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.