Kelly Azuma

Had a great time with Dylan today, lots of catching up and gasbagged for 2 hours, before we parted ways. I left him with BBQ chicken pringles that I brought back from Japan (up until about a month ago we couldn’t get chicken flavour in Aus, and now we can get bbq chicken..but only at certain stores..) so he was a happy chappy.

I had fish n’ chips for lunch and a lemon lime and bitters. I actually thought I would drink something alcoholic but I can’t resist a LL&B, and it was 34 outside so it was really refreshing.

Dylan had chicken and leek pie, which certainly looked interesting!

Today Yasu woke me up about 9am (first sleepin-in I’ve had in ages!), and we went shopping for groceries. I also bought a new frypan and some christmas cookie cutters as I’m going to make some traditional shortbreads tomorrow.

We came home, had showers and then went to Fremantle to meet my Japanese friend S, her NZ husband S, and their baby R-chan. R-chan had just had a nap but was still sleepy but he woke up abit when he saw our fish n’ chips arrive. He immediately climbed over onto my lap and sat with me. For some reason he loves me! He proceeded to look down my top and grope my boobs like he did last time and everyone was laughing. He had his eyes on my boobs and wouldn’t look away…it was so funny but also a bit embarrassing. Everyone kept saying “typical guy”…

Yasu was itching for a hold so I gave him to Yasu, but he was still trying to get over to me to get my chips, so I gave him one, and it was gone in 5 seconds, I kid you not. And he’s only 10 months old!! He proceeded to eat 3 more until dad told him no more.

After we had finished we went up to the Fremantle markets because S was looking for a pendulum but with a Lapis Lazuli as the crystal. Both crystal shops had everything but Lapis unfortunately.

We left them in the carpark as we were both tired and they were going to go on to the next markets. On the way home we stopped into the new J-supa to find them selling 200g bottles of Shiseido Tsubaki shampoo for $37.50, packets of 5 sachet bath salts for $27.50, and House Vermont curry for $7.90. I was pretty disgusted at the pricing and Yasu thought it was ridiculous. The only thing I bought was a joy pack of Wasabi kaki no tane for Yasu, and two monaka’s for us to nibble on, one waguri and the other azuki. I spent a total of $5.10. I really wanted to get some senbei but they only had shoyu or salt flavour, no ebi or kotsubukko

Anyways we came home and Yasu worked in the garden for an hour and I made chahan for dinner. I’m feeling really tired because I got lots of sun and wind today. I didn’t get sunburnt today though which is good, as I’ve been using a suncream I bought in Japan, Kose suncut, which is 50+SPF, higher than anything you can get here (they only go up to 30+SPF).

Below is a photo for Desley who asked me about the leaf thing on our wall. It’s a tealight holder. (We don’t have any tealights at the moment so that’s why there is only one in it)

Before the guys came today to install the central heating and cooling I asked my guides to tell their guides to come and do it quickly and get it over with because I had a migraine.

So anyway, I’m still doing the dishes at 7:50am this morning and they knock on my door ready to start! Luckily I was already dressed, so I let them in. That’s 40 minutes earlier than they should have started.

I asked them, all 5 of them, if they wanted a cuppa and they politely declined and said that “we just want to get it done quickly and get it over with” (my exact words to my guides!)

So they got on with it and at 12:30pm today it was all done. There was a bloody big mess where all the insulation fibres had come down when they cut through the ceiling, and they all kept offering to vacuum it up for me and apologising but I said that it was no problem, I had expected that, and would do it myself.

I got a run-through of how it works, and it’s all in one control panel which is great, depsite being two separate systems. Nice boys

We have 18 outlets, 9 each of cooling and heating. There is 3 in the living area because we have such high ceilings. The square ones are for cooling and the round ones for heating.

We also have zones so that we can turn it off and on in the bedrooms as we wish. We got that especially since if we have kids we don’t want the bedrooms to be too hot for a baby, if we want to sleep with it on.

So yeah, it’s all cool. In the long run we’ll recoup the money in about 2-3 years as they both run on gas so they save alot of money, and are very cheap to run, half of what electricity is.

