Jonas and Liz's Japanese Adventures: 2013

Ok, this is kinda outta left field, but it is Japan-related so it should be allowed.The drink situation in this country is fascinating. I have come to believe that every single Japanese person must be chronically dehydrated.The drink glasses in restaurants are TINY and most people I see only drink
the one glass...whereas myself, I could drink roughly 12. It baffles me! Then again, they have amazing vending machines full of all sorts of delicious normal-sized beverages, but for some strange reason they believe that NOBODY should be that thirsty while eating. That being said, my sister should definitely visit Japan because she'd be in heaven; that lady can go an entire meal without drinking...sis, perhaps you're half Japanese and we never realized? ;) Anyway, I was emailing a friend about McDonald's (btw at McD's here you get a US kid's size cup for your regular value meal...and don't go thinking you'll get a free refill cause you won't) and this inspired me and got me to thinking just how odd it is that Japanese restaurants have this strange everyone-is-a-5-year-old size glass trend. In fact, the only place that I have eaten here that I was satisfied water-wise has been Coco's Curry...and not because the glass itself is so big (think kid's juice glass) but because they graciously give each table their own pitcher of water! Thank goodness for spicy foods, otherwise I'd thirsticate. Yeah, I said it.

The second petty thing that irks me about Japan is *some* of their drivers...before I get into the bad stuff, let me list a few good things that I have learned here that I think will make me a more courteous driver when I return to the US: the use of the emergency flashers to "thank" other drivers. We've all been there, you let someone in front of you and the JERK doesn't even glance your way or give you a half-hearted wave to say thanks
and you're like "you know what, eff you, man cause that was 8 seconds of my life I just gave you to get in front of me and for what? You didn't even half-wave at me!" and whatnot. But here, they just quickly flash their emergency flashers at you to say thanks...and it's genius and pretty much cannot be missed (unlike a wave). And it's fun to be a gaijin visitor here and to be in the "club" so to speak and do my own thanking of other Japanese
drivers. Anyway, now to the bad stuff...the drivers here pretty much stop anywhere they want, even partially (or occasionally completely) blocking a lane of traffic and feel like this is OK as long as they have their flashers on. Ummm, OK, I realize sometimes it is a royal pain in the butt to find parking in this country (at least the free kind) but this is kinda out of
control. When you have 3 lanes of highway-speed traffic, don't freakin make everyone in the far left lane have to merge over because you need to use the phone (and it's illegal to talk on the phone and drive here, so they just stop wherever and make their calls). This past weekend I did the driving as per usual and I can remember at least twice where I had to semi-Fast &
Furious drive around random a-holes who decided outta nowhere to just park in the lane in front of me. Not cool. And I would include the overall traffic in my list of irks, but it's a city of 35 million people...they ain't all staying home.

The third gripe would have to be the lackluster air-conditioning in businesses. Yes, I realize this is a luxury, but it's one that most of us fortunate Americans have grown accustomed to and when you take it away from us (or give us a slight breeze when it's 90 something degrees out) then we are gonna gripe. At least this hot-blooded American is. Now, I have been like 2 or 3 places where the AC was just about exactly right, but for the
most part, alllllll the establishments pretty much have the temperature set to "Egg Frying" and that seems to be acceptable to most Japanese people. It is strange, in a country where they are so extremely customer-service oriented that this would occur in businesses. For example, we were at a mall this weekend near Yokohama (hugely popular area right on the Tokyo Bay) and
while the main area of the mall was really nice and cool, the FOOD COURT was like a million degrees...seriously, everywhere you looked there were people eating steaming hot bowls of ramen while fanning themselves. It was crazy. It might have been slightly exaggerated because I was already really hot and tired but I found myself kinda sick to my stomach trying to eat warm food in
such a hot room, but I struggled through. Also another American trait I possess...struggling through nearly impossible odds to get my lunch eaten. ;)

Despite these petty things, there are so, so many good things about this country...the people are so very friendly, almost all the road signs are in English as well as Japanese, they have English menus pretty much everywhere, and they are very welcoming towards us. We have come to feel like this truly is our home for these years that we are lucky enough to be here. Despite all this, it was a really great weekend with the kids, exploring Yokohama and swimming at the Rainbow Pool...all dehydration, annoying traffic, and lack of air conditioning aside. Hope yours was great too!!

Much love as always,
J+L+C+M+A+Pepe+Kitty :)

PS. Please enjoy some random pics from our past weekend :)

J & kids in Yokohama :)

I think they have a cream for that...

Ash posing w/Herro Kitty glasses :)

I've often pondered on where exactly the Dimension of Infinity is. Found it!

Right next to the Cup O Noodle museum...amazing view of Cosmo World Amusement Park :)

Entrance to the Cup Noodle Museum

In the "Design It Yourself" area...adorable Japanese boy obviously enjoying his art

The kiddos coloring their cups

Morgan showing off her art :)

You got to pick your broth flavor and 4 add-ins...almost 6,000 possible combos!

