A Color of Your Own

My husband and I are a couple in our early 30s, so it is suitable age to buy a house. Many of my friends already bought her or his own house. We need to find a good house by the end of 2021 because we need to move out from the current house by that time for some reason. Recently we check real estate information on the internet. Once we went to Tsujido, Fujisawa to visit two new apartment's gallery. We haven't decided many factors like a style of house is a detached or apartment, area and so on. Our baby is coming in less than 4 months, so now I want to collect information not only through the internet but books.

Today, I met two college friends of mine. One of them lives in the same city as mine so we often see each other. The another friend and I haven't seen each other for a while, but it happened to get a chance to meet up. I was interested in a job teaching English to kids, and an other friend of mine told me that she may know something about such a job. Then I contacted to her on facebook, and we realized we live in the same prefecture. The two friends have a one year old baby boy each other. My coming baby will be two years younger than them. Looking forward to seeing them playing together.

It is the end of 6th month of pregnancy today and it is moving to 7th month tomorrow. In this month, my tummy grew so big comparing to the previous month. You can see my big tummy over the winter coat. I am careful at my weight not to gain too much. In Japan, if your BMI is standard, which is in range from18.5 or more to less than 25.0, it is said you can gain 7-12kg until delivery. I set my weight gain target around 8kg somehow, but I already gained 4kg. I still have 4 more months to go and it is said pregnant women tend to gain more weight at the end of the pregnancy. It is most important for me to deliver our baby in healthy and good condition.

Over the 17days, winter sports athletes showed great and exciting performance to the world. I remember a Norwegian cross-country skiathlon skier, Kruger, slipped at the beginning of the race and was at the end, but he passed all 63 other skiers to take the lead and win the gold medal. I had fun watching the sports festival. But I want to record that unfortunately, in this Olympic, many aspects were intervene by political power like women's ice-hockey of South and North Korea mixed team.

Gift certificates which we received from our new cellphone company made me feel want to buy a mirrorless camera for our unborn baby. I checked it on the internet, and it is said Sonny mirrorless is good at taking a photo of a moving subject, like a baby or a kid. Today, my husband and I went to Yamada electrical appliance store. We tried using some mirrorless cameras of Sonny, Olympus, Cannon and Panasonic. Mirrorless cameras are popular among women, so Olympus and Panasonic design it for women's favor. I like their cameras but from a viewpoint of taking a picture of our baby, Sonny camera's specification is better. Yamada didn't have Nikkon mirrorless. I want to check it at another store.

Meiji probio yogurt "R-1" is popular with health conscious people in Japan. Meiji says it is a lactic acid bacterium "pull out strength". Those who ate R-1 for a certain period of time says they din't catch influenza or symptom of pollen fever got improved. It is considered because the yogurt contributes to enhance immunity. I didn't drink milk and eat yogurt for a while because there are many Asian adults who are in condition of lactose intolerance. I think I am one of them because I tended to have stomachache or diarrhea after drinking milk. Despite of the reluctance to have dairy products, I've been trying to eat R-1 because I want to improve intestinal environment in order to enhance immunity and resistance for the baby and myself. It has been 5 days since I started to have R-1, and it needs at least a few more days or ideally a few more weeks to realize its effect. I am not sure the yogurt is good for my body so far.

My husband and I used KDDI au iPhone 6 for each, and the two mobiles' monthly payment was about 15,000 yen. It was very expensive in our household expense and I wanted to reduce the expense changing to a cheeper contract. Today, we went to an electrical appliance store "Yamada Denki" to buy SIM card, which we use for our iPhone 6, from "Y!mobile" which is a subsidiary of Soft Bank and one of the most pouplar cheep mobile telecommunication companies in Japan. The "M" plan we chose was with 6 MB data traffic per month for the first two years, and it will be 3 MB afterwards but you can add 3 more MB with 500 yen. It costs 2,980 yen for the first year, and will be 3,980 yen after one year. In addition to that, family discount applies to the 2nd and the after, so the payment for mine is 2,580 yen for the first year. The monthly mobile payment has become about 7,000 yen with tax. We are satisfied with the new contract!! Moreover, we received gift cert...

