baby and karaoke

I was looking at this picture more closely and I realized that the baby looks just like Rob when he is sleeping. Another funny thing is that the doctor and the nurses were impressed by the baby's nose...a gaijin hana-foreigners nose-which is highly desirable here. Also when the doctor was trying to take this picture the baby kept sticking his tongue out. It is amazing how much care they take of us here. They did a complete "baby check" where she checked all of his organs, limbs, digits and anything else you can imagine that they can see on an ultrasound. It was amazing to see how developed the baby is already.
After the baby visit and a nap we went to karaoke with Justin and Sarah, William and Samantha and Kelsey. Rob brought his sax along just in case anyone wanted him to play along with them. It was lots of fun, and Rob enjoyed it alot.


We had the "blacklight room" so Colette at first was scared to go in but eventually she calmed down and enjoyed the show. Here she is sitting with Samantha. Colette knows that everyone is willing to play with her so she takes full advantage and loves it when there are other people around.






The videos that are the background for the words on the tv are hilarious. Sometimes the videos kind of tried to go along with the song and sometimes they were completely random. Justin and Sarah are singing their hearts out in this picture and Colette was mostly just watching the crazy videos. I don't know if she entirely grasped that we were singing the songs until the end and even then I am not sure she understood why. We decided that karaoke in japan is the only way to do it and we will take whoever comes to japan to visit to sing karaoke. It was great fun.

It's a boy! Es varon! Eh homem! Otoko no ko!

We went to the doctor today for the ultrasound, and there it was, pretty obvious. Last time I thought I saw a little unit but it might have been the umbilical cord, but this week it was pretty clear, there was no denying the baby's gender.
We'll post more later right now we're off in a flurry to karaoke!

Grandma and Grandpa . . .

I just asked Colette if she's excited for Grandma and Grandpa to come, she said, "Bammah bambah." We're excited for you to come, along with Chris.

taking bets...

Monday is the fateful appointment where we learn the gender of our made-in-Japan-baby and we are really excited. We have been reviewing the tape, sitting on forks and spoons (a brazilian tradition) and judging my belly's roundness all in hopes to guess before our doctor tells us for sure. My friend Cat thinks it is a boy and our brazilian friends think it is a boy and Rob was convinced it was a boy because of the ultrasound videos but I think it was the umbilical cord and not the....other thing. So now he thinks it is a girl. Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone else had an inkling.
So the first picture is of my belly as of today, next Colette with her "ainy", we think she is trying to say raining, that is what she calls her umbrella. There is a tiny tiny playground by our house with a slide (come to think of it I think that is the only playground equipment there except for a pullup bar). Colette tried to climb up the steep steps by herself and then slide down, until she discovered that she could get her daddy to walk her up the slide instead. She went up and down about 20 times.
I had thought of a funny anecdote about japan but I forgot it already, oh well maybe next time.

Girl or boy?

Hi,
Just a quick note about our doctor's visit on Monday. Not only did the doctor put aside our concerns about Nicolle's cervix length (her cervix measured more than it has the past three visits; we think Nicolle just has a short cervix naturally); the doctor also told us she won't let us know the sex of the baby until after 20 weeks, the cutoff date for an abortion in Japan. This isn't China with its one child policy; nevertheless, our doctor said that a small number of people here might still abort a female fetus if they find out its gender before the 20 week deadline. I don't mind waiting until the next visit to find out. I really like our doctor.

Something old and something new

We had a fun filled day off this Monday, with a bit of exploring and lots of videos and pictures here are a few of them:
the first one is outside of one of our favorite second hand stores, for some reason they have a live owl outside by the door.
Next we were making fajitas for the missionaries and Steve so Colette was "helping" me make the tortillas. Then there is Colette playing at the doctors office while we wait to be called in for the ultrasound. The little kitchen is pretty cool, it makes noises and lights up and has little ovens. We saw it at the store and it was about $60 so we decided against getting it for Colette. She will just have to settle for 15 minutes every two weeks when we have doctors visits.
Finally we went to a park after the doctors and had lots of fun. The video is of her on the slide. The sun was in her eyes so she was making funny faces the whole time but she had lots of fun.

