tried pushing in a bunch of different positions to try and encourage the baby to engage in my pelvis with no luck. At this point the midwife seemed to be concerned about my energy due to labour starting in the middle of the night and lasting so long and decided to get the doctor to decide what to do.  It turns out, the baby was facing sideways instead of towards my back or stomach which made it difficult for her head to drop into my pelvis. The doctor tried spinning her head and then decided she had to come out soon. Instead of giving me pitocin to make my contractions stronger, he tried pushing on my stomach while I pushed a few times with no results. At this point they decided to vacuum her out while someone pushed down on my stomach. I was given an episiotomy and then they sucked her out which only took a few minutes and two tries with the vacuum. Our sweet girl arrived at 3:11pm on Friday May 2nd. She wasn't too big, 7 pounds exactly and 19.1 inches long. We named her Chloe.
I had to spend five more days in the hospital and recovery for me was tough. I was given boatloads of stitches and conveniently, no pain killers. For the first two days I could barely walk, sitting was hard and picking up Chloe took me about five minutes. Eventually my husband asked the nurses why the pills they gave me weren't helping me with pain -- they weren't painkillers! What a terrible mix up! So I was finally given something to help me with the pain which made it a lot easier to pee, shower, sit, stand, walk, sleep... Everyone told me to get as much rest as possible while I was in the hospital... what a crock of shit that is. I was put in a room with three other women who had just given birth and all four babies were also in the room. It would have been ok if one of the women had at least tried to calm down her crying baby. The sound of 24-7 howling from her baby really did my head in and lead to many text messages to my husband where I begged him to let me leave the hospital early - he did not. Looking back, I'm pretty impressed that I managed to do it without an epidural or laughing gas or anything. Leading up the birth all our foreign friends told me giving birth without pain meds was impossible and I'm glad my stubborn ass was able to prove them wrong. My mum had three children without and pain meds - and I used that for inspiration to get through it.
Chloe is now 7 weeks old and we are getting to know each other better every day. She is a really sweet baby and has just figured out how to coo and smile which is really sweet to see after she wakes me up at 5am to eat. My husband is on cloud nine with his daughter and I can't take enough photos of them cuddling and sleeping together.
Would I do it again? Probably. Not for a while. I think I need to emotionally heal from the trauma and also enjoy my new sweet baby, get to know her and help her grow up a little.

The little lady has arrived!

On May 2nd our daughter was born. It has taken me a while to find the time and coherence of thoughts to sit down and write this entry.

First off, I feel it is necessary for me to write about my time spent as a pregnant lady in Japan before I dive into the details of the birth and the babe.
It was quite the experience being pregnant in Japan and I quickly came to discover that there are some major differences in attitudes towards pregnancy between Japan and the west so I found myself trying to find a good balance between the two. Here are some things I discovered on my journey:

-In Japan, prenatal vitamins are not common, nor do doctors prescribe them as they would in the west. I ended up finding some on the shelf at a baby goods store and did my best to take them everyday. I was told the Japanese perspective is that a pregnant woman should be getting all these nutrients from the food she is eating and not from a vitamin.
- Japanese doctors are extremely strict about weight gain! My first doctor was extremely insistent that I not gain any more than 10 kilos (22 pounds) throughout my pregnancy. She also strongly encouraged I only eat brown bread, brown rice, lots of vegetables, NO fruit and only drink water throughout my pregnancy. Had I have the willpower to give up chocolate and fruit and the ability to find brown bread I might have considered this to be a viable diet option. Unfortunately some women take this strictness a little too far. A friend told me about her sister in law going on a diet exclusively of bean sprouts while pregnant to avoid being reprimanded by her doctor. While I agree a pregnant woman should not follow the "eating for two" idea, I also think pregnant women should not be preoccupied with worrying about their weight gain. I think I gained about 13 kilos total for my pregnancy and most of that is gone as I type this. :)
- The question of exercise - I encountered two very different opinions from the two doctors I saw for my pregnancy. My first doctor recommended I stay very still, definitely not exercise and do minimal housework. My second doctor encouraged pilates, yoga, long walks and squats throughout my pregnancy.
- Ultrasounds! We got an ultrasound at every appointment, it was great to see our little girl grow month by month and then week by week. In Canada, a friend said she only had one ultrasound for her entire pregnancy!
- In Japan, women are encouraged to give birth naturally without pain killers with the belief that mothers should feel pain while they deliver in order to feel close to their baby. (or so I was told) If I wanted to have an epidural, it would only be available if the anesthesiologist wasn't busy and it was between 9 and 5 on a week day for a large fee, of course. With that in mind, I spent my pregnancy mentally preparing for an unmedicated childbirth.
- TOUCHING! People I had never met before would come up to me and pat my stomach without even asking! I've heard this happens in the west as well but it was very annoying none the less.
- Post partum recovery - Most Japanese women when they are close to their due date return to their hometown to give birth and recover at their mother's home for the first few months.

