We're baaack...

So the trip to Tokyo was fantastic, not least of all because I successfully spent four days with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law without spilling a very big secret. When we met up with Zack in Tokyo, we got to tell them together (and his Dad, over the phone) that I'm pregnant! It was a lot of fun to share. And now that the family has all been notified, I'm sharing with the world. Our first child is due on March 3rd, which is girl's day in Japan. (I know I told some people it was February, but after my doctor's appointment, they adjusted the date to match how big the baby is.) We're all super excited, of course.
The first question everyone asks is how am I feeling, and before the Tokyo trip my answer was always "Tired and hungry, but fine." I had a couple days on the trip where hungry was replaced by "unable to eat." But so far I've really been feeling pretty good. I've become a much pickier eater in the last week or so, but I'm still relatively functional. I am however, considering adding an afternoon nap to my schedule now that my family has left and I'm not a tour guide.
It was my intention to post the ultrasound pictures, but I've changed my mind for two reasons: 1) Honestly, it doesn't look like anything at all, unless you're an expert ultrasound reader. 2) We had a storm come through a few nights ago, and it knocked out the internet at my house, so I'm doing all my internet stuff (for now) at base. Yesterday was a Japanese holiday, so I couldn't do anything about it until today, and then this morning is busy, so I'll be heading over to get someone to come fix it, and hopefully I'll be back at home in a few days. Instead of an ultrasound picture, I'll post a nifty little ticker thing I stole from Riss.
So pictures of Tokyo are soon to come. And of course we'll keep you posted on the baby stuff.

One minor crisis averted...

I swear the minute Zack leaves things around here go to pieces. Or may be they don't, but I just notice the loss of someone to worry at. Either way, things have gone a little crazy here in the last week or so. For one thing, I've started a new class for my degree. It's the last one in a series that is essentially designed for us to create these things called Action Research Projects. It's what we do instead of writing a thesis. We pick a problem we notice at our work setting, research solutions, and then pick one to try out, sort of, except we're not required to actually try it out if we can't for whatever reason (in my case because I'm not teaching enough classes). Instead we make up data and go through the motions of writing the 30ish page report. At first, I thought this final class wouldn't be nearly as bad as the last one (which was a nightmare that I coincidentally went through the last time Zack left). For one thing, this time we only have one more chapter left to write, whereas last time we had four chapters to write in the same amount of time. Also, upon first glance, the teacher seemed pretty cool. Now, though, I have my doubts. We had to resubmit our first four chapters and he's torn all the other students' papers to shreds and hasn't given me any feedback at all (we're having technical difficulty). So I'm living in absolute terror of what he'll have to say.
To complicate matters further, I'll be out of town for a solid week of this class sightseeing with my in-laws. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally excited about the trip and seeing them, but it will make editing my paper a bit more complicated. Plus there's the small matter of cleaning the house and packing and all that, which brings me to the minor crisis.
It occurred to me Sunday (when the kennel is closed) that I hadn't reserved a kennel space for Dory while I'm gone (I was hoping Zack would be home) at the kennel on base. So Monday I went in to get my space, and of course they're all booked up. I should have expected this since American school is out and it's prime traveling time for Navy-folk (many of the other ships just got home, so people are going on vacation). The kennel people gave me names and numbers for three Japanese kennels and wished me luck, and I was not looking forward to calling them myself and trying to sort out the details in broken Janglish. Instead, I planned to take the numbers to my Japanese class tonight and get my tutor to translate for me.
Then on the way to class I passed a dog-related store, just like I do every week, and it occurred to me that there are also dogs in there every week, and that it's nice to know where to take the dog when you're ready to leave on vacation. So I walked in and successfully asked them if they have kennel services. (This was a major success for me.) They do, but only for small dogs (which is good since Dory's nice and small). Not only do they have the services, they cost 10ish dollars less per day than the kennel on base. All the kennel spaces were visible from the front desk, and everything looked pretty good, so I successfully booked Dory's stay at a kennel not two blocks from my house without using English or a translator. I'm very proud of myself.
So that's one issue down, two or three hundred more to sort out. I can do this...

The things I remember...

Back when we were little, my sister Emily and I took Suzuki Piano Lessons. I could spend days talking about the many and conflicted feelings I have about piano and suzuki, but we'll skip that part, and get to the point. Suzuki is a method by which kids learn songs by hearing them over and over and over rather than by reading music. It's designed for kids too young to read music. As a result, Emily and I listened to a TON of classical music as kids. Either to make the music more memorable or more interesting for small children, a lot of the songs had words attached to the melodies that were of interest to small children. For example, there was a song about pizza, one about a horse named Flicka, one about a goose that was dead and going to be made into a feather pillow, you get the idea.
So the other day I was hanging out in my classroom with Tomoko (the woman who helps run JAFCO) and she was going through some of her English supplies and we were discussing what was and wasn't usable at this point. She had a CD of music with kids words that she was going through and she asked me if I knew a song. She said the melody was German, but there were English and Japanese words to it, but she only had the Japanese. She hummed a bar. Instantly the words came to my head "Buzz Buzz Buzz, goes the bumblebee. Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz Buzz. Buzz Buzz Buzz goes the bumblebee." It was a Suzuki song sure enough. The Japanese words as it turns out, translate "Buzz Buzz Buzz. The Bee flies." followed by more buzzing. Only for them, Bon is the sound of a bee flying instead of Buzz.
I was amused that I could still remember the melody and words to a song that I listened to when I was all of four years old (may be five?), so I went back through my memory looking for other songs that came up. Emily is much better at this than I am, but I was amazed at how many I could still bring up. There were the ones from the first paragraph as well as several others. I think it's weird the things we remember.

