The sign reads, “A map former than this.” And I love that instead of YOU ARE HERE, it says, “It is the ground here.” I was just glad that I wasn’t standing in the pond!
A map former than this
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Monthly Archives: September 2007
Alcohol and Cigarettes
I love that you can get anything from a vending machine. You can get underwear, batteries, ties, shirts, beer, cigarettes, sake, and just about anything else you can think of. It’s so awesome!
Okinawa
DJ and I went to visit Okinawa because he had some work to do down there. It’s the southern island of Japan and there is a bit more space there. It’s a tad bit more tropical and there are sugar plantations and palm trees everywhere. It doesn’t get as cold there in the winter, but otherwise the weather is pretty similar. We left on a C-35. It seats six passengers and there were five of us so it was perfect. 
We got there and our friends in Okinawa picked us up at the terminal.
When the boys had to work, my friend Angie and I went to this cultural park (Ryukyu Mura) and wandered around. It was basically a “traditional Okinawa village, dressed as one would find thousands of such villages across Ryukyu…in a time when life was simple, Japanese were visitors and Americans simply weren’t around.” 
With our ticket came entrance to the snake show. I had no idea what we were in for, but as we sat down in a small theater they brought out a snake and mongoose in a cage separated by glass. They both tried to get at one another and eventually the mongoose fell asleep and the snake slithered all the way up to the glass and tried to get out. Finding no luck, he eventually gave up as well. Then, after about 15 minutes of listening to a Japanese guy give a little presentation 
(probably would have been fascinating had I understood a single word) they brought out a water balloon and stuck it into the cage. The poisonous snake (a Habu) lunged at the balloon and broke it, soaking the poor thing with water and then we watched a very advanced 3D movie of a mongoose and snake attacking each other. It was a very convincing 3D movie, really. I especially liked the weird hissing. It reminded me of snow on the television.
As we were leaving we stumbled upon a little performance. It was quite cute and they had lots of different people up there giving little dances.
Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing – Photo Books
Mini troubles
This is about the fifth time I’ve had to get the Mini jumped. It’s a 1992 Mini Rover (basically a Mini Cooper before BMW bought Rover out) and there is no signal to let you know that you’ve left the lights on. There’s a 2km tunnel right before you get to the house and you have to turn on your lights for the tunnel. It gets us every time. However, this battery drain was different. A light that I’ve never seen work before (we’ve owned the car for 10 months) went on and stayed on all night. It was the overhead light (although you’d have to call it an overside light because it’s not in the center of the car, but off to the side where a hanger would be in a normal car) and once I got the car jumped and figured out why it had died I was ok. But, DJ was not. DJ had to take the bus to the train station, take the train and then walk to work. It made him an hour and twenty minutes late for work, which is not something the Navy takes to kindly.
Now, what I don’t understand, is why you would design a car that not only fails to chime when you open the door and leave your lights on, but also makes it so hard to tell that you’ve left them on at all. 
Or even tell that that is the lights switch in the first place! In the photo of the control panel (under the CD player) there are five switches. The lights are the last and blank switch between the hazards lights and the choke. ??? It’s a crazy car, but I don’t think we’ll have any problem selling it. All the sailors seem to love it. We get comments on it all the time.
I waited until about 11am and then while my neighbor was talking to the mailman, I walked over to him with the jumper cables in my hand and pointed to the car. “Oh…bat-ta-rie?” he asked. Nodding, I walked over to the trunk (which is where the battery is…don’t ask me why). And we jumped it. I went on base and got my groceries and of course, bought the guy that helped me jump the car a gift of chocolate (Godiva, yum).
Gift giving is a very important custom here. They had actually been over here the day before because they JUST moved in and had given us a gift of kitchen towels. When you move in you’re supposed to give all your neighbors a small gift. I’ve gotten tea towels, laundry detergent, rice, celebration rice, sake, and cookies. Yea cookies!
Typhoon Fitow
The house is shaking…so much so that while I was laying in bed, I could feel the house moving and swaying. What a creepy feeling. We still have power and everything is fine. It’s a small typhoon, so that’s good. The eye is supposed to pass over us soon and we’ll see how the rest of the night goes. Fun fun!
T-Shirts
One of the best parts of living in Japan are the T-Shirts. They’re awesome.
This says, “Devil confront it with courage groan in the may that I lose temptation strongly have a heart”
This one says, “This is diversity of my memory.”
And finally, “Happiness. I want to look all the time the smile that seems to be very happy.”
Ice Shop
It says, “Welcome to the Ice Shop. Your the crown of the head suffered direct hit you will enjoy the cool breeze.”
Sounds like some painful flavored ice!
