The last couple weeks have begun the summer festival season here.  The week before last we went to a local Bon Odori Festival.  The Bon Odoris are usually very small as they’re put on within the neighborhood,  Unfortunately our neighborhood doesnt sponsor one,  but there are about 3 that go on within 10 minutes walk of us.  We got Yosei all dressed up in his jinbei to go to the festival, and only after we got there did I realize I had forgotten the camera ><  (Actually, we had our first family barbecue by the river the next day and I forgot the camera then too)

    But this last weekend we went to the very big Hamura City Summer Festival.  It’s a little bit further away so we went by bicycle.  This time I remembered to bring the camera too.    We ate some yummy food and watched some performances and just had a fun time (even though some of the dancers scared Yosei, it was the masks).

Yosei in his beetle bug jinbei watching a wadaiko (Japanese drum) performance

Papa and Yosei at the festival

Feel free to enjoy some vids I took at the festival as well ^^

Festival Music

Taiko Performance

Taiko 2

About a year ago my old host mother gave us her son’s old Rody hoppy horse.  We were pretty happy to recieve it since brand new cones are pretty expensive.  Thing was it had been very well used.  So well in fact that her son had even taken blue pen and drawn allllllllllll over the bright yellow horse.  Being that Yosei’s my first  I’ dkind of like him to mess up his own toys instead of having already messed up toys, so I decided to repaint it Rody. 

I asked my lil’ sis if she could come up with a design; she’s a tattoo artist and is pretty good at that sort of thing.  She came up with a beautiful pirate ship with two swallows holding banners with Yosei’s name and birthday written on them.  Unfortunately  it was too intracate a design for the size I had to reduce it to.  So I ended up taking the swallow with the name banner, enlarging it a putting it on Rody’s rump, and then coming up with my own design for the chest.  It took me nearly a year to finish (because I’m a slacker) but I finally finished the whole thing today!!

It’s painted all by hand in acrylics, with a sparkly topcoat of glitter mixed in gel medium and the gone over in high gloss acrylic varnish.

 

The finished horse

My own design,  I wanted to put a banner with Yosei’s b-day on it underneath, but I thought that might seem kind of morbid :/

The swallow my sis designed

And most important of all, Yosei enjoying his new hoppy horse ^^

So in HKO SEA  I had this idea in my head for quite some time  and thanks to Cyndle donating her farm and time I was able to complete this rather piratey strawberry skull design

 

One of my most favorite drinks ever in milk tea, and today when I was at the convenience store  I happened upon possibly the cutest milk tea ever!  Milkitty milk tea.  I’m sure its like alimited time special edition thing so of course i had to buy it, take its picture and post on my sanrio blog.

Anyone else agree?  Cutest drink ever?

So for a while now there has been something about our bath that has been bugging me. Everytime I’m in there be it for a shower or bath, no matter how long or short a time period always right around the time I start to think its about time to get out one of the lights in the bath flicks off, and doesnt come back on until your are making an effort to exit.  It’s been going on for a few months now, so last night I joked with my husband ‘Hey you think there’s a ghost in the bathroom or something.’  To which he replies (quite casually) ‘Oh yeah there is, didnt you know that?  They especially come out in the summer towards places with water to cool off.  Infact the realtor told me that they were aware that the ghost of a previous owner often appears in the bath, not to do anything bad they just live there.  So when the lights flick off that’s the ghost telling you your times about up and they’d like you to leave.’  

All I can say is …(O.o)   Honestly I don’t know whether to believe him or not, he’s very good at making up convincing stories  but most of the time I know whether he’s BSing me or not.  Like the time he made up a story about how he left sorry that Yosei was a bald baby so he ordered him a blue mohawk toupee, he even went into great deal about the phone conversation and the entire thing was just made up on the spot while he were in the car (he’s a very good story teller ^^). The thing with the lights though makes it really hard this time to tell if he’s messing with me.  (><)

I dunno I’m kinda creeped out to go in the bath now,  but really in the middle of summer a girl’s gotta shower at least once or twice a day…

 Anyhow, just felt like getting that out,  now it’s time to take Yosei to the doc for a check-up,  think I’m going to ask for a special look at his right ear.  When he first got home he had a horrible infection in that ear, and lately when I clean it he acts like its painful.  The joys of being a mom…

Yep,  he’s that age already, potty training time…

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from my old host mother asking if we could use a training potty, and a tricycle among other things.  Her kids have outgrown them  and she just cant bear to throw things like that away.  And with the cost of buying all those things brand new  as compared to the gas money it would take to just drive down there and get them for free  of course we said yes.

So now Yosei has a super cool Thomas the Tank Engine training potty.   We’ve been at the training for 4 days now,  and while he doesnt understand why he has to sit his nakey bottom on the seat with a hole in it, he knows it makes him happy when clap for him after he’s managed to use it ^^;

I’m on my second bottle of black vinegar, this time its blueberry flavored, and I’m totally addicted.  Especially after my husband told me that if you add a teaspoon of sugar and mix with milk instead of water  you get a super yummy yogurt type drink.  Needless to say I’ve been going through milk like crazy. 

Below we have a picture of the Thomas potty…

Normally I love the healthcare system here.  Medical bills are 70% covered and kids are free until the age of 6, and all you need is health insurance,  either private or government provided.  The catch here is that health insurance is mandatory  and if you go to the doc and dont have it  then you have to pay 150% of the bill, yup not just 100% but 150%.   So back at the end of December my husband got laid off,  he found a new job right away,  but they had a 3 month trial period  during which time he would be paid incredibly low wages and not be allowed to enter into their health insurance.  Because of the low pay we couldn’t afford the govt. insurance, but since Yosei is a preemie  he needed once amonth check ups  and shots called Synagis  to help prevent a disease called RSV,  which can be deadly to preemies.  

