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We went to the baby clinic today and came away with a few new ultrasound photos, definitive answers regarding the sex and a measurement of its feet (5cms.) It`s 100% assured that Reiko is giving birth to a girl. I`m not too happy posting pictures of my unborn child`s genitalia so you`ll have to trust me on this.

With each new picture I put up, the realisation grows that in the coming months my life is going to change. The realisation has grown from disbelief at the very start, “You can`t be pregnant! There must be something wrong with the test!”, to gradual acceptance when confronted with a printout of the foetus, to seeing other families out and about in Osaka and imagining myself in their place. Whoever said Japan`s birthrate is declining obviously hasn`t been to the baby factory that is Osaka.

The expense of it all is the largest worry at the moment, especially when confronted with the price of all the paraphernalia that go along with it - the pushchair, cot, baby car seat and clothes. Reiko is particularly susceptible to the latter, emitting screams of, “Kawaii!” (How cute!), when confronted with any items of baby clothing - seemingly the more expensive, the louder are her screams.

This has prompted me to put my foot down and decree as leader of the household that essential cost-saving decisions will be taken.

1: Until the baby is six, she will be clothed in towels held together with safety pins. After she is six, we will consider upgrading to different coloured ones and/or bath towels.

2: Until she is six or until supplies dry up, she will be breast-fed. Reiko is producing free nourishment, we might as well use it as long as we can.

3: In a similar vein, we will be using the milk to produce cheese and cream either for her consumption or for sale towards more towels.

4: Pushchairs, cots and baby car seats will be manufactured by myself out of wood and any towels we are able to buy via the above methods with no regard for any national or international safety standards.

5: Disposable nappies and cotton nappies will be shunned in favour of towels that have outlived their usefulness as clothes.

These five steps should enable us to survive without living on cardboard. Hopefully by the time she is six, we will have saved enough money to start thinking seriously about the expense needed to start a baby. Perhaps.

1: If I ask you where the station I have to work at tomorrow is and you know it`s literally two hours from my house, don`t claim total lack of knowledge forcing me to name every train line in Osaka until I get close and then hope I won`t get mad. I won`t. I learned to accept bad news after I learned there was no Santa Claus.

2: Don`t praise my chopstick ability. There are people in other countries that use chopsticks daily. Some of these people have moved to other countries and opened restaurants where chopsticks are used. Have you heard of China?

3: Similiarly don`t praise my Japanese ability. If your English were as good as my Japanese, you wouldn`t have passed high school. I suck ass.

4:

This was going to be 5. Add to them if you can. Any suggestions?

Out and about today on the way to work on a cold and windy day in March in Osaka and I came across a cherry blossom tree blooming - stretching its wings as it were.

For a truly thought provoking picture of cherry blossoms from last year, take a look at illegal sakura (err..)

I did some training today and made a small girl cry in one of the lessons I did. I`m that kind of guy.

I`ve been acclimatizing to my my new job but the hardest thing to adjust to is that I speak to native English speakers daily as opposed to once in a blue moon or often less. The thing is they can`t understand a word I`m saying thanks to the mumble and a speed of 500 words a minute.

When I was doing my old job, I went on my own to a random school and spoke English only to 12 year old children, “Do you like bananas?”, eager teachers after a free English lesson, “Do you like bananas?” and on occasions Japanese who were near-fluent English speakers with whom I could often have a normal albeit slightly stilted conversation.

Blogging, the Internet and reading English books, newspapers and magazines have kept my reading and writing skills going strong yet my oratory skills - never having been high in the first place have sunk to new depths. I`m asked a question and my brain has the answer fine but along the journey from brain to mouth the words seem in a competition to see which can arrive out first and the result is they come out as a “mwap” sound.

“Do you like bananas Simon?”
“Mwap.”
“Where are you from?”
“Mwap mwap”
“How long have you been in Japan?”
“Mwap”

Talking to Japanese I could always pass this off as a fault on their part:

“What do you mean you can`t understand what I`m saying? I`m English! I thought you said you could speak English?”

This would come out of course as “mwap mwap?” Sadly with native English speakers, this is impossible. I`m sure I`ll adjust to this or more accurately they`ll adjust to me. It`ll take them time but quicker than me slowing down.

I came back from two days off the computer to find that my old blog that I deleted had been reincarnated as a porn blog which was a shock. Thanks to eddy and akijikan for the tip off. I`ve just finished working my eighth day in a row. Yesterday being a Sunday and today were training for my new job. I went to a seminar where they explained the methods they use and how to employ those methods.

We also had to do simulated activities in small groups pretending to be the teacher and the students. Today I decided to volunteer for the first activity so that I wouldn`t have to do anymore and ended up being called upon for two in a row in the afternoon on top.

The methods they use are different to what I`ve been taught before. Here you speak at a normal speed without using exaggerated gestures or visual clues which goes against all training I`ve ever received in Japan but it seems to be working.

It often felt like a group counselling session. “You`ve got to share the love. Yes that can be difficult. We`re all here with you. or I`m going to make a bargain with you” but was relatively effective.

Yet they stole my Sunday. Today (Monday) was a beautiful day and I spent half an hour outside - the rest in a lamplit room. The most embarassing part was there was a grammar test at the start and a part of it was to give three examples of words that are spelled differently in British English and American English.

I`ve spent nearly two years on this blog (incorrectly) cursing you Americans for warping the English language into a twisted and near-unidentifiable version and I could only name one word that is spelled differently which was jewellery. I should be an expert. Colour was given as an example. My mind drew a blank at 9:00 on a Monday morning which was humiliating. What would you have written?

Still swept up with the hectic training and work schedule. Here`s a picture of the Osaka King.

This is my favourite kind of photography. I don`t have to bother anyone, I don`t have to worry about framing it too much. Someone has already done the hard work of designing the image. It`s just point and shoot. This goes for Japanese kanji signs and notices on walls and fences too.

I`m in between jobs undertaking training in all parts of Osaka city (mostly a near-two-hour train journey away) so forgive the lack of quality well thought out mutterings.

In its absence can I recommend a few sites you might find of interest?

Cosmic Buddha discusses the interesting phenomena of Mayoral election signbaords.

Bloggers discuss Japan`s victory in the 2006 World Baseball Classic.

A directory of Japan Bloggers instead of this nobody`s blog.

I went to the Osaka sumo tournament on Sunday where I took lots of photos. This is from the penultimate bout where the Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu watches the action from the side before his own turn comes.

I have a flickr set of some of the better pictures I took.

And how about a very detailed entry on Sumo wrestling from wikipedia?

Thanks for those who played the game. Here`s the after shot of the previous capture and we can see quite clearly that the man on the right departed the ring the winner. Congrats to Sluggo and Tom who correctly answered.