The months leading up to her birth, I did everything I could to educate and prepare myself as much as possible for labour, the birth and the early months as a new mum. You name it, I probably looked into it. Since I was having her in a foreign country I found it especially important to do my research. When I found out I was expecting, my husband and I discussed options for the pregnancy and birth to make my first pregnancy as stress free as possible. The first option was to return to Canada and the other was to stay put. I was very tempted to return home so I could have an English speaking doctor and be close to my mum for this major life experience but didn't want my husband to miss out on the birth of his first child. For my husband's sake, I decided to stay in Tokyo, I was lucky to find a hospital with some English speaking doctors for all my appointments. I struggled at times with the differences in attitudes towards pregnancy but in the end it was the best decision for us.

Happy *belated* 2014

It's been a while (of course) since I last updated this blog. And like usual, much has changed. Since August of 2013, I have changed jobs. Now I am working part time in a public junior high school as an assistant language teacher. The students are pretty nice and the other teachers are really friendly. It would be an awesome job if not for the dreaded dispatch company I work for directly. Oh well, my contract is up in March and I intend to move on to greener pastures... specifically, MOTHERHOOD! The husband and I are expecting our first child who is due to arrive sometime in early May. It's a girl and so begins a whole new odyssey in my Japan adventure. For the past few months I have been researching everything under the sun about pregnancy, birth, and children. My husband is so excited he keeps saying he wants her to come out NOW but it's a little too soon for that. We have prepared almost everything that needs to be prepared, bought a bunch of super tiny clothes and diapers and now all we have to do is... inwardly panic and wait. :)

In other updates, the hubby and I had our big Tokyo wedding way back in October and everything went off without a hitch. The day whizzed by really fast and it was a lovely day - the sun was shining, everyone showed up (including the groom) and there were smiles all around. That being said, I'm glad it's a one time thing!

Huge Update

I guess I last wrote in this blog in March. Well, I wont apologise for my neglect. A lot has happened since then.
On April 7th, my boyfriend proposed to me which I happily accepted and on June 9th we got married. Hows about that for an update ahaha.
I'm not sure how much I have said about him in my past blog entries so... here are some of the nitty gritty details:
- He goes by Shuhei
- 29
- Japanese
- Speaks English
- a 'mad man' (works in advertising)

In May we moved in together and have been occupied decorating and setting up house together. I think we are pretty much settled now though which is nice. The new apartment is a huge step up from both of my previous apartments in Japan. It is so refreshing to have a kitchen with an oven and a proper stove. I have slowly started to get back into cooking -- much to the dismay of my husband I primarily cook western food. haha.

So it is now mid August (How did that happen!?)... he, his family and I went to Canada for a big family meet and greet earlier this month which was in a word - stressful. It was wonderful for everyone to meet but I'm glad it's over and that I will hopefully never have to do that again. My parents threw us a small wedding reception at their house while we were there. It was lovely, the food was amazing (cooked by my best friend and mum), and I was able to see so many people I hadn't seen in a long time. I was really happy I could introduce Shuhei to some of our old family friends and he seemed to enjoy meeting them too.

