Neighborly Fun

Unfortunately fate has dealt us the ugly housing/horrible location/insect infested, card. We live back in the corner of housing, way off a dead end street. Where as other units surround small parks, ours is nestled against a "jungle". If it weren't for my wonderful neighbor Dacia, I would've probably found a desperate way a long time ago to get moved to another unit.

Abby's friend Karissa lives in an area that has a park. This is just a little bit down the block, and seems to be a "Mecca" for kids. There is constantly kids playing, and neighbors chatting. I am constantly jealous about the little community they've formed back there. Luckily they have made us honorary members, and were nice enough to include us in the gift exchange they planned for the neighborhood kids. The kids drew names a week ago, and we congregated at the park on Friday to have a little party. Some of the moms brought cookies and other snacks, while others brought the fixings to make hot chocolate (my favorite fixings were the ones that included peppermint schnapps and cool whip).

Both of the kids loved their gifts. Mateo got an action figure that came with a car, and Abby got a Hannah Montana purse that she could decorate herself.

As it grew darker, and colder one of the moms brought out a fire pit, and we huddled around roasting marshmallows. Mateo was having an overly independent moment and wouldn't let me help him with his Marshmallow. I was paranoid that he was going to swing his flaming confection at one of his friends sardined next to him, but luckily we avoided that nightmare.

It's easy to feel a little sad and complacent when away from your family and friends back home during the holiday season. But I've come to realize that everyone here is in the same situation, and we can fill that void by doing little things like this. I've been having a hard time with Christmas cheer this year, but I'm starting to feel the tingling of it.

Fa ra ra ra ra....Tis the season

On Monday Aaron was able to play Santa at the school I teach at. Of course it didn't come without the major stress of not knowing if his ship would actually let him off, even though he'd had it approved a month beforehand. All I could picture was 350 Japanese children waiting for a Santa who never shows up. Luckily he was able to get the morning off, but then we still had to stress out about him getting back in time to do a drill at 1:00. Luckily things went very smoothly, and passing out 350 bags of goodies went by much quicker than we anticipated.


This of course leads to Friday. Once again Aaron was supposed to play Santa, but this time at a "Nursery" school which is owned by the same man who owns the school I teach at. Rather than stress out about Aaron being able to actually rely on his prior approval to get off, I enlisted the help of a man named Neil who is in my Japanese class.



Neil proved to be a great Santa, and was encouraged....if not begged to come back next year. Neil is pretty skinny, so he looked more pregnant than fat in the Santa suit. The little ones could have cared less, and were quite convinced that he was indeed the real Santa.

My favorite part of the day was seeing the little kids dressed up in their homemade costumes. Last year I was very confused as to what the costumes were supposed to be. This year I was able to plainly see that the youngest class were elves:

And the next class were obviously.....uh, urrr........Scarecrows???

I had to ask Yoko Sensei that I teach with about that one. Apparently their scarecrows wear those Chinese, rice paddy hats. Whatever they were, it was adorable.

At the end, they gave Santa (and myself) a treat, by singing Silent Night. Go figure they can sing it at schools in Japan, but not at most of the public schools in the states. Here is a short video I took of the students and teachers singing.

The Game of DUMP

Last year when my mother was visiting, we hit up the 100 yen stores to see what "novelty" items she could bring back. Of course this means looking for innocent, but offensive "Engrish" items, and other useless items. Kudos to mom for finding a "Dump Set". I looked for my own after she left but couldn't find one. I came across this one the other day while at the 100 yen store in Zushi.

The name of this card game is obviously funny, but I think it's the directions in English that provide the most entertainment.

How to play dumps (over 5 years old)

1. There should be more than 2 people.

2. Each person put one pasteboard dump on the ground (floor)

3. Decide the order by rock, paper, scissors. (This seems to be how everything is decided here)

4. Strongly put down the pasteboard dump you've put on the ground. If the wind you've made by that action turn someone else's pasteboard dump over, you can get it.

5. If you get other's dump, you can continue to attack. (my personal favorite line)

6. If you fail getting other's dump, you just leave your pasteboard dump on the ground, and other person get to attack.

Warning

*Play dumps where it's safe outdoor.

*When you're indoor, play dumps in some broad places looking out for people or obstacles near you.

