checking in

Well, a week has passed since we got on the plane for Aus. The flight over was surprisingly easy, I managed to get K to sleep (yay for my ergo!) after the meal was served, at about 11pm, and she slept through until I had to wake her up for landing at 6:45am. how cool is that!! The train ride out to Narita was memorable (K in ergo on my front, 50L backpack full of nappies on my back, lugging along a 23kg suitcase - my fault for choosing a mid-day flight when J couldn't take us to the airport,) but it worked out in the end as we had 3 seats to ourselves for the pretty empty weekday flight, and both K and I were lying down most of the flight over.

Spent the first few days seeing family (nieces and nephews, bro and sis) and just lazing around really as last week was quite hot. I also had a bout of reverse culture shock/why did I want to come home again? feelings over the weekend, but am happy again now, and settled in to our "summer niiiiiiiiiiii-ights"! This week has been more bearable heat wise too.

I even got my first K-free day yesterday, when mum minded K while I went shopping with my friend (and despite my will not to buy anything, I came home with two shirts, nothing fancy, just a tee and a light cammi type thing). It was sooo nice to have some girl time with a friend, without K ( only really my 2nd ever K-free time). Today mum and I went shopping at a local shopping center, where we bought not much, but spent about 4 hours there (most of it trying to get K to sleep in the stroller so we could actually LOOK at something in the shops)

The fam and I went to a local Japanese restaurant tonight, and it was an interesting experience to see how Japanese food is presented here in Australia.

We had:
a tuna and cucumber sushi roll, for K
yakitori - which turned out to be chicken on a skewer, served with a soupy type of sauce
*karaage - which was just like tempura chicken
*takoyaki - very nice!
*yakiniku - which was like a korean bul gorgi dish
*roast duck - at a Japanese restaurant?!? hehe. It was delish, though. in a yummy ginger soy sauce
*sukiyaki calamari (!! what the...?) - it tasted like a chili sauce/chow mein style sauce over veges and calamari
*curry - can't go wrong there
*rice - long grain, just not the same

We enjoyed it, and the meals were huge, so we all rolled out. K was great, sitting up at the high chair for almost 2 hours during dinner - she got given a hello kitty sembei near the end form the lady in the shop! she was SO stoked!

Haven't been online much as pretty worn out after long hot days of family fun, followed by a few days of not being able to access a computer, but hope to blog a few more times over the next few weeks here.

Tomorrow is my nephew's birthday (happy birthday!). In the morning, we are off to see auntie L and uncle J for morning tea. Probably end up going shopping somewhere on the way home, as we ave the kids next week once school breaks up for Xmas, so we have to get all our retail therapy out of the way before they are with us, as a 12year old boy and 7 year old girl and 20month old K will probably not be that much fun to take out shopping.