Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu (Happy New Year)

I've started this post around 8:30 pm local time, which means it'll be the last one of 2005 for us. Reflecting on the past year, it's hard to believe that our path led us to where we are tonight, preparing for our first New Year's Eve here in Japan. Even six months ago, if you had asked me where we'd be for New Year's Eve, I would have listed at least 108 cities before coming up with Yokosuka-shi. But here we are and I couldn't be any happier.

We decided to be mellow when we ring in the new year. I have been feeling a cold/flu bug approaching for the past day or so and I don't have much energy right now. Also, with Josh as young as he is, we didn't want to get lost in Tokyo somewhere late and have to fight the other party-people for the last train back down south. But it'll be nice to sit at home under the kotatsu, toss back a couple sips of warm sake, and watch the festivities on television.

From all of us at The Japan Years to all of you reading this from your computer monitors, Happy New Year and Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu. We hope your 2006 is filled with joy, laughter, and love.

Kanpai (Cheers),

Mike, Nicki, and Joshua

Back To Work Tomorrow

I decided to go to work this week between Christmas and New Years, because it'll give me a chance to save up my annual leave hours for trips around Japan and the rest of Asia. Plus, it should be quiet around work this week since most people will be taking a lot of time off, so I should be able to get some serious work done. I did enjoy my federal holiday today, which made up for Christmas falling on a Sunday this year. For those of you who aren't going to work the rest of the week, enjoy it for me!

Just a quick note before hitting the hay that I've added pictures from our Christmas activities in our Gallery, under the heading 12/25/05. Please pardon the "just woken up" look that we possess in the photos. Here's a few samples to motivate you to look at the rest:

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!!!

One of the advantages of living here in the Land of the Rising Sun is the time zone difference, which puts us a good half-day or better ahead of our family and friends in the States. Our marriage merged the Christian and Jewish faiths together, so we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. We've already opened our Christmas gifts, before our family in the States have even gotten past Christmas Eve. By coincidence, this year Hanukkah begins at sunset on 25 December, so we'll be able to start lighting the Menorah sooner than the rest of the Jewish side of the family, too! ... Yes, we are waiting until sunset to open the Hanukkah presents.

Anyway, just a quick post to wish our readers a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. We took plenty of pictures this morning, but we'll wait to post until after we celebrate Hanukkah's first night tonight. Here's a few for those that can't wait, of Joshua sneaking away one of Santa's cookies then trying to look cute to make up for it.



And here's one from our Christmas Eve lunch at Sbarro's, where Josh happened to be offering me a bite of his meal, and I happened to be carrying my camera. I thought it was worth a share because his expression is priceless and it's one of the better indoor shots I've taken with the new camera while controlling the aperture and not using a flash.

ER

From the looks of things around here, you'd think that Nicki had taken over with the blog entries. In all honesty, I have been keeping myself busy before the upcoming Christmas holiday in the evenings, so I haven't had much time to write a blog post. Even tonight, it'll be a short one because I spent much of the earlier part of this evening updating the blog site.

I added several new photo galleries, which you can visit by clicking on the word "Gallery" on the left column of the page, which will open a series of dates, then simply click on the date that you would like to view. The dates listed for photos are actual dates that we created blog posts, so if you are curious about the details related to the pictures, simply look up that date in our "Archives" and you can read the story all over again. You may also note that we added some additional friends to our "Links" page. Between Random Planets is a blog that was set up by a friend of Nicki's, who is here with her husband who's in the military. Grand Stream Dreams belongs to Claus, a new friend of ours who lives in Texas and was kind enough to link us to his blog. Finally, I also updated our "References" category to include useful tools for getting around in Japan and some references for learning the language.

At this point, you may be wondering why I titled this post ER. As many of you know, that acronym is short for Emergency Room, which is exactly where we took Joshua on Sunday morning after he tried to impersonate a basketball with his head, bouncing off our front step. To avoid additional suspense, he's alright and nothing is broken. Now that you know that, here's the scoop:

It's Sunday morning and we were getting ready to head to base to do a little Christmas shopping. Nicki was helping Joshua put on his winter coat just inside the front door of our house, where there's a step that separates the entryway from the no-shoes-allowed part of the house. While putting on his coat, Josh lost his balance and landed nose first on the corner of the entryway step. The olympic judges gave his landing a 9.3, but it wasn't enough for a gold medal. It was enough, however, to cause his very first nose bleed. When we saw the blood, we decided it was a good idea to take him to the ER for an official look-see by the doctor, just in case he broke his nose or any other important body parts. After a long series of questions with the admin staff, we finally got to see a doctor, who treated Josh to the usual height, weight, temperature, blood pressure tests... all important things for a kid with a nose bleed. Finally, the doctor inspected the nose and told us everything was alright.

