Sightseeing

The day Emma was born, my mother arrived from the States. She came primarily to help out with the baby, but when you visit a foreign country for the first time, some sightseeing must be done. After I got out of the hospital, we made our plans. (By the way, hospital policies in Japan require that mother's stay for 5 days for a normal birth; 7 if a C-section was required. Given how long I was in labor, and the way they count days, we ended up staying for 6, but more about that later.)


The first place we went was Ritsurin Gardens in Takamatsu. Its a park that had been established by a feudal lord in the 1600s. There are many winding paths, ponds, a tea house, and a folk museum. The fish and turtles love people and will come up to the edge of the ponds to beg for bread. To our surprise, there were a couple of soft shelled turtles in the mix too. I hope you can see him in this picture, his head is more yellow-green and oval shaped then the other turtles.

One soft shell among a bunch of hardbacks.

Marugame Castle is not very far from our church building, so after church ended, we stopped by. The castle is at the top of a very steep hill. At the bottom of the hill is a moat, two large gates, and a courtyard. On the way up the hill are stone walls. At the top are a couple of open courtyards and the castle. Its not very large, but it has a great view. From the top you can see the harbor, the surrounding city, and the mountains. Its a great outpost for spotting incoming raiders.

Mark, Emma, and I in front of the castle.

The last place we went was Shikoku-Mura, an architectural open air museum. Many historic buildings were transferred to Shikoku-Mura for preservation. There are old houses, bridges, storage facilities, lighthouses, boats and more. They also have gardens and an indoor museum (essential to visit because of the air-conditioning, if nothing else).

Because of things like this, we were unable to take our stroller.

We only traveled on days that Mark had off or had a late shift; but, because the Japanese don't think a new mother should do anything for a month after her baby is born, we believe that Emma is the most widely traveled two-week-old on the island.

Introductions

This is Emma Katara. She was born on June 17, 2011.



Some of her favorite things to do are eat, sleep, and make funny faces. She is still getting used to the world, but her parents are helping her with that.

Shoes

Does anyone else remember when they could take their laced-up shoes on and off without undoing the laces? I know I did that when I was a child, and it would annoy my mother. I'm not sure when I stopped doing this, but the ability has apparently left me, and I would love to have it back.

One of the most well known traditions in Japan is the taking off of shoes whenever you enter a building. Thankfully, this is not done everywhere - many businesses don't ask you to do this - but it something you do when you visit someone's house or enter a school. There are some places in the hospital where you cannot wear shoes and some places where you can.

My casual, outdoor shoes are a pair of sneakers, with laces. I can still see my feet, but bending over to tie up my shoes is not an easy thing. As most pregnant women will tell you, bending over to get/do anything off the ground becomes a task of epic proportions. Which is why I wish I could still take my shoes on and off without undoing the laces.

What I've been reading

As you might imagine, there are not a lot of English language books here in Japan. We did get library cards, and the library has maybe 30 books in English, most of which are criticisms on Shakespeare or D.H. Lawrence, but I have been picking up some children's picture books to help me with my Japanese. I'm starting to be able read simple words in katakana, but I don't know what all the words mean.

But I'm not completely cut off my regular supply. My Texas library card is still good and I've been using it to download ebooks and audiobooks. The selection is not as vast as it is in print, but I'll take what I can get. So here's a few titles that I've been reading:

The Temeraire Series by Naomi Novik. Read by Simon Vance. This is a historical fantasy series that takes place during the Napoleonic Wars. There's no magic or elves or anything like that, but there are dragons. In addition to land and sea troops, there are also air troops that ride dragons. The dragons are intelligent and bond to their captains when they hatch. The series follows Temeraire, a rare Chinese Celestial dragon who was captured by the British when he was an egg, and his captain, William Laurence. Simon Vance's voice enhances the story perfectly. He puts just enough emotion in his narration to keep you listening, but doesn't betray the sober, duty-bound British officer persona of the time period.

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. This series has gotten a lot of attention lately because of HBO's adaption, but its been on my to-read list for about a year. I'm about halfway through. Each chapter is from another character's point of view, and I think that http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gify are "good guys". The reader is not allowed to see what the real villains are doing or thinking. At least, that's my theory at the moment. We'll see if that's the same when I finish.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. Read by David LeDoux and Jenna Lamia. This is another one that I'm in the middle of. There are wolves in the forest that appear every winter and disappear every summer. Grace has been fascinated by them since she was 11 years old. Sam is a wolf every winter and a human every summer. He has also been fascinated with Grace. Now in high school, tragedy has allowed them to finally meet, but has also brought anger and fear to the wolves that threatens to destroy them all. The chapters alternate between Grace and Sam, and I'm enjoying Jenna Lamia's narration, but David LeDoux does not sound like a teenage boy to me, so I'm having a harder time paying attention to his chapters.

Adventures in Cooking

What can one do with just a hot plate and a rice cooker? This is a question that been I've been faced with since we've moved to Japan. (Not that I've been doing a lot in the kitchen - Mark loves to cook and I'm not one to tell him he can't; I'm more for baking anyway.) Apparently you can do a lot.

Saturday night was game night with some friends, and game night means goodies. We made a quick stove-top fudge. Marshmallows work just as well as marshmallow cream.

Sunday we had a potluck and we brought BLT pasta salad, which was fabulous.

Monday we made onigiri, which at its most basic, is a rice ball. You can put other things in it, bits of fish or chicken, or veggies, or whatever else you can think of, and wrap it seaweed to make it more exciting.


Yesterday we tried a special regional dish called okonomiyaki. Its sort of like a pancake with cabbage and meat or noodles in it, topped with a BBQ-like sauce and mayonnaise. People put mayonnaise on a lot of things here. Its a very popular condiment. I forgot to take a picture of this, but here's what its suppose to look like. Ours were not that nice looking.


And because Mexican food is extremely hard to come by here, I made tortillas.
Not bad for my first time, eh? I'm sure I'll be making this again, and possibly turning them into chips.

On the ground

Well, here I am at almost 36 weeks; just over 32 days to go until my due date. If I'm anything like the rest of the women in my family, I'll be early though.

All in all, I'd say this has been a pretty easy pregnancy. I haven't had any morning sickness and only some lightheaded-ness and occasional swelling in my feet. Most people haven't even noticed that I am pregnant, until now. Now I'm getting people patting my belly, asking if I'm tired and need to rest, and giving me extra pillows to sit on. Its all very strange, especially the pats on my belly.

The only major difficulty I'm having is getting up and down out of our couch. Japanese furniture is all very low to the ground. The couch is probably 8 inches off the floor, and I either fall into it or kneel down on the floor and roll myself up into it. I feel huge and awkward and ungainly whenever I do this. If we had carpet, I probably would probably just stay on the floor.

What we've been doing

The Internet is alive and well again in our apartment, so I thought I would take a moment and tell you all what we've been for the past few weeks.

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.