Feb 2009

Hi Everyone,

Quinn ran a 30k (18.64 miles) race a couple of weekends ago and rocked! There were about 20,000 runners and Quinn came in 32nd. His time was 1 hour 43 minutes. I am very proud of him. I was greedy and tried to see him in a couple of different spots by taking the train and ended up missing him in both the middle and the end. I was VERY frustrated. But it was a good lesson learned for the Tokyo Marathon. I will not be too over zealous in my Quinn sightings for that race. The race took place along the Ohme river which is close to our house and only about 3 train stops away. It is a relatively rural area and this was the backup on the train platform as people tried to pass through the ticket stalls. It took 15 minutes just to get off the platform. They had to stop the trains because there wasn't enough room for people to get off!

Here is Quinn at the start.

Last weekeend our friends and neighbors, Kyle and Julie, had a few people over for a brunch and Kyle made a cheese souffle. It was great. As you can see, Quinn was very excited to eat it. Quinn made custom order smoothies for everyone.

Here is a cute video of Ethan after I spilled tomato soup on his head. Don't worry PETA, no animals were hurt in the making of this video.

Here is a pizza that we bought at Costco today. It was delicious.

Many people have requested pictures of our apartment, so here they are. The kitchen and dining room are connected via a little pass through and the living room is separate. We just painted a mural of a tree on the wall this weekend. These are not the greatest pictures, but if you want the real deal you are welcome to come out and visit. Haven't heard from many of you lately. Please drop me an email and let me know how you are doing. We miss you all!

Last weekend we flew to Sapporo for the 60th annual snow festival. There were three main sections to the festival; one with ice sculptures, one with snow sculptures and another playland area. The large sculptures are made by the Japanese military and the rest are made by local groups. There were probably about 300 sculptures in all and about 5 very large ones.

This was our first time staying in a Japanese hotel. This was a business hotel and had been recently remodeled

Sapporo is known for its crab and here were some in a little pond outside of a restaurant.

Here is one of the ice sculptures. Those are real fish and crab inside. (dead of course)

This was a little train that you could ride that still ran on coal. They stopped it every other time around to put in a tiny piece of coal.

These next few pictures are of the very large sculptures. Quinn estimates one at over 60 feet. They had performers and shows on the larger sculptures. There were performances throughout the day.

We also went to the playland area but it was more set up for families. They had raft rides pulled by snowmobiles and giant slides made out of snow. I made my first snowman!

That night we ate at Ramen Alley. This is a little alleyway with about 15 or so Ramen noodle shops lining it. Here is a picture of everyone taking a picture. All famous sites in Japan are photographed about 1 million times per day.

Here they are cooking scallops inside of a shell on the grill. It looked really neat. We were too full to try one.

We went back to see the ice sculptures at night and they were even better with the lights shining on them. You could see all the details and texture. Each night people are carving new sculptures. They use chisels and chainsaws.

We went to Otaru the next day. It is about a 30 minute train ride from Sapporo to Otaru. It is known for its romantic canal street which is lined with old warehouses. There are also numerous glass blowing shops and music boxes. Can anyone say, Venice in Japan? I am wearing a mask in the picture to keep my face warm. It is very common to wear a mask in Japan when you are sick to protect others from catching your cold since you are often in close quarters with many other people. There go those curteous Japanese again! The reason we took this picture is because they built little teepee type structures around a lot of the trees and bushes in Sapporo. I wanted to see if anyone had any idea why they would do this. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Here we are on the romantic canal street.

We ate lunch in a really cool old warehouse. We had a crab lunch to celebrate Quinn's new job.

You may have heard of a Bento lunch before. Bento means boxed lunch in Japanese. Inside of the trainstation there was a department store with TONS of stands selling perfect little meals with tiny samplings of everything. You can get a little of the idea here. We spent 30 minutes walking around looking at all the food. That will give you an idea of how much there was!

Marketing in Japan is amazing. All of these people are waiting in line for a special type of carmel that I think is only sold in Hokaido. These little shops were all around the city and there were always people in line. There were security people holding up signs explaining at what times they would be restocking the shelves and people would get in lines hours ahead of time to be able to buy the carmels. There were even longer lines in the airport for these carmels. We were lucky enough to find a stand after passing through security to buy some of the carmels. I bet other people were made when they saw no line after the security check point. 10 tiny carmels for 9 dollars. They were good but I am glad I didn't wait in line.

Back to see the ice sculptures at night.

Beautiful scenery at the Hokdaido University. This is the most open space I have seen since moving to Japan.

Outside of Sapporo brewery. You have probably heard of Sapporo beer if you have been to a Japanese restaurant.

The Japanese love different flavored kit kats. They change with the season and based on the location. Here are the most odd flavors I have seen.

I have been sick for a couple of weeks so I have not been in the mood for writing but I am on the upswing now so I will try and fill everyone in on the last few weeks or so.

After we got back from Vietnam we went to see Cirque du Soleil resident show in Tokyo. It is called Zed. Here is a pic of the outside of the theater they built just for this show. The show was incredible, as usual for Cirque du Soleil. No pictures of tehe show, of course.

The next weekend we volunteered the entire weekend at the Frostbite run. This is a race that the Yokota running club puts on for the Japanese running community. There were about 8,000 runners plus all of their families on base for this event. It was BUSY.

We also went to a festival at Tokyo dome. It was the most crowded place I have been yet since moving here. Imagine a football stadium completely full of people with people all over the field. You couldn't even move. We spent longer waiting in line to get in than participating in the festival. It was just too much.

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but the Japanese are crazy about melons. Some melons in the regular grocery store sell for 50-75 DOLLARS. We are talking about honey dew type melons. These apparently are high class melons. They come in a special box. Haven't had the chance to taste one of these and I don't think that will happen before we leave.

So, I am sure you all are wondering what the big surprise is. I couldn't possibly go on and on about melons and lines and shows any longer. The big surprise is that Quinn got a job! He is going to be a community planner! We are very excited and will keep you all updated as we know more.

That's it for now.