*When children play dumps, make sure let them play near adults. (no thanks, please dump elsewhere)

Hakone Trip part III: Lake Ashi and Hakone Shrine

After we left Owakudani, the bus took us to Lake Ashi where we boarded a boat that would take us to the other side of the lake. The boat was very pretty, but it had limited seats, and by that time all we really wanted to do was sit down and rest.

After we got off the boat, the bus took us a block to our large, expensive, gift shop. We looked around for a few minutes, and then headed out back to get some pictures of the lake. I spotted some big, stuffed pandas that looked like they were for climbing on, so I told the kids to go ahead and play for a few minutes. When we got closer we realized that they had a sign that said 200 yen on it. We had no idea what they did, but slipped a coin into it anyways.

The panda then started to play music and walk. Aaron was able to catch a really quick video clip of it before it stopped. It's really short, but it's still cute to hear Mateo laughing at the end.

After we left the giftshop, we drove to the Hakone Shrine. It was very pretty, but unfortunatly I had a hard time getting pictures of the Tori gate that is in the water due to the sun's position.

We walked a billion stairs up to the Shrine at the top, and I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out where to get my Shrine book stamped.

Finally, after asking the Souvenir sales lady 3 times in my broken Japanese where to get my stamp, she finally said "parking"......if she had said this the first time, I would've realized that I had to walk all the way down to the bottom of the stairs which I had just come up to get it. I came so close to going into the monk's office to try to get my stamp. Glad I hesitated on that one, and turned back for better directions.

After the Shrine we made our way back onto the bus and headed home.

Hakone trip part II: Owakudani

After our visit to the Open Air Museum, our tour bus took us to Sounzan Station, where we boarded a Cable car bound for Owakudani. The Cable cars were fairly good size, and could fit about 12 or 15 people in them. On a nice clear day, the views of Mount Fuji are supposed to be beautiful, but of course it was very overcast for us.

The ride started out very pretty. It was very green, with the colors of fall mixed in.

I thought our ride would be over once we reached the top of this mountain, but once we got over the top we kept going. The view on the otherside was very suprising. It went from very beautiful, to looking like the pits of hell. You could smell the Sulfer, and see the steam rising from the ground. All I could think of were scenes out of Lord of the Rings.

After about a 5 minute ride, we arrived in Owakudani. Here is an excerpt from the brochure we were given by our tour guide:

"Owakudani was formed roughly 3000 years ago when an explosion occurred on the hillside of Kamiyama. To this day there are still volcanic fumes of hydrogen sulfide being emitted. As a result, timber has wilted and rocks have turned to clay, exposing a bronze-colored hillside. Come experience the boiling pools, steam-spewing vents, and the many other activities of a dynamic volcano".

Strangely enough, Owakudani is most known for it's black eggs. They boil regular eggs in the Sulferic water until they turn black, and they sell them at a price of 5 for 500 yen (roughly $5.00). You can walk 10 minutes up the side of a mountain to watch them harvest the eggs.

There are tables everywhere, that you can use to crack the eggs that you can purchase at the top. Supposedly for every egg you eat, you add 7 years to your life. We each had one.

The eggs taste like normal hard-boiled eggs. They even came with a little packet of salt.

You can never pass up the chance to have a family picture taken by the smelly sulfer pits. It's not like I'm not constantly used to living with that smell anyways.

After we bought and ate our eggs, we walked back down to the bottom and got some food and hit the overpriced gift shops. At one of them I couldn't help but notice a stuffed Boar of sometype. On the sign next to it, please note that they call this a "beaver".

Hakone trip part I: Open air Museum

It's been over a week since we went on our trip to Hakone, but I've been too busy to post anything about it until now. So here's a recap of our day. The bus picked us up in Ikego at 7, and we got to Hakone within a couple of hours. Our first stop was the Hakone Open Air Museum. Unfortunatly, even though we arrived earlier than originally anticipated, we were given only a little over an hour to see everything. The Museum is so spread out over the large grounds, that we didn't get to see everything we wanted. It ended up being more stressful than anything. Some of the art was artsy "my kids can do that" stuff, but other pieces were impressive. This was one of my favorites, it's called "Man and Pegasus" by Carl Milles. It actually stands quite tall in the air, but the full shots I had of it were harder to see the actual sculpture. This is the only I actually stopped to see the name of. Here are few more that I thought were interesting:

Some seemed more like toys to play on than art

There was a Labryinth that the kids were so excited to try out. After they went down I saw a group of Teenage tourists doing rock, paper, scissors in the middle. I knew immediately what they were planning on..........Tag! I also knew that this ment one of my kids was going to get ran over in the process. Before I could pull them out, Mateo was knocked down, and dirty of course. I was irritated, but he said the girl told him she was sorry.....I'm such a pushover.

