Erin Hughes.com

Eric recently had surgery for sleep apnea. It was pretty stressful and it was a re-education in how rules are applied in Japan. Either way Eric had his surgery and we all took turns going to visit him. I have 3 funny photos to share from this not so pleasant experience; 1. This is what was removed from my little guy. They took out both tonsils and a small section of his nasal passage that leads to his throat in the back. I thought it was weird that they brought them out to show us, but here they are. 2. The view from the 8th floor out on to the sprawling megalopolis of Tokyo as it faded out to the Hakone Mountains. I only has my small camera so sorry the quality is not so good. 3. Finally some Janglish (badly translated Japanese into English) for you. Hope you get a laugh out of it. The sign basically says; "Same day surgery patients go inside this door to get started." The English printed below is not quite so clear.

Marys Visit After a long delay, my sister Mary made it to Japan to visit the family. I wanted Mary to come and help out with Eric and see how things are here in Japan. We have a (very) high standard of living here and it was good for her to see that except the lack of central heating and chairs in Gotemba I think everything went well. We went to Gotemba on Christmas, and all opened presents together. After that we went out to Numazu to have a few drinks with my friend Brent at his bar. The next day we went sledding at Yeti Snowboard Park in Susano. It was supper expensive. Inside it was a little disappointing because there was only one tiny run for the kids to sled on. We made the best of it and took some illegal sled runs down a longer hill. Eric brought his friend Drevon and they had a great time. The following day we all went to Fuji Safari Park. With the coupons we got while doing some site seeing in Gotemba, we were able to get into the park extremely cheap. The wait to ride the the animal feeding bus was about 2 1/2 hours which was almost perfect amount of time to see the rest of the park. The tour bus allowed you to feed the animals and let animals like this big fella get right up close and personal. Even with all the steel and wire between us, I was a little nervous. We went to Gotemba Kogen Beer to see the lights and eat the food! Finally before we left Gotemba Mary watched as we made mochi and soba. After getting back to Tokyo Mary and I met up with my friend from Rugby Matt, we had a few drinks together at the local HUB. It was the start of the New Years Holiday and many things were closed like public buildings, but we managed to get some site seeing and shopping done. We visited, Shinjuku sky-scraper district, Akihabaras Electic Town, Harajuku, Shibuya, and Shibuya 109. It was a long day that we capped off with some beers at The Club House at their closing party. Finally the next day we got everything together and went to Narita Airport and Mary, just like that was gone. I was pretty sad to see her go but had a lot of things that needed to get done so I rushed off and tried to make it back to Gotemba stopping along the way at Akihabara and other place to look for some geek stuff like a new TV and laptops, or netbooks as the type I like are called. I almost did not make it back to Gotemba but thanks to Satomi picking me up at the bus stop, I made it and slept the night away. The next day New Years Prep started and everyone was in full swing cleaning and getting ready for New Years. More on that later.

Wow another year down. I am sitting in our warm bedroom in Gotemba listening to Eric and Satomi and Anna snore away the New Year. Coldplay is playing on the stereo and in the distance I can hear a bell ringing. It will ring 108 times for our sins. That is what a country side New Years in Japan is like with a new baby. If you were not as lucky as my sister Mary and did not have the chance to meet my daughter. This is Anna. She was born 2008/12/16 at 0628 in the morning and is a happy and healthy baby girl. I just want her to be happy and as every fathers hope.....she does not meet a guy like me. Eric is very fond of the baby but not so fond of her smell sometimes. Today I tried to get the car cleaned and take Eric shopping. Along the way we had a problem because I tried to get him to sing some English songs instead of the Japanese ones he liked, then I proceeded to correct him when his English was not perfect. It came off wrong. He cried and asked me the most perfect question "Dad you can't even speak Japanese that good, we live in Japan, why do you get mad if I sing English songs wrong?" He is right but I am hard on him, for the same reason any other parent is hard on their kid; you want him or her not to make the same mistakes you made and because you want them to be better than you.

I spent allot of time trying to explain what I was thinking for a series of videos for my rugby team. Something that shows the great things about playing on the Tokyo Gaijin and what the guys are like. Everyone I talked to said it sounded good but were not really enthused as I was about the whole project. So I basically did it myself. Now that that the first one is in the can I think that other team members will be more keen to help out. Special thanks to Muz, Matt and Joffa for their input and error checking. Enjoy. E./