My husband ended up leaving that job after 3 months anyways,  and ended up getting a new job in May,  fortunately because we have a baby the boss agreed to let us on the health insurance instead of make us wait until August. 

So once we got our cards  I took them to the hospital in the hopes that we might be covered for the previous visits… Well that didn’t happen, and they said they didn’t know the exact amount  but the bill would probably end up being something like $2,500. A lot of money  but  we’d be able to manage it somehow I thought.  Then I got the phonecall,  they calculated everything and it wasn’t $2500  it was $7000><  

Fortunately there was a way out of this, and it was to go to the city hall and register for government health insurance for the 4 months that we weren’t covered.  It’ll end up costing about $1700 for those 4 months  but still compared to $7000 I think we can handle it.

So lately I’ve been trying this super popular beauty treatment here…drinking vinegar :P  Not just any vinegar but kurozu (black vinegar)  This type of vinegar is supposed to be very healthy  and take years to make.  Its become so popular that they’ve started adding flavors to it to make it more pleasant to drink.  I’ve been drinking cassis & blueberry flavor and ume & honey flavor.  Doesn’t taste bad,  supposed to be good for your skin, and if there’s any truth to a new medical study they did here  it can help with weight loss also  (something I desperately need).  Thing is I’m a total slacker when it comes to keeping up stuff like this, so we’ll see how long it lasts…  I’m such a sucker for Japanese beauty/diet gimmicks (-_-;)

So  today  me an Yos took a bike ride up to a clothing store called Shimamura.  They’ve been getting pretty popular lately because thay’re both cheap and fashionable.  And while looking around in the kids section  I found the greatest shirt ever on sale for $5.

 

It’s still a little big for the littlest pirate,  but at that price  how could I resist?  And besides he’ll grow into it soon.  Incase you have trouble reading it  it says ‘Ahoy matee! How be ye today?’

So unfortnately, as all babies do, Yosei is gettin a bit bigger and heavier and its getting harder and harder to lug him around in the baby sling and walk to the grocery store and home with my arms loaded down with groceries.  On days when I have lots of shopping to do I usually take the stroller along and use it as a baggage cart,  but still the 7kg baby on my shoulders is really starting to wear me down.  So on Saturday I took some money I had saved up  and we went and bought me a new bicycle.  A very nice electric assist bicycle. Since we live at the bottom of a very steep hill, and theres more than a few hills in the area anyways I figured the electric assist is worth the extra few thousand yen (80,300 yen to be exact, roughly $803). 

So now I had my bicycle  but the baby seat was another matter.  There’s two types typically used here,  ones that mount on the back, and ones that mount to the handlebars.  The back ones to me are just yuck,  for one you can’t see behind you; and two thanks to a horror story my husband told me about the time he stuck his foot in the spokes (he still has the scars on his heel from it).  But then the kind that mount to the handlebars…  As anybody who has loaded down their handlebars with groceries and stuff it throws off your balance quite a bit.  Now replace groceries with squirmy child and it just adds to the problem.    Anyhow, did some research and found this one brand of seat that you mount between yourself and the handlebars.  Seems nice, safe, easy to use, and just happened to be for sale on amazon japan.  So I ordered that along with a lovely Yosei sized helmet.

They arrived today, and I’ll tell ya the seat installation was a lot harder than they made it out to be.  The mounting bar all that was easy enough.  Problem lies in the style of handlebars most Japanese bikes have and the design of the safety pad on the front of the seat.  Essentially the pad was resting in a position on the handlebars that was making it impossible to attach the seat to the mounting bar.  So industrious me, determined not to give up (I’d spent $130 on the seat, and if you open a product and return it amazon will only give you a %10 refund, hence the determination) I proceeded to make a few modifications on the safety pad.  Actually I took a box cutter and started cutting away some of the plastic to make it smaller.  The thing is covered by a fabric pad  so really making the plastic part a little smaller really made no difference. 

So nearly $1000 later and 3 hours of baby seat assembly time  and this is my end result

 

 So we took a test run,  up to the child welfare center to get Yosei’s polio vaccine, and then to the grocery.  And I have to say it’s a great seat  no affect on the balance or the way I pedal, and I can keep an eye on the kiddo in front of me.  He wasnt too sure about it at first,  but by the time we got home and I took this pic he was having a blast!

It’s been exactly one year since Yosei was released from the NICU and able to come home for the first time.  He spent 3 long months in the hospital. 

So today I went to Fujiya and bought a strawberry shortcake and got some strawberry ice cream at the grocery store so we could celebrate. 

This kid has come a long way since we first got him home.  He would only drink from bottles because he was just still to tiny to nurse properly.  He had just reached 2500grams (5lbs) a few days before hecame home, which is the minimum weight the required for babies to be allowed home. The newborn size diapers we had at home actually came up to his armpits.  He would often forget to breathe during feeding time so I had to watch his color carefully  and if his lips started to look blueish had to pat him on the back or blow in his face a little to remind him to breathe.  He also had day a night all mixed up,  this was because in the hospital they never turned the lights off (except when eye tests were being performed)  so he’d never had a day and night cycle.  So after 3 months to suddenly have night come about I think was very unnerving to him, or he associated darkness with the painful eye tests that they put him through 3 times a week.  Either way he would be up and crying from about 11pm to 5am  and there was nothing I could do about it for a very long time.  He’s fine now,  but that first month of easing him into it was exhausting.

So here, in honor of today, is a picture of Yosei the day we brought him home