Kelly Azuma

I bought myself a new pair of fluffy, chenille-like material socks today. Ahh they are sooo nice and warm! Lucky I didn’t buy more though, turns out I won’t need them for long. ;)

Had a great day. I walked 2.3 km to the nearest shops, picked up a few groceries including some chickpea ‘hamburgers’ that are pre-cooked. They have other veggies in them too. I thought they would be good this week as a substitute to meat. I also got some veggies for a stirfry, some pre-cut watermelon slices, and salad. I also checked out the other meat substitutes, tempeh, vegetarian bacon, vegetarian sausages, vegetarian chicken, I was amazed at the range, I’d never actually looked at it before.

I plan to eat about one meat meal a week, probably red meat as that is my favourite.

Anyways, Yasu had other plans, I found out when he got home tonight, he had bought pork belly again, and wanted to make butadon. So I let him make it, but I only had a spoonful of rice to make him happy, and had a side salad. It was quite nice. We had some watermelon for dessert, very juicy.

I took a pic of my new socks with my mobile phone. I haven’t taken them off since I got home, they are so comfy!

I went to visit my mum today but because I have to change trains in the city I popped into one of the department stores for a little look as they had a sale on. My bad! I ended up walking out with $700 worth of clothes!! I only paid $300 for them though as I got most of them 75% off.
I got some great pieces though and they all mix and match quite well. When I got home I gave Yasu a fashion parade and he was pretty impressed, telling me I have good taste. :) I guess he’s happy to have a fashionable chick as his wife, and a bargain hunter at that! :) Below are the images I nicked off the brand’s website.

Called a “skant” this is pants with a skirt sewn over the top.

This wrap is made from Alpaca wool, hence the normally $200 price tag.
I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. I also bought the red top she is wearing.

I bought this in black. It goes over anything and is so cosy and warm!

Thursday night we got an email from Yasu’s sister who complained that her fabric softener (Huggie) hadn’t arrived yet. She said that Yasu always says he is going to send it but never does. Little does she know that I am the one who has to send it, Yasu doesn’t ever have time off when the post office is open. So that made me feel particularly bad as I hadn’t gotten around to sending it because of what’s been happening. They don’t know about the baby because I told Yasu not to tell his mum, because they would make a big fuss about it.

So anyway Friday I woke up and felt less than good. I really wanted to go out but every time I thought about it I started to have a panic attack and I couldn’t breathe. I told myself that I wasn’t going anywhere but I still got ready as I was kind of desperate to go out. I eventually got out the door about 2 hours later, and went shopping to a multiplex shopping centre. I got some great fashion finds, because 1st of July is the beginning of a new financial year here and all the stores were having stocktake sales. I got some really nice Japanese-style tops, and a really cool dress. Get this, the dress was $159, marked down to $39, and when I got to the checkout I got it for $29!! I love a bargain. :)

I decided to head into the city for a look at about 5pm, I knew Yasu was on his way home but how can I say I just didn’t care. I guess with the loss of the baby, I feel as if I’ve kind of gone numb and lost the feelings in my heart that makes me care. I hope it will return, I hate feeling like this. I guess I just needed some space.

I did abit more shopping and then went to Utopia and picked up the last of the pan that I could find. Some greedy lady ahead of me just took a whole tray of pan for herself :( Anyway, I got a piggy face pan, and a matcha swiss roll slice, so that was enough for us.

Piggy’s face got abit squashed. He had green bean paste in the middle, yummy!

Matcha Swiss Roll with Azuki bean cream, yummy!

Yasu picked me up at the train station at 7pm and he suggested having KFC for dinner (bad I know), so we went and got a variety bucket and ate it at home (I had some leftover veggies with mine, I’m a good girl!). We watched a repeat of かんすけ, and then we watched Socrates on Nhk.

I took a bath and then Yasu did and we both went to bed, but somehow Yasu woke me up at 3am and neither of us could get back to sleep so we ended up watching 英語であそぼ and then 日本語であそぼ. I found that the Japanese one is much harder as the children are quoting haiku from Basho, and in the English one the kids just repeat “paper” “airplane” “fly” etc.

Anyways, and yes, I did finally send the softener, and the in-laws parcel so hopefully I don’t have to do any more crap like that for the rest of the year.

Today I hit the shops. I had to get Otoosan a father’s day present – I am very late! – I’m hoping he won’t mind. It’s also his birthday on the 29th June, so I have to get something for his birthday too.