Next step, Nicki and I will be recognized as Parents of the Year, since we just barely beat out our closest competition: the parents who let their kid shove GI Joe figurines up his nose and the parents who let their kid run around wearing a blindfold and carrying scissors .

Japanese Holidays & Survival (Nicki)

Some loved ones have been asking about Japanese Holidays. Here is a link to a list of Japanese Holidays. I also found a fantastic PDF link for "Survival Japanese", provided by the Navy. This was provided to us in our orientation class in a hard copy. Hope that this helps!

Tackling the Tupperware (Nicki)

Before I start on today's story, an FYI that the 1st photo in the previous post is of a Japanese style computer desk.

Ok, on to the more important things like my triumph over the 2 moving boxes that have been mocking me in the dining room. Many folks may know what I'm eluding to. Those last 2 or 3 boxes left after a move that just won't go away on their own. Well, in this house there lived such boxes. They were loaded with miscellaneous crap from our San Diego kitchen and dining room. I dreaded unloading these. Most of the contents were Tupperware. A housewife's best ally or worst enemy depending on how we view it. I tend to be the pessimist so I view them as the latter of the 2 labels. They (Tupperware) are great for storing leftovers (which only my husband really enjoys) but are a pain in the butt to organize. I had one cupboard in my miniscule kitchen preserved for these plastic creations. Before I started on my mission, I had to pick the appropriate soundtrack. I chose Offspring's "Smash" album; the perfect music for going into battle.

I proceeded to sort the "haves" from the "have-nots", that is I trashed most of the spaghetti sauce stained containers and the recycled yogurt cups. While I did this, I questioned myself as to why in the world I didn't trash these before we left. Ah, I remember. I was just too lazy! After carefully sorting my trashed tupperware in the right garbage can, I moved on to the smaller more annoying objects that had whittled their way to the bottom of the humongous box I had just cleaned out.

A common mistake that I make while cleaning is getting sidetracked with reminiscent memories of a particular object. Such was the case with several of the things I was trying to find a home for. Many of them were magnets that I had collected from trips that Mike and I had taken over the years. Some magnets were not even collectibles. Some of them were just freebies that I had received from local San Diego companies. Thus, leading me down the path of missing California.

I found a Baja Fresh magnet and started thinking not about Baja Fresh but of it's somewhat ghetto counterpart..... Roberto's. Oh how I miss Roberto's Carne Asada Burritos. The burritos are about the size of my forearm. As you bite into the "forearm", grease trickles through the massive heaping pile of carne asada (steak) and guacamole down onto your chin. G-d only knows how long that carne asada had been sitting under a heat lamp before it made it's way to your mouth, but at the point of contact the consumer could care less. 3:00 AM cravings are different all around the world. I know on the east coast, it's pizza, Wendy's, or White Castle. However, in SoCal, Roberto's is the place to go (or In-N-Out, which may make it's way to a different blog, but for now I'll stick with this fantasy). Between the carne asada burritos and the Offspring music playing in the background, I decided to move on before I started drowning in the longing for Southern California.

So, I turned on a new CD. The Vandals. Before I knew it, all of the junky freebie magnets were stuck on our new refrigerator. We had a quick dinner of Ramen and walked to the 24-hour market by our house to sample some new junk food. Oh yeah, I almost forgot the most important thing that we picked up. An expensive bottle of Sake (or at least we hope it's Sake!). After Mike's beer and my glass of wine, what better time to stock up on more alcohol? We sampled some and boy was is strong. This is why you may find this blog a little more "colorful" than most!

