Happy Birthday, Hanster!

Best bday card ever! 

uhmm....

Oh, that Cooper...

Who taught the toddler to open the storage containers?!
This is what I found when I was preparing to make rice one day.

Anything we can do they can do better....

A few things that we're absolutely loving about Japan right now....

7-11 

1. We love Seven Eleven
   Unlike in the States, the food here is crave-ably delicious. We cannot get enough of the rice balls, but really everything that we've had is super yum. This is also where I can pick up some of my favorite Japanese sweets. Grapefruit mentos, anyone?!

Dom Dom's

2. We Love Sofutokurimu (aka Soft Cream)
   You can get soft serve pretty much everywhere and it's pretty much always delicious.

3. We Love Our Place
 Justin won the "Should we live on base or off base?" battle so we chose to live in town. The funny thing is, we could not have found a better place to suit our needs! We're barely 10 minutes from base, the master bedroom has an AMAZING view of the water, we have a good sized yard (not very common here) and our neighbors on both sides speak English! We're also super close to the train station and parks are within blocks in every direction.  What's not to love? The heated toilets in the bathrooms are just icing on the cake. Speaking of toilets...

Tokyo Bay

4. We Love the Toilets
  Where else in the world can you go and find 3 different toilets in one public bathroom? There's the traditional hole in the ground (We're not brave enough to try), the Western seats (What you see in America) and the multi-service Japanese-Western seats (best invention ever!). The women's bathrooms are also equipped with built in baby seats on the wall and a button near the toilet that plays water sounds or music when you push it so that your restroom neighbor doesn't have to hear you go.

The Japanese don't waste anything and that includes water so our home toilets actually have a faucet connected to the top where you can wash your hands after you flush and that "dirty" water fills the toilet for the next user. Very clever...

Merry Christmas!

This was really taken in Nov...

Coop and Daddy decorating the tree

Daibutsu (Giant Buddha)

Love, Peace & Taco Grease...

Justin insisted that we drive to the Buddha and while we were all skeptical of his ability to navigate with an all Japanese GPS, he got us there!

Gina and Mom

Soft Cream! 

hi-ya! 

Tokyo Tour #2

Mt. Fuji and Hakone

So, I was quite relieved that our tour to Fuji didn't involve any hiking...unless you count the stairs in Hakone. In fact, it was mostly a series of pleasant bus rides and stops. The tour also included a "Japanese style lunch". Japanese style lunch can be loosely translated to mean: "lots of small samples of a variety of foods that will surprisingly make your stomach feel full for at least 2-3 hours". I got the vegetarian "sample" and the rest of our crew had the regular "sample".

Vegetarian meal

Although we were able to see Mt. Fuji best from the visitor center and again when we got to Hakone, we did have a chance to actually stand on the mountain, too. The day was clear enough for us to go to Step 4 which is the highest point that anyone can go in winter and also the point where the trees stop growing. (Some vague memory of elementary science class makes me want to call that the tree line...)
The Korean pop group Code V happened to be visiting Fuji at the same time as our tour so we joined the hoards of girls snapping pictures and got a closer look. Gina somehow managed to get us close enough to start a conversation with them and they were actually really outgoing and friendly. An older woman nearby said that we were "lucky" to talk to them b/c apparently they're kind of a big deal here. So random. 
Anyway, it was a looong and exhausting tour, but worth every moment of the mad dash at 5 AM until the nice quiet cab ride from the Shinkansen (bullet train) to the hotel.

Gina made it to Japan!!

We officially have our first visitor! She raced through customs faster than we had anticipated, so our "Welcome to Japan" sign was a bust, but more importantly, she made it!! The Team Allen Tourism adventure begins......NOW! 

First stop --> RAMEN!!! 

Kenchoji Temple, Zazen and Green Tea

More Zazen details on TheMadHanster.blogspot.com ...

Feeling very Zen with the gals

Green tea & cookie

This cost over a million dollars to restore.

Beautiful grounds! 

Yokohama's Chinatown

We drove to Yokohama just to see something new and ended up in Chinatown (the biggest in Japan) for dinner. Oishikatta desu!!

Mikasa Park

Mikasa Koen is a cute park that is walking distance from base and located right off of Yokosuka Bay. It has a lot of grassy areas, an old battleship museum, a bandstand, and a fountain with lights and music. We went to visit during a weekend festival and there were so many people everywhere!

Cooper loved the live music and his new pet goldfish! A bonus for us was that the "fair food" was delicious! I had ramen, Justin and my mom had some kind of fried noodles and Cooper had a little bit of everything! We had to laugh when Cooper asked for noodles instead of his usual request for french fries and chicken!

So far so good...

Everyone keeps asking what we think of Japan.... Well, the truth is that it still feels like we're on an extended vacation! I think reality will set in more once we actually move into our new place. Here are a few things that we're still getting used to:

1. The food. Most of the food that we've had in town is great, but I would give anything for a California burrito or a super beef from Gordo's. Oh, and I miss Yelp. Walking into a restaurant and ordering blindly  is soooo 1990s...

2. The cost. It is so insanely expensive here. We've found that maybe the best thing to do is to stop converting everything to dollars. It's just too painful.

3. The roads. I once thought that the hardest thing about driving here would be staying on the left side of the road, but that was easy to adjust to. The hardest thing is navigating through the unbelievably narrow streets.

4. Earthquakes. Yes, we're from California, but that doesn't make earthquakes any less traumatizing. We just experienced our first one here and someone who has been here much longer than we have said that we'll get used to it. Eeek! They happen THAT often?!

5. Oh, and the foreign language factor! Cooper has already picked up a few words, I continually stretch my Japanese to the limit, and Justin has been studying a lot... but it's going to be quite a while before any of us get comfortable trying to communicate in town. Thank God the people here are super patient and friendly!

More pics to come...

"Halloweening"

Yes, that's a real word. Trick or treating here is called halloweening, and the base opens up to the public so the local kids can participate in "halloweening". I don't believe it's tradition out in town, but we did see a lot of halloween stuff at the Home store (Home Depot)...

Coop couldn't believe that all he had to do was say "Trick or treat" the

Kamakura/Hachimangu Shrine

This was our first time taking the train and it was sooo easy! We went to Kamakura which was the capitol of Japan in the 12th century. We lost the group during lunch and ended up wandering into a very tiny, very Japanese restaurant with a limited menu. The hostess was very nice and while we somehow managed to order food, I could not tell you what it was! Cooper was very adventurous and sampled a little of everything before settling on the soup, a radish (?) dish and rice. I think we could get used to taking off our shoes and maybe even sitting on pillows, but the smoking allowed inside the restaurant was intense. I guess that's one CA law that I will miss...
After lunch we were able to reunite with one of the small groups and their English-speaking guide. The actual location of the shrine was very busy! There seemed to be quite a few school groups there looking for English speakers to interview. Justin was a popular choice and received paper cranes (origami) for his time!
I've become an expert at "holding it", but my mom and some of the other ladies with us couldn't so they got to experience the joy of a traditional japanese toilet! Haha! My mom'll probably be annoyed that I included that since it's basically just a hole in the ground... :P

Allen 3.0

Our little guy is measuring big so, although the official due date is still 2/2/12, we can reasonably expect a stork visit in January! (=

"He fills my life with good things..." Psalm 103:5