His family are really nice people and have welcomed me into their home very happily (or so it seems). A lot of people have told me about their Japanese significant other's parents being very against their child having a foreign boyfriend/girlfriend but fortunately that isn't the case with his family. His family reminds me of my family in many ways... in particular the dynamic/roles each person plays. They also love to joke and tease each other, especially the newcomer (me).

The husband and I are planning to have a wedding which is in less than two months now (yikes!) so we have been very busy planning and getting organized for that. My whole family will be coming out to attend the wedding so I'm thrilled to finally get to show them all around my new stomping grounds.

It was my birthday a couple weeks ago so in order to celebrate the husband and I are taking a short trip to Seoul later this month. We both had to work on my actual birthday and all the days surrounding it which made for minimal celebrations at the time of. This will be my first trip to Korea so I'm pretty excited to finally check it out - its so near but I've never taken advantage of its proximity to Japan so far. Shuhei and his sister take regular trips there - they are big fans of the country and especially of its cuisine.

Tumblr

I have started to tumble or whatever it is called.

http://keitorininwonderland.tumblr.com/

Enjoy.

Happy Science

I guess it has been a while since I last updated this blog. I'm not exactly sure where the time went but the past two months seem to have flown by. I haven't really been doing anything all too exciting unfortunately. The weather in Tokyo has been so nice that the cherry blossoms have already begun to bloom (which they don't usually do for another few weeks). Jeeze, I just commented on the weather... surely there is something more interesting in my life to mention. Here goes, in the past few months I have:
 - gone for my first Taiwanese foot massage... it was pretty nice and the masseuse told me that my neck and eyes are tired -- almost definitely true. The BF loves getting massages so he convinced me to go, I'm glad he did it was really relaxing and I definitely needed that :)
- seen and sat through a massive dust/dirt storm in the middle of Tokyo. A lot of Japanese new stations were (apparently) blaming the massive storm on Chinese pollution but then it ended up just being the result of warm and cold air systems colliding lol.
- replaced the old iPhone 3GS with the newer, sleeker iPhone 5. The old 3GS erased all my contacts for the last time, it was also completely out of space so the need to upgrade was quite dire.
- hurt my ankle and wrist (not too sure how on either one of those - both not drinking related injuries)
- gotten a visa extension! Bad news Tokyo, you are stuck with me for another three years. After all the horror stories I'd heard about dealing with immigration I was pleasantly surprised that I only had to wait a total of maybe two hours over two trips to the office. I now have a residence card... I'm not sure if that means I am a resident now but it does mean that I don't have a visa in my passport but this card in its place.
- encountered a dirty old pervert who shook his flaccid penis at me. I kid you not. I was walking home from work one day and some old dude in his car drove up to me and shook his business at me and then drove off. I'm very disappointed to say that I was too shocked to throw anything at his car or write down his plates. Bad Keitorin. I guess there is always next time...

Hair Flap - Hair Salon in Futakotamagawa

January has been quite the bad month for me. I have a theory that January is always a terrible month.

It all started a couple weeks ago when I agreed to go in to work on my day off and teach classes for one of the other teachers... I woke up congested, thinking nothing of it I got on with my day and did some grocery shopping before heading to the school. By the time I got there I felt disconnected from my body and seriously ill... but I was already there so I taught the classes. That Sunday I had to travel across the city to meet the new BF's family -- which went well enough. On my train ride home I felt like I couldn't breathe and ended up hyperventilating on the train and almost fainted. I've never done that before so that really freaked me out and I thought I was dying. What was more scary was the thought that my Japanese is still awful so I wouldn't have been able to tell anyone who to call or what was wrong with me.

