Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!

あけましておめでとうございます。

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has had a great start to 2007.

It's been crazy here! We've had visitors for most of the year so far! My brother and his wife, Carl and Leigh, arrived on the 31st, left on the 3rd and then my cousin, Danielle, arrived on the 4th and left yesterday morning. It's going to take me a few days to catch up on the washing and getting the apartment back to normal.

It was great to see everyone and I had a ball. Carl and Leigh's visit was rather low-key and I really appreciated having time to get to know Leigh much better. Danielle's visit however was manic! We fitted in about 20 hours of shopping in a 48 hour time period! I kid you not! Danielle is a very talented jewellery designer whose work has a strong Japanese influence, so I took her to a bunch of funky department stores, craft shops, 100 yen shops and second-hand kimono stores.

Wayne and I now have a few days of holidays left, so we are trying to tackle our lack-of-storage-space problem. We also became a two computer family again, so I need to give him some space to use it as well as get my office space workable. We hit the "home centre" tonight and got lots of ideas. We've then since come home, measured spaces and will be back there tomorrow morning. I vow to try to get it all done tomorrow with no tears...

One great thing about New Years Day in Japan is recieving Nengajo - or New Years Postcards. Our card that we sent out this year is pictured at the top. It's traditional that if you were married the previous year to use a wedding picture. Families with young children will often use photographs as well. As this is the Year of the Boar, we also got many cards with boar images. Oh, talking of Boar - on January 2nd (Wayne's birthday - Happy Birthday Wayne!), we had a lunch of nabe with wild boar. I must say - it was delicious!

今年も どうぞ よろしく

** Update

I'm not sure on the best way to reply to questions from comments, so thought I'd give this a go...

Thanks for the comments Kelchan! I had the dress and Wayne's shirt made. I had a good idea of what I wanted, but am not a great seamstress. The designer we used was great with amazing attention to detail, so they did a great job on Wayne's shirt and even made corsages from the fabric for our families.

The boar was yummier than I expected. Was just like a tender pork really. We were told that it was most likely from a female boar - as they taste better. Go figure.