J & M enjoying the choices :)

Friendly Japanese fellow snapped a pic for us :) Us in the Noodle History Cube

Cup Noodles, anyone?

This was so fun!!

In the Cup Noodle Art area

What did you do??!!

Ashley had SO much fun on this ride...all by herself (no, seriously, she was the only kid on the ride). Best 300 Yen spent all day!

Loving the "windblown" 'do

Finally riding the ferris wheel after walking around it all day!

So glad we got to see it all lit up!

Beautiful!!

It's only good for a month so we had to eat it right away (ok, we waited til lunchtime on Monday)...this is Connor's seafood mix: seafood broth, crab, shrimps, green onions & corn

L's was curry broth (sooo good! never had it before), little adorable chickens that really had no flavor, corn, green beans & cheese (it was really good even though it sounds random lol)

You know you want one.

Well, folks, if your 4th of July has been even half as fun as ours then I know you've had a blast!! We really jam-packed as much as we could into 3 days and I'm about to tell you all about it!

But before I get to that, a (not so) quick rundown of what you missed last weekend...we headed to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo on Saturday. We have been venturing out more in our van (as opposed to the long and very often standing-room-only trains into Tokyo) and all of our recent family outings have gone well travelwise. J is the navigator and I usually do the driving, which is odd for us because J loves to drive but I kinda suck at navigating...and nobody is interested in getting lost in Japan, oddly enough. So anyway, last Saturday we piled in the van and headed to the Ueno Park area, our final destination being the Ueno Zoo. The park itself is very beautiful and the weather was just about perfect...slightly rainy but nothing too intense and about 72ish degrees...perfect for strolling! I tried not to include too many pictures since we have already posted a bunch from our trip last year...but since this time we had the kids with us, I picked a few of my favs from this trip. We found that the only real downside to driving into Tokyo is the parking....for about 3-1/2 hours of parking we paid roughly $30...so, prepare for that added expense. Also, prepare for the ATMs in the area to not take Mastercard...luckily the station one did, after at least one small heart attack for each of us while thinking our van was stuck in the 300 yen every 30 minutes parking space. So, take our advice and take plenty of yen for parking! Otherwise, everyone enjoyed the zoo...especially the ice cream (it really was awesome). Our family is filled with ice cream lovers so it is pretty much a prerequisite of any road trip or family outing. In fact, I think we are all starting to judge each area of Japan that we visit by it's ice cream first and then everything else. But hey, it's summer...and thankfully my knee is getting better so I can run off the endless ice cream calories. J says it was interesting to him to see Native American animals like buffalo and prairie dogs right next to exotic animals like polar bears. Animals that we take for granted. They also had dairy cows and the kids were asking why they were there and didn't realize that space is so limited here in Japan that many Japanese people have never seen a cow...or at least that's what we assumed. Anyway, it was a great weekend and a lovely trip to the zoo indeed. :) Please enjoy the zoo pics below as well as a few bonus Hinohara Waterfall pics from weekend before last!

Gorgeous waterfall @ Hinohara

Can you spot the moth?

Ueno Park promenade

Runch time ;)

I need a giraffe dress

We never did see the dhole...

Adorable kids!!

We also put together a Family Time Capsule this past Monday...included a couple of family pics (see below) and a bunch of other fun stuff: a few Japanese toys, US and Japanese money, a USB flash drive, a CD w/a family interview on it as well as Connor playing guitar, a lock of kitty's fur, a survey filled out by each family member about his/her current likes and life right now, a letter to ourselves in the future, and copies of everyone's IDs and a fact sheet of stuff for posterity (gas prices, what we pay for groceries, etc). It was really fun to put together and I can't wait to open it on July 1, 2038! :)

The kids wanted a pic with the pets...which is genius cause they will sadly not be around in 25 years

Family pic included in the time capsule

So, this brings us to July 4th...we spent a really fun day building cardboard boats and racing, checking out cake and pie cooking contests, walking around enjoying the festivities at the base celebration, jamming out to the Lt. Dan Band and then fireworks that night! The kids were so excited to enter the boat race and they had been practicing their boat design the night before even. It took them about 2 hours to construct and decorate a boat out of only 3 sheets of cardboard and one small roll of duct tape (not a full roll by any means)...as you can see below they had a great design and they took 2nd place in the 13-18 year old category and went home with a $100 gift card! We just enjoyed a lovely lunch at Chili's with their "winnins" this afternoon. :) The kids voted to have a family meal instead of splitting the winning money between them...how sweet is that?! They are such great kids. So anyway, after the boat race we enjoyed checking out and sampling the cakes and pies from the cooking contest...and 2 of our friends took home prizes as well, which was a fun bonus! Then we picked our spot and settled in to wait for the Lt. Dan Band to start. They were truly awesome, they played for almost 3 hours! They were even better than I expected and it was fun to be about 12 feet from a real life celebrity (Gary Sinise is the bass player, of course....wouldn't be much of a Lt. Dan Band w/o him). We enjoyed spending some time with a couple of our Japanese students that we signed on to watch the band and fireworks. It was a really fun day!

