Apples

I see it's been a month since my last update. I don't know how those daily bloggers do it! XD

It's apple picking season here in Japan, and Braden and I have been the recipients of some delicious apples this week. We got some from a friend at church and some from our neighbors. Really big, yummy apples. And since the apples at the store are about a dollar a piece (yeesh) I was glad to get some free ones! I had a hankering for apple pie, but I don't have a conventional oven, so I decided to cook them on the stove. Found a simple recipe online. Couple TBS of sugar, a tsp of cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg, a TB of butter, and voila. Yummy, sweet, warm cooked apples. :) Clara liked them too, gobbled them right up. Braden is away in Tokyo right now for some training so he missed out, but I promised him I'd make it again when he got home.

We put up our little Christmas tree this weekend. Clara has a hard time leaving it alone. She keeps wanting to grab the tinsel or branches and shake them as hard as she can. Rather than take her away every time I've been trying to go over there and show her how to gently pat the tree branches while saying "gently", hoping that she'll learn that it's okay to go over there, it's just not okay to be so rough with it. When I'm over there saying "gently" I feel like I'm teaching her how to pet a dog or cat or something XD. Here's hoping I'm not doing it all December long. Fortunately we didn't put any breakable ornaments on it. In fact, we haven't put ANY ornaments on yet, though I was thinking of making some origami ornaments to put on. But I'm a little afraid if I do she'll just keep pulling them off, so maybe we'll just be ornament-less this year.

Right now I can hear the yaki imo truck going by. Yaki imo is a cooked sweet potato, and in the winter there are vendors that go around in trucks selling them on the street like an ice cream truck sells ice cream. They play music too, but not "The Entertainer". The song I'm hearing right now is just "yaakiiiii imoooooooo!" over and over again. Not exactly the most 'entertaining' song ever (see what I did there?) but I guess it could be worse.

No pics this time, but maybe next time. Sorry!

Tokugawa Gardens

Sorry for the long delay in updates. Been procrastinating as usual :P. Clara, Braden, and I have been keeping busy. Braden's duties at the Prefectural Office will be changing a little now that his supervisor has been changed, and while the new supervisor gets acclimated Braden will be taking on more duties at the office. Clara and I went to two Halloween parties, one at a parent/child support center called Yumoa and one at our Church. Both were very fun and we saw some pretty cute costumes. Clara was a princess :).

Today was Culture Day, a national holiday, and Braden and I decided to celebrate it by visiting the Tokugawa Gardens at the Tokugawa Art Museum. Since it was a holiday, the entrance fee for the garden (not the museum itself) was free (it's usually 300 yen) which was a nice surprise for us when we got there. We went with our good friend Asuka and her son Chihaya. Her husband couldn't go because he was at the Cosplay Summit in Nagoya (we actually didn't know that was today or we would have tried to go to that too!) The Tokugawa Garden is a beautiful little oasis in the middle of big city, as you can see here:

Clara loved it. She wanted to walk by herself all over the place, but there was a lot of water, little streams and a lake and such, so we had to carry her much of the time. (She always headed for the water when she saw it. She loves water!)

She was pretty wiggly during every picture, so there aren't any of her just smiling, silly girl.

Anyway, it was a very pretty walk through the garden. The maple trees are just starting to turn red, most were still green. The maple trees are turning red a little late this year because the autumn has been hotter than usual. I would like to go to the garden again when all the trees are red, but next time I'll have to pay the entrance fee :P.

The weather has gotten a lot colder recently and so Braden and I have started winterizing the apartment. A lot of cold air comes through our big windows, but a member of our church mentioned that Japanese people often buy plastic curtains to go behind their regular curtains, so I got some at the store this week, and it really does seem to help keep the cold out. Now all we need is a space heater near the bathroom. A kotatsu (a low table with a heater underneath and a blanket that goes over the top) would be nice too, if we can find an inexpensive one.

Japanese stores are a lot like American stores when it comes to Christmas decorations. That is, they put them up really early, like around Halloween. They don't have nearly as many as American stores, of course, but they have them all the same. Braden has to work on Christmas but we'll make it special still :). 

