Friends & The Holiday

Mike, Josh and I really had a special weekend. On Saturday, we were invited once again to the Annual Kakimoto Children's Day Celebration. There was wonderful food, friends, and of course many children! I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be dressed in kimono by a real expert, Mrs. Kakimoto, who enjoys dressing in kimono and also teaches people how to wear kimono as well. She was very fast getting all of the layers on me and, of course, Michael took a ton of pictures.

We also had some last minute visitors that we really enjoyed. Let me just preface how amazing it is that when we decided to move to Japan, we found out that many acquaintances we had throughout our life were residing in the Land of the Rising Sun as well! Just recently I found out that an old high school friend of mine was living with his wife and 2 daughters here in Japan. They had just moved further south from Aomori to Numata to pursue a different English teaching position. Golden Week was their time off and at first we offered to meet them in Tokyo as it was halfway but then I decided that it might be more fun if they could make it further down south to our home to stay. Mind you, I hadn't seen this guy in about 8-9 years and his wife and I had never met. I'd imagine taking a 4 hour car drive down to a place you had never been too and meeting someone you barely knew was quite a nerve racking adventure. However, after some wine & beer it soon ended up feeling as though we were old friends. Since they are living as us Military Folk call it, "On The Economy" we decided it would be fun to treat them to lunch on base and to experience a little piece of home (America). As far as we could tell they had a really good time and we were thrilled to find some new/old friends.

On a sad note, we are saying goodbye to some very good friends who will be PCSing any day now back to the States. They came by a couple days ago to donate some things that they couldn't take with them and I tried hard not to tear up while waving goodbye after we saw them for the last time (in Japan). Josh and their son have become very close and we are still hoping to keep up communications between us, especially while they live the Navy life traveling all over. This summer will be our first military PCS experience. Many of our military friends are old pros at it, but saying goodbye to them will be a tough new experience for us and it will take some time for our skin to thicken.