Epic Ashley face while chillin @ our friend's house making Smore's

Building the masterpiece!

I told J it wasn't patriotic enough so they had to throw a lil somethin' on there

Our pirate crew :)

The kids going fast...they made it across the pool in 1:16 :)

They lost 1st place by less than 10 seconds!! They did so great!

LOL so cute that she's like "it's still in one piece!"

Aww :)

Goofin' around at the kiddie go-karts

They are a lil big for those but who cares!

Gary Sinise aka Lt. Dan :)

The whole band...they rocked!

I figured Gary would be the lead singer, but he just played bass. The Gary Sinise Foundation has built 26 houses for wounded veterans (double and triple amputees) and has given over 130 free concerts to entertain the troops like us. Pretty awesome!!

That brings us to Friday, July 5th...and THE HARRY POTTER EXHIBITION in Tokyo!!!! Many thanks to my co-worker and good friend Masako for helping me buy the tickets because we literally could not have gone without her help! The exhibition is a travelling display of artifacts, costumes and huge set pieces from all of the Harry Potter movies! Needless to say, it was completely amazing and I found myself in a nearly complete nerd seizure at least twice. ;) Sadly, there were no pictures allowed inside the exhibition, but we did get lucky enough to purchase the picture below...which we thought came out really cute...and so did the exhibition people! They asked J for permission to use the picture as a display pic and said it would be on the wall in the gift shop! How cool is that? We're immortalized in our full Harry Potter glory now. ;) Anyway, the exhibition has only been to a few cities before Tokyo, so if you're an HP fan and it's coming to a city anywhere nearby...GO!! You won't be disappointed. We also took the kids to nearby Harajuku for them to experience the famous shopping district...it was surprisingly empty for a Friday evening but it was fun for us all to do a little touristy shopping. We were completely exhausted and my Fitbit told me I walked almost 25,000 steps so that kinda helps explain why. But it was a wonderful day in this amazing country.

On Saturday we loaded into the car and headed towards Kamakura. As with the Ueno Zoo, I tried to pick just a handful of pictures that included the kids this time around since you have all seen Kamakura before from our blog. The drive was very easy, but a tad long at just about 2 hours 20 minutes one way. Our first stop was the Great Buddha which the kids really liked. J and the kids even paid the extra 20 yen each to go inside the statue...which I was too chicken to do due to it being so hot and looking way too claustrophobic in there for my taste. After walking around the Buddha grounds and doing a bit of shopping, we headed over to, you guessed it, the ice cream stand near where we parked. J was looking for the famous Sweet Potato soft-serve that we got on our last Kamakura trip, but sadly we had to settle for vanilla instead (and J bravely got the vanilla/green tea twist which was blech to me but he enjoyed). Next we headed to Enoshima Island (about 15 minutes' drive away) and enjoyed walking on the dock along the shore...especially since it was about 90 degrees out so the occasional ocean spray was quite lovely and welcomed. We walked along the tiny streets and did some more shopping, as well as J and the kids climbing a few flights of stairs to view another famous shrine (I punked out and sat on the stairs at the bottom cause I was getting a tad over-heated). Connor stopped for a skewer of grilled baby octopus on the way back...and he ate both of them! So brave...but so nasty lol. This was the only time so far in our Japan trips that I have not been able to find a single thing that I would eat or that even looked remotely good...there were so many weird choices like the octopus, whole fish on a stick (that did not look yummy), fresh mussels, and other seafood that none of us were really interested in...and also a ton of different ramen places but with it being 90 out, nobody wanted that either. So we sort of skipped lunch and didn't end up eating until 4pm that day, which was not fun but we all had plenty of road trip snacks to keep us going. We ended our day with a dinner at 7-11 on the way home...perfect! The kids love eating there as much as we do, which sounds insane but you can't judge unless you've been to a Japanese 7-11 cause they're the bomb! The kids usually get rice balls (onigiri) and I always get this yummy teriyaki chicken and rice thing...while Connor usually gets inari sushi (rice wrapped in sweet tofu wrappers...delicious) and any other type of sushi that looks good. Like J said this weekend, it is so crazy that food that is not native to us and that we've only been eating for about a year can feel so much like home to us. He was speaking more specifically about Coco's Curry, but we would definitely put lunches from 7-11 in that category as well. We really love it here and count ourselves truly Blessed to be able to experience this wonderful place. Now we're just chilling watching the Harry Potter movies with the kids, after the Exhibition inspired them to re-watch them...and for the girls, they've never watched them at all! We hope this finds all our dear readers happy, healthy and cool this July 4th holiday. Love to all ya'll!