Cherry Blossoms...and more!

Cherry blossom season did not disappoint.  It was spectacular!  I had no idea so many of our trees around here were cherry trees!  The whole path lining the entrance to the base is full of these trees and the combination of static displays of airplanes, a statue of Macarthur, and these soft pink trees and blossoms blowing around like snow was surreal. 

My adventure with my English students was wonderful.  They plant early blooming cherry trees, they bloom a slightly darker pink, and have over 1000 gathered on a hillside.  At the bottom of the trees they plant yellow rapeseed flowers. 

The blue sky, pink blossom, and yellow flower contrast is stunning.  The rapeseed flower is where we get canola oil by the way and for obvious reasons they changed the name for marketing purposes!!  This plant is called nanohanna in Japanese and is delicious to eat just before it flowers.  You par boil it for three minutes, chop it up and toss it with soy sauce and spicy mustard.  Yum.  During this time everything is decorated in cherry blossoms, all drinks come in cherry blossom flavor (not like our cherry taste from home) and I even found a pale pink wine with blossoms at the bottom that was delicious!

  

 My friend Drew asked me a tough question, did I like cherry blossom season best or seeing snow monkeys?  I actually think about this more often then I should because they have been the most stunning and surprising experiences I have had here so far.  I think today the answer is snow monkeys.  I have not done the cherry blossoms in DC and I’ll bet it is similar in terms of its beauty.  The difference here is that you will be driving to an event, turn the corner and all of a sudden hundreds of cherry trees line the road and everything is covered in petals. 

     It is the unexpected blocks of trees surrounding a soccer field that we discovered while out with friends for lunch.  Willow stopped the car and the three of us set out to do what had to be done….stop and walk among those beauties.  I say snow monkey, but I sure talk about those trees a lot! Ohanamiga tanoshimi desu! That means I am looking forward to cherry blossom season and I am!

We are being weaned with beautiful dogwood trees and late blooming cherry trees and azaleas everywhere.  The wisteria is about to show its self and it is spring!  We have had some hot days and cold days.  Feels like Virginia weather: Confused. 

Life is busy with parties and other fun events.  We are cramming in some time with couples since the air wing pulls out in June, taking most of the men on this base with them!  Not just men...we have lots of cool chicks flying navy aircraft these days too!  The base population drops off so much that businesses have different hours when the air wing is in town and when it is out.  The most recent party was a Great Gatsby themed event that DCAG hosted.  He does nothing half way and it was spectacular!  He wore a white tux jacket with black pants and had a bartender mixing up mint juleps and martinis.  In other words, he tried to kill us all.

Ryan arrives May 2 and lands at 11:00 pm.  We will be getting him up and out the door to see a live samurai show at Odwara Castle bright and early at 7:30 the next morning!  We have more plans than we can accomplish!  Baseball, amusement parks, crazy dinners at themed restaurants, sumo wrestling and of course flopping around with the dogs just to name a few!  He heads to Virginia Beach on the 22nd of the month and will start working full time at the beginning of June.  He's only here for less than three weeks, so we are going to make the most of it!

I will close with one more shot of the cherry blossoms...as you can see ALL of us enjoyed them!

 

Japanese Art - Ikebana, Chigiri-e, and Yoga

March is here and spring is in the air.  All the talk around here is that it is almost cherry blossom season.  Starbucks released its sakura (cherry) flavored treats and new mug designs and the lines were long.  The season is anticipated like Christmas.  We have a big party to go to on the 27^th to celebrate these blossoms with the Japanese Naval Officers. I asked my Japanese friend, Yuumi, “What if the trees haven’t bloomed by then?”  Her answer, “No problem!  They will pick some branches to decorate with and hit them with a blow dryer until the buds bloom!”  I love it!  

I have taken my first Ikebana class.  This is a kind of Japanese flower arranging.  (My teacher confirmed the blow drying of branches by the way….) She taught us all about choosing 3, 5 or 7 flowers.  You should never use an even number.  The tallest item represents the sky, the middle level is people and the lowest elements the earth.  In Ikebana the beauty of the arrangement can be found not just in what items you are working with but most importantly the space that is between them.  Before I could start she gave me a handout to read.  Part of it said:  “Gaze at the flowers growing around you.  Flowers in nature have an expressive power that is grand and inexhaustible.  Pay attention to the expressions of the flowers along the roadside, in fields, in gardens, the trees that line the streets, the weeds that cover vacant lots.  Aimlessly looking at nature is ineffectual; when you feel something, stop and think about it.”

