internal murmuring

during my summer holidays from elementary school, i was supposed to do a drawing every day showing the growth of  a “morning glory” flower i planted in the spring.  it was a combined science and art project.

i always drew the entire made-up 6-week record of the flower growing two days before school started at the beginning of september.  my drawings would end up showing a bigger, more beautiful and impressive flower than actually grew in real life.  a big bloom would show up suddenly in my drawings on august 30th or 31st.

one year, my flower died because i forgot to water it.  i did the same kind of drawings anyway.

i just made a birthday card for a seven-year-old boy named shane, from lancaster, ontario. he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of five. he made a wish this year - he would like to break the world record for the most birthday cards ever received. his goal is 350 million cards. so far, he has received 125,000 cards. his birthday is may 30th.

i was contacted by one of my contacts on flickr. i thought i should spread the word.

if you would like to wish him a happy birthday, here is the address:

Shane Bernier
PO Box 484
Lancaster, Ontario
K0C 1N0
Canada

for more about his story, visit his website.

i can’t wait to breastfeed poko-chan. i hope my milk is as tasty as a fresh apple.

i spend most of my waking time thinking about poko-chan and our life together as a family of three. i’m really looking forward to meeting poko-chan in seven weeks. people like to tell us horrible stories about giving birth or bringing up children. but i listen to them with a grain of salt. of course it will be difficult because we are new parents and poko-chan is new to the world, but i think our effort will be nothing compared to poko-chan trying to live.

like my dad always says, “you’ll forget about all the hard things that happened when you look at the angel face of your child”.

you can view the progress of this drawing here:

art recipe 1
art recipe 2
art recipe 3

i’m just starting my 21st week. it’s our first baby.

my belly has really started getting bigger recently, so i’m visibly pregnant as well. the baby is already quite active. it started moving in my belly around 17 weeks. at first, it felt like bubbles popping. some pregnancy books describe this as “butterfly flapping”, but i’ve never eaten any live butterflies, so how would i know?

more recently, i can really feel the baby kicking. this involuntary movement (on my end) is absolutely amazing. sometimes, when i feel its kicks, i tap it back around the same area. a few seconds later, it kicks back :) i’m enjoying this non-verbal communication so much. the kicking feels like “poko-poko” to me (the japanese language has lots more sounds to describe things than english does), so i gave the baby a nickname: “poko-chan”.

yesterday morning, i could feel the baby pushing out against my left and right sides at the same time — like stretching out, slowly. the baby is building a new body, and it’s going to be crowded inside me.

just before i found out i was pregnant, i started drawing the baby in my drawing “numb“. after i found out, i went to the doctor and saw the heart beating on the ultrasound, and heard the heartbeat sound with the fetal doppler. i did another drawing: “new heartbeat“.

paul and i went to get an ultrasound last week. the radiologist gave us a 3D image of one of the photos, which shows our baby’s face, with the right hand held up shyly in front of it.

mmm~~ good looking. as you can tell, i’m already starting my “oya-baka” (foolish parents) plan (親ばか実行計画）. :D

during the ultrasound, we saw our baby open its mouth and wave its hands around. the baby got much bigger since the last ultrasound. now it actually looks more like a human. it’s got fingers, toes, ears, eyes, and a cute bum. at first, i thought i might give birth to some sort of animal, but now officially it’s a human. :)

i knew something was living inside of me… no wonder my belly is getting so much bigger. i’ve never experienced this type of rapid physical transformation before, except in my mind. it’s interesting — all the changes seem to happen according to a schedule. it’s like my body is a machine. but i’ve never felt so human before.

some other time, i’ll post about my early pregnancy experience, and my weird “morning sickness” behaviour, which lasted about 8 weeks.

in a meantime, this is me with our baby inside. :)

16 weeks 2 days

20 weeks 1 day

(paul took the photos of me)

(click the image to view close up)

many canadians ask me if i miss japanese food for the past six years. my answer is YES. but when i say “japanese food”, i’m not talking about sushi, or tempura, or green-tea ice cream. they are japanese food and i like them, but i don’t miss them, i guess. i like sushi, but i’m saving my sushi-craving for edohei japanese restaurant in winnipeg. edohei is the best sushi on the prairie.