The next day we had our first snowfall -- a massive dump of snow... at least one foot. As a result of that the concrete stairs that lead up to my second floor apartment were quite snowy and then icy and then black icy five days later. On Friday that week, as I tried to go to work, I slipped on some black ice on those stairs and fell all the way down them resulting in nasty bruises on my lower back, arm and hip. I'd like to give my decrepit landlord a big "fuck you" for never in five days bothering to clear or salt those stairs and helping make that happen. Since my back was bruised it was almost impossible to sleep on my right side for the past week. Fortunately, the bruise isn't as painful now as it was.

The rest of the January b.s. I will not be blogging about.

久しぶり or whatever

So it's 2013! When the hell did that happen?! I guess a little over a week ago. Happy new year and all that.

My (not so) new job is going really well. I'm thrilled that my new coworkers are AWESOME. They really made the transition seamless and now I consider them to be a part of my Tokyo family. It's really nice to have coworkers who share the same sense of humor as me as it sometimes lands me in hot water hahaha.

Since August I haven't been up to anything too crazy as I have significantly cut down on drinking. I've DJ'd a few times, including one night where I played for about four hours, so that was fun. There are no upcoming events to report at this time.

I went up to Fukushima to visit an old coworker of mine waaaaay back in September. It was really cool to get out of the city and see some parts of the country I had never seen before. I went to this place called "British Hills" and it was a total trip! This place was all built with wood from England and it was built in England and barged over to Japan... every building was built according to traditional British architecture. The place is stunning! It really brought me back to the brief times I spent in England. At British Hills there is a tea house and a pub that even serves good old fashioned British food (that actually tastes authentic) -- it kind of made me home sick for my mum's cooking lol.

I went to a Japanese wedding reception for the first time in November. I went as my boyfriend's date as it was his friend from junior high school's wedding. His friends were really nice so that was good as my Japanese still sucks!

I finally returned to Disneyland! Only twelve years after my last visit haha. Unfortunately we chose to visit on what might have been the busiest day of the month at the very least. I did get to take a lot of fun pictures wearing Minnie ears though and I found, with the right company, the crowds weren't so noticeable. :)

I had a week off at the end of December and beginning of January so I hopped on a plane and went back to the good old Pacific North West to pay my family a visit. What I'll never understand is a family's need to take their infant on trips around the world. On my flight in to Vancouver there was a family of five with what had to have been a three to four month old baby... They had clearly gone to Tokyo to do some sightseeing and I couldn't for the life of me understand why they would bother. Nothing infuriates me more than babies on a plane with indifferent parents. Granted, for that flight I was fighting a nasty cold and was quite sleep deprived so that didn't help. The visit was a lot quieter than the ones in past years had been. I spent a lot of time hibernating on my parents' couch and saw some good friends. I did some shopping and had some quality time with my favourite foods haha.

Going back to Vancouver is always strange for me. I feel like I am interrupting the lives of everyone I see. It feels like we are almost strangers again because there is so much we don't know about each other again. And yet, returning to Tokyo always feels like I'm falling into a mass of concrete and I'm back to getting lost in a vast sea of people. It always takes me a while to get back into the rhythm of things.

So a lot has happened in the past little while.

It was my birthday and I got a little bit older, not at all wiser.

I worked for maybe less than half the month of August and I came down with a wicked head cold/sinus infection. I am still trying to recover from this.

I DJ'd in Shibuya one night and it was grand. The music was awesome, I was awesome and then I went home for two hours of sleep before getting up for a good 9.5 hours of work.

My friend from elementary school and high school came by for a brief but memorable visit.

For the past little while I've been musing about making t-shirts so at the moment I'm trying to get all the logistics of that sorted so I can get them made. It's going to be grand, who wouldn't want a t-shirt of some giant lizard rampaging Tokyo?

