i am fat. it's ok, i'm used to it. not to say that i like being fat, or that i want to be fat, i just am. i am pretty healthy (shocking, i know), which seems to be the basis for most people making comments about weight. studies show, blah blah blah, and yes, i know there's a risk for certain diseases as i get older, but there's no guarantee.

i do want to lose weight. i was losing weight before i got pregnant with hiro, mainly through exercise. i was swimming almost every day, but since moving to fukuoka, i have not had that opportunity. i have also been pregnant most of that time (yes, there was a year that i wasn't, but finding childcare here in japan is difficult. at least, it has been for me.) i don't have to be thin, however. just...not so fat. if that makes sense. and i want to exercise because of the benefits.

my weight is not something i usually talk about here, so that's why i wrote the above. i'm not trying to be a fat activist or something, just writing about what i am. and this isn't going to be a weight loss blog or anything. if the title of this post has told you anything, i am going to write about some comments i've had directed toward me lately.

society (both in the US and in japan) has made it very clear that being fat is not good. not healthy. not sexy. fat = bad. this is sad, really. but then, even i am disgusted by seriously overweight people. maybe that even prompts me to some self-hate. i don't know. i have tried to come to terms with this, one cannot lose weight by wishing it, or by taking a magic pill that makes it disappear by the next day.

(hm, i seem to have lost part of my post. oh well. long story short: totally random guy came up to me while i was in my car at home and said that i sure eat a lot. yes, i was eating a snack in the car, but i didn't start eating until i had parked the car. and i was eating in the car because it was hot and it was raining, and the kids were sound asleep. DO NOT WAKE A SLEEPING BABY. what a jerk.)

anyway, the main reason this post has been bouncing around in my head: last friday yoshi had a drinking party. he thought it would be a good idea if the kids and i showed up so his co-workers could meet us. that isn't really the done thing here in japan, but since i'm a foreigner, and our kids are cute, his co-workers wanted to meet us. yoshi mainly works with older people. he's the youngest in his section, the next oldest is a man about my age, and then everyone else is in the grandma and grandpa age group. seriously.

so, i took the kids to the restaurant where they were having the party. aw, the kids are cute. i almost immediately get bombarded with the, 'where are you from?' question. more often than not, this means, 'where in the US are you from?' but most japanese people don't know what i'm talking about, unless i bring up seattle and ichiro. kinda weird for me, as i'm not really from seattle. anyway. yoshi spent a lot of time chasing the kids (sasha crawls fast!) and one guy kept trying to get me to eat fried chicken. i wasn't really hungry, plus i had had fried chicken for lunch, so i kept trying to decline. then he asked me how much i weighed. i just didn't answer the question. so, he started to guess. 100 kilos? i didn't answer. another guy, sitting on the other side said, 'she must weigh at least 120 kilos.' for those of you who don't know, it's about 2.2 pounds per kilo, so 100 kilos is about 220 pounds. i have never weighed that much. i was embarrassed, and didn't say anything. the man sitting across the table started saying, 'that's really rude.' and the subject dropped.

surprisingly (to me) i wasn't angry. i suspected that yoshi hadn't told them that i was pregnant. since we have two kids, and one of each at that, it probably didn't occur to these guys that i might be pregnant. i asked yoshi on the way home if he had told them yet and he said that he hadn't. he kept apologizing and saying that these old guys work in fields all day and don't have opportunities to speak to young women very often. i still wasn't angry, but i don't want to see yoshi's co-workers again. yoshi said we had made a difference at the party, that they weren't really talking to each other until we showed up. i guess babies are a great ice-breaker, and having a chance to talk to a foreigner is rare for many people here, but i really don't think we'll be going to another drinking party. ever.