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.