There was a Picasso exhibit on the grounds, and I spent a good portion of my time looking for it. On our way we stopped at this tower.

It was so pretty inside. It was lined with beautiful stained glass, and even though there were a billion stairs going up to the top, it was worth the view once you got there.

At the end we realized we were running out of time very quickly. There had been an area for kids to play in that we had promised Mateo he could go to. Aaron kindly volunteered to take Mateo there while Abby and I hit the Picasso Exhibit. I'm glad I went, although it was more his work on cermaics verses his crazy paintings where the facial features are all messed up.

Disney Sea

Last week we decided to take advantage of the fact that Aaron was in port, and actually had some days off. I had to work on Thanksgiving, so on Friday we decided to skip the hordes of people waiting in line at 5 a.m. for the Navy Exchange's less than desirable merchandise, and head out to Tokyo Disney Sea. We didn't tell the kids we were going just in case something came up (which is usually what happens when we plan something fun). Of course Aaron and I woke up at 5 a.m. to the sound of rain thundering down. We spent a few moments trying to decide if we wanted to attempt the hour and a half drive, and the possibility of being soaked all day. Aaron said that he would rather go and have it be bad weather, then stay home and have it clear up.....so, off we went. We told the kids we were going to Yokota Airforce base to go shopping, but once we hit the parking lot of Disney Sea they caught on, and the look on their faces was priceless. Once in line we figured out that this park opens up later than regular Disney. We waited for 45 minutes, which in the grand scheme of things isn't too bad for anything related to a Disney Theme park. As soon as the gates opened, the rain stopped.

The best part of Disney in Japan, is the over zealous enthusiasm of adults when it comes to the characters and rides. They sprint at full speed towards the ride of their choice, even when there is no wait. There are also many who seem perfectly content waiting in line for 2 hours just to get a picture taken with Chip and Dale. We however, took our time, and even stopped for some Cappuchino popcorn before heading towards the first attraction we came to.... Journey to the Center of the Earth. Once we got there, we realized that Mateo was a few cenimeters too short to go on it. I sent Aaron and Abby to go first, and Mateo and I hung out checking out the Volcano architecture, and eating our popcorn. After about 10 minutes, Aaron and Abby appeared. I asked them how it was, and Aaron said it was kind of boring. I asked Abby if she liked it, and she just said it was "ok". Abby and I got on the ride, and it did seem pretty tame. It was just a little train car going through caverns and you could see crystals, and little creatures here and there. I kept wondering why there was a height restriction on it......and I soon found out. All of a sudden a huge dragon type creature appears, there is a blast of fire, and the trains goes from a snail's pace, to very fast, and it's shooting straight up. I knew something was terribly wrong when I could see the sky, and steam. Before I knew it we were dropping straight down. I screamed of course.....and then couldn't stop laughing. My husband and little actress of a daughter pulled one over on me. They lied to me about it being tame, so I wouldn't know what to expect! If we had come into the ride from the other side, we would've seen the others coming out, and screaming on their way down.

The rest of the park was great. We only had to wait in line 1 time, for 20 minutes. Every other ride we got straight on. There were a couple of rides that Mateo was too short for, but it worked out well because he probably would've been to scary for him anyway.

The whole park has a "Sea" theme. Unlike Disneyland which has different "lands", Disney Sea has different "Ports" which divide up the park. The above picture is from the American Waterfront Area. I thought this section was very pretty. There was a lighthouse, and it had a New England fishing village vibe to it (not that I have been to a New England fishing village). In the background you can see the Volcano which houses the Journey to the Center of the Earth ride.

Can you believe it? We actually got a picture of all of us together. It's a rare occasion. Looking at it, gives me further proof that I need to stay behind the camera instead of infront of it. This was taken on a Galleon ship overlooking the Mediterranean Harbor.
Mateo riding the Genie on the Carousel in the Arabian Coast.

We took this picture on our way out. If you can't tell, this is the dashboard of a Japanese car. I told you they like their Disney characters!