Pictures!!


Thought I'd try and post some pictures of our life recently. Sorry we've been absent so long, but we've been without a camera for a few months! Here's some things we've been up to......enjoy!






Me and a few of the American moms after we put on a Halloween skit at Hannah Jane's school. After introducing ourselves in Japanese (and saying whose mom we were ("Watashi wa Hannah Jane no haha (mother, no kidding) desu!") we described, in Japanese, who we were....an amusing account as you might imagine from the costumes above...(I'm "Aka zin-something" by the way....Little Red Riding Hood)

Hannah Jane at her favorite restaurant in town, "Two Turtle Sushi." The restaurant serves endless sushi on a carousel that goes around the restaurant (see metal track above her food) which you can pick from, or you can order from the electronic menu (thankfully has an english version) which arrives by an electronic "Shinksen" (bullet) train -- right to your table! (we're at the counter here) She loves tuna sushi rolls, the "hot pot" shell soup you see here (a hot egg/custardy thing with shellfish and squid in it..her favorite!) and the real serious sushi with eggs and stuff that most American I know won't touch (including me) She loves to pop the eggs in her mouth! (The fried things by the way are chicken nuggets I thought she'd like...she wouldn't touch them. The raw squid, however, was another matter) "Two Turtle Sushi" by the way is the American's name for the restaurant, (since we can't read the kanji names for things, we make up our own names which "sticks"-- the Japanese find it hilarious) -- the name comes from the two "turtle-looking" creatures on the sign. Tell any Japanese this and they'll burst out laughing (covering their mouth doing so). Turns out the cutsie looking "turtle" creatures are "Kappa" (the actual name of the restaurant) -- which are thought to be "water nymphs" (according to most japanese I ask about this) that inhabit the rivers north of here, and ...here's the kicker...eat children. Why the restaurant--a kind of sushi Bob's Big Boy, very family oriented-- is named for some creatures that would eat a healthy portion of its clientele is beyond me.

The school bazaar's theme this year was "the Inside of the Body" -- yes, this is exactly what you think this is! While the first floor of the school had goods, foods and crafts for sale, the second floor was a demonstration of what the kids have been doing...in this case (in Hannah Jane's words which I didn't believe until I saw it), "making poop." This room contained a, granted fun, exhibit on the body's digestive system. You walked into a giant mouth, and traveled down the esophagus, into a paper-strewn stomach (kind of ball-pit Playland style) -- so the kids would roll around in the balled up newspaper and throw it around while getting "digested." Then they'd walk out into a coiled "maze" which turned out to the be the intestinal tract. And finally, as the food turned brown and blobby as you walked down the tract you crawled through this tube which is just what it looks like...a butt. That's Hannah Jane down there, in her formal school uniform, crawling through the butt. This cutsie display on how poop gets made was no surprise actually after the summer "homework" we had which asked us to track our child's poop. We got a fun calendar for the 6-week summer break in which we were to put fun little cutsie stickers and drawings to track what we did throughout the break, and how much often they pooped. The "poop" sticker was by far the most popular sticker and actually had Hannah Jane looking forward to the act. No, it wasn't a shiny, sparkly, puffy sticker that American kids seem to get excited about, but an actual pile of poop -- complete with eyes and smiling mouth. Happy poop! (It wasn't until we returned to school that they asked us to track "non-happy" poops.. when our child has hard, runny or no poops) That's about all I can (or should) say about that.....



Here's Hannah Jane at her recital rehearsal (she's the one in the bunny ears. OK, just kidding-- she's the only Gaijin in the photo...)
This is one of four costumes she'll wear during the recital. I'm just glad we got to borrow them instead of buy them!








And here's another bunny. Hannah Jane picked her costume based on the dance recital she's about to do. We saw the original one in September (of the bunny dance, above) and had to be a bunny for Halloween. She was ecstatic to learn she would be wearing the actual ballet costume that inspired her Halloween costume. Now if she can just keep up with her classmates who've been doing the dance since April!











Our jack-o-lantern.......Happy Halloween!

That's about all for now. Will try to post more pictures now that we have a camera again. Thanks for tuning in!