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!

Marverous - Name of a bar in Fussa

After a month hiatus, I'm back blogging.

What have I been doing you ask? Nothing particularly special. In the past month I have:
-Worked, worked and worked. I was given the opportunity to teach some silly classes... French, darts and bar. No, I do not speak French.
-Taken a day off and got lost in Gunma on said day off. I ate a horrifying kaiseki dinner at the hotel in Gunma which included fish kidneys and clams. I'm still shuddering about this. The dinner had good points too... like salad, wild boar and some unidentified fish. Breakfast at the hotel was much of the same. I also went to an onsen where I could watch the snowfall. I went to a farm (which I later discovered was intended for five year olds) and saw some goats and sheep. I got lost on the way home because I foolishly got off the train to pee (turns out the train had a bathroom) and found myself stuck in darkest Saitama for an entire hour and a half with Take. We made some friends with the locals and wandered around. They laughed when we asked where we could find a restaurant haha.
- Caught up with some friends... Mainly drinking around my area and singing Karaoke, there was also some darts and purikura.
- Had an evening out with my co-workers and got to know them personally a bit better. We ended up drinking until 5 am... unfortunately most of them were drunk after the first.

What's on tbe books for the next little while? A friend of mine from Scotland is coming in for a few weeks to visit so I'm really looking forward to that. I'm celebrating a friend's birthday and successful surgery next weekend. I'm teaching English to the masses. That's about it. Glamorous life, I know. :)

Your Mother is Developer - a t-shirt

So! I finally have internet! What a gruelling ordeal that was! Took ages and ages.

But rest assured I am alive and relatively healthy! After my birthday weekend I think my health took a major beating! My students took me out after class on Saturday and we proceeded to drink for a good five or six hours... maybe longer. They were all really sweet and pitched in to buy me a traditional Japanese fan (I'm always bitching about how hot it is here hahah)and they gave me a champagne toast and everything. It was really sweet!
On Sunday I drunkenly welcomed NTT into my home to install internet which was entertaining... and then I went to Yoyogi park to see some teachers and continue drinking. It takes a lot out of you -- drinking in 35 degree heat. I went to bed at 10 that night and spent the next day lounging around. It was a very nice birthday weekend. My one friend gave me a 1.8 litre bottle of Japanese sake... I named it Koshi and it lives in my fridge. I'm far too scared to open it.

Let's get on to the goods now!! Pictures of my travels!

The top picture is of the shrine in Omiya where I was at first.
The second is of a street in Omiya.
The third is of Ueno (one of the wards in Tokyo)during training a bunch of us went there and explored a bit, had some traditional izakaya food... and beer. :)
The fourth is of the traditional izakaya food - apparently when you eat the tiny squids they explode all their juices and gunk in your mouth. I did not try them.
The fifth is of Hibiya Park (also in Tokyo) we went on the search for Oktoberfest but apparently we missed it by one day. Shucks!
The sixth is of a building in Roppongi - the ward where all the foreigners go. I had to check it out!!
--> Blogger has somehow put them in reverse... the building in Roppongi is top right and Hibiya park is top left and then it goes down in reverse from there! My apologies I will hopefully figure this out sometime!
So those are all the pics I'm going to upload for now... I have plenty more but I need to put them onto my computer and all that jazz... I hope you enjoyed them!

Greetings!

Hi! So it`s been a few days since I last posted. There hasn`t been too much going on as of late. A lot of training. Eight to nine hours a day of very intense training, practice and what not. So needless to say my mind is full and hazy with trying to wrap my mind around being a good teacher. I`ve had good feed back from the trainers. I can`t say I`m fully confident just yet but they are doing a great job with giving as much advice as possible. I think it will all come full circle once I`m at the school and thrown into the mix. Happy birthday @Dark Energy :) Love!