This is an art form that is done for beauty but it is also a spiritual pursuit done by both men and women.  Like everything in Japan, it takes years to really be a master and families pass it down through generations.  Like a typical American, I think I got the hang of it in about 20 minutes.  I admire the Japanese way of patiently studying and focusing on the smallest of details and subtle difference in the world around them but I could not be more different by nature. Rave reviews on my first attempt from Gary and Casey means I will be doing it again next week!

I have also taken another art class called chigiri-e.  This is where you take colorful paper and rip it into strips, glue and layer it until it looks like a watercolor painting!  I am working on an image of Mt. Fuji.  It looks great actually and no one is more surprised than I am about this! I signed up alone but knew 5 of the other participants and made 2 more new friends.  The sensei teaches in Japanese and a bit of English, so I should be getting better language skills to match my new found artistic talent.

My English class I teach on Fridays continues to bring me great joy.  One of my students, Hiroko, is a yoga teacher.  Tamako, another student, is the wife of a Buddhist “priest” and she lives at a temple in a local town called Ebina.  On Thursday afternoons Hiroko teaches yoga at Tamako’s temple.  I have gone twice now.  To be in a large Japanese room with sliding paper shoji screens for walls and the tatami mat (woven from rice straw or grass), taking a yoga class in Japanese is awe inspiring.  I am planning on taking guests and the other ladies taking the class are so excited to have Americans visit.  The style of yoga is more of a relaxation type and my favorite part is when these quiet, tiny, sweet Japanese ladies take a deep breath and loudly say, “ooohhhmmm…” until they have no breath left.  They can always do it longer than I can and it is impressive! I really want Tamako to invite me to take a tour of the temple, and I’m not sure how to ask. Maybe she will read this blog…if not, I am sure it won’t take me long to find a way.

This Friday we are taking a field trip to see cherry blossoms.  I have no idea how they know there will be blossoms unless this is a place where they bring out BIG blow dryers!!  The goal for the Japanese is to sit under a cherry tree and have the blossoms fall gently on you.  This is said to bring you good luck! We are meeting at the train station and then heading out from there.  Afterward we will go out for a “Ladies Lunch.”  I put it that way because they showed me a picture of my meal from the place we are going.  Each item will be served comes in its own colorful little dish…and the emphasis will be on pink, the color of the blossoms.  We will be having crab and shrimp…note the color palet! In May or June, I am inviting them all to the base to enjoy some American traditions.  I plan to serve big BBQ burgers….and at my house they will have good luck if they can all avoid stepping in dog doo!

It is obvious that my 4-6 month funk is over.  Also, Casey is her own little blossom these days. She did great in her Far East Drama competition in South Korea (their team was awarded an Excellent rating!) and she killed it singing the song “Home” by Phillip Phillips in the school talent show with her friend Mary.  The words to that song are so perfect for a military kid!  Google the words and I am sure you will get a little lump in your throat.  I am loving the signs that spring is coming and looking forward to my first Cherry blossom season.  Pictures to come!!

Blogs are like Christmas letters

I have not written in awhile and I know exactly why.  I have reached the 4 month mark.  I have been living in Japan for 4 months as of December 17th.  Every time I move I hit a funk and it is around the four month mark.  Everything that was so exciting and new just seems hard now.

As an example, in an effort to hang pictures on cement walls we tried, cement nails (bad, chipped chunks from the walls),  3m special hooks (didn't work for many of our frame styles), and finally settled on velcro.  This did the trick and we had all of our wonderful black and white pictures up that we love so much.  The first one fell, broke the frame and glass.  I went around, pushed on the others to secure them into the wall and yet we lost two more.  More broken glass.  This is not the biggest deal in the world right? Go to the exchange, get new frames, but they don't have what I need.  I'll go out in town! Nope, pictures seems to be different sizes and I haven't found a store with pre-made frames besides the dollar stores.  There is a framing shop on Zama, the Army base where Casey goes to school that is about 45 minutes away..  I finally find the place and it is only open W-F very specific hours and the wait is long.....It is our best option, and what we are going to do, but in the mean time I will look at the two remaining photos that are hung way too high without the two that normally hang underneath.