I managed to get him a knick-knacky thing. It’s a ceramic tea ball that holds leaves and has a little holder that it fits into. Basically you put a serving of tea into the ball, put it to brew in your cup of hot water, and when finished put it into the holder. I also got him some nice premium leaf tea – Orange Pekoe, Chai, and Australian Breakfast. It’s pretty expensive at $3.95 per 25 grams. But I figure it is his special present so it would be nice for him to try something good!

Ceramic Tea Pod

I also bought some “Japanese Evening Mist” tea leaves (for Yasu), but this one was $7.95 per 25 grams, so doubly expensive. It is very nice though. Yasu liked it so much he requested another cup straight after the first one. He never does that! :)

I bought myself a nice candle I had my eye on too. The best part it was marked down to $5 from $15. Once you use the candle inside, you can put a new candle in the holder. I really just like the holder, but the bonus was it comes with a nice vanilla scented candle inside.

Hmmm…what else. Oh, I got some nice choccies for some friends in Japan. I also got a big jar of decaf coffee. I’m the kind of person who can’t drink coffee after 4pm otherwise I can’t sleep at night. I’m hoping by drinking decaf I can have it later and still get to sleep. The only problem is that here decaf doesn’t come in small bottles, only large ones.

I also bought some softener for Yasu’s sister. I got an email about 2 months ago asking me what kind of softener we have here, and would I be able to send some over. Apparently, she was using some softener called “Downy” but it became popular so she doesn’t want to use it anymore. Then she started driving an hour each way to get to her nearest Don Quixote to buy imported softener from America just because it was different from what everyone else was using. So anyway, I bought a bottle of Huggie, here’s hoping she likes it. I don’t really understand what the big deal is. If I buy something and I like it, I keep using it, whether it is popular or not. Maybe it’s a Japanese thing???

Huggie softener – Jasmine & Tigerlily,
Dove – Green Tea & Cucumber Shampoo

I also picked up some travel brochures for Japan. The Ghibli museum caught my eye but it looks like you have to book well in advance to get a ticket. So no popping in on the spur of the moment.

Oh yeah and I bought a Teppanyaki bar, so I’m waiting for that to get delivered, hopefully early next week! Then we can have Korean bbq style meals at home. I can’t wait!

I’m going to visit my mum tomorrow. It’s about an hours drive each way to her house but because I take public transport and there is no direct route it takes me about 2.5 hours each way (2 trains and a bus)! And it’s meant to be thunderstorms tomorrow. But, I really want to see her because we haven’t seen each other for a few weeks. So I’m not letting the stupid weather stop me.

Hope you all have a marvelous day!! Night :)

Today was another of those rainy rainy days. I had abit of work to do at a large shopping centre near me and I bribed Yasu to take me there. He hates going as it is simply huge, takes about a day to walk around, and is always noisy and crowded, and he hates crowds. So I promised him a shake if he took me.

We went but it took us half an hour to find a car park, I almost thought we wouldn’t find one!

I had to shop another book store, so another free book, this one by the same author as the book I bought yesterday, but an earlier book “The Law Of Attraction”, a book that started the whole “The Secret” craze off.

I also bought a gift for a friend in Aichi. And a couple of things for myself, plus a couple of groceries.

Yasu went off and looked at some baseball equipment while I browsed around a gift store. We met up in the middle and went and had a thickshake, him vanilla and spearmint for myself.

After that we left and went to the hardware store, we had to get a stake for one of our trees that is growing so high, with all this stormy weather and wind it’s practically bending over. Yasu wants to cut it down abit (it’s like a tall pencil pine), and so we had to get something to put on the cut to make it mend, so it doesn’t rust.

Yasu barbequed some lamb for dinner, outside on our barbeque table, and I did the rice, so it was nice. The meat was yum too.

I think we will just be having a pretty quiet night tonight, might curl up with my book and get a bit of reading done! I think I might be able to use my new candle tonight as there is a bit of lightning outside at the moment. Type fast quick!!! Oh, why the title of this post? Yasu called me that today. He said I’m his “ichiban lovely girl” so that was nice. :)))

A fresh Vienna loaf and some Navel Oranges

The Law Of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks

A scented candle set “Dewberry Dreams”

The set comes with 2 candles, one as a refill. They look small, and they are.
Each candle only burns for 2-3 hours.
I guess if I don’t like the scent it will be a blessing.

The inside of the bottom of the candle (the silver part) is actually a magnet.

I found this adorable little piggy bank at a gift shop, she was the only one and was calling my name!
As she was the last one left I got her for 50% off which was a bonus :)

This is Yasu’s favourite Tenki-Oneesan – Yamamoto-san
He watches her weather religiously. He also likes Nakarai-san,
but thinks Yamamoto-san is better as Nakarai-san “is too skinny”.