a bit of blogging

Still don't know if I feel ready to blog again, but since J is putting K to sleep (so that I could actually have a relaxing bath at night time - I usually have a morning 2sec shower!!) I seem to have a few spare minutes.

It is weird - I feel like there are so many things I want to blog about, but whenever I think of sitting down, I end up wanting only to write about what we are having for dinner!! So instead of turning this blog into a foodblog, I have dedicated a-whole-'nother blog to that! Not really sure why, but I have a feeling that I will probably be blogging there rather than here for a while, but I am sure that when I feel the inclination to blog again here, I guess I will come back!

Anyway, a quick round up of things I have been meaning to blog:

*our trip home and all the fun things we did. It was soooo good to catch up with friends that I haven't seen for years - a friend on jet with me, friend from primary school now living in UK and a friend from when I was on exchange. I am also feeling very lucky to have such great friends back in Bris who always make time to see me when I am in town. Even though we hardly ever speak while I am here, it still feels normal to catch up with them from where we left off the last time!

*my feeling like tourist in my own country.
For a while when I found myself not knowing how to act at the checkout, and fumbling with all the huge coins and plastic notes - why does Australia need so many denominations?? I guess this time I had a bit of a bad case of reverse culture shock or something like that. Perhaps it was subconscious knocking of Australia, you know, especially when right after just having bought a place here in Japan.

*observations of being at home and seeing so many friends and friends of friends now (finally, as in there is such a baby boom right now, everyone in their thirties is going all at once for the baby-rush) with kids and the kind of things they talked about. I thought it was really sad when friend went to nurse her 9 week old in a public toilet while we were out at a restaurant for brunch....literally, she was sitting on the toilet seat. Now, I understand that I had issues for the first few months with breastfeeding in front of others, and was no where near smooth at the whole whipping the boobie out, aiming it at K's mouth (teasing her with it for a while at the same time to get her interested) and then keeping it in there, but as much as I fumbled under the nursing cape (and never really "enjoyed" bf like some people say they do), I never felt that I had to do it out of other people's view. I felt sad for her. She also said that some other new mothers around her where trying to tell her that she should put her baby into the nursery room by herself already, or else she would get separation issues. The baby is 9 weeks old, sheesh!! Another friend of a friend was saying how since her baby was born, she has put it on a tight schedule - feeding baby on HER(the mum's) schedule, etc. Perhaps it was just people I happened to be around this time, but I found people to be very "detached"...I guess I am more leaning towards attachment parenting in some ways, if only because of space constrictions in Japanese apartments which sort of naturally lead to co-sleeping, and I so love my ergo and baby wearing! I understand each to their own, and am not knocking their way of doing things, but it sort of re-inforced in my mind that even though Japan sucks in a lot of ways, I think their attitude towards early parenting leans towards attachment parenting styles too, and I am thankful that I got to experience that with K, as I wonder (doubt) if I would have even been exposed to that sort of thinking if we had her in Aus?? hhmmmmm.

*coming back and slowly getting the house in order
We bought a tv stand, display cabinet and side-board type low display cabinet for the living room from Ikea on Sunday night - J spent a few nights putting it all together. The mega-huge 46inch TV sits on top of it, taking pride of place, while we all sit as far away as possible on the other side of the room (as I say, as far as possible in a japanese size house!) so that we dont go cross-eyed! Although, must admit that after a few days, the TV doesn't feel so overbearingly big anymore.

*typhoons.
The winds and rain hit last night, and seemed to petter out by morning, but I drove J to work just in case the trains were all stuffed up....turns out they stopped not long after he should have gotten on, so it was better in the end to have driven home (and it only took 30mins to drive there, 15mins home!). All morning with the wind howling, I was thinking back to when I was in Beppu and a typhoon would come and us contract workers would get the day off work when it was strong wind warnings. I used to think it was so wrong though, sitting on my balcony watching the primary school kids trudge off to school, while we got the day off (only because the uni was on the top of a freakin' mountain and it had its own weather patterns!!). Usually got over my guilt in time to go shopping and long lunching with workmates though. Loved those wine and pasta lunches!!

Tomorrow is Friday and I have more random stuff to do like go to bank (gotta find one around here first) and city hall so I guess another morning will be gone with that. Am gonna walk to next closest station, should take about 20mins and it is all down a slight hill (am gonna catch the train back!). Hoping to make it a bit of an adventure and find new shops of use in the future. At least it should be fine, for the first time almost since I got back, so it is perfect timing for a bit of 冒険。