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.