Nov 2008

Japanese people love to wait in line. Here there long line in a train station because they are giving away some vegetable that looks like an albino carrot. There were at least 70 people in line to get one of these.

We decided to go to the zoo on our day off for Veteran's day. It is starting to get pretty chilly so I prepared for the weather with my new and first winter jacket. Quinn of course was more than ready for the chill.

The Japanese zoo was quite impressive and they had a variety of animals including a large section of "asian" animals that I had never seen. Their butterfly garden was awesome and we had butterflies landing on us and you could see them everywhere. It was the most butterflies I had seen ever. They like to put a lot of animals in one exhibit. There were 19 lions in the same exihibit where you would normally see about 5 lions in states. It made it much more exiting and the animals didn't seem to mind. I guess the animals take the same stance as Japanese on the matter of personal space. They just don't require as much as is Americans. Except for this guy. He was unhappy.

I also got to take a ride on a wild caterpillar. Quinn was our prey.

Here are some Japanese children on a field trip to the zoo. All the groups have little hats on that match so they can't get lost. Another interesting note is that even the littlest ones had maps around their necks and appeared to be able to use them to navigate their way around the zoo. The Japanese demonstrate their intelligence even at the age of 3 and 4!

Other than that, the zoo was a zoo and we were really tired by the time we got home because the zoo always requires a lot of walking.

This weekend we went out to a touristy mountainous region of Japan about 2 hours away by train. The funny thing about touristy places in Japan is that all the tourists are Japanese. Most people just travel within the country and there are very few foreigners anywhere. One woman asked us on the train, "what country, Italy?" People never peg us for Americans. I think it is the tight jeans that Quinn is always wearing!

So, to get to Hakone we had to ride two different trains for a total trip of about 2 hours. Then you ride a switchback train that climbs a total of 700 meters. This train was absolutely packed and I thought I was going to pass out or hyperventilate or something because it was very hot and damp inside. This picture gives you a small idea of what it was like.

Then you ride another train that is pulled on a cable. At the top we ate at a little restaurant named Gyoza center. We had been pretty Gyozad out from the last restaurant but I felt ready to eat it again. This place turned out to be marvelous and it had the cutest atmosphere. There were little placards with bells everywhere that you buy when you get to the top of a mountain so I am guessing that the owner was a big mountain climber. They had gyoza alone, in soup, and in salad. It was fabulous.

Then we road the rope way down into the valley. Each car sat about 10 people inside and it was super freaky. I was really scared because you are really high up in the air and you can see out around you for a long way except that is was foggy for a lot of the trip. The leaves were starting to change color and the Japanese maple were a brilliant red.

Then we crested a hill and looked into another valley to see sulfurous pools of water that they use for the natural onsen hot springs.

They cook eggs in the water and it turns the shell black. You can see a man here pulling out a basket full of eggs. Here are a bunch of people frantically eating their black eggs that are supposed to increase your life span an extra seven years. We took part in the fun too.

Then we took a pirate ship across the lake. It is starting to get pretty cold here. I am not so sure about the weather here. I am starting to miss Arizona a little bit.

You can buy beer in vending machines in Japan. No open container law here. Makes vacationing a lot more fun.

Here is a picture from my artistic side. I am becoming artsy fartsy in Japan.

Two weekends ago we set out on a mission to find a restaurant named Gyoza Heaven but commonly referred to as Communist gyoza. I think it is more like Gyoza Nazi like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld. For those of you who don't know what gyoza is, it is similar to an egg roll but the outside is more doughy and soft and it is usually steamed instead of fried. After much searching we finally found this hole in the wall with only about 5 tables in the joint. The only thing they have on the menu is Gyoza and you have to buy at least one order of Gyoza per person and one drink per person or they charge you a fee. Unfortunately for us, we did not realize that they also do not allow you to take home left overs and we order half a dozen orders of Gyoza for just 4 people. We were trying unsuccessfully, to eat all the gyoza we could which resulted in us all feeling disgustingly sick. We were all very upset that we could not take our Gyoza home since we had already paid for it and that does not seem like any kind of logical way to operate a business so Quinn convinced me that we should try and sneak them out in my purse. This is obviously a man's idea because no woman in her right mind would hatch some crazy plan to put gyoza in their own bag. Being the wonderful spouse that I am (and cheap) I agreed and we emptied out a cough drop bag I had and shoved as many Gyoza in there as humanly possible to smuggle them out of there. I can't even believe I am admitting to this on the internet but I figured you all would get a good laugh out of this.