Working hard, playing harder

Colette is happy most of the time, especially when the three of us go out somewhere together.
Colette loves to sit on her pony.
Poor little squashed pony.
Last week we ate at our favorite little Indian restaurant here in Marugame.
Yummy! the food looks ok too . .. heh heh.
This week we worked hard, and thanks to modern medicine my cold was just a hiss and a byword. It's been really cold here, so we don't go out much.
I played at a bridal fair here in a neighboring town. They had models pretend they were getting married, (they even kissed!) and I played some Disney favorites for the crowd of brides-and-grooms-to-be, with a few parents mixed in; probably the ones that'd be paying for the "Western Saxophone Disney Extravaganza" wedding.
Our small branch has been meeting in the same building (office building, not so churchy) for the past 33 years. In March, attendance will be counted to see if we deserve a new chapel, they already have the land, it's just up to us to get enough people there each week. Our branch president has been planning a big program in March to get more people out to church. I made the mistake of opening my mouth suggesting something different for this program, and now I'm in charge of the whole thing. That's how things work in a volunteer organization, right?
Tomorrow we have another checkup for Nicolle and the new baby, hopefully we'll be able to find out if it's a boy or a girl.
Well we're making dinner for people so gotta go. We'll post the latest videos soon as well.

One more video

Here is one more video we took last night. Colette starts nursery this Sunday and apparently will be the only one in there, which is fine I guess because the teacher is Sarah, one of the other teachers here and Colette likes her a lot. It kind of makes me feel old to have a daughter in Nursery.

New video

I just wanted to provide a link here for the new video I put up. It is in myspace and since I know some of you aren't fans or acquainted with myspace I wanted to make sure you weren't left out of the fun...I am going to try and put up more videos so check often for links, and we are taking requests (within reason;)

I guess things have started or will start getting back to normal this week, stabilising after the holiday festivities.
Nicolle is more beautiful with each day of the pregnancy. Her preggo belly is finally emerging a little. At church I get to stare at her now instead of sitting next to her, and I'm amazed each time. This Sunday someone was sitting right in front of her the whole time so I was disappointed, had to stare at the speaker instead. Colette's started nursery, Nicolle says she loves it and didn't want to leave when it ended. I peeked my head in for a second and she was fiercely pounding away on a little keyboard. She still wakes up sometimes in the night when she has a "movement" (or lack thereof) and we hold her and massage her rock solid abs as she deals with it. She must be so confused by the word "Pooh", it holds so many meanings, one meaning drastically and painfully different from the next . . .
It still amazes me after six months and numerous trips to the hospital how great health care is here. When I say "trips to the hospital" automatically red flags go up in my head, as an American. For us Americans a trip to the hospital is a worrisome, expensive, dangerous thing. The Japanese don't see it that way, because it isn't any of those things. They'll call for an ambulance if their back is hurting, not only if something really urgent happened; because the hospitals don't charge extra for ER visits or ambulance rides.
I got sick this week with either strep throat or tonsillitis, which I endured for about 2.5 days before calling my boss who courteously took me to the local hospital. The great health care alone is almost reason enough to stay in Japan long term. It was a Saturday after a holiday week so I expected to be there all day. After waiting about 30 minutes I saw a doctor (no appointment, and this wasn't even an ER) who did some tests, looked at my throat, asked me a bunch of questions, and prescribed me an antibiotic along with two other interesting drugs and a throat gargle, all of which was provided to me within another 15 minutes in the lobby, along with a hefty bill totalling: (drum roll please . . . . ) 1,600 Yen, roughly $14. No, I didn't leave a zero off. I've been taking the drugs since and my symptoms have been "warshed away" like Delmar's sins in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" (we just watched that a few days ago).
This week I had a rehearsal for a bridal fair I'm going to play at next week. I was nervous because my throat was really swollen and I haven't really kept up my sax chops since coming to Japan. A friend of mine runs a cafe near the English school downtown, and she put me in contact with her singer friend's agent/manager, who I met with back in October. I thought she'd forgotten about me but finally she emailed a few weeks ago for this bridal fair, which will basically be a mock wedding held at a local wedding cathedral. In Japan there's a very strange phenomenon because less than 2% of the people are Christian, but it seems most of the people love western culture to the point that they want to imitate it all the time. This shows up in tv, movies, pop culture, clothing, the language . . . everywhere. So the Japanese construct huge western-style cathedrals which will never house a single religious meeting of any kind except wedding ceremonies. My new music agent wanted me to see an actual ceremony before our rehearsal last week, so I made my way down to the big cathedral/wedding complex by the coastline in Utazu, a neihboring town. It was nice to walk in there dressed in a nice suit carrying my saxophone, because last summer I'd walked into the lobby dressed in short carrying the baby after biking from our house and given them a demo cd, only to be told that they only hire through their "music planner", they were pretty abrupt. Now their music planner is sort of my agent, so now they all bowed to me (this is normal of course, everyone bows to everyone here!) and I walked right past the evil gatekeepers at the front desk who would give me the time of day before.
The ceremony looked much like ceremonies I've seen on TV or in movies (I've never been to an actual wedding ceremony apart from LDS temple marriages). There was a "Priest" in what appeared to be Catholic robes with a sash containing crosses (I was told he's not actually a priest, on a funny side note the other day I got a job offer to be a "model/priest" who performs western-style wedding ceremonies in Japanese). The priest led the ceremony which consisted of speeches, reading from the bible, praying 2 or 3 times (to God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost) exchanging of rings, promised made to each other, signing of a book, all interspersed with various songs from western culture, mostly Disney songs. A violinist played the Italian love song whose title escapes me ("this is the night, what a beautiful night, we call amore, etc . . . from Lady and the Tramp), also "When you Wish upon a Star" and other Disney favorites. I'm going to be performing "Over the Rainbow", "A Whole new World" (from "Aladdin") and some Japanese song I've never heard before. In total I'll only be playing for a few minutes, as the songs fade out quickly during the ceremony. Most of the music is actually midi played by the electronic organ upstairs in the back of the cathedral, but my songs and a few others are accompanied by a real person.
The rehearsal went great, I loved playing in a room with such nice acoustics, I could play very quietly or loudly, the sound carried very well.

