Christmas party

My friends from my old work Chie, Chisa and her son Keito came to visit us with some Christmas goodies. We had an early Christmas lunch party!

Chie brought all the ingredient for Chicken Nabe/steam boat- it was a special kind of chicken which was stuffed with Korean herbs. It was just delicious and the perfect dish for a snowy cold Osaka day!





Check this out! Spiderman hair cut:



Luca posing and trying to look cool for the photo:



Merry Christmas!





It is always nice to catch up with friends. Thank you Chie & Chisa for coming! See you next time we are in Osaka :) 

On a cold morning

We hold hands and check what's on the iPad!

It doesn't stop the kids

As usual the moment we landed here in Osaka the temperature dropped so much and now we are into real winter...

It is taking forever to dress the boys every morning. So many layers and very wiggly and impatient boys...

The weather is not bothering them much tho. They are keen to go outside and when we visit mum and dad they are always out on the balcony watching the trains - in their full winter gear!

Of course just in case they miss the trains going by we have to keep the door open - the whole apartment is freezing!!!

Trip into Namba

My sister Mako had a day off yesterday. Her weekday off = shopping with me!!

There is a place in Namba (south central Osaka) I really wanted to go to called Tiger, which is a Danish store that sells all sorts of knick knacks. There are lots of branches in Europe but this is the first store in Japan (in Asia!).  Like IKEA Japanese people love things from the Scandinavian region.

When it opened in Summer there were too many people who wanted to shop there and guess what? You had to queue up to get a ticket to get into the shop, you get your number at 1pm and you can only get in at 6pm - how crazy is that!! And even then you can only visit a part of the shop. They had to close the shop a few months after opening as they had sold everything in stock!!

We weren't sure if we could get in but we decided to give it a go. We thought 6 months from opening people shouldn't be still queueing up...

We took trains in, made really good connections and it took us less than an hour to get to the city!
And of course my boys loved the train ride with Mako :)





The Midosuji (main street) still had beautiful leaves that were changing colour. It was freezing cold tho!!!



Only 10min or so from the station we got there without getting lost. It opened at 11am and we were there 11:15 but there was already a big queue!!



But because we were there early enough we only had to wait about 10min or so - Phew! waiting outside in the cold with two toddlers could have been a big mission, you know...

Once we were in the shop there were too many people and you can only follow the crowd to look around the shop. We managed to find and buy quite a few things tho. We were quite happy until this moment. But what we didn't know was we had to queue up again to pay... The queue started at 1F where the cashier is but you needed to wait up on the 2F while you were told when to come down as too many people were trying to check out. We thought it would take forever so I took my boys out of the queue and waited where there were no crowds while Mako queued up for me with my shopping basket. In the end it took over one hour to get to the cashier :( It was so painful... fortunately Oliver went to sleep in the buggy and Luca was mostly calm.

This is what the crowd outside the shop looked like when we left.



Our buggy was very full with what we bought but we were very happy we went there and got some goodies :)

On the way home I promised Oliver he can have a special train ride - Repi:t that turned out to be the best ride home - happy smiling boys and comfortable seats for us :) We even had a coffee and a croissant each and got home in no time.

Dentist visit

The boys had their teeth checked at the dentist this afternoon. Oliver was so brave and didn't cry at all! Great improvement since last time (I think it was April this year).

Luca on the other hand fought every second he was being examined - hence no photos, I had to help them hold him down...

The good news is they both have beautiful healthy teeth :) :) :) I am very happy!

Afternoon tea

We are enjoying our little walk to our local bakery (when it's not too cold). The boys are in love with these snowman breads - they are so yummy!

Precious me time

Whenever I am back here I get my hair done. I can only do so while someone is looking after my boys. Yesterday mum had a day off from work so she kindly looked after them for me :)

I just got my hair trimmed a bit so only took me one hour, but the whole hour was just what I needed. Away from the real world!? Very relaxing slow time. I love getting my hair washed (including the massage!) - feels so good!!!

Now I am refreshed and my hair is shiny again :)

Advent calendar

There were two very excited boys in the lounge this morning. It is December and the advent calendars have started! This is year our boys were lucky enough to get a Kiwi Santa Chocolate calendar, thanks to aunty Kylie :)

Plus we got Oliver a LEGO City calendar too!

Oliver now understands Christmas (well... he thinks it's the Christmas tree's birthday and singing Happy Birthday to Christmas trees everyday...), counting down the days on the calendar so he was very happy.







There was a slight problem... he wants to open all the windows :(

KALDI shopping

One of my MUST shopping spots when we come back here is KALDI. We buy our coffee beans from there and I often end up buying lots of other things...

It is a little international food market. Their food range changes quite often so when we go there is always something new!



This time I got some Thai green curry soup (that already has coconut cream in), Swedish Christmas gingerbread cookies, some Italian Christmas Pasta and Japanese renkon/lotus root chips.

4 Birthdays in one month

December is here! and it is always a busy month. All my family members are working so we can only get together over the weekend and being December everyone has a busy schedule...

It is slightly earlier than other years but we got together to celebrate Runa, Mako, Mum and Dad's birthdays last night.

Mum ordered some crabs so we had crab nabe/steam boat - perfect winter dinner!
So many!!



Time for the cakes! We had to sing so many times!



It is always nice to have everyone together (there are 15 of us all together, unfortunately Matthew missed out this time)  - Our next gathering will be in February when we come back for mum's 60th birthday trip :) Cannot wait!!