Je Suis Delicieux - T-shirt on some girl

So as always I guess I should start off apologising about my absenteeism. To be fair I have an excuse this time, I was off the grid for the past month and a bit. It feels good to be back! Obviously a lot has happened and I'm not even sure where I left off... I moved into my new apartment. It's great and I'm really enjoying it so far... it's a lot bigger than my last place, it has a much better location and view (no cemetery, woo) but sadly it's very empty as I have barely any furniture! Oh well. The transition between jobs went off without a hitch. I feel like I'm settling in well at the new company and my new coworkers are pretty cool so that's nice. In terms of my personal life... nothing interesting whatsoever is happening. I've been listening to good music as always and started sketching a lot more in my free time. For some reason it seems like I have a lot more free time with my new job which is nice. I'm looking to make a couple t-shirts but maybe I've mentioned that before. They feature random drawings I've done including one of Godzilla rampaging Tokyo and one of outer space (naturally). Yet another birthday is coming up. I feel like I should just cancel it and stay 25. I don't have any plans and it doesn't seem like much of anything will happen. Oooooooooh well. On a bizarre note - I keep seeing people throw up lately. It's entertaining and I'm grateful it's not me who is throwing up but I can't help but wonder why all of a sudden everyone wants to puke in front of me. I guess I'm a good audience? June and July are puke season?

Holy Shit. Not dead, just lazy.

Wow it has been a seriously irresponsibly long time since I last blogged. No, I'm not dead... just lazy. Suffice to say a lot has happened since I last updated so bear with me while I try to include every thing in this update. I guess the last time I blogged I had just declined another contract with my company. Now there are only two weeks left on my current contract so I'm saying my goodbyes to all the students I have known and loved for the past two years and getting ready to start my new job. I spent a good month applying for as many jobs as possible and I went to three interviews and luckily for me I found a job that I think will be a good fit for me. So far the company sounds really reasonable and respectful which is more than I can say for the one I work for now. The job will be similar to the one I have now but it will be focused on teaching children and it is in Yokohama. So last Monday I went to observe an experienced teacher at one of the schools and I will go again tomorrow. Even now that I'm leaving the school I've worked at for two years I'm having a hard time believing I've been living in Japan for two years already. I say it all the time but it needs repeating, it's like a dream. So since I'm leaving the company I came here with, I have to move apartments. It has been a trip looking for a new place to live. I never knew that racism was still socially acceptable. I guess it Japan it is ok to refuse someone's rental application based on the fact that they are not Japanese. I make decent money and I've never paid my rent late in the seven years I've lived on my own but that isn't counted for anything. In the past few weeks I have applied for four apartments, two of which I have been rejected based solely on the fact that I'm not Japanese. I'm really lucky I have a Japanese friend who has vouched for me with one of the applications, that one was successful so I am going to sign the contracts today. I'm trying not to get excited until I have the keys and am living in the apartment though. Throughout this whole apartment hunt I've been packing... it's amazing how much crap one accumulates over the course of two years. When I first came to Japan I had three suitcases, now I have seven boxes and three suitcases. Yikes. My Mum says I'm a pack rat... I'd like to disagree but I guess the evidence speaks for itself. I guess back in December the last of my good friends from training had just left Japan but he has had a change of heart and has decided to come back. I'm really looking forward to our reunion, it's a rare thing when you meet friends you really connect with and can be yourself with. So since I last blogged I've DJ'd two more times, both were relative successes I suppose. I'm not sure when the next time I'll DJ is. Not sure what else to write... So I guess that's it for now. Good to be back.

Happy Holidays!

Well I know it's been a really long time since I updated this. I'm lazy and a lot has been going on!

I did indeed go and take pictures of my bandmate's other band. It was pretty fun. I got to sit around and listen to them practice and take some pics. Unfortunately the lighting was less than ideal.

The DJ event was a big success! Although I had no idea what I was doing up there... the small crowd seemed to like what I played so that was nice (I was the first person on so most of the crowd hadn't arrived yet). As the night went on a lot of people came and danced so that was great. I was the official photographer so there are some photos of the event. They have not been posted anywhere YET but they will be at some point. I got to meet a lot of cool people that night so I'm pleased. We're going to do it again as the venue was really pleased with the turn out but this time we get to do it on a weekend. Yay.