Hiroshima

Colette learns about the disasterous effects of nuclear warfare, seeing a model of downtown Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped . . .
and after.
5:30 am Tuesday morning, at the train station. We left early and came home late, we got home about 11pm.
Keeping warm! She's chewing on her fingers as new teeth emerge on her lower jaw.

Our friends Rick and Aileena giving us the last two stamps on their rail passes, so we had free travel for one day. We set out for Osaka, home of a beautiful aquarium, many foreign restaurants, and a CostCo. Upon reaching Okayama, a major crossroads, we changed our minds and headed for Hiroshima instead. We had planned a Hiroshima trip earlier this year but it didn't pan out.
It was a lot of fun to ride the trains, since it was both Nicolle and Colette's first time on a train. The trains reminded me of trains/subways/metros in other parts of the world, except that they were immaculately clean, no gum on the floor/chairs, the seats looked as if they had been recently replaced, no matter how old the trains were, no graffiti or trash anywhere; it was amazing.
The countryside looked much like Kagawa where we live. After four trains and about 4 hours of travel we reached Hiroshima station.
We realized after exploring and looking for food that our Japanese bank accounts would not be available for even ATM withdrawal until the 4th of January. When there's a bank holiday here, even the ATMs are closed. In rural Japan everything is done with cash, and the only ATMs which take foreign cards (Visa, etc) are in the post offices, which of course were closed for the holidays. So we had about $40 to last us the day, lucky for us we didn't go to Osaka where we'd have spent that just getting around. Downtown Hiroshima was fairly small and the museums were free or inexpensive so we were able to see all we wanted on foot.
It was very sad to learn about the bombing and its effects. We saw many pictures and read testimonials of those who were there at the time of the bombing. It reminded me of the concentration camp in Europe which we visited back in '97, such a huge loss of life. All the arguments for whether or not the bombing was necessary melt away in the face of so much destruction. The people who died, many of them women and children, had no say in what their government leaders were doing, or others around the world. It seems inhuman to try and justify the bombing of Hiroshima, just like it would be to argue the need for concentration camps.
The victims' flesh flaked and peeled off their bones as they frantically tried to escape the city or find missing loved ones. One girl searched for the body of her mother and only found the bottom half, from the waist down, the top half had been carbonized in the blast. Some tried to help by scooping water into the suffering burn victims mouths, but eventually left to find their own families. One child tried to pick up her mother's bones with chopsticks to remove them from their house a week after the blast, only to have the chopsticks ignite in flames.
It's depressing how peace demonstrators are marginalized in the US and around the world. War is noble and courageous, heroic. Peace is something dirty hippies and draft-dodgers advocate. I don't and won't support any war for as long as I live.

Video

Rob's link is working now, so you can see Colette playing with her kitchen toys. Here is a different video that I posted on myspace. It is the one titled oops (I messed up but the video is still good). Check it out please. Also we will each be posting our own impressions of Hiroshima (we went for a day trip on Tuesday) so look for that soon.