As for the weekend, we’ve made plans to meet S and her husband and cute little R-chan in Fremantle for some Fish n’ chips and a wander around the markets tomorrow afternoon, so that should be fun. Yasu has the day off so I hope to go to the J-supa in Fremantle as well, it’s only newly built.

Sunday Yasu will play baseball and I’m in the middle of organising a Christmas party for all our J-friends and their partners.

Today I went down south to Mandurah with my mum. I caught the train to her station and then she got on and we went to the end of the line, which we both had never been to before. The end of the line is Mandurah, about 1 hours drive from Perth, and a coastal community by the sea. It’s a popular place for holidays and retirees.

We did some sight-seeing along the water, lots of little shops selling souvenirs, fairy shops, cheapie shops, a choco cafe selling everything that’s chocolate including drinkable chocolate (didn’t have time to go back, will do another day), clothes, shoes etc etc

There is an outlet clearance store there that mum wanted to go to, she ended up buying 2 pairs of shoes and a skirt.

We then went and had lunch on the water, good old fish n’ chips. The fish was perfectly battered, crispy and crunchy, and the chips were long and crispy with lots of salt and vinegar! Heaven!

The Bay

The Jetty

Big scary pelican who was waiting for a chip!

A lone bird in the bay

The tide was out, showing the grasses at the bottom

After alot of retail therapy we found a Muffin Break and had afternoon tea!

Hot Chocolate

Jaffa Muffin (orange & chocolate)

Was really yummy, especially the muffin with butter on it!! Mmmm

Finally we caught the train back, mum got off at her stop and I went on to the city, then Yasu picked me up at the end of my line. We then went and had Hungry Jacks (Burger King) for dinner…I was still full so I took mine home (Whopper meal), but Yasu had the new Chicken Cheesy Bacon Tender Crisp meal there.

From there we retired to opposite ends of the house, Yasu played Tokunaga on the pc, and I read “The Devil Wears Prada”. I’ve seen the movie before, the book just wasn’t as good as the movie though. Nothing beats Meryl Streep on the screen!

This morning I woke up rather late, about 11:30 am. When I got up the house was really quiet and I wondered where Yasu was. I walked around the house and finally found him fast asleep in the guest room. It turns out he was sleepy but didn’t want to wake me up by getting back into bed, because he knows when I get woken up I find it hard to get back to sleep. Such a sweetie.

I woke him up by giving him butterfly kisses on his cheek. haha

He then suggested we have fish n’ chips for lunch, which I thought was a good idea. I also wanted to go to Bunnings (a large hardware store) to look for some hedging plants for our front garden.

I got dressed and off we tootled. Had a look around the hardware store but they didn’t have the particular hedge I wanted. Still I got some soil vitamins for my Japanese maple tree at home that isn’t doing so well, and a watering can, and Yasu got some buckets and a tape measure.

After that we picked up some fish n’ chips and took it home to eat. Luckily the Sumo tournament had just started so we watched that and ate. Afterwards it was getting a bit cold so I got my blanket and pillows from my healing room and put it over us on the leather lazyboys and we snuggled up watching the Sumo. We had a surprise at the end when 日馬富士 won the tournament instead of 白鵬! Everyone threw their red zabuton in surprise.

After that I gave Yasu a massage on his neck, the second in two days. It’s been troubling him all week. I did a little bit of shiatsu as well as some neck stretches and he said it feels better now.

Then Yasu said he would be cooking tonight’s dinner with a recipe he got from MSN Japan. He made something called “Chinese Chicken” and a side dish of sweetened potatoes. It wasn’t sweet potato, but rather jagaimo with some kind of sweetened saute. It was really nice and so was the chicken, really delicious. He even surprised me by washing up all the dishes as well.

So I’m pretty happy tonight, as we’ve had a great day together and I got a night off from cooking and dishes, so I’m feeling pretty good.

I got a part-time job offer over the weekend, right out of the blue, I wasn’t even looking. I’m considering taking it because I want to go back to Japan and the airfares are quite low now so If I can save my pay from that part-time job we might be able to go.

I’ve also got a couple of meet-ups with friends this week so I’m looking forward to those.

The weather is going to be fine this week too after last weeks thunderstorms and heavy rain and hail, so it will be a good week to get out and about.　良かったね！