The Ultimate in Fast Food (Nicki)

Thought I would type in a quick post to let you know how we spent our weekend as a follow up to Wednesday at Disney - by the way, Mike wanted me to let you know that the remainder of our Disney pictures are up in the Gallery, dated 12/14/2005. We took it easy this Saturday but we thought that we would take a short trip up to Yokohama (well, close to Yokohama), to Kamiooka station on the Keikyu Line, to check out an electronics store that Jeff told us about. I wanted to get a couple of frames for some pictures that my Grandparents sent me a couple weeks back and Mike just wanted to check out all the "toys". This place was definitely electronics overload. It was awesome but at the same time overwhelming. Great entertainment for Joshua and it was fun to see all the gadgets that we don't have yet in the States. I'm sure that this store was nothing compared to Akihabara in Tokyo, which is one of the spots on our "must see" list before we leave Japan. I found a couple of 8x10 frames at the store but couldn't really find a collage frame to my liking, so I'll just have to keep shopping. If you're interested and/or you are located in the Yokohama area and would like to check it out, the store is called Yodobashi and it's located on the 9th floor at the mall around Komiooka station.

On our way up to Kamiooka, as we were walking to the train station, we bickered about where we were going to eat lunch. We had gotten a late start - it was already 11:00AM - and Josh's official lunch time. I was cranky and hungry because all I had was a cup of coffee for breakfast. We thought about hunting down a Sushi place, but we didn't know where there were any child-friendly places. Josh doesn't eat raw fish yet. (I'm not sure what the safe age for this is. He's 2 years) We have faced this predicament in the past. Typically, we hunt for for a new Sushi Restaurant to try (that is child-friendly). During our search, we proceed to get hungrier and more frustrated. We find nothing to agree upon and end up settling for McDonalds. So today, we decided to skip the search and stop by the train station's McDonalds and grab a bite. However, as fate would have it, the line at McDonald's was out the door. Seeing this as some sort of a sign, we headed for Yokosuka-Chuo train station to try our luck at hunting down a good sushi spot. We didn't have to hunt for long. More's is a mall located at Yokosuka-Chuo train station. Taking the elevator to the 8th floor lead us to the food garden (I think that's what they called it) and "Ding" we found something. It was a little Sushi Bar with a coveyer belt full of plates. Just what we were looking for. We scoped out the place and it was pretty quiet inside, which meant, Horray!, not too many folks would give us the evil eye if we brought a 2 year old into the place. They had just what we were looking for. As I sat there, I pondered....'this is the ultimate in fast food! You don't even have to order. It's just there already.' If you've never been in a sushi bar such as this you're missing out. For family members back at home, I'll describe. When you walk in, there is a bar set up with a Sushi Chief behind the counter.

On the counter, there is a small conveyer belt with little plates of sushi delights. Each plate is color-coded. Each color stands for a certain price that is usually posted on a menu or on the wall. For example, blue plates cost 100 Yen, yellow plates are 200 Yen, and so on. When you're done eating, the amount of plates you finish off are added up and that's your bill. Usually, there is complimentary instant green tea or tea bags placed on the counter along with a hot water dispenser and mug. Being that this was Yokosuka-Chuo Station (and extremely close to the Navy Base), much of the sushi being served was of the America-jin variety. Salmon, Tuna, Squid, Shrimp, and different sushi rolls. I'm not a big fan of the sushi rolls at all. The seaweed is just to fishy for my taste and in a lot of the rolls, there is an excess of mayonaise or some sort of creamy stuff that I just can't hack, along with fish eggs. However, I can eat the raw stuff all day! For those of you back home who have never tried actual Sashimi, I urge you to try. There is absolutely NO fishy taste. The texture is like a really rare steak - it melts in your mouth. Mixed with sticky rice, wasabi, and soy it is fantastic. If you're apprehensive, drink some sake (Japanese rice-wine) first and then give it a try! Or try some seared tuna at a restaurant and you're halfway there. Josh was content with some rice, fried chicken and french fries. That meal definitely made our day.

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E...

Quiz #1: I'll give you three pictorial guesses of where we spent today:



For those of you that live around Tokyo, Orlando, or Anaheim, the first picture should be easy to recognize. If you know how to read English, the second shot should clear up any misconceptions. But the third picture is the sinker...

Today we visited Mickey and all of his friends at Tokyo Disneyland. And let me just tell you, it was cold, but it was also the time of our lives.

