Happy New Year 2013, as told by Shosei!

Hello, and Happy New Year, belatedly!  It is actually much closer to the Chinese New Year!  My new years festivities started out in Taiwan this year.  I kicked off the Eve of New Years Eve with a very high fever that led to a visit to the ER at a local hospital near my grandparents' home.  Before that emergency, a week before, I had already visited the ER at a different hospital to treat my huge welt on my forehead after I fell off my stroller.  To top it all off, I screamed at the top of my lungs for the whole 4 hour trip back to Japan on the airplane.  I screamed and hollered and kicked at the seat in front of me, and angrily dropped crackers onto the man's shoulder sitting beside my mom.  The man disgustedly and quietly picked the crackers and handed them back over to my mom's embrassed and cringing self.  My mom was pretty much left at doing all possible ways to calm me down SOMEHOW, but, the blow my dad threw into the back of my head with the airplane blanket just made things worse in me.  It made me sooooo angry!!  My mom was pretty sure she had a two year old in her hands after that episode!  Welcome to the terrible two's, Dad!

With that episode aside, my mother was not surprised to see an extra 1 or 2 kilos gained from the trip to Taiwan.  It was all that delicious food she ate while visiting Nai nai and Yie Yie.  Steamed dumplings filled with crab bits and crab miso, tasty pork thigh, delicious shrimp, scalding hot dumplings filled with hot broth and meat, eaten with ginger slices and soy sauce....I can go forever!  It was so good!  My mom drank a lot of the pearl milk tea, too.  And lots of tea, in general.  Nai nai bought a lot of jasmine tea bags for my mom and she drinks it just about everyday now.  It is really good, especially with a spoonful of sugar or honey.  Daddy is snacking a lot on snacks he bought in the grocery stores.  He and mommy enjoyed a bit of foot massage time before we went back home to Tokyo.  It is much more cheaper there than to do it in Japan.
Thank you, Nai Nai and Yie Yie for having us stay at your place and taking care of me when I got a high fever.  I will forever be Mr. Bean and Tato, to you! 

Here are some photos from our trip:

Sucking on a large pork bone.

My Taiwanese breakfast outside-sweetened soy milk, egg pancakes, soy milk soup with deep fried bread sticks and salty vegetables, sticky rice ball filled with dried beef bits, deep fried bread sticks, and other goodies. 

Daddy really liked this meal.