I am in my hometown of Vancouver now visiting my family. It's 4:30 in the morning and my jet lag got me up really early. I'm kind of at a loss for what I should do now until everyone wakes up at like 7 or 8. I dont even know how to turn on the TV!!? I've already fed the cat way too much smoked salmon and made myself breakfast.

Oh. I also declined another contract with my company so in June I'm officially jobless. It's kind of nice to have a bunch of possibilities of what to do next. :)

I think that should bring everything up to speed!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Ghetto Happy Dining - Restaurant in Shibuya

Not a whole lot has been happening lately. But there are some things happening in the not so near future.
-My bandmate's other band has asked me to take pictures of them... Maybe I'll have a gig as the band's official photographer haha.
- I'm going to a taiko drumming concert - not sure what to expect there haha
- I'm DJ'ing for an event my bandmate is throwing. I have no idea how that will go as I have absolutely no experience in that field. I like music but I'm not sure that will translate to me being a decent DJ.
- I'm going back to Canada for Christmas/New Year's!! I dont think I can even begin to explain on here how excited I am to go home for a visit. So I wont.
- My band is having another gig sometime in early 2012, we have no new material and no time to practice so it should be another gong show haha. Good thing we aren't in it for the money/fame/glory!
So lately it seems like I have a lot of free time on my hands as all my friends seem to have found lives of their own. Because of this I've started using my DSLR camera, that I bought in Canada before I came to Japan, a lot more recently. So here are some pictures I took a week ago in the Iidabashi, Ochanomizu, Ebisu and Shibuya areas of Tokyo.

Ooze Charm - An Italian Restaurant in Nishi-Shinjuku

So I had a great blog entry all typed up and then lost it. So... here's round two.

I tried that 'pungency' tea that was the title for my last entry and I have to say, it was quite good. Not pungent though. A little disappointing but I'm willing to look past that.

It was pointed out to me that in all my entries not only do I apologise for my tardiness but I'm also always sick or getting over a cold haha. I am very happy to report that I am not sick at the moment and nor do I feel the need to apologise as I updated this blog recently. Go me.

So recently I've been wandering all over Tokyo during my days off as I have nothing better to do haha. Last weekend I went on an epic journey that took about four hours to acomplish. I went from Ginza to Tsukiji (the massive fish market) to Daimon (where I stayed the first time I came to Japan TEN years ago) to Zoji shrine, then I walked up to Tokyo Tower and around down to Akabanebashi to Azabu-Juban and wandered around the shopping area there (it really reminds me of Kitsilano in Vancouver haha) and then up to Roppongi where I caught a train to Ikebukuro because there was no way I'd be able to walk there haha. After that I walked around Sunshine City and then went home. Phew. So, since it's my weekend again I decided to go on another trek in the city and, at the request of a special someone, I brought my camera to take a few pictures. These pictures were all taken around the Nishi-Shinjuku and Kabukicho areas of Tokyo.

Pungency - name of a tea beverage found in most convenience stores

So instead of saying something like "wow, it's been ages since I last updated this blog" as I seem to do in every entry... I'm going to dive right in!

I have been up to a lot of hijinks lately and it has been fun. What have I been doing? Glad you asked...

1) I attended the Great Japan Beer Festival - it is a beer tasting festival held every year in various locations around Japan. The main goal of the festival is to taste a variety of craft brews... Granted I take it as a challenge to taste all the different craft brews in attendance. This year was my second year to attend the festival and it was great! There were different beers there this year than last year so I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to drink with the Italian brewers I met last year - oh well.

2) I went back to Shimizu-shi in Shizuoka. This place is near to my heart. Let me explain: during my first trip to Japan many moons ago, the school I came to Japan with had a sister school in Shimizu-shi and so when we came to Japan we came to Shimizu to do a mini exchange with the sister school (and then the students we stayed with stayed with us when they came to Vancouver). So! Late last month I went back to Shimizu and met the family I stayed with TEN years ago. We had sushi, chatted all day (only in Japanese - eek!) and looked at pictures from the trip. It was quite the trip down memory lane.