The Disney tour was a one-day trip set up by the Navy's Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) folks. We decided to try Disney through MWR for several reasons, including:

1) The bus ride there was guaranteed to be better than riding the trains or taking a car... so we thought,

2) The tour guide spoke English, though we were on our own once entering the theme park, and

3) We had the opportunity to meet some new people by riding with the group.

The bus to Disneyland was scheduled to leave Yokosuka at 6:30am. In our typical family routine, we woke up at about 4:45am to get ready, eat breakfast, and get over to base in time. After all that, we arrived at the bus at 6:29am, with the bus running and warming up. As we got on the bus, we noticed a family with a child about the age of Josh, so we wandered closer to them to check out how successfully they were getting their child car seat attached using the difficult bus seat belts. Turns out that we spent the bus ride talking with them and then spent the first half of our day in the park with them as well.

The bus ride was fairly eventful. About halfway to Tokyo, the son of our bus-mates noticed a peculiar odor looming like a dark cloud over our section of the bus. It was a smell that my brain couldn't place, but my nostrils were having trouble digesting the foul stench. I finally asked Nicki if she smelled mold, but she was one step ahead of me... she quickly said, "That smells like puke." Sure enough, a child a few seats back decided to share her semi-digested breakfast with us. The family tried cleaning it up by storing the blown chunks in a plastic grocery bag, but unfortunately they didn't have the foresight to put the bag into the bus's bathroom or even to tie the bag soundly. Long story short, for the last 45 minutes of our bus ride, we were stuck in Vomitville. And... as we were getting off of the bus, we noticed that the little spewer's parents had the audacity to leave the bag behind on the bus, apparently saving it for the ride home.

In better news, once we got to Tokyo Disneyland, everything was wonderful. We decided to join our bus-mates - Keith, Christy (I hope I spelled your name correctly), and their son, James, for the first half of our day. We started out in Toon Town, where Keith, James, Joshua and I rode a child-sized, but still surprisingly speedy, rollercoaster... but only after convincing the Disney crew that our kids were three years old, the minimum age for riding. Throughout the day, we also went on the Tea Cups ride, Pinnochio's ride, the Dumbo Experience, It's a Small World ride, the Who Framed Roger Rabit chase, and a few other Disney staples.

After eating lunch with our bus-mates, we decided to venture out on our own for a bit, but only after exchanging contact information with our new friends for future reference. We knew Josh was going to skip his nap, but we weren't sure the extent to which his no-nap-meltdown would happen, and didn't want to hold up the bus-mates because of a toddler eruption. We spent the next few hours basically walking around, shooting pictures (over 100), and enjoying the beautiful but chilly day.

Quiz #2: Where are the two longest lines at Disneyland typically located?

Answer: The second longest line is that which leads to "Pictures with Mickey" opportunities. The longest line in the entire park today was the one full of Japanese people who wanted to talk to Joshua. Everywhere we went, people tried to pinch his cheeks, shake his hands, or talk to him in Japanese. Quite a few were surprised to hear him say, "Ohayo gozaimasu" or "Konnichiwa" ("good morning" or "good afternoon", respectively) in return to their greetings.

Around 3:15pm, we had to make a critical decision. Our bus was scheduled to leave Disneyland around 9:00pm, but we knew that without a nap all day, Josh was bound to get cranky towards his bedtime (normally 'round 7:00pm) and after the sun set, we knew that it wasn't going to get any warmer. Problem was, we were within a couple hours of major Tokyo rush-hour and with 14 million people or so living in and around Tokyo, we didn't want to head back on our own during the 5:00 - 7:00pm time frame. So we decided to cut our day short around 3:45pm, and we started our journey to the train station nearest the theme park.

Fortunately, the walk wasn't far, but we knew that the walk was the easy part. Our train trip took us on several different train lines, with transfers at some of the largest stations in the metropolitan area, including the central Tokyo Station and Yokohama Station. Sufficed to say, Nicki and I decided that if we all completed the train ride in one piece, then we could probably successfully travel just about anywhere we want in the future without much trouble. Fortunately for us, we caught an express train from Tokyo to Yokohama, then a limited express train the rest of the way from Yokohama. It still took us about two hours to get home, but we made it in one piece.

