Shinagawa Aquarium (in Tokyo)

We made it! 

Coop couldn't look away! 

Sea Lion Show

More Tokyo/Aquarium

Love these!!

The New Sanno

What's in a name?

That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet...

It's been a week and yet our little guy has ended up somewhat nameless! Despite us not knowing what to call him, he is the easiest baby EVER! As long as his belly is full, he will sleep or look around without any fussing at all! He looks just like Cooper did except that he has lots of hair and their eyes are quite different. Cooper is so sweet with his little brother and so far isn't upset about sharing our attention with him. We'll send out announcements as soon as we finally settle on his name. For now, here's a pic of our newest team member!

5 Days Old

After spending one last night at the hospital, our little guy was finally cleared to go home. Yay! :)

Braden or Samuel?

Waiting to be a big brother is hard work...

Coop loves his baby brother

first trip to Starbucks

Sleepy Coop and Granny watching Gnomeo and Juliet 

Justin and his boys

Welcome to the Team, Sweet Baby

“My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted high..."  
1 Samuel 2:1a

Good Eats!

Tuna lunch special

Miso Soup

100 Yen Sushi

Fried Mochi!

fried chicken on a stick

Coco Curry

Neighborhood Ramen House

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!!!