We had our first doctor's appointment and we have an English speaking doctor (yeah!). None of the nurses speak English, but with a lot of gestures, we can figure out what they mean. Besides, they do pretty much the same thing that the nurses in the US did. They take my blood pressure, weigh me, and have me pee in a cup, then tell me to wait for the doctor.
The hospital is pretty nice. Everything and everyone is in white though. It makes it think it must be hard to keep clean. In the room with the ultrasound machine, there is a big, flat-screen TV hanging from ceiling for mothers to watch the scan and see their baby's vitals. Its much nicer then the little 4"x4" screen that our doctor in Texas had.
We've also been traveling and seeing some of the sights. In Kan'onji there is a giant coin made out of sand. We don't know why its there, but it seems to be the town symbol. Every year the community gets together to clean it up. They weed it and shovel and rake the sand back into nice sharp lines. We found when they were doing it and went and helped.
There are shrines and temples everywhere. The island we live on, Shikoku, is famous for the 88 temple pilgrimage. There was a Buddhist monk named Kūkai who founded them and if you visit all of them in a year something good is suppose to happen to you. So far, we have visited one, Zentsu-ji; but, it has sand imported from all the other temples, so if you visit it, you can say you have visited all of them. Its also Kūkai's birthplace and there are statues of all 500 of his reincarnations surrounding the grounds.
We've seen a couple of other Shinto shrines in parks too. They don't have big stories surrounding them though. Shrines get built in places where something is considered holy, or invokes awe. There seems to be a lot of them on the mountains.
I love the little carvings and ornaments on the shrines.
And finally, I've finished knitting a baby blanket for Emma.
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