Tropical christmas

Heheh, hee hee!
Oh dear, what a riot. Pardon me, I was reading my blog's archives from way back in the day. I am proud to announce that little gaijin blog is now on it's tenth year! (Pauses to bow for the wolf whistles and applause )

Thank-you thank-you! Hopefully many more years to come.

Anyways ,  I think for one of my new years resolutions I'm going to try to make the posts here more like they were in the beginning when I was not yet jaded about living in Japan and write short, funny anecdotes about miniskirts in winter, fascination with beetles, etc, and hopefully post much more frequently. 

Oh and to draw more comics!  

I got hooked on geek-and-poke.com . So here's a cartoon I made just for you, dear readers, about why it's so hard to get a blog written.

Note: I am writing this at work. (shh, it's the end of the year and there is nothing to do!)

On another note, Hubby went on lots of business trips around the globe this year, including three countries in South America and four in eastern Europe.
He would get back from a trip, all tired and complainy and stuff, about his trips in business class lounging around eating gourmet food.
Hah! I would say. I have also taken several international trips myself, in economy. With a baby. Ten hours of convincing him not to run around the cabin and please stop pushing the call button. At least he is so used to flying he doesn't cry!
Ray is now a super veteran and, if you count one leg of a journey (takeoff + landing) as a flight, he has been on SIXTEEN flights. Dude, I think my first airplane flight I was in high school. Kid is one and nine months.
I have earned enough miles to upgrade to business class, but I am afraid of the hairy eyeballs such a move would incur.
But anyways, hubby accumulated tons of miles, enough for a family trip, so for our holiday vacation we didn't do anything that Chirstmasy, but instead went to Ishigakijima, an island south of Okinawa, close to Taiwan! The waters were blue and gorgeous, the air balmy, and the island mostly undeveloped (except for vast fields of sugarcane). We went to a local market and bought starfruit and papayas and guavas and flavored brown sugar. Yum! The water was too cold for swimming but we rode in a glass bottom boat and admired the coral and fish, and later went on a yak-pulled cart ride where the driver cracked jokes and played the shamisen.

Ray isn't really 'talking' talking  yet but he knows a few words and babbles happily in his own language, using the few words he knows. He learned the word 'big' on this trip, so now in conjunction with 'fish' and 'epi' (airplane), he's getting pretty expressive. Also? 'Shisa' , the word for the little dog/lion figurines around entrances, all over the island. ;)

We visited a little baby boutique and bought him some cute shirts, which he loves. I put the crane shirt on him ('tuk' for truck I guess), and then he gestured for his bus shirt, with a 'buh'. So I tried to take off the crane shirt, which he was violently opposed to. So, I put the bus shirt on top. Then he gestured for his I.C. Berlin sunglasses, which his auntie Ellen who works in top-of-the line eyewear provided. but was very upset about the thought of wearing pants. So, he's got some pretty cool fashion sense. Unfortuately I eventually had to force some pants on him, but here's what he looked like before that.

Dad said he looked like Hunter S. Thompson, which is a reference I didn't get until I looked up, but was totally appropriate! I can imagine Ray biking with the Hell's Angels now.. ;D

Hope you all have a fantastic holiday!

Your little gaijin