3) I attended Octoberfest in Yokohama. Again, this is a festival I went to last year and wanted to keep the tradition going. This day turned out to be one for the ages so I feel like I should write it down before I forget it all together haha. It all started off with a phone call from my co-worker asking me to go to Octoberfest with her and her husband... I of course agree and run out the door to meet them. The day started off slow with some polite beers with a bunch of couples and me... the single foreign one hahaha. Eventually I got a phone call from a friend who had gone to Octoberfest with me the year before to say he would be arriving shortly. I met up with him and our mutual friends and started playing drinking games (Eek!). We began to compare the current fest with the previous year's fest and remembered our favourite story from last year - our friend getting up on stage to sing polka to the massive crowd and then getting removed by security. We decided to do this again this year. Unfortunately when we got on the stage (just one other friend and I) the microphones were unplugged so we ended up having to yell quite loudly and only one group of people sang back to us. We were quickly removed from the stage.
Eventually once Octoberfest died down we hopped on a train for Shibuya. Oddly enough my friend and I got separated from the main group so he and I were listening to music (still very much in the singing mood) and singing to the rest of the train. Now if you have ever been on a Tokyo train you know that what I'm about to tell you is quite amazing. Some how... I managed to get about half our train car to both sway/dance AND sing "You can call me Al" by Paul Simon with me and my friend. This lasted for a little while until a major stop when my audience left and I lost interest.
And last but not least for my amazing Octoberfest day - I met these three stray Australians sitting by the side of the road... at this point my friend and I had purposely ditched the big group of friends we were with and my friend was off somewhere for the time being. So I sat with the Australians and started chatting with them and they offered me some champagne and then showed me these great costumes they bought... naturally in my state of mind I ask to wear one and they being cool guys agree. For a little while I was walking around the streets of Shibuya in a "Sento-kun" costume by myself until two of the Aussies decided to bust out their costumes and join me in a rilakuma and pikachu costume respectively. We were dancing in the streets and drinking champagne while the third Aussie and my friend watched (and of course various passersby).

I think my Octoberfest will go down in history as the coolest.

At the moment I'm a bit sick so I'm trying to take it easy so I can go out and do that all over again hahaha. I have to say, looking back on my adventures - sometimes I meet the coolest people and do some really silly things. I love the stories.

Yikes! It's been ages since I last updated. What can I say... I'm really lazy. But I guess now I have a lot to say.

1) My birthday night was pretty great. I got to see my closest friends, have a lot of laughs and even more drinks and even a little cat nap in a restaurant. All in all, it was pretty good! Over the course of the three days I celebrated my birthday I had the lights dimmed, cake brought to me and the entire bar singing happy birthday to me FOUR times. Unbelievable and very embarassing haha.

2) Hong Kong. I went for five days in early August and I really enjoyed it. I have to say one of the most memorable moments for me was before I even set foot in Hong Kong. When we were flying into the city it was around 11 p.m. so it was dark and all you could see was the many islands that make up Hong Kong lit up by traffic lights and buildings. The view was stunning.
The hotel we stayed at was really nice and had a great view of Victoria Harbor and Hong Kong island. The only thing is, it was on Kowloon. The travel agent told us that Kowloon was the better island with more things to do but I would have to disagree, I spent most of the time on Hong Kong island except to watch the symphony of lights.
While I was in HK I took a day trip to Macau. That was an experience in and of itself! While it was really great to see the Portuguese architecture and the massive casinos, I found it stressful because of the lack of English haha. I ended up getting lost on a bus for a while and missed my ferry back to HK... it didn't really matter because the ferries run every half an hour.
I spent most of my time there doing what I love best -- eating and shopping. Unfortunately I'm too big to fit most of the clothes there! (Wtf?) I guess when the British left they took their big bones with them? The food was good, my travel companion doesn't like Chinese food so we didn't really get to try too much authentic Chinese food haha but I convinced her once to eat some and I thought it was fantastic. We found a lot of western style restaurants and surprisingly enough a lot of Japanese restaurants with strange Japanese dishes like omuraisu.
That brings up one thing I noticed that I was surprised about - how much Japanese pop culture etc you can find in HK... I always thought the Chinese and Japanese despised each other? Guess not so much.