This is just one example in a long line of silly little things that come up and frustrate me as I try to run our home.  I want to share this with you all because it seems to me that Facebook and Blogs could give someone the impression that every day is a new adventure and our lives are a total blast.  There are days I long for my full time job dealing with middle schoolers in the halls of Brandon and the familiar comfort of friends you can walk in, grab a glass of wine and even help fold underwear if that is what they are doing.  (As I write this I can picture about three new friends who will point out where their wine glasses are the next time I am over and hand me a laundry basket!)

The great news is that this phase I am in has happened at every move we have made and ends at around month 6!  That is when I start running around yelling, "We only have 2 1/2 years left and we still have to see (fill in the blank here)!"

Highlights of December include an impressive amount of parties.  One of my favorites was a great party thrown by the Japanese Navy called, Mochi Pounding.  I had heard about this since I came here and when I found out that Ryan's flight landed during this event, we decided to hire a driver to pick him up so we wouldn't miss it!  Gary had to get on stage and hit rice with a mallet in a large wooden bowl wearing a Happi coat.  It was brilliant!  The food was amazing and the mochi is so yummy.  It makes this nice soft, chewy paste that they fill with sweet black beans or roll in this "dust" that tastes like crushed peanuts to me but I think it is a different bean of some sort.  Yummy! Ryan loved being greeted by a driver with a sign, gloves and cap.  While he was here we had a great time showing him the sights and introducing him to his new home.  I was glad to have both of my children with me when the Sandy Hook tragedy struck and they allowed me to snuggle them most of the day as we went from watching the news to watching many movies.  What a horrible tragedy.  My English students all bowed and expressed their sincere sympathy to all of us and I extend their condolences to you too.

We ran around all over the local area but the highlight had to be seeing the snow monkeys!  They are absolutely amazing.  These are wild monkeys that live in the mountains but during the snowy season they gather at the hot springs that are so prevalent in our volcanic land.  I think you can catch glimpses of them all year but this one area brings in about 100 monkeys.  You could get right up next to them and they were not at all tame, but also just so not interested in people.  Fantastic.  Well worth the 45 minute snowy hike to get to them, the 45 minute snowy hike back down the mountain,  the three falls I made onto my rump and the panicked run to the bus when we realized it was picking up on the opposite side it had dropped us off!

We had spent the night before in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese hotel, that had onsen baths.  These are natural hot springs and the morning before we left I had sat in one of them and stretched.  I think that is why my falls did not cause any serious damage!  When you arrive at this hotel you change into a yakata.  This is a three layer outfit.  First comes a cotton robe, then a heavy layer and finally we had a sweater type layer on top.  Our shoes had come off at the check in desk!  You wear slippers and this outfit for your whole stay.



We ate dinner and breakfast at a table on the floor and spent the night on mats that were rolled out for us.  Our beds were thin pads on the tatami mat floor, our pillows were made of buckwheat and the comforters were thick plush down.  The bath in the morning was a great way to loosen up my stiff back!! Our hosts were wonderful and we will be going back again and again I am sure.

It is January.  Ryan is back at school after a wonderful visit home-ish.  Casey had two weeks off for vacation.  It was great and now she is getting back in the swing of things.  She will be in Korea in February for a drama Far East event and will miss a week of school.  We are trying to help her stay on top of all she has going on! This moth has many fun events coming up.  I am going to Odwara castle with the friends I usually cook with and having a day with the Japanese Officer's wives in Tokyo to see a Sumo Tournament! In between those fun events are change of commands, laundry, Gary traveling, mopping floors, a hail and farewell party at our house, and missing all of my family and friends back home.  More soon I promise!

No room on the train!

I am sick....you know, that kind of sick where you lay in bed feeling too yucky to go to the Doctor.  I had a slight cold and I pushed it a little hard.  I did have a friend here mention that I have been going non stop since I got here.  As I look back on all the pictures I have and the blogs I have yet to write I think she may have a point.!!  I am on my way back to good health, and so happy about that since my in-laws are on their way here in three days!  Their tickets were $800 EACH (yes, round trip!)  That is an exceptional price but keep a look out and plan your trip to see us!

One of the reasons I pushed the limits on my cold was to attend the Farewell dinner of two of the new friends I have made.  We went to Gonpachi for dinner. This restaurant was featured in the movie Kill Bill and was the back drop for a big fight scene.  It also has an amazing atmosphere and incredible food.  A great evening and in spite of my wagyu beef, perfect sashimi, and the sparkling saki, the train ride home will be most memorable for me. 