Team Japan renewed total medal counts at Winter Olympic by earning 11th medals, the previous record was 10 medals at Nagano Olympic in 1998. Tonight, Japanese women's team pursuit of speed skating raced Canada at semi-final, and defeated Netherlands at final with an Olympic record. The team rewrote the world record time in this season before this Olympic. At quarter finals, the first race in this Olympic, they couldn't make a good start, and the time was behind Netherlands. The race at the final was excited to watch. At the beginning, Japan lead Netherlands, and Netherlands overtook Japan. At the end, Japan run across the goal line first. The athletes' hard work made me moved!!

There are many good restaurants and bakeries around Tama-plaza station in Aoba ward, Yokohama. "Ten" is one of the new places opened there. Our family went there to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday at lunch time. You can choose from three types. In each type, you can choose pasta or risotto. There are some varieties for pasta. I picked meat tomato pasta. It started with a salad and soup and appetizer, then continued to pasta and main at last. The main dish was saute pork. They were all good and it taste like a combination of Italian and Japanese. I want to visit for dinner next time. Just one concern I want to mention is that there is not many parkings around. The closest spot is one at a store named "Sankaku Base". We paid 1,200 yen just for two hours..

Nao Kodaira took gold in women's 500m speed skating last night. She continued almost two year undefeated record, unless she had a lot of attentions from Japanese media and Japanese people. She went to Vancouver and Sochi Olympics but couldn't reach medal. After Sochi Olympic, she went to Netherland to take training in high level environment. Her winning moved Japanese people. My husband and I acclaimed the winner. She showed us not only her great skating performance but sportsmanship showing respect to Lee Sang-hwa of South Korea who is a second time Olympic champion and took silver after Kodaira in this Olympic.

My husband and I visitied a insurance consulting shop called "Hoken no madoguchi" continuing from last weekend. He applied for income guarantee insurance in which insurance recipient receive monthly a certain amount of money when the insured person is dead or become disability. My husband had a good result in last year's medical checkup, so it made insurance payment cheaper. Good job, darling!! Insurance goods changes with the time, so it is very diffenrent from what it was when my parents were in my age.

Yuzuru Hanyu, a Japanese figure skater, made a dramatic come back after injury. He brought Japan first gold medal in Pyeong Chang Olympic. At the same time, he became first men's skater to defend Olympic gold in 66 years. Shoma Uno, another Japanese men's figure skater, took the silver. The 1-2 finish gives team Japan positive impact. We hope Nao Kodaira, a Japanese women's speed skater, will take gold at tomorrow's race.

In Japan, people go to a shrine, in the 5th month of pregnancy, to pray for the safe delivery of the child. My husband and I went to a shrine last month to pray for the safe delivery of our child. It is said on the Dog's day we do this tradition although we can go on other days. Therefore, if it is on weekend Shrine tends to be crowded. Dog's day comes once per 12 days, like 12 zodiac signs and this year is year of the Dog and last year was year of the Rooster. Each shrine has features, and some shrine is believed that they have divine favor for specific pray. For the safe delivery of the child, Suitengu Shrine is very famous. Its origin comes from Fukuoka, and there are others in Japan. We went to Suitengu Hiranuma Shrine in Yokohama.

The winter Olympic games started last week, and Japan earned 4 silver and 3 bronze medals by yesterday. Some players were very nearly to gold medal. Snowboarder Ayumu Hirano was one of them while I expected him to be a champion. He took silver in men's halfpipe behind Shaun White from the United States. The race was settled at the very end, as Shaun took first place in his first run and Ayumu took it over in the second run then finally Shaun won the game after his third try. That was very excited game as Ayumu said. I watched Ayumu, who was 15-year-old, performing in Sochi Winter Olympic 2014. He was very young at that time so I felt he grew up yesterday. He won his second straight silver medal in Olympic yesterday. I am looking forward to watching him to win the title in the next Olympic.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I have studied English about 20 years with some breaks in Japan and I will continue, but realized that I need an opportunity to output on a regular basis. Therefore, I opened this blog to share my daily life, interests and also sometimes information about Japan. Speaking of myself, I am 22 weeks pregnant and it turned out that the baby is a boy at a yesterday's check-up. There are about 4 months to go until his expected date. My husband and I will have to have somethings done before that. What should I buy and do now?? The baby is our first child, so everything related to childbirth preparation is new and excited. My husband and I are going to visit a insurance shop this weekend to discuss life insurance of my husband preparing for the child's education cost and also for when something happens to my husband just in case. We already went there the other day, but it takes time to buy insurance because it is said "Insurance is the second hi...