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.

Sept. 22nd

Wow. Is it really the 22nd already? I've been back in America for almost a month now? Weird. The last few weeks have been pretty crazy. Braden and I have been living out of our suitcases for about a month as we've traveled around Japan visiting friends and then traveled around Washington and Idaho visiting family, and now we're finally back in Ellensburg. I finished unpacking the suitcases yesterday (Its so nice to have a closet and a dresser again), but we still have a lot of things still packed up in boxes and tubs (Mostly decor at this point. All the useful stuff is unpacked now). Seeing our families again was great. I got to see my grandparents, some aunts, uncles, and cousins I haven't seen for a long time, and I got to see all my wonderful siblings, my awesome parents and in-laws, and the adorable dogs and cats back home :). Unfortunately I caught a bad cold as soon as we got to Idaho, and Braden suffered from some severe jaw pain (he needs a root canal soon 0_o), but I enjoyed being around my family and miss them again already. I miss my friends back in Japan too. We had lots of fun and lots of great experiences, and I'm sure that someday we'll go back :). The trip home went pretty well. There was a big selection of movies to watch on the plane, so the ten hour trip went by pretty quickly. We arrived in LA and had to go through some very long lines and then hurry to catch our next flight to Seattle. I lost some luggage at the LA airport (the second time I've lost luggage in that airport...) but it was delivered to Braden's parents' house the next day. We arrived in Seattle and Braden's parents were there to meet us and help us with our luggage (well, except for the suitcase that was missing). Boy was I glad to put those suitcases in the car. The worst part about our travels was dragging those heavy suitcases around, especially getting them on and off the trains in Japan. But now they are unpacked and I don't have to worry about them anymore for a while. Well, now I guess I'll write about a few of my first impressions about being back. As soon as we got to Seattle I had to unpack my sweaters because I was suddenly cold! (It was still very warm in Japan when we left.) Soon after getting back to Idaho I had to start putting lotion on my hands every day because they were getting so cracked and dry. My hands were really pampered in the humid air of Japan. The first day back I kept bowing and saying "gomen" (Japanese for sorry) when I bumped into people at the airport. The food in the stores all looks so big (I can buy gallons of milk instead of just liters again, yay!), but I miss being able to buy cheap natto for Braden and flavor packets for Hayashi Rice. I guess that means we need to take a trip to the asian market Uwajimaya in Seattle soon. Now we're back in Ellensburg getting back into the swing of things. I guess since this blog is supposed to be about our adventures in Japan, there's not much left for me to write about here. I want to print it all in a book and keep it as a scrapbook of sorts of all our time in Japan. Thank you all who've been reading, I hope you enjoyed it. And now I have a diary of our life in Japan to look back on.

I love Japan :).

Sept. 1st

Sorry for the delay in writing everyone. The last few weeks have been very busy with packing, moving, sightseeing, visiting friends, traveling, etc. I have lots of new pictures that I want to post on here and on facebook, and maybe I`ll put a few on here today, but the rest will have to wait until we get home and I have time to get files off the computer. For now, I`ll write a little bit about what we`ve been up to the last couple of weeks. During out last couple of weeks in Matsue we went on a few hikes in the area and visited some famous places. I visited a pretty shrine on a mountain overlooking Matsue with my Japanese teachers, then with Braden and Ed and our Japanese teachers we went on a hike in Oku Izumo and visited some tatara (Japanese iron forge) and katana making museums. The next day we met up with some friends and hiked up to a cool Buddhist temple called Nageiredo, built into the side of a cliff on a mountain. The hike was extremely steep and we spent most of the time climbing up rocks and tree roots, and near the top we got to ring a big temple bell. We moved out of our apartment on the 19th and stayed with our friend Ed in Izumo for the weekend. We visited Izumo Taisha Grand Shrine one last time, and we got the once in a life time opportunity to go inside the gate of the main temple and see the new roof. Every sixty years the bark roof has to be replaced with new bark, and during that time the inner temple area is open to tours to the public (Normally only the Shinto Priests are allowed inside the inner gate). On Monday we went back to Matsue to pick up our luggage (which we left with some friends) and then we went to the station to catch our bus. Some of the ward members and our friend Chieko came to bid us farewell. We were sad to leave our friends, but we were looking forward to visiting our friends in Kyoto and Tokyo. While in Kyoto we stayed at our friend Hiroko`s house. We visited two famous temples in Kyoto, Kiyomizudera and Kinkakuji. Braden finished his summer vacation homework (Yes, they have that in Japan :P), we hiked up to a pretty waterfall with Hiroko and her daughter Anju, and then we did Karaoke with Hiroko and her daughters on Saturday. We sang lots of Ghibli songs, it was awesome :D. On Sunday night we took a night bus to Tokyo. The ride was long and the seats weren`t that comfy, but we got to Tokyo in one piece. I was really worried that the trains would be super crowded since it was a Monday morning, but luckily for us, all the salary men were taking trains towards the center of Tokyo, and we took a train going out of Tokyo, so it wasn`t crowded at all. All that worry for nothing, haha :P. So we took a train to Chiba Ken and arrived at the house of Braden`s former missionary companion, Brother Watanabe, and his wife and two little daughters. On Tuesday Braden and I spent the day in Akihabara Electric Town (As the signs call it). It was really interesting, and there were computer stores, hobby shops, and arcades everywhere. We bought a few souvenirs (and I had to do some clever packing to get everything to fit in our already full suitcases 0_o), and then in the evening we met up with our friend Taisuke, who had done stayed with Braden`s family while going to college while Braden was in high school. He treated us to a great dinner of shabu shabu and then dessert at Denny`s (Japanese Denny`s is really different from the American version. It was all Japanese food. But they did have yummy cheesecake!). It was great to spend some time with Taisuke, he was super nice. The next day Braden and I went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. It`s in a park surrounded by trees full of cicadas and the museum itself is in a big old fashioned style house with lots of rooms full of drawings, storyboards, demos about animation, a theater for watching short animated films, and lots of just interesting, random things to look at. After seeing all of the museum we took the train home. My feet were so sore from walking around and standing on trains for the last few days, I was so relieved to finally get back to Chiba Ken. That night we went with the Watanabes to the church English conversation class taught by the local missionaries. Their church building is the biggest LDS church I have ever seen! It was five stories tall (the first floor was a parking area). And the fifth floor apparently has a large gym in it. It was way bigger than our church in Matsue, which was two stories tall, but still fairly small. This morning was spent with last minute packing, trying to keep everything under 23 kilos, which was no easy task, but I think I got it ;). Well sorry this post has been so long. I`ll try to get some more pics up soon. Its hard to believe we`ll be back in the US tomorrow (But we`ll be crossing the international dateline, so even though we`re leaving on the 1st at 7pm, we`ll be arriving in Seattle on the 1st at 6:30pm. So we`re going to travel back in time XD. See you all soon!