Merry Christmas, again...

Santa's little helper....

An onsen basket from Daddy (Onsens are the japanese hot springs and yes, toddlers/babies go too). Since much of the onsen experience involves letting others see you wash thoroughly before and after you soak, it's customary to carry your own "onsen basket" full of soap/shampoo/scrubbing stuff with you. Daddy put this one together at the "100 Yen" store (also known as a dollar store...)

Santa brought playdough sushi set!

Fairy princess....

Another fairy princess....working with her power tools from Santa.....

...our new ride....

Doing ballet while drilling....

Merry Christmas

What a great Christmas. We were sad to be away from our family and friends, but overjoyed by the love (and loot!) they sent...ha! Our families really overdid themselves. Hannah Jane "got" Santa Claus for the first time really, and was elated Christmas morning to see that he'd left her gifts (despite her parents talk about the "naughty" list which she worked hard to make the top of just before Christmas). Christmas Eve we made a gingerbread house from scratch, leading us to the conclusion that Rick should be the architect/engineer next year. Hannah Jane had a great time piling on candy though, and an even better time eating it afterward. Amazingly enough, she did manage to get a nap in before I hauled her off to church for a Christmas Eve service at 6pm. She enjoyed seeing some of her friends there and even singing Christmas carols. Rick stayed home and worked on a festive Christmas dinner - lucky us! Afterward we read the Night Before Christmas and put Hannah Jane to bed, leaving us to "Santa Claus" and toast Christmas by the tree. (Yes, we do get Christmas trees on base, but they're in demand obviously so you end up buying and putting up your Christmas tree a day or two after Thanksgiving. And yes, the needles are ready to fall off about now...) Christmas Day was a wonderful day of unwrapping presents, eating, napping and visiting with neighbors. Exhausted as she was from the day, we put Hannah Jane to bed early and ate another celebratory meal, just the two of us. I'll let the pictures tell the rest........

Decorating the Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving (and before Rick leaves for Singapore)

Building a gingerbread house with mom

Christmas Eve before heading to church

A princess with kneepads!

Santa brought a choo-choo train, just like the ones they have in Utah!

More to follow...stay tuned......

Singapore!

So we followed Rick to another TDY location (temporary duty) -- this time to Singapore. What a blast! I traveled with my neighbor and her daughter, a friend of Hannah Jane's, which made things easier. The trip over was an adventure because we did a "hop" -- the military's version of the buddy pass. Like the buddy pass you're flying "non-revenue", or in this case, FREE. There were a few minor drawbacks though -- in addition to not knowing if we'd actually make it on the plane (we're flying "space available"--same as "standby" on a commercial airline), we didn't exactly know on WHAT we'd be flying. So, prepared for anything, we ended up on a C-17....as in CARGO. We were flying along seated in cargo nets, with no windows and several blankets each to protect us from the cold air, with that week's mail and who knows what else tied down in the middle of the plane. We knew this could happen so we'd brought along hats and gloves and plenty of food and diversions for the kids, so we were actually OK. We were even better than OK when the kids -- able to stretch out between the rollers on the floor -- took long naps. Which helped tremendously when it turned out to be an unexpected 8 hour journey! But like I said, we did fine, with earplugs and garbage bags full of boxed lunches to ease the trip. Here are a few photos to give you an idea.......

Stretching out for a nap; Watching a DVD and snacking on the floor

Going for a "walk" with a new friend

You get the idea. The ride on the way back was an entirely different matter -- I'd show you pictures but I was too busy soaking up the business-class service to take any ("regular" airplane with comfy seats, shrimp cocktail and Chilean sea bass for lunch, movies, hot towels, snacks, the works...and it took less than 6 hours).

When we arrived in Singapore we walked out of our refrigerated cave into the bright light and steamy heat of tropical bliss. It had been cold and even snowed a little in Misawa and we welcomed the warmth and heat of a country not far off the equator. We found out quickly though that the heat and humidity is ever-present -- things don't cool off at night or with a passing thunderstorm like they do back home. So the heat was something definitely to contend with, but once we adjusted, we were fine (just had to make sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day and make many trips to the pool).