Since then, I've had a Guinness - the perfect beer for sipping while sitting with legs stretched out under the family kotatsu. I also soaked in the ofuro, or "Japanese style tub heated to skin-peeling temperatures", to regulate my body heat again. Now, I'm really sleepy so the remaining images of today's Disney excursion will have to wait. But I promise that soon, you'll be able to click on our "Gallery" link to the left and find over 100 pictures from today's adventure... we'll label it 12/14/2005 for easy access.

Hayama, Clouds, and the Livin Store

For the past several weeks, I have wanted to see the other side of the peninsula that surrounds our home. From what I've heard, there are some spectacular views of Fuji-yama, Mt. Fuji, and Fuji-san (all names for the same famous landmark) on the west side, if you can get over there on a cloudless day. Every weekend since we got our car, we picked a day to do shopping and a day to drive around the peninsula. And so far, every day that was chosen for the drive around town turned out to be rainy. This weekend was different.

On Saturday, we made plans to go shopping (more on that later), so we determined that today would be our day for the drive around the peninsula. We woke up early this morning and found that it was an overcast day, with limited visibility on the horizon. We decided to venture out anyway, because we've wanted to explore more and more of this beautiful country and didn't want to necessarily wait until the "perfect day" to do so. We hopped into the car a bit after 10:00am and started our trek towards Hayama, a town on the northwest side of the peninsula. The one-way trip to took about 45 minutes by car, at which time we found ourselves at a Denny's Restaurant, where we had lunch, which consisted of Ramen noodles and gyoza for Nicole and myself, and spaghetti for Master Joshua. Upon our arrival, we couldn't help but notice the view from the restaurant, so I made a mental note to snap a few photos on the way out.

After lunch, I whipped out the camera - and the zoom lens that I have on loan from Sushi Jeff - and started taking a few photos. Unfortunately, we encountered too many clouds to actually see Fuji-san, but we did get some great shots of the landscape, which in a way reminded both of us a bit of some of the sleepy coastal towns of Northern California along Highway 1.



Kotatsu Shopping

As I mentioned above, we went shopping on Saturday. One of our blog commentors, David, mentioned a few posts ago that a kotatsu would help keep us warm in our house during the winter. We decided his advice was sound. A kotatsu is a table that provides heat, and we were offered shopping assistance from my coworker, Lonnie, and his girlfriend, Takami, who is from Tokyo and speaks perfect Japanese. We went to the Homes Store (like a Home Depot) and the Livin Shopping Center (similar to an IKEA and Walmart SuperCenter, combined) and found the perfect kotatsu at Livin. With Takami's assistance, we were able to convince some employees to help us out and we came away with a great deal. Now, all we have to do is find a matching cover for the top of the kotatsu and we'll be all set.

The Japanese Toilet, the Magic Handle, and our Family Wagon
We received a few comments regarding our blog posting about the Japanese-style toilet in our house. One of the comments, from Charles, requested a photo of the toilet. I finally got around to posting a few pics in our new Gallery at the left column of our blog... just click on the word Gallery and select the 12/11/2005 set of images.

Also included in the Gallery are pictures of our car, which I realized haven't been posted before now. You may wonder what the green and yellow magnet is on the hood. That's the new Japanese driver get-out-of-an-accident-free magnet. We're allowed to keep one on the front and one on the back of the car for up to one year to let everyone know that we are rookie drivers here in Japan and to stay away from us when they see us coming. The Japanese have a similar magnet (orange and yellow, I believe) for the elderly, basically indicating that they may drive like beginner drivers because they are elderly. It's a very useful tool that I wish would be adopted back in the States. Also, you may be wondering about the license plate.



I blurred out the actual plate number because I'm paranoid, but I left some Kanji and a few other visible characters on the picture to point out some things. First, the Kanji says "Yokohama", which is where the plates are registered. The 500 indicates the type/horsepower of the engine. The letter 'Y' indicates that we're gaijin (foreigners) and I believe it may be short for Yokosuka, but I could be wrong.

New Left Column Setup

You may have noticed that our blog looks a bit different than it did before. The left column, specifically, has been cleaned up to make it a bit more eye-friendly. We have created a few options, including a Photo Gallery and Links, as well as the original Recent Posts and Archive options. Feel free to click on any of the options and you'll open some sub-category options for your viewing pleasure.