Crunch Chocolate
This candy was in a shop in Hakone. It says, “Being exposed to the refreshing breeze, I am experiencing comfortable feeling in nature. I will go out together with someone again.”
Enjoy your pink crunch chocolate !
Mom
Mom came to visit August 17th and she’ll leave in a couple of days. Hence the reason I haven’t blogged in awhile…we’ve been doing stuff. We’ve seen the sights around the house, we’ve gone to Kamakura, Yokohama, Tokyo, Hakone and Kisoji.
Hakone was the big trip so I’ll start with that. We stayed at a modern Ryokan called the Tenseien. 
It was straight out of the 70′s and as I said to mom…our weekend was the most affordable way to time travel. The entry way was decked out in gold. The chandeliers were hilarious. Long diamond strands falling from round orange lights. 
It looked like every 70′s tv hotel scene I can think of. We wandered around the place and the parking lot is facing the falls. Up the hill a little is a shrine, but we didn’t venture up there. It was too steep and we didn’t feel like it. We got there at noon and had a few hours until check in so we wandered around. We got lunch at an “upscale” Japanese Italian restaurant. I say “upscale” because while they thought they were totally authentic and classy, they were also stuck in the 70′s. And while they did have classical music playing…they also seated us on plastic chairs. Once we were able to check in to the inn, we were brought up to our room and served tea. We changed into our Yukata’s (cotton robes) 
and headed upstairs to the hot spring baths. Two steps out the door, however, and we were told by an inn lady to stay right there as she sprinted down the hall. Looking confusedly at each other, mom and I did as we were told and waited. After a few moments she came hurrying down the hallway and shooed us back into our room. She handed me a different sized Yukata and had me change into it. She tied the belt around me twice and made sure the bow was in the back. She then turned to mom and while muttering, “excuse me, excuse me, excuse me” she opened mom’s robe, adjusted it to make it fit better and tied the sash expertly. She said, “This like proper Japanese kimono!” She gave us a nod and we thanked her and she scooted down the hall. After some giggling we headed up for a proper Japanese soak.
We came back downstairs a few hours later to find our dinner laid out for us. 
It was absolutely beautiful. There were plates of sushi, pork and cabbage, miso soup, fish soup, crab, prawns, beef with a peanut dipping sauce, tofu, eggplant and some others we had never seen before. The sushi was great, but the rest? Not so much. Everything was cold, which is totally normal Japanese, but I can’t say that cold crab and prawns were that appealing. We tried a bit of everything and that was good. After dinner we got a massage and fell right asleep.
Waking up the next morning we decided to leave the luggage at the hotel and headed to the main part of Hakone (about an hour away). 
We took the train, which made a lot of switchbacks on the mountain, to the cable car and then took that to the ropeway. I then basically followed the trip that DJ took me on in January. We took the ropeway down to the lake and took the pirate ship cruise to Hakone Shrine. This time, though, the sun wasn’t out and the whole area was covered in a low and mysterious fog. It was as if Mt. Fuji didn’t even exist. If you didn’t know it was there, lurking in the background, you would never know. Once we got off the cruise, we headed to the shrine. 
This time we didn’t actually go all the way up to the shrine, but stayed at the waters edge and got wet with rain. It was beautiful, though. There was an elderly Japanese couple sitting by the water and eating rice from their bento box. We stayed for a few minutes and then had to go back in time to make the bus so we didn’t get stranded there.
Later on in the week we visited Kisoji on a military tour. I had taken only one military tour before and that was to Hakone. It was a great tour and we enjoyed it a lot. This trip, however, was not very fun. We got up at 3:00am to make it to the meeting point by 4am. 
We got on the bus and the fun began. It was a five and a half hour trip so a perfect time to get some sleep, right? Except that a bunch of parents thought it would be good to bring their small children on a tour with a ten hour bus ride. So…we had crying, fighting, whining, running up and down the aisles and so on. “Mom, while you were looking out the window, he hit me!” and “I did not!” was the reply. We had about 15 adults and about 12 children. 
The oldest child was about 10. The youngest looked 3. TOO YOUNG! Anyway, our first stop was in Magome. We arrived and she just turned us loose to check out the place. We soon got back on the bus and headed to make our own lunch, soba noodles. It was fun to make, but labor intensive so I doubt that I’ll ever make my own. Especially when I can buy a pack for $.50. We ate our lunch which included tempura, the noodles we had made and rice triangles bought for us from a convenience store (classy, indeed). 
The trip back wasn’t nearly as bad because some of the parents brought movies. They showed them on the TV in the front of the bus. That kept the kids quiet for the most part, which was a relief. We ended our day at 10pm and I was very thankful to be in my own bed.