Since we moved here I have heard about the trains being so packed that people are pressed up against each other and they even have employees called "shovers" whose job it is to stand on the platform and shove people into the train so the doors can close.  I have told Gary that if I had to get on a train like that I would just stay on the platform and wait for the trains to get less crowded.  I never thought about being on the train and having more and more people board at each and every stop.

 Fortunately for me I was traveling with cough drops a friend had just purchased for me.  As I realized I would be about three inches away from about four different people's faces, I popped a cough drop in my mouth and passed them out to the friends around me.  One of the ladies in our group, Cindy, is a Cross Fit instructor and she was right next to me.  I told her I may flip out and try to claw my way out and that she should be aware of how much I hated what we were going through.  She made me laugh and after 30 minutes we finally began losing passengers instead of gaining.  If I could make you understand for one minute that my entire back, rear end, thighs, and calves were pressed up against a stranger, while the front of me is half-pressed on Cindy and the other half is pressed along a Japanese man who was playing a small portable video game with earplugs in his ears.  The train is very quiet with the exception of us giggling, and Cindy making perfect comments.  It was awful.  It was 10 pm and most of the people were still in work clothes just returning home.  Count your blessings next time your are stuck in traffic....it is better than touching strangers...or touching friends! (On the same trip, I was in a full body press against a friend and that was just as awkward as being shoved into the Japanese stranger!!)

I need to head to bed even though I haven't even mentioned my day spent at a Japanese High School, our tour of the Sensoji Temple, or my trip to get my hair done!  My hairdresser is a big surfer.....he always has great stories......

Our home and life on base

This post is going to focus on our life on base Naval Air Facility Atsugi.  We live on the base and Gary has about a 5 minute walk to work.  It seems crazy that he would ever drive to work, but just like when I worked at Brandon Middle down the street from our house in Virginia, sometimes it is raining or you have to run errands at lunch.  The short walk is convenient since we still have only one car.  The area we live in is also a short walk to the Officer's Club (now known as the Conference Center) and the golf course - both with good food.  This makes it really nice to be able to go out to dinner and take a short walk home.  The weather is perfect (read Fall!) now so we are trying to make the most of it.  There are only about 15 families who live in the area we live in. It is very safe and the teenagers can play in the street, just like the younger kids (see Casey and her friends working the hula hoops).

We have a big house (1,950 sq feet) and yard compared to most of the other American families on base and certainly compared to most Japanese families.  We have used it to host a few parties already with over 40 people in attendance so no space is wasted!!  Here is a view of our main living room/family room - enough room for the guitar, so we are doing fine.

It is a ranch style with 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms.  The best part is the sign out in front!  Gary will never get lost.....Funny little details would be our metal doors to each bedroom and the cement walls.  Most of our pictures are hung by putting sticky velcro on the back of the picture frame.

The church on base is the place we have been going on Sundays.  It was a Dojo that General MacArthur  decided would be the new base church.  Outside it looks very different then most churches but the inside is very familiar.

The gym is so close and all the classes and equipment are free!  I go more often then I did in the states but can still manage to make a few excuses as to why I just can't make it!!  I have been busy with functions in support of the families living here.  We also do quite a few events with the wives of the Japanese service men.  Just this Friday I began teaching English to a group of Japanese women most of whom are in their 60's.  They think I am so young and that is refreshing since just about once a week on base someone tells me that I remind them of their Mom.....
There are about 8 women who have been getting together, leaning English for over 10 years.  It is a great gig because they pay me for chatting, learning and having fun.  I think it is so neat that they continue to make this effort and work hard to improve. None of them have any ties to people in America.  Only about half the class has ever been to the states or Canada.  I have invited them all to stay with me when we get back home.  They have three years to get the airfare together!  Tamako's husband is the head priest in the Buddhist temple in the town of Ebina.  Tomoko is another one of the women in the group and she is very shy and thinks her English is not good.  If my Japanese gets as good as her English I will be thrilled! Tomoe is better at English then many people I know and I think spends her free time reading college text books!  How I am going to keep those three names straight is beyond me.  I know I am going to learn so much from them.  I have another student I will see every 6 weeks or so to go to the movies and then talk about them.  My plan is to hold at that point for awhile to try to make sure I keep life a little balanced.  The social events for the month of December are piling up already!!