The pictures from this post, including additional shots of Hayama, our Japanese-style toilet, and our neighborhood are there for your enjoyment. And if you are wondering why the spider photo is there, it's because he (or she) was the first neighbor we met. That colorful spider was waiting at the entrance of our home for the first few weeks we lived in the new place. It has moved on and no longer resides in our tree, which is a good thing because I'm not a big fan of spiders.

Wild Goose Chaise

Can't remember if we mentioned it on a previous post, but about a week ago, we purchased a living room set from the Naval Exchange (NEX) furniture store on base. We had been looking for one since moving into the house, since we left our old sofa and matching oversized chair in San Diego, concerned that they would be too big to fit into a Japanese home. In the NEX store a week ago, we found the perfect set: a dark olive green sofa with a matching chair and ottoman, advertised as a sofa/chaise set. I asked the salesman if the set came together for the advertised price and he said, "yes". Recognizing a great deal, Nicki and I jumped on the opportunity and requested that it be delivered ASAP. We were told that the set would arrive today (Dec 7).

I went home around 11:00am today to prepare for the arrival of the delivery crew. They showed up around 12:30pm and began unloading cushions and the sofa. When the sofa and ottoman were set up, they asked me to sign off that it had been delivered. I asked about the matching chair and was told that the "sofa/chaise" combo was all that I ordered. I asked the delivery guy to call the NEX so that I could inquire about the situation, since to Nicki and me the "chaise" meant the matching chair with the ottoman. The delivery man called the store on his cell phone and told the representative to speak with me directly, since the delivery guy's English abilities weren't all that great.

I grabbed the cell and knew it was going to be a long conversation when the representative asked me if I had picked up the sofa from the store or if it had been delivered to me. "Duh", I thought... "you just spoke to the delivery guy". Anyway, I politely told the NEX rep that the delivery guys were in the process of delivering the living room set, but the chair was missing. Again, the rep asked, "so the delivery team is still there?". Obviously, the rep was a couple of peanuts short of a circus. Once I was finally able to explain that the delivery guy, Nicki, and I were all standing in our living room together in a circle around the spot where the missing chair was supposed to be, the rep took my information and looked for the receipt. When she found it, she told me that we had purchased the sofa/chaise combo, which included only the sofa and ottoman. I explained the situation, how in the store I was told that the entire set came together. All the lady could do was apologize over and over again, and she said that there must have been confusion because the salesperson probably thought we just meant the sofa and ottoman, not the matching chair that was on display less than 5 feet away. But the rep did nothing more to help. Finally, she told me that I could go ahead and buy the chair if I wanted, for $450... I told her that I had already purchased the chair as part of the set. Obviously, this wasn't working out very well.

Then after apologizing a few more times, the rep told me that I should come in to talk to the manager, whom she said would be in the office tomorrow. I asked what time to come in tomorrow and she told me after a brief pause that the manager wouldn't be in tomorrow, but instead she'd be in on Monday. Yup, I thought, this lady's about a sandwich or two short of a picnic. So I asked if they could hold the chair until Monday and she told me "no, because there is only one chair of that type left in the inventory" (which furthers my suspicion that that chair was part of our set). Then the rep told me to hold on so she could talk to her supervisor (not kidding... I guess a supervisor is different than a manager). She said that we might be able to get a discount because of the confusion. When she got back on the line, however, she told me that we could not get a discount on the chair, but they would be willing to drop the delivery charge if we bought it at full price. I asked, "How is that reconciliation for this situation? We already paid for today's delivery and we were told the chair was part of the set that was delivered today." Once again, all I got was more, "I'm really sorry". When it finally dawned on me that the NEX furniture store has a monopoly and could care less, and this rep is four beers short of a six pack and doing nothing more than saying, "I'm sorry", I finally ended the call with an "I'm sorry too" and hung up the phone.

Then, as gracefully as I could, I handed the phone back to the delivery guy, signed his delivery form, and let him leave. The good news is that we finally have a sofa in the house and no longer have to sit on the floor to watch television. The bad news is that our matching chair is still property of the NEX furniture store. With any luck, maybe we'll find it in the bargain bin sometime in the future for less than they're currently asking.

