Hato Bus!

We just booked two tours on the Hello Kitty Hato Bus.


The one we take on the 2nd will go over the Rainbow bridge to Odaiba. I believe it also goes by Tokyo Tower.
On the 3rd we will take the Ueno and Asakusa route. Pictures to follow.

運転免許!

We finally, finally got our Japanese drivers licenses.


The word is unten-menkyo. 


It's about damned time. 

Christmas dinner

Greg gets to post everything. Well poo on him. Here's our not sad Christmas dinner. Delicious!
First up we have the ham, delicious pumpkin soup, and baked squash. I recommend the pumpkin soup. Also, the glaze on the ham was best.

Ham, pumpkin soup, and baked kabbocha. 

Next is a picture of the whole dinner. It consisted of ham, mashed potatoes, baked squash, pumpkin soup, green bean casserole, delicious bakery dessert, beer for Greg, and some cheap wine. Note our classy wine glasses. We have tons of leftovers.

The whole spread. 

This is the dessert I found when I had to run out at 4pm for butter and chicken bullion. I was impressed by the bit of plastic holly and decided to pay $1.80 each. They were wonderful and cream filled.

Dessert! 

Kurisumasu concert

Confused about the title? Just repeat it over and over again really fast (and drop all of the "U"s until they're almost inaudible) until it makes sense. Since every syllable in the language has to end in a vowel (or at least an "n"), it's really the best the Japanese can do for "Christmas".

But anyway, on Friday (Festivus in America, Emperor Akihito's birthday here) we finally had the Christmas concert for which we'd been rehearsing since the middle of November. We performed "When You Wish Upon a Star", a medley of Japanese folk songs, and did Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (in Japanese) for an encore. The concert ended up going kinda long (3+ hours), but thankfully our group was at the beginning, so the audience was still fresh. Not that we were anything other than amateurish, but at least my second graders still had the energy to scream "Gu-re-ggu-sensei!" very loudly when we were done. Anyway, here's pictures.


The semi-formal group shot. 


Japanese people have a strange fixation with beaujolais. Anyway, we got free wine just for showing up. It was great. 


An example of Japanese people reflexively posing with a peace sign. 


Somebody was saying something inappropriate (about Sam - a language barrier thing), and I was laughing embarrasedly. 


There's Santa (me, that is), conducting. You can see Sam in back near the piano. 

School's out!

And it's about damned time. Both of us feel pretty much like we haven't done anything except work, sleep, or eat in about two months. So now it's time for some well-deserved rest.

Tomorrow, we have the town Christmas concert. Saturday, I'm going to sleep until noon and sit on my ass. Sunday, I'll cook something appropriate for Christmas. Monday, we have to go to Chiba city at 8am to re-take our driving tests. Tuesday, we wait for an electrician to come by and install the new air conditioner / heating unit that Sam's vice principal donated to us, and sit on our asses. Wednesday, our guests from overseas arrive.

Yay vacation!

Christmas

- Moving this to the top because there has been additional information added -
Dad's been nagging me for what we want for Christmas. Here it is. It will probably be updated over the next few days.

Sam: (in order of most to least important)
Deodorant, lots. Tons. Like 10 sticks. Seriously. Nothing fancy, just plain old white stick deodorant.
Pants. Old Navy cords in purple, green, or khaki (I have the white ones). Size 10 or 12 (10 is a proper fit, 12 is a nice relaxed loose fit).
Sweater: Warm. Button up the front or uneven split neck ones are cute. Ones with huge kitties or a tight waistband are not. I'm not 10, and I'm certainly not skinny enough to have my sweater clench my hips.
Jacket: Old Navy Cropped Frost Free Jacket. Blue. Large.
Warm shoes: Old navy lace-up wedge boots. size 9 black is best (white gets dirty)

Greg:
Deodorant. Lots. Manly clear stuff.
Sweater. Size M.
Socks. Huge (size 13 foot). Tons. White. Go to Costco and find the biggest bag you can.
A rolling pin. Just a normal, wooden rolling pin for rolling out dough. They don't exist here.
New warm pants to wear to around the house and to bed like he got last year.
A heat blanket. Somebody cries when he gets in bed. (It's Trabi)

Japan is cold

Reports from back home keep mentioning extremely cold weather in Oregon, to say nothing of Boston. I saw pictures of light snow (or was it freezing rain?) in Portland today, and while we haven't had any of that here, it's still damned cold.

One thing winter visitors won't have to deal with is rain. Winter is the dry season here, at least on the Pacific side of Japan. In the middle of the day it's probably more comforatable here than it is back home at the moment, but only for a few hours. We get up to about 40-45 degrees fahrenheit around 1pm, but not for long. Nighttime lows are around 28F.