I will close with this view of the field down the road from our house.  You can see Mt Fuji in the background already covered in snow. Everything is quite a departure from anywhere we have lived before, but we are really beginning to feel at home.

A trip to northern Japan via the bullet train!

One Navy Ball was not enough! We attended ours in Atsugi on Thursday night and then headed north for the event in Misawa the next day.  Admiral Carter was the guest speaker at this second event so he and his wife Julie flew up with Gary, and I volunteered to bring Casey and their kids up on the train.  It seemed like a great idea.  It would be cooler in Misawa and maybe we could see some fall leaves.  I love these kids and knew they would be no problem but I underestimated the challenge of figuring out train connections.  We were all over the place in Tokyo trying to make our train and ended up missing the final train by 3 minutes.  Due to the amazing kindness of the ticket agent I happened to turn to crying, we were able to rebook on a train that left an hour later. The difference between a train and a plane (besides the obvious goes in the air part) is that someone looks at your ticket on an airplane and confirms that you are in the right place.  Train travel means you are more than welcome to get on a train going the wrong direction and pay more to get yourself where you need to be! Well, we made it and the kids rolled with it all just fine.  On the train I had a fun meal; it was a beef and rice bowl.  You pull a sring and it begins to heat up.  The box steams and you can see from the picture the price tag actually turned brown!  The tray table also got very warm so I don't think there is a market for these products in America.  Someone would sue.

The train goes so fast but you can't really feel how fast it is going.  I was able to download an app that is a speedometer.  This is a screen shot of how many miles per hour we were going!

When we got to Misawa we were not disappointed.  It was green and beautiful.  We spent one day driving to Lake Towada and enjoyed the journey every minute of the way. It was a winding road with the beginning of fall leaves and waterfalls every mile or two.   

We stopped at a local fruit stand where we could buy mushrooms still on a log, garlic, pears, apples and plums.  We tried a mochi on a stick treat that was ok but so cool to see being made.  Later we stopped at Nicco Cakes to bring a treat to our friends the Wrights, who live in Misawa and had us all over their house for dinner. As we were driving that day we saw small wheat looking tee pees in fields. LuAnn Wright told us over dinner, she had just gone on a field trip with her son and we found out that is how they harvest the rice! Each child was given a sharp scythe and was able to participate in the harvesting of rice. (Both of her sons are under 10....a sharp tool seems dangerous but all survived.)

The next day, after a fantastic brunch, we headed to Shipwreck Beach.  It is called that because there are many old wrecks up on the sand.  We were on a bay that opens up to the Sea of Japan. I really wanted to go here because I have heard you can find glass fishing balls that were used as floats by Japanese fisherman before they used plastic.  We found none but had a blast exploring the beach and finding cool rocks. Casey and her friend Mary took about 12 million pictures and they can be found on Instagram if you are followers!

It was a great first trip and one I hope to do again before too long!  Near that area they have hot springs and wild monkeys that sometimes sit in them!  That is worth a trip right there.  Monkeys in a hot spring!

Cars in Japan - funny names and customs

Sorry for the absence from the bloggosphere, but we received our household goods! Great news, but it means more time spent unpacking and less time exploring.  I promise my next blog will include something about our house on base!  It is finally starting to look like a home.

In the meantime, here's something interesting and unique to Japan. 
Most of the car names we have seen are verbs:
A Spike, a Scrum, and a March ...

We have seen a Note, a Dunk, and a Move

How about a Logo, a Vitz (which means joke in German) , and a Joy?

But none of these can compare to THE CHODE! 

Now if anyone has a clue what that means, please let me know!  And why do you think the Japanese want English words (odd English words) to describe their cars?  The car I am wanting is called a Moco and it is so cute!  It looks kind of like a square shaped bug.  Our current car, a Honda CRV, is great and runs well but as it gets colder and the rainy season begins, I think we need two cars.  

Interesting things to note are that the Japanese people all back into parking spots.  They are good at it and parking is fast for them.  The cars have a button that retracts the side mirrors and cars are usually parked all tucked in. I also love the unique way they have found to park with limited space.  They have parking  that is like a car elevator.  A car goes on and rises up and another car parks underneath. 

Finally, I saw this guy in a parking garage and had to take a picture.  Why a person would want it to look like they were in the drivers seat I don't know.  They don't have car pool lanes but this image would fool many in the states!

Stay tuned for another update soon.  On my next blog I will give you a tour of our home and a glimpse of what is now our normal life in Atsugi.