Okay...

i don't even know if anyone even reads this anymore, so if no one does, i'll just chalk it up to a nice little e-journal. if you haven't guessed, yes we are in japan. gabe got a promotion and here we are. we got here around july 10th. so far, what can i say? we love it and are having a blast! we are in yokosuka, japan. japan is about the size of california and tokyo is about in the middle. yokosuka is about 2.5 hours SSW of tokyo. gabe made the move into the carrier world and is now part of the detachment that works on the george washington. we happened to arrive in the hottest summer japan has seen in over a hundred years. it was down right oppressive with the 100% humidity and no breeze. luckily, they use ac around here like it's going out of style. we spent our first few weeks in the navy lodge which is just like a best western. we found a place to live (off base) right away. right away meant about three weeks as opposed to some people that stay there for three months trying to find a decent home. it is a decent size home, i'm guessing about 1700 square feet. the thing that is most surprising about this home is that it has a back yard and, yes folks we have a little 10 x 10 foot patch of grass which is unheard of around here. we got a sweet ride. for those of you that ever heard me say i will never buy a minivan, i was wrong. minivans rock in japan.















who knew minivans could have a spoiler and ground effects? apparently the japanese did. it's even called a "homy"--how could we pass that up??

so the kids are going to school on base. the bus picks them up literally right outside our house. they like school a lot. maye is in 4th, brennan 2nd and elly finally made it into preschool. maye decided to sign up for cheerleading this winter, brennan wanted to try flag football and elly is doing what almost all little four year old girls want to do--ballet. it's nice to get back to a schedule again and things have hit fast forward again as they usually do during the school year.

These are from a shinto shrine a couple blocks from our house.
















This guy was on his way to a mikoshi parade. the kids were giggling like crazy because he wasn't wearing any pants. but those are standard duds for the parade. the mikoshi parade is when they carry the shrine around town and play drums, sing and dance. pretty cool to watch.


What can I say? a lot gets lost in translation. we have yet to try the "digestive biscuits"





















Japan is very organized. Everything has a time and a place and therefore makes Japan a very efficient culture. busses and trains are always on time down to the minute. even at the baseball games, the crowds' cheering is organized! the guy on the crate calls out the cheers (which the entire crowd knows by heart) and there's even drums to keep everyone on beat. baseball fans in japan are seriously the best fans out there! there's no sitting around relaxing until someone gets a hit. if your team is up to bat, you are screaming and on your feet...




















i was on base the other day picking up the kids and pulled over to take these pictures. these guys/girls are amazing and we are happy to be here supporting the fleet!
















i took this picture because at this moment when the helicopter dipped down close to the water, it was completely silent. all i could hear were the waves.

Okay, so it's been a while

No time now, but I'll blog again soon..

haha sorry!

karaoke!

you can't go to japan without doin some karaoke!

Day 3

stayed around town tonight. i think maybe we're starting to crash a little cuz we were too tired to take the train anywhere and ended up going to bed around 9pm! we walked around town and found the mall. it's pretty dang close. there is a nice boardwalk with a view of the shipyard.











we found this neat restaurant where you have a little hibachi grill built into your table. you can go here to make your own okonomiyaki or japanese omelet (which is basically your typical egg foo young). i gotta tell ya it's pretty dang good.

any guesses?

ummm, ya that's raw horsemeat. so if you remember to be gracious and open, adventurous and un-insulting, you find out that raw horsemeat just tastes like raw meat (i think). never really had raw meat before but if you know what raw meat smells like, that's pretty much how it tastes!











so about 1.5 hours drive south of tokyo is yokosuka which is where the naval base is and where we are staying. about a half hour north of yokosuka is yokohama, which we've been told is about the same size as chicago in population. we took the train (which was full but not crowded) and got to experience some of the night life yokohama has to offer. seeing the lights of yokohama last night was so beautiful.

konnichiwa!

home for a few weeks and back on a plane...
this time to japan. gabe was sent for work and we are so lucky to have auntie mo take care of the kids and house so i can go too. the flight wasn't bad, gabe and i just vegged out and watched on demand movies back to back. it was about a 10.5 hour flight non stop. japan is 16 hours ahead! so far everything is great. we are having a blast over here even though it's only the first day. i went for a walk to find food and found...











yum yum. i found this delicious plate of noodles at a great restaurant. i mean... 7-11. they have fresh hand rolled sushi and all kinds of stuff in there!

can you guess what flavor chip this is?











well, if you said seaweed you're smarter than i am!

here is the view from our balcony...










not quite as picturesque as the view from our balcony in DC, but still fun to look at! on the other side of the skywalk is the main entrance to yokosuka naval base. the hotel room is actually really nice. i've stayed in best western hotel rooms smaller than this one. so that fear was relieved! other fun differences are that people drive on the other side of the road here, they use the metric system, so it's hard to get used to the conversions (does anyone remember the formula for converting celsius to farenheit?). so far it has been tons of fun. we'll keep ya posted!

last few highlights of DC

There is a second Air and Space museum out by dulles airport that we were able to go out and visit. we got there and 6 hours later, gabe decided this was one of his best highlights of our stay in DC. parts of the film transformers 2 was filmed there, so there is a lot of transformers stuff there.






we also went to the national gallery of art and got to see many monets, boticellis, and the only da vinci in north and south america.





i guess boticelli is from the west side