But here's the thing: our houses don't have central heat. No thermostats anywhere, no furnace, no heatpump, nothing. We use a couple portable heaters to keep the rooms bearable. I cook breakfast downstairs wearing a thick winter coat. So whine all you want about walking through a cold parking lot when you're running errands. At least your house and workplaces are heated.

stuff to do

I'm trying to figure out just what we're all going to do together in a few weeks. For New Year's Eve we're going to go somewhere and eat soba noodles (it's tradition) then go to Narita-san for the countdown. It's in Narita, only a short drive from home, which should come as a relief to everyone who remembers the 5am train home from Tokyo last year.

Everything else is pretty up in the air at this point. I assume everyone will want to spend a couple days exploring Tokyo, but beyond that, what do people feel like doing? I've been pushing Sam to get out to Kamakura, because it's a) pretty much the oldest city in this part of Japan, and was the seat of the first shogunate and b) because it has a 30-foot tall Buddha. It's about a two hour train ride from here, and probably about the same by car, thanks to Tokyo being in between. One advantage, we'd pass through Yokohama on the way home. In addition to being a neat city, Yokohama is home to Japan's largest China town. It's a cool place to walk through for awhile, and the food rules (it's where shu-mai were invented).

Another possible destination is Chuzenji-ko (just look at the pictures, don't worry about all the scary looking Japanese), a volcanically-formed lake in Tochigi prefecture, about 70 miles north of Tokyo. In addition to being a beautiful area (should be covered in snow in Dec/Jan), it has a bunch of hot springs and is the bureal place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder the Tokugawa shogunate, which lasted from 1602-1868. We could go there for a long day trip, or, if we find a cheap spot to stay, spend a weekend.

There are a bunch of smaller things to see closer to home, like Chiba Castle in Chiba City, only about 30km away. We're probably go to Choshi too. It's a port town with an old lighthouse, among other things.

OK, that's a lot of information, but look over it (especially you, Jonathan). Don't want everyone to just be sitting around the house when you get here in two weeks.

Alphabet Name tags

.Alphabet Name tags

Can someone either buy me 5 packs of these or pick up something similar at the store? I'll totally pay you back.

Greg, you can't have any of my 5 packs. If you want it too, you need to ask. No mooching my loot

Percussionists do it better.

Sadly, in the case of our Christmas concert group it's true. And I'm the percussionist.

It's a well known fact that while Jonathan gets to take private music lessons twice a week on my parent's dime, they wouldn't fork over $50 for a year of cello lessons for me in elementary school. Thus I can't read music and have a very poor understanding of everything that has to do with music aside from whether or not I like it. In spite of this abuse, somehow I am the only person in a group of 14 other people who have been reading music and playing instruments since elementary school who can keep time and use my instrument when I'm supposed to. Sure, percussion instruments aren't as hard as the trumpet. I admit it. But if you've been playing the trumpet for 5 years and I've don't even understand what |: means you SHOULDN'T miss half of your notes while I nail it the first time through.

Especially not on "When You Wish Upon A Star".

We'll see how the concert goes.

In the news

We never did get around to scanning these in, but here are our interviews from the town magazine.

Mine which is oddly all in Japanese. I'll translate it some day.


Greg's with English.

These are hosted on Subtend, which has been sucking lately so if it doesn't work the first time try again later.

P.S. Click the picture to download the file.

P.P.S. Hey Daddy, maybe you could print these out and have someone at Linfield translate them for you? There's got to be someone who speaks Japanese hanging around there. -Greg

Clearly, they needed a cartoon to get this message across.

Japanese people are befuddled when I ask them why every public service announcement has to include a cartoon character. Whether it's the cute puppy telling us about bicycle and pedestrian safety, the rabbit telling the kids at school to brush their teeth, or the Pokemon explaining the virtue of recycling, every message that you'd expect to hear in 15 seconds from a b-list actor in an NBC "The More You Know" segment back home is told in cartoon form in Japan. My example of the moment is the following cartoon, which was part of a sheet (an official document from the prefectural police!) of holiday safety information given to teachers at my school this morning...


Friends don't let friends drive drunk. The Japanese version. 

Buy some guy a goat

For like $26 you can make some guy in Angola happy this Holiday season by buying him a goat. Or for $160 you can buy him a herd of goats and make him damn nearly the richest man in Angola. Either way, it's a good way to get a gift for that person on your list who has everything AND a random stranger who has nothing all at once!

http://www.greatgifts.org/(zpdsogb1filr1pijksdawy2i)/GiftSelection/home.aspx