3) Good byes. One of my closest training buddies has finished his contract and decided to leave Japan so we had a good-bye party for him last Sunday. It was really fun but also really sad. We ended up going to a few bars and mid-way singing karaoke (as we always do), during one of the songs me, Nathan (the one who left) and my other training buddy Javier all got kind of choked up. I guess it hit us that it was the last time we'll probably ever do that together. After Karaoke we went to my favourite bar, the Loft in Kabukicho, and managed to convince the manager/owner to let us play one of the really nice Fender guitars and sing on stage (haha) so Nathan played guitar and we sang together for the bar. Finally, we ended the night true to form with an early morning snack, and since there are no pizza by the slice shops out here we had a little gyu-don instead (beef bowl). Rather than have a long heartfelt good-bye we just kind of said "See ya later." and walked our separate ways. I'm beginning to feel like an orphan or some kid getting left behind at the mall haha. Everyone is leaving! Javier will be leaving in December. Which brings up my last point of this entry...

4) Visit home. I've booked my flight and I couldn't be more excited that I'm going home to visit for eight days at the end of December/early January during Oshogatsu. Unlike my whirlwind visit last March, this one will be planned and I will savour every minute of the time I get to spend with my loved ones.

Lupus - A Restaurant's Name

Wow! I haven't updated for a long time - my apologies! I have no real excuse as to why I haven't updated. Actually, I kind of forgot about my blog. Oops!

Did I mention how the gig went? The first gig went pretty well. While my bandmate and I did make some mistakes on stage, the crowd loved us (granted they were all my students and friends). We couldn't have asked for a better crowd for our first gig. I was so nervous to perform, during one song I completely blanked on the lyrics for a while haha! Our second gig (We had a second gig on July 16th) went well - no mistakes but due to the last minute invitation to play and the time of our performance there were only about five people in the audience. Oh well! We had a lot of fun playing. We dont have any plans to perform again in the near future. I think there is talk of another performance at the first venue in October or something. The second venue asked us to perform every month but we declined - we're too busy for that kind of commitment.

So since Vietnam was cancelled due to an overall lack of interest by Japanese people (the tour needed 10 people to be held and only my friend Ayano and I signed up) we have decided to go to Hong Kong! We decided to opt out of going on a tour and to just sightsee by ourselves. We're going for five days leaving in about a week and a half. My travel companion is a bit nervous about going to Hong Kong so I have assured her I will be better than any tour guide so I have to start finding out where to go and what to see. While we're over there we are going to stop by and say hello to an old high school friend of mine. I haven't seen him in seven years! Wow time flies!

Speaking of time flying - it's my 25th birthday today. I had a nice video chat with my parents and brother, it was really good to see their faces. My family sent me birthday presents too!! I got some lovely clothes which I'm very excited to wear! So for the birthday festivities... tonight I'm keeping it a bit low key with a small birthday dinner with a few students and my coworker (it's her last day today). I took tomorrow off so I plan to relax all day and then head into Tokyo to celebrate with some friends. We're planning to have a photo scavenger hunt which should be very entertaining.
As a side note... people keep saying "congratulations" to me because it's my birthday. It makes me think.... are you congratulating me that I've managed to stay alive this long? Surely it cant be that big of a feat. It makes me think of dogs who get into the garbage and eat some chocolate and accidentally die. "Congratulations, you haven't accidentally killed yourself (yet)".