We were lucky to find a good price on a hotel downtown, which helped tremendously considering how pricey Singapore can be. One "Singapore Sling" at the nearby historic hotel where the drink was invented cost $24 (yes, of course we got one...it's us! See photo below). One room at said hotel costs around $1,000 per night (see tacky tourist photo after that). Fortunately taxis and the very clean/easy-to-use subway were both cheap. That made it easier to do the tourist stuff -- the zoo, their famous "Night Safari" next door, a bus and boat tour of the city, and even a water park (that one was for Rick I think -- he just needed his toddler there for an excuse to go). We also felt OK spending money on all the great food Singapore's known for. We ate a different ethnicity every night!

All in all we had a great time. I'll let the pictures tell the rest........

At the National Orchid Garden with mom, waiting for Dad to get off work.

Playing in the spray park at the Children's Garden section of the Botanical Gardens

Cooling off at the water park for the day

Slingin' "Singapore Slings" and throwin' peanut shells on the floor at Raffles Hotel's "Longbar."

Tourist shot in front of Raffles Hotel (we did actually walk into the lobby where they require you not where shorts or have opened-toed shoes/sandals on. We gawked and then we walked straight out...)

At the zoo (we didn't see a single cage. In the monkey's case, the animals just roamed free in the trees above you.)

Open-air bus tour that led to a boat "Duck" tour (a World War II amphibious vehicle that tours the historic area on land and then the harbor -- see below)

Duck tour (the condos in the background start around 1.5 million each, according to our tour guide)

That's all for now. Thanks for visiting!

Sports Day!

Every October, the Japanese celebrate Sports Day, a day that supposedly commemorates the year the Japananese hosted the summer Olympics and reminds them as a nation to keep in shape. Schools honor this by closing for the day. However, in typical Japanese style, Hannah Jane's "school" celebrated their Sports Day on the Sunday before, requiring all us parents to be there by 9am on Sunday morning for the opening ceremony:

Following this opening march onto the field, the entire school lines up in neat little rows and stands perfectly still while they are addressed by the school officials. While I understood nothing beyond "Konnichiwa!" in the beginning, a friend tells me the speeches were something about loyalty to school and how important it is to exercise and all that. After the speeches, the entire school sung a song or two together:

.....followed by a very fun and amusing dance:
And then the races and events started. Hannah Jane's class had just two of these races, both of which involved the parents helping. In one I had to run with her ---in a box--through an obstacle course:

Thankfully our part was done after this, and we got to go home and enjoy our Sunday. But the rest of the school went on --even through the rainstorm that came later --to run, jump and exercise their little hearts out until well into the afternoon. We took our prizes (some japanese cookies from a local grocery store and a new washcloth for cleaning up before lunch at school) and went home. Still, Hannah Jane, as you can see from the post-race picture here with her buddies, thoroughly enjoyed herself!

Halloween photos

Thanksgiving is almost here and I thought I'd better post some of these before it's Christmas......

Carving the jack-o-lanterns with "Neh-neh" (Renee) our friend and neighbor

Making halloween cookies with our neighbors/friends (one wanted blue pumkins....)

Weird Japanese things I've seen.....

Here's another ramble on everyday Japanese life I guess....with photos:

So this is an electric construction flag guy that takes the place of the guy directing traffic around construction -- pretty funny! We actually saw several versions of it on a recent road trip: some were similar to this one, others were just a picture of a man holding a flag in blinking lights on a flat sign. Here's another one, though a little fuzzy:

And here is the sign -- "translated"--warning us about all the construction:
For those who don't speak Japanglish, it reads "It is taking a rest constructing." Signs like this exist all over the place, leading to much confusion and laughter. I wouldn't laugh so much (because my Japanese is pretty non-existent) except that the signs are often permanent, written in neon even. This one wasn't permanent, but it was replicated --about 2 dozen times.

We also passed a few signs warning us of various animal crossings. In the photo up top you can kind of make out a sign in the background warning drivers about crossings of what looks to be like teddy bears -- isn't he cute? And here's one for some mystery rodent:

No one quite knows what this animal is but I sure hope to never run into one (you can't really see from the photo which was taken at 80kilometer/hr --whatever that is--but the thing has teeth and appears to be snarling and laughing at the same time)

OK, moving indoors now on, here is the fancy potty I referred to in an earlier blog:

This is just the electrical part that makes it fancy (pay attention if you're planning to visit -- when you land in Tokyo, you won't know how to flush your hotel toilet otherwise, and you may even do yourself harm!). Not only is it heated (as most Japanese toilets are, public and private), but it's equipped with the technology to wash your different parts different ways! Now, looking at all the different buttons, you might just try one in hopes that it just flushes the toilet. But you'll be surprised! You might get hit in the eye with a spray of water. The flushing mechanism seems to be different on every toilet, so you just have to hunt 'til you find it. Sometimes it's on the floor, sometimes the wall. Sometimes it's actually ON the toilet itself, but there will be different ways to move the switch according to HOW you want to flush (lightly, heavier) which will be CLEARLY marked in kanji somewhere in the vicinity of the switch (I have yet to figure this out even on ours which was designed for the idiot American).