PS - Later on in the Night

Tonight, we overcame the bitterness of the "chaise incident" I described above and decided to enjoy a little bit of time on our new sofa while watching TV. It inspired me to grab the camera and shoot a few pictures. As you can see, our Christmas tree is fully armed and ready for Santa, but we did wait until after December 1 to put it up and decorate it. This year is the first that we've ever had an artificial tree, but it serves its purpose well, at least for the next few years while we're here in Japan. I took a close up of the tree that turned out pretty nice and the other shot is one that I think I'll call "Twilight Zone", because it looks a little eerie with the bright white TV screen. Actually, I was playing with the camera's aperture on that shot, so it took the camera a few seconds to actually shoot. The only light that the lens picked up was from the tree and from the TV, which is why the screen looks blank white (and why Josh's head is blurry, because he moved too much during the shot). All of our other lights were off. Enjoy!

Just Another Day (Nicki)

After reading SushiJeff's blog about Takayama it inspired me to type out a blog of my own since I haven't done it for quite some time. Actually, this will be my 2nd blog. If you like this blog, you'll love www.sushicam.com. That is how we came up with the idea for this website.

Lately, because of the cold weather, I've been feeling a little bit like spending my days in a cocoon that I like to call the living room, with the heater blasting at full force and the only English TV Channel on, National Geographic. Yes, I'm a spoiled Californian through and through. Although I do find solace knowing that it's been reported to be unusually cold for this time of year. It makes me feel a little less "wussy". Not only is it cold but I do have my episodes of missing home. The comfort of being able to leave the house and know exactly where to go for something is now pretty much gone. Also, the idea of the effort that it would take to get a toddler to the train station and to a destination and back is just too frightening sometimes. Last time I took the train to base it took 2 hours. (Then I had to run my errands) OK, I'm over-exaggerating just a tad. Today I decided to buck up, get over it and get outside. Went shopping at the local store for a couple of last minute Christmas Gifts. Really, the grocery store and small shopping strip by the train station have been so much fun to venture out to. I honestly don't know how I'm going to see everything this country has to offer since I see something new everyday at the grocery store. I've also become a bit of a vending machine addict. Every time I see something new in a machine I haven't tried, I HAVE to pay the 120-Yen to get it. The hot Lemon Tea is great. Also, the apple juice is glorious. We've so affectionately called it "Crapple" (Crack apple Juice) because of the super sweet flavor & because of the way Josh gulps it down like it's the last thing he will ever drink. I've got a care package together for Mike's old office filled with interesting food items that I hope they enjoy, like Grape Kit-Kats and sweet potato chips.

We haven't really taken any trips recently. We've just been trying to get the house together and get ready for the Holidays. We are planning on taking a trip up to Tokyo Disney very soon. It should be a great time. Josh will really enjoy it. It's so exciting to see how he is starting to grasp concepts more. We've put up the tree and placed several presents underneath. I've started to talk to him more about Christmas and what Santa is going to bring. Now, when he wakes up in the morning, I say the usual good morning and ask him, "Do you want to go downstairs? Mommy will make you oatmeal and turn on the Christmas Tree Lights." He immediately replies, "DOWNSTAIRS! PRESENTS PRESENTS!!" You guessed it; the presents and tree are downstairs. He hasn't opened any on his own yet....I hear that we have to worry about that as he gets older though.

Even though it's been cold, the weather up until recently has been absolutely beautiful. The trees have changed and the sun has been out. It's been really awesome to see the change in season. To get over my "cocoon symptoms", I've decided to call a couple places on base to get me involved. Twice a week, I've decided to enroll Josh in daycare (for a half-day or less) so that I can get away and so that he can have some interaction with other children. Preferably, I'd like to find someone (who speaks Japanese) to come and watch him but he might really enjoy seeing other children so I'm going to give daycare a shot. I have my driver’s test on Friday, so wish me luck! After I get my license, I'm going to sign on for the Health and Wellness program at the Gym. I'll get evaluated and then be put on a program with a trainer. It's a first step. Maybe I'll finally get rid of the huge roll on my stomach. (Probably cutting back on the vending machine would help too!) Anyway, like the title says, Just another day in JAPAN!