Fan Dance

After our college friends left, we had exactly three days to clean up and reset before Zack's bestest friends since forever arrived. During their stay, I had the chance to go to another International Ladies Club event. The cultural show for the event was a fan dance, and the guys kindly agreed to find their own lunch one day so I could go and check it out.
The fan dance turned out to be three fan dances, all performed by foreigners who are taking classes while they're here in Japan. The first dance was for men and performed by a guy from Norway. He was very nervous, but very good. In addition to twirling fans, he had a staff that he twirled around, and his was probably the most energic of the dances.

Then came a young American girl who performed a dance that I presume is in a style meant for women. She also did very well. Her dance was much more subdued, but very pretty.

Finally, two girls from... okay yeah I forgot where they're from, but they performed another version of a fan dance which was more playful in tone. These two girls seemed the least nervous and they were also very fun to watch.

So a good time was had by all, and I'm glad I went. The guys used their free time to discover a wonderful restaurant that used to be called Hokka Hokka Tei, but for legal reasons is now called Hotto Motto. It's their new favorite, so I would say it was a good day for all of us.

BioPark

Ever since I began substitute teaching, I've been hearing about the biopark. All the elementary classes take field trips to see it. The BioPark is a zoo, but all the animals are in relatively natural habitats, and many of them can be fed/touched. With our college friends, I had a chance to go and check it out first hand. Here's a sampling of what we saw:




There was a green house FULL of orchids, butterflies and...





... other interesting animals.... Bats are much nicer when they're not in my house.





There was a lovely habitat for prarie dogs in the BioPark, and after we had admired them and taken a few pictures, we walked on from it. Not long after we ran into this guy:





He was also spotted by one of the park employees, who rolled her eyes and got on her radio when she saw him. Soon she and another employee were herding him safely back into his habitat. It appeared that this was a somewhat regular occurance. Interesting stuff...

Not long after we saw the runaway, we stumbled upon the racoon enclosure. The biopark does not, apparently, take any chances at the racoons running away. Their space was enclosed entirely in glass. However, there was a space where two overlapping pieces of glass were left with a gap so that visitors could feed the racoons. When we walked by, all the little buggers crowded up to the glass, anxiously watching for food to drop through this gap, so we decided to feed them. They were so determined to get food that some of them have learned to do this:

Apparently they figure they've got better odds of getting the food as it drops if their paws are actually in the shoot. It almost never worked out for them, but I have to give them credit for trying.

My personal favorite part of the BioPark is the monkey enclosure. Some of the monkeys live on islands, like in zoos in the states, and there are slingshots visitors can use to feed them, but there is also a section where visitors can walk right through a monkey habitat and feed the monkeys right out of their hands. That's where this guy lives:

The monkeys followed us, watching intently to see if we'd go get them some food from the machine, but I have a friend who was recently bit by a monkey there (she's fine, and the doctor says she has nothing to worry about), and I didn't really feel like taking any chances, so we just took our pictures and went on our merry way.
So the BioPark turned out to be everything the kindergarteners claimed it was. There were lots of cool animals, you could feed and touch them, and they were ever so much fun to watch. I'm glad I got a chance to check it out.

99 Islands

In May, we had a visit from a few good college friends. I spent the better part of two weeks wandering around showing them everything I'd done since we got here. In addition to that which I had seen before, I did a few new things with them. One of those new things was a boat ride around the 99 Islands, a scenic area in Sasebo. here's some of what we saw:


Also on the ship were some of my lovely students from the junior college. :-)


It was an hour long trip and we enjoyed it immensely. More pictures to come shortly...

May in Review Part 1

So this month has flown by what with visitors and work and more visitors and more work and school. Here's a quick review of some of the more interesting bits.


In the time between when my parents left and our next group of visitors came by, I went to an ILC (Interenational Lady's Club) event where we visited a shrine in Sasebo that is drowning in Wisteria:



Then it was Golden Week (a series of Japanese Holidays that lead the natives to take a week off and have major sales), so Zack and I went to Arita for China shopping. This year we brought a camera, so imagine miles and miles of this:



Golden Week includes a day called either Boy's Day or Children's Day depending on how politically correct the speaker is. The park by our house had a little party in honor of kids that day:



Then there was the change of command ceremony for the ship...

Followed immediately by a renewal of vows ceremony for the new CO, which meant even more men in choker white uniforms...

And that was all before the second week of May was over! After that our friends Emily and Michael arrived, and we did a bunch of sight seeing... more pictures to follow...