Nagoya Matsuri

Hey, Braden here. Finally updating this blog for the first time in awhile. Since I last updated here, I've worked a part time job at the Genki Sushi up on broadway in Seattle, serving sushi to college students and gay guys (one asked for my number), worked in the warehouse of K Line Logistics, a Japanese shipping company for a year and a half, lifting heavy bozex and driving a forklift around, Melissa and I had our first baby Clara who is now a year and 2 months (3 months?), and I got a job as a CIR translating stuff for Aichi prefecture in the city of Nagoya through the JET program. It has been quite a ride the past few years.

Here is a video of baby chan watching a lamp display during Nagoya Matsuri this last Saturday. Near the end you can hear her yelling with the guys pushing the display.

Here's another video of the Matsuri with Samurai riding by on horseback.

Work has been quite interesting here at the Aichi Prefectural office in Nagoya. I translate several things throughout each month as well as volunteer in the community. Recently I've been volunteering with the Aichi prefectural police department in mock foreigner interrogations. Those are pretty fun. I get to pretend I'm a foreigner living in Japan who stole a can of beer from a Japanese convenience store and then punched out the store manager and escaped when the store manager tried to stop me. It's pretty fun to do. The organizers asked me to act very rude and deny all charges adamantly, which I'm more than happy to do :D. Well, that's it for tonight. I'll try to update more along with Melissa
Peace out crackas!

Meat Loaf

Today I had a hankering for my mom's homemade meatloaf. I have the recipe, but there was one problem. I don't have a conventional oven. Japanese apartments don't come with one, or even a hook up for one. If Japanese people want to bake they buy a small toaster-oven size electric oven. I do have a gas stove, and underneath the range there is a very small gas oven. Big enough for grilling small fish or even toasting a slice of bread, but there's no way I could cook a meatloaf in it. I was about to put all thoughts of delicious meatloaf from my mind when I came up with a brilliant idea. Use my mother's meatloaf recipe to make Japanese style Hambagu! (Hambagu is a Japanese western-inspired dish that consists of a hamburger patty with gravy). I got the ingredients at the store today, made the meatloaf, shaped it into patties and fried it in a pan and Voila! My mother's meatloaf! I was so happy. I should've taken a picture but I am a very lazy photographer and now it's too late. We ate it all in all its delicious glory. And now I must go for my daughter has figured out how to open the cupboard in the bedroom where I keep her clothes and is throwing them all around for me to pick up. Silly girl. ;)

Clara and Balloons

Yesterday we went to the local department store to do some grocery shopping and decided to let Clara go to the play place (It costs 300 yen for 1 hour. About $3). It's a pretty nice little place. They have a ball pit, a bouncy house, a room full of balloons and fans blowing them all over the place (featured in the video), a carnival ride type spinning tube, some simple moving stuffed animals, and a small merry go round type thing with cushions the kiddos can ride on. Anywho, Clara's favorite thing to do is grab a ball from the ball pit and carry it around, or take a balloon from the balloon room and carry it around, or hug the stuffed animals. There are always lots of older, hyper kids running around that I have to watch out for so they don't accidentally knock clara down, but so far that hasn't happened. There was also another little girl Clara's age in the play space that day, and at one point Clara offered her a ball from the ball pit, then offered one to her mom, then one to her dad, it was all very cute. Everyone here always tells us how cute Clara is. She stands out since she's the only white baby in town (at least the only one I've seen) and she gets complimented every day. I hope it doesn't all go to her head XD.

Back to Blogging!

Back by popular demand (of our families), heeeeeere's Melissa and Braden's blog! So we're back in Japan, this time in the city of Nagoya, about as far removed from good ole' country living as you can get. I miss Matsue a lot, but living in the city does have its perks, like close daycare centers, a department store a couple blocks away, and... um... I'm sure I'll think of some more reasons to like the city in a moment. Anywho, I hope to update this little thingy with updates on how we're doing, pics (especially of the baby chan :D) and maybe some helpful information about living and working in Japan for those of you who may be interested in coming here. I'll keep my first entry short, but not to worry, I shall update it soon.