Year of the Ox

Happy New Year!

January 1 and its eve have been pretty somber here.  We used to gather with my husband’s mother and sister and nieces, but now the girls are pretty much grown and have their own things to do and places to be.  Last night, my husband, kids, and I watched the Red and White Song Contest, in which popular male and female singers battle it out on the stage.  The highlight for me was seeing one of the singers in the Okinawan band Speed doing a little sign language.  Her daughter is deaf, so I figure she was sending a special, intimate message to her child via national TV.

The special foreign guest was Enya.  “Kids!” I said, “This is what I wanted to be listening to while I was giving birth!”  My twins arrived before all the details were ironed out, and as it turned out, there was no music in the delivery room, but Enya’s music reminds me of their birth  all the same.

Also, I thought Jero’s shirt was pretty funny.  Jero is a biracial (multiracial?) American who grew up singing enka with his Japanese granny.    He’s really good at it, too.  Anyway, he had his grandmother’s face screen-printed on his shirt.