Both of these things makes me think of David Letterman's joke about such Japanese inventions: "Ah, the Japanese: So much technology, so little normalcy...."

Now this next thing isn't a weird Japanese thing as much as it is just not something you see much of back home.

And that's because we don't have too many active volcanoes back home. They have enough around here that the Japanese think nothing of it to go hike them, which they do with zeal in the autumn, potentially hazardous fumes or not. Being nature girl I dragged Rick out one Saturday (leaving Hannah Jane with a babysitter) to hike Hokkoda Mountain which I read on the way there is actually an active volcano that spews gaseous sulphuric acid to its visitors as they make their way up the mountain. Sometimes these fumes can be dangerous, the literature warns, so we should be careful not to linger anywhere "where vegetation is not growing." This turned out to be large swaths of black smoldering dirt that smelled heavily of rotten eggs, which the large parties of Japanese tour hikers lopped merrily around.

Now here perhaps is the weirdest Japanese thing of all:

Sorry, I couldn't help myself -- it's just Hannah Jane in her "scary lion" Halloween costume, as she called it. But it does remind me of one weird Japanese occurrence that happened around here on Halloween. Around 2pm, in broad daylight, the doorbell rings -- it's two 6 or 7-year old Japanese kids, trick-or-treating, alone, without a costume, holding what looks like the travel bag I keep my toiletries in. At first I wasn't sure what they wanted, as there was no sign they were trick-or-treating, not to mention the fact that the Japanese HAVE NO HALLOWEEN. But these kids were no dummies. We figured that hearing about this trick-or-treating thing (which the Japanese are actually allowed to do on base), that when their parents weren't looking, they snuck out of their house with their mother's cosmetic bags for candy and headed for the nearest clump of American-looking houses and started ringing doorbells. The only thing is that they didn't know the English wording for "trick-or-treat" so when it came out in Japanese, it was too unclear to most of my neighbors, it turns out, to know what they wanted. I wouldn't have known either except that the last part of the phrase uttered when I opened the door sounded something like "twleetOH", and I only got this after I made them repeat themselves several times (asking them back, "you mean, 'trick-or-treat'?" only resulted in them staring at each other in puzzlement, like "what's wrong with this lady?") I was happy to get it eventually and actually produce candy which I pilfered from a napping Hannah Jane's early stash, as we hadn't bought any candy to hand out, knowing that the Japanese don't do Halloween (except, apparently, when there are crazy Americans around).

There are plenty of "weird" things that I keep seeing and either don't have a camera for or that I have become somewhat inured to now that I don't think they're that weird. Many customs are becoming like that to me already:

- Bowing in the car to the guy in front of you to let him know it's OK for him to go, instead of motioning or pointing with your hands,

- hearing "IRASHEMASEH!!!!" shouted out at you whenever you walk into an establishment, which means something like "YOU ARE HERE!!!! welcome." I now catch myself thinking, "YES! I AM here!..."

-taking your shoes off when entering a restaurant...because that's FAR more hygienic then leaving them on....

-using the special "bathroom slippers" at said restaurant because putting your (often bare) feet into slippers used by every diner is again, just more hygienic....

-making steamed rice in the morning for my 2-year-old's preschool lunch, instead of just a plain ol' peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich....

-backing into parking spaces instead of pulling forward into them (not all that easy for Americans with their comparatively large cars given the tiny Japanese parking spaces and lots)...

-carrying yen everywhere because credit cards aren't used out in town....

And more.....will save some for another ramble, another time. Thanks for tuning in!

Thailand!

What blast.......Here's just a few photos for starters (please take a look at our slideshow for more!)

Happy hour with Dad at the swim-up bar (they were taking a break from the slide...see below)

Snorkeling off of Phi Phi Island (pronounced "pee-pee island", much to Hannah Jane's delight) She saw lots of "Nemos" and fed
the monkeys on the beach.