Red Lobster and Other Fine Japanese Things

It's been a long week and I'm glad today is Saturday. We haven't done many tourist activities in the past couple of weeks because we've been busy with getting all of our possessions unpacked, organized, and reintroduced into our lives. Not sure if I mentioned this previously, but after our shipment of goods came in, we were having a lot of trouble finding our telephone. And we looked everywhere for it, finally figuring that it must have been lost during the move or it was in one of the unfortunate boxes that may have fallen off of the back of the boat on the way over here. It didn't matter too much to me, because we have been making all of our international calls using the computer (more on that in a bit), but when I'm at work and Nicki and Josh are at home, it'd be nice to have a "land line" phone hooked up for easy local calling. Plus, people have wanted to call us from the States, but we've had no way of answering... Until yesterday, that is. Nicki happened to open a box that we had both opened 100 times before, but this time she somehow recognized something we hadn't seen all those previous times... our precious land line telephone. So we're now a fully-functioning communications center.

Now, if only I could find the box containing my Masters degree and my Professional Engineering license, I'd be alright. Fortunately, I made a copy of the latter, so I keep the copy hanging in my office at work as the law requires.

I mentioned above that I'd refer back to international telephone calling on the internet, so I have to give some proper respect to our internet calling software provider. If you have never heard of Skype and you have a computer with DSL or a cable connection, and you make long distance phone calls for more than 2-cents a minute, log onto www.skype.com and see what they are all about. So far, we've used Skype-Out to call people's land phones and cell phones in the US and it costs us 2-cents per minute, every minute. Even more amazing is that you can call someone from your computer to their computer (we haven't done it yet), but it's supposed to be completely free. Anyway, if you ever get hooked up and want to chat, let me know and I'll give you our Skype-ID... so long as you mind our time zone differences and call at a decent hour.

In other news, I finally figured out why every time my parents came to visit us in San Diego and we plugged their digital camera into our Dell's USB port, my mom would always say, "Geez... your computer downloads slowly." Turns out, our computer is older than my parents' and we've been using a USB 1.x version. I don't claim to be one of those guys with a lot of (or any, for that matter) knowledge of computer software or hardware, so I asked my coworker Jeff about USBs and what could be done differently. He recommended that I get a "USB 2.0 PCI card" to help increase the speed. So I did... and as it turns out it came with FireWire, too, which some computer-intellegent people told me would be helpful if I ever do anything with video on the computer. The fun part was trying to figure out what to do with the PCI card once I got it. But between the directions that came with the hardware and a couple of advice columns on the web, I figured out that I had to find an open slot inside the back of the computer and jam that little thing in there gently. The good news is that it worked and now I have four USB 2.0 ports and two FireWire ports waiting for the next visit from my folks.

Nicki and I did a boat load of holiday shopping this morning and actually got gifts for most of the people on our list, though we hear that if we don't send them out soon people may not receive them until 2006, so we still have some work to do. When we got home from shopping, we continued putting Christmas and Hanukkah decorations around the house. We put up our "free" (short for "fake tree") last night after Josh went to bed and hung a few ornaments througout the evening. Today, I put up strings of lights on the outside of the house while Nicki wrapped presents, but I still hope to buy more lights in the next week or so. My goal is to have enough lights up that from an aerial view, it looks like our yard is Tokyo. Hey, what better time... my work is picking up our electricity tab while we're here.

We celebrated our successful Saturday - and my successful USB 2.0/FireWire PCI card installation earlier in the week - by going out to dinner tonight at a famous Japanese restaurant that translates loosely into "Red Lobster". Okay, you got me... it's the same Red Lobster chain that is all over the U.S., but the menu here is quite different. Nicki and I got the Lobster Platter for Two, which included a salad, steamed oysters, an appetizer pizza, a whole steamed lobster pulled live from a lobster tank, a large plate of rice topped with various sea creatures, and post-dinner tea. I was a bit skeptical about sticking a fork - yes, they had forks, not hashi (chopsticks) - into some of Disney's Little Mermaid characters, but when I found that there was no actual mermaid on the platter I figured it would be alright to try everything else. I'm guessing here, but Nicki and I think that we tried all of these tonight: lobster, oysters, shrimp, squid, octopus, clams and maybe one or two other bottom feeders.

I'm hoping that tomorrow can be a relaxing day of sorts so that we can possibly drive around to the other side of the peninsula to see what's over there. I've been told that the views of Fuji-san (Mt. Fuji) are spectacular from over there on a clear day...