We have been seeing quite a few Halloween decorations and costumes for purchase in the local Japanese stores. I didn't realize that Halloween had spread this far around the world but it has. They allow each American to bring up to 10 Japanese children onto the base for Trick or Treating from 6-8 on Halloween night. So we braced for the onslaught of children. We bought five big bags of candy and we probably should have bought ten. Quinn made us bumble bee costumes at my request and we even had one for Ethan. The best part of these costumes was our giant stingers that I used to bzzz at the children. They loved it.

The Japanese children were so cute and all said Tlick or Tleat with the cutest accents and bowed a thousand times each to thank us for the candy. I assume it is a pretty big deal to get to try so much American candy and to get it from complete strangers must be quite the concept. The first couple of children were timid but as the night went on they definitely got the hang of it. There was tons of security on base and they had people dressed in uniform patrolling the streets. It was really fun. We stood out in front of the house and handed out candy for about an hour before we ran out. We went over to the neighbors for a Halloween party and he had made a costume entirely out of beer cartons. Pretty impressive. I hear it took about two packages of hot glue to get it all together.

The next day we went to Oku-Tama which is a rural area about one hour train ride from our house. On the way, we had to change trains in Ome. Because it was a weekend there weren't quite as many trains running so we had to wait 20 minutes instead of 5. On the platform they have these little noodle stands where you can get a snack. You put your money into a machine and pick the item you want and then it prints out a ticket. You bring the ticket inside of the stand and they make your noodles for you. There is only room for about 5-6 people inside and if anyone needs to bend over, there are problems because there is not enough room. In Japan, it is culturally acceptable to slurp your noodles and the broth so it can be extremely loud in the little hut standing with 4-5 Japanese people fanatically slurping their noodles. Quinn was about to freak out and have a nervous break down but I wasn't going to miss the cultural experience of slurping my noodles so we stood there and slurped with the best of them to try and drown out the noise of everyone else slurping away. The noodles were fabulous and they had tempura vegetables in the broth too. No pictures of this but I will take some next time. We went and walked along the river in Oku-Tama and saw some beautiful scenery, bridges, and dams. I know, it is not the same without the pictures but I forgot the camera.

Sunday, we went to Costco! My friend from work, Steve, drove us there as he is a member and has a car. When we were less than a mile from the store we had to wait in line for about 1 hour to even get into the parking lot. It was a mad house. There is also an outlet mall attached so they share parking structures. The outlet mall is awesome and modeled after American outlet malls. They even do the announcements overhead in English to make it more Americanized. Anyway, back to Costco. We decided to split from Steve so he could get his shopping done and we could do the same and to meet up back by the TVs. Costco is set up much the same as in the US so we headed back to the wine section to see the selection. As always seems to be in Japan, we ran into a wine tasting event. They had special vendor representatives from all over the world there to come and hawk their wine. One of the vendors actually worked in the vineyard in Chile and spoke Spanish, English, French, and Japanese. You meet the most amazing people here. So there were about 8-10 tables of wine with 4-6 types of wine on each table to try. Forty-five minutes later, Quinn and I were tanked and hadn't even done any shopping. We rushed back to find Steve and he was all finished shopping and all we had were 6 bottles of wine. So, we went on a whirlwind trip through Costco to get the rest of our groceries and skeedadled out of there. Thanks Steve for your patience.