anyway, when i say “japanese food”, i’m talking about umeboshi. if i could have umeboshi for breakfast every morning, i might not miss japan… as much. umeboshi are pickled plums (”ume” means plum and “hoshi” (”boshi”) means to dry). they are sweet and extremely sour. mmm… just to think of umeboshi makes me feel sour. most commonly you eat umeboshi with rice. you can put it on top of a bowl of rice or you can put it inside of an onigiri (rice ball).

i had a huge craving for umeboshi a couple weeks ago. i needed to eat something sour. i could have eaten lemons, but i didn’t want to eat rice with lemon — too weird. i went to the asian market here in saskatoon, but they don’t carry umeboshi. it’s really more like a chinese market, they only carry a handful of japanese foods. i guess there probably isn’t a big enough japanese population here to support a japanese market.

my craving grew and grew…

so i phoned up my mom :D my parents live in wakayama prefecture, which is famous for… UMEBOSHI! they make the best of the best umeboshi in japan, more sweet and sour than salty. they make a special type of umeboshi with honey in it, that we call 優しい味 “yasashii” (kind + gentle) flavour. i love them. i asked my mom to send me some umeboshi along with some of my other favorite japanese foods.

a few weeks later, the package arrived! actually, i just got the notice from the post office to come pick up the box. the notice said that i wasn’t at home at the time of delivery, which is not true — i was home all day that day. i guess the mailman would rather make me carry the big box in my hands than put in on his nice red truck.

anyway, picking up the package and running a couple of errands was just enough time to make some rice. so i put the rice in the rice cooker and went out. it was a cold and snowy winter day, and when we got back, paul and i were ready to cuddle up and have some warm rice with umeboshi. this must have been the best umeboshi i’ve ever had. thanks mom!

(click the image to view close up)

this is a drawing for an exhibition in spain in 2007. this exhibition is called “dreams” organized by roger omar in spain.

In 2002 I started a project of dreams. I ask kids from
different countries to write their dreams during 2 weeks.
From hundreds of dreams I made a selection of 60 very short
dreams from kids of México, Spain and Brasil.

he invited artists to select and draw one kid’s dream, to make an artbook of 60 dreams/artists. from the interesting children’s dreams, i chose #32.

32. (SPAIN-GIRL) - Yuka Yamaguchi
I dreamed that I married my dog. I was in the altar, dressed in white, with my fiancé. When the priest said “Kiss the bride”, I saw that my fiancé was a boy with my dog´s face.

usually i’m not good at drawing with a theme in mind. but to my surprise, i had a good time drawing this :) i hope the girl who dreamed this dream will like my drawing.

this result of this project will become an artbook. The exhibition of the project will take place in Cadiz-Spain, 2007. The kids dreams and the images of the book will be exhibited, as well as some other things related to the project, like photos and some original kids-written dreams.

along with their drawing, the artists are asked to submit one dream that they had in 2006. oh boy… i have tons of dreams to choose from. i dream a lot, or so it seems. after seeing my drawings, some people have asked me if i have nightmares. i really don’t. i have some scary dreams featuring cats (i’m scared of cats), but i’m not sure if those are in the nightmare category.

i have some of the same dreams over and over again. here are my recent dreams:

• i enter Nijo castle (in kyoto) at 2am and have to run around and around the castle 10 times before dawn without being caught by the security guards. it’s hard, because Nijo castle has special “nightingale floors” that squeak when you step on them (protecting against ninjas!). cats keep getting in the way and i can’t run past them…
• i’m on an escalator with hundreds of steps, and it’s not moving. i need to get to the top of the building because i need to buy a toy from the toy department of this department store. but by the time i get to the top of the stairs, a different dream starts…
• i’m riding on the electric streetcar in kyoto, but i’m on the wrong train, going in the wrong direction. i’m carrying a suitcase that i have to keep secret and safe.

none of my dreams are really nightmares but they’re pretty stressful. maybe i’ll draw them someday.