Riding through the jungles of Chang Mai....


















Sliding down the resort's waterslide! What a great adventure. Hannah Jane did really well and a fun time was had by all. We started our trip in Chang Mai to see the temples, jungles, and elephants of this northern mountainous region. Then we flew onto Phuket to experience the Andaman coastline where we sunned and snorkeled for three days. We ended the trip in Bangkok where we zipped around in the skytrain and caught a canal-touring longtail boat both right by our riverside hotel. We had a full day of travel to get back home which included a 5-hour Shinkansen (bullet train) ride after our long flight, but Hannah Jane hung in there, and it was all worth it.

Home again, Home again...

We're Home!!!
After a 6-month separation with Rick's deployment, we are all together again. It was odd coming "home" to Japan but it when all's said and done, it felt good to be here -- it felt like home.
Rick returned from deployment a week before we did. We were sad we couldn't be there for his return but he was able to fly home in one of the jets which was fun for him (others got the photos for us, below).

Hannah Jane and I flew home from Utah, with overnight stops in Atlanta and Tokyo, and Rick picked us up at the airport with flowers and balloons. That night we celebrated all our birthdays which we "missed" while Rick was gone with individual cakes Rick made for us all (Hannah Jane was especially tickled with her "2" candle, an extra I had from her real birthday celebration in March. Problem is, she now thinks birthdays come twice a year for everyone...)

I'm two, again!

(Yes, that's a mustache on Rick -- a little ritual the deployed guys had going which didn't last more than 24 hours after we returned home. "Mustache month" is second only in popularity to "No-hair November" around here. For Rick, however, that's really no big deal...)

We've settled into a nice routine again and are getting use to being here and all together. Our second weekend home was labor day weekend which we celebrated by going camping with two other couples (one with a child HJ's age) at a mountain lake area -- beautiful! (see photo up top) Funny thing about camping is that one enjoyable thing about it is that it's cheap -- even in Japan. However, GETTING THERE still is not. While we paid $30 for a little camper cabin for our family, we paid about $80 in tolls for the 2-hour car trip. Traveling anywhere in Japan, however you do it, is not cheap. It cost us $250 for a one-way train ticket to Tokyo to catch our flight out of Narita --and that was for just me. Driving I'm told would cost you about the same --maybe a bit more with gas. Which is one reason we're huffing it to Thailand for a family vacation -- we leave mid-October! We are looking forward to the adventure and some quality family time. In December Rick will go to Singapore for most of the month, but we're hoping Hannah Jane and I will get to join him for part of it. Stay tuned!

"Daddy!!!" (or Hannah Jane does Korea)

In mid-April, Hannah Jane and I were lucky enough to fly to Seoul to see Rick for a few days -- what a great time! Seoul was beautiful, believe it or not (its a changed city since the Olympics I understand), and we just had such an amazing time touring and visiting with "my daddy!" (as Hannah Jane exclaimed when she saw him in the airport). Rick and Hannah Jane got good Daddy/daughter time in, and I got good mommy/Rick time in -- win/win! We stayed in a very nice hotel (with a spa on the first floor...weee!) which we used to tour from -- around the city one day, to the zoo, and even to the DMZ! The pictures are the best storyteller.........

Hannah Jane in her "touring perch" at historic village in downtown Seoul (the weather was beautiful, with all the cherry blossoms and azaleas in bloom)

Rick and Hannah Jane look out from Seoul Tower onto the city (btw, Misawa is 1/1000000 the size of what you see here....Just a note for anyone planning to visit....)

In front of largest palace in downtown Korea (yes, people take goofy pictures standing right next to the guards, who are suppose to stand still and look forward not smiling. See our much more dignified photo below)
(OK, maybe just cuter....)

This was one of the only shots we were allowed on our tour of the DMZ. We'd just crawled out of a tunnel the north Koreans had dug out supposedly with the idea of invading South Korea. We were allowed to walk, bent down with hard hats on (even Hannah Jane) through 260 meters of the passage -- unfortunately our camera had to be locked away first. This was the carnival-type food sold outside the zoo -- stewed shells and steamed bugs. MMMmm.....

That's about all the fun photos from Korea -- thanks for tuning in, and be sure to check back for more adventures of Hannah Bear!