Kelly Azuma

or a Happy New Year to you!

This post is somewhat late, but i thought i would just put a note about what we did new years eve. Yasu worked until about 6:30pm, and was home at 7pm. At 7:30 pm we sat down and began to watch 紅白 on NHK (Kouhaku means Red/White, in this case Red Vs White, Women Vs Men).

I was looking forward to seeing Sexy Bucho make an appearance, and we also saw the cast from the movie Ponyo on the cliff by the sea (崖の上のポニョ). The little girl was sooo cute, and now i can’t get the song out of my head! There’s a great video clip of the song on youtube  here.

They had the usual performers like Smap, Hamasaki Ayumi, Speed, Aiko, Exile, Kiyoshi, Akiko Wada, and Perfume (Yasu’s favourite of the night) and ALOT of Enka singers, in fact, way too many for my liking. It seemed like an NHK concert night with a few jpop-ers thrown in.

Nakai-san from Smap was the host for the night, and was also joined by a few guests like Hige-danshaku but sadly no DJ Ozma, but i noticed one guy lost his pants down to a fundoshi, no doubt that will give the old ladies something to complain about.

Yasu and i were a little bit disappointed with the talent, or lack thereof this year and kind of glad it was over. The last half hour they showed people going to temples and shrines to pray for the new year and we had a conversation about western people making new year’s resolutions. It seems that Japanese people prefer to go to shrines, pay money and pray to make the God’s carry out their wish or resolution for them. Western people seem to struggle with making a resolution or keeping them, maybe the better way is what the Japanese do, pay someone else to do it! At least we can’t blame ourselves if it should fail.

This is the only New Year where we haven’t had a drink. Neither of us felt like it. We both stuck to Coke Zero and juice. Older and mellower? Maybe.

We rang the parents in Japan and they were getting drunk on Shochu with Yasu’s sister. Yasu’s dad asked when i was going to show my face in Japan again, and said he wanted to hug me. haha. Weird. I told them they should be asking Yasu that question but they said no, they would rather see my face! Yasu doesn’t mind, he’s happy we all get along so well.

And that’s about it really! Yasu and i said Happy New Year to each other, Yasu said 明けましておめでとう to me and bowed, and we went to bed.

The next day i went to work with Yasu, but basically it was uneventful.

Happy New Year to you! I hope 2009 will be a great year!

Yesterday was really bizarre. I spent the day in coughing hell, and by mid-afternoon i had started shaking really badly. I called my mum and she recommended that i go to the hospital as soon as possible. I didn’t feel confident taking myself, but not quite bad enough to call an ambulance so i waited for Yasu to get home from work.

He arrived about 6pm and reheated last nights bolognaise for his tea, had a quick dessert (with my blessing, who knows how long we would have to wait at the hospital), and then we went to the hospital which is just up on the main highway, not very far, about 5 minutes drive. About 5 minutes after i got there, i got called in by the nurse. Blood pressure was normal, temperature normal. Then another short wait and i got to see the doctor. He said i had a very bad chest infection, and he couldn’t believe that i actually saw my own doctor on tuesday with the same symptoms and he sent me away empty handed. This doctor gave me 2 courses of antibiotics to take at the same time, two different kinds.

The shaking is caused by the ventolin i take for my asthma, he said it’s a side effect. When the body gets a cold, the ventolin can’t do it’s job properly so it gives the body the shakes, he said i should be aware of it in the future, but it was nothing to worry about. Phew, that’s a relief. I thought i was going crazy or something!

After that we dashed up to the pharmacy to get my script filled and went on our way home. Yasu made a joke that my doctor, Doctor No, should be called Doctor I don’t know. Good one Yasu! :)

After that we came home and i made myself a quick dinner of carbonara, which Yasu said he didn’t want any of, but as soon as i sat down with it, he was eyeing it off. I ended up feeding him my leftovers. Then we had a cup of hot chocolate, and went off to bed. Before we fell asleep i showed Yasu the latest music video i downloaded on my ipod of Dj Ozma, who he thought was Smap! Funny. Can’t believe he actually thought that it was smap, he is so behind the times.