Ai Otsuka draws a pregnant girl in LIFE-LOVE CiRCLE :)

こんにちわ、みんな！

We're meeting for the first time this year. And today I have something for you which is related to Ai-chan's pregnancy :)

As you probably know, Ai Otsuka is having a baby in April. Generally, we don't know much about the pregnancy, as Ai stays aways from the public eye. She only appears in her weekly LIFE-LOVE CiRCLE program on Tokyo FM (the official website is here) and that's it.

The news below come from a rough translation provided by chokokokoa from Channel-Ai.

Yesterday, Ai-chin had her first program this year aired. She wished everybody a happy new year and briefly summarised her professional achievements of 2010 (she mentioned also obtaining the driving license ^^). Then she expressed her delight and disbelief that she's a mother (still didn't get used to the growing belly? :D). What's the most interesting for us, chokokokoa claims that Ai used the words 女 and 女の子 (female and a girl) several times...

Is it telling us indirectly that she's going to have a baby girl? (No, I'm not suggesting anything!)

If so, then the dreams of many fans about Ai having the cutest baby in the world are coming true! ^^ (it's mine dream as well).

At the end, Ai-chan mentions she feels like eating mochi...

Here you have the picture for today's episode:

I'm in love with the cuteness and simplicity of Ai-chin's drawings!...♥

It's doubtful whether the woman in the picture is Ai herself.

I have some doubts concerning the kanji character on the left. At first glance, the character resembles this one: 女 which means female or woman. The kanji in the picture (安) has a small "roof", which makes it a different kanji than 女. According to my kanji dictionary, this "roofed" character means safety, peace or peace of mind. Therefore - we can't assume that Ai drew it next to a pregnant woman to express the child's gender, because despite the initial similarity, the kanji here has a different meaning. I don't know what to think about it... I will have to ask my Japanese teacher to clarify this issue :)

If you want to listen to Ai's sweet voice (her sweet laugh!) every Saturday, you can download podcasts with her program from the Tokyo FM official site: http://www.tfm.co.jp/love/circle/

I definitely can't wait till April!

EDIT (03.01.2011) I learned some important things about the news above. Both kanji characters in the picture put together mean easy childbirth or easy delivery (according to flintandtas @ Ch-Ai). Moreover, chokokokoa added that this picture was probably for a friend of Mizuki-chan (whose message was read by Ai in the program). The person to whom this pic is dedicated is pregnant, so Ai probably wanted to wish her easy delivery. We wish the same for Ai-chin :)