Hanabi - Fireworks

Every year the city puts on large amounts of fireworks during the month of August. One friend described the month of August in Japan as a time to catch up on sleep, relax and enjoy your family before the last push through the end of the year. Everything seems a bit slower during the month of August, or maybe it is just so hot that people physically cannot move very fast. There are loads of festivals going on in August and firework shows. We have been blessed to be able to view the Tokyo Bay fireworks from our apartment. They are partially blocked from some office buildings across the way, but some of them are so big we get a pretty good show...much better than going out with the thousands of people to get a view from the ground. This year I went running early on the day of the fireworks. At 6AM people were already sitting on their blue tarps waiting for the fireworks that would take place 13 hours later. Seriously, these people wait in line for ANYTHING! And it was hot outside, at least 95 degrees with a heat index over 100. I cannot think of one thing I would wait for in that kind of weather. We had a small party for the firework show this year, a mix of people including Japanese, American and British. I love our international life here and the fabulous people we have been able to meet. Enjoy the pictures. God has blessed us with a great view. It makes the compact city not seem so claustrophobic.

August 13, 2013, Scrapbook Day - Tuesday

On Scrapbook day this month I had my sitter so while she stayed indoors with the tired kids (we hosted a party the night before so the kids did not get to bed until 11 on Monday) I went to the doctor to have a physical. I have not had a check up since before the K Man so I thought it was due time. My blood work will probably be abnormal because I ate breakfast that morning and I do not think I was supposed to (a lettuce and fruit smoothie). The nurse also took a double take when she read my blood pressure at 88 over 50. I told her it was always low so it is nothing new to me, and since she did not speak much english she was okay with that, and we moved on. It was an interesting set up at the clinic. They have this small waiting room where you sit in your matching clothes, men and women together. You are surrounded by curtains or stations and they call your number and you go to your next station. There are about 8 in all. You receive your results via mail in about 2-3 weeks. I will spare you the details as I hate doctors or check ups and move on to lunch, but the whole experience was a bit uneasy. There was no personal connection with the doctor per se. No body to really ask questions to. You just get checked out and leave. Afterwards, I met a friend for lunch at a restaurant called Bubby's in Ark Hills. If you need an American fix and are in Tokyo, this is the place to go. Super yummy food, much better than your typical chain restaurant, and the pies were fabulous. We shared a Banana Cream Pie and I felt like I was back in the south. So yummy and a big piece! Supposedly one just opened up a bit closer to us at Daimon station so I hope to take the family back for a nice brunch one day. In the afternoon, the kids and I met our friends and said our final goodbye as they moved out of our building. So sad. I will write more about that in a later post, but these are our neighbors who lived right above us on the 49th floor and we played at their house every Tuesday for the past year. They are going back to Sapporo. As the husband says, this gives us a reason to see Sapporo in the winter for the ice sculpture festival and a ski week! I will write more about them later, but here are a few pics from that last day with them here in Tokyo for scrapbook day.

Anpanman Museum

A friend recently wrote me on facebook and said she had missed my blog and hoped we were doing well. The blog...it started out as a way to keep friends and family informed of what we are doing on our two year journey to Japan. Now we are going on four years and it has become my scrapbook because let's face it, I really do not have the time to scrapbook, or the energy. Recently I have not blogged because we have been busy, having fun, making memories, soaking up life, and running around in a very hot city which makes mama pretty tired at night after the kids go to bed. Also, at times I want this blog to be a reflection of what is going on inside me and our family a bit more mentally and emotionally, and well, I just have not wanted to write about that lately. Life right now is good, really good, but we have been in the process of saying goodbye to many dear friends, and I just have not wanted to blog about that. Saying goodbye is hard, it just is, but in the process of saying goodbye, we have made lots of fabulous memories and have seen God provide new relationships and opportunities. Oh, and we went on vacation to Guam for a week! So, with that being said, I am going to work backwards - with what we did today and on scrapbook day, which was yesterday. Then I hope to follow up this weekend with tribute posts to the two families we said goodbye to in the past two weeks and a recap of our trip to Guam. Today we went to Yokohama to the Anpanman museum. I was a bit hesitant to go on summer vacation because I knew it would be a zoo of little kids, but we went with our friends who are in full-time preschool in the fall so I was afraid their schedule would be hard to coordinate once school started. I was not wrong - it was a madhouse. But Miss M got pictures with her favorite characters (Melonpanna and Anpanman) as they roamed about the museum. The kids enjoyed it, so that is all that matters. It really is quite a fun museum, especially if your kids like the characters, and Yokohama is a nice escape from Tokyo for the day. There are lots more things I want to do there that I have added to my endless list. And I have a feeling this will not be our last time to the Anpanman museum. Anpanman is a super hero in Japan and everyone knows about him. There are hundreds of characters that go along with the story, but he is the main "bread" character. He always saves the day on his TV show and is very popular. Supposedly the man who created Anpanman is one of the richest in Japan. I can see why watching how much money they made on this day at the museum with all the kids out of school. The husband and I have both been surprised that the characters have not taken off internationally like Snoopy because it is so loved here in Japan, but maybe the Japanese want to keep it that way - something special only to them. Who knows. Enjoy the pics of our hot, crazy, fun day.

The goodbye parties are starting...

I have mentioned on the blog that we have a lot of friends who are moving between now and the next four months or so. This comes with the territory of being in such a transient city. People come and people go. Not many people settle for years and years. I have a tendency to be a debbie downer so right now I am wallowing in my pity of people leaving. If I am honest, I will tell you, it is hard. You feel like you are a bit left behind when you stay. :) But I am trying to focus on the positive - to see how rich my life is by having met these fabulous people. My world is so much bigger now after having lived here for 3.5 years now and being exposed to so many interesting people that God has brought into my life. I am so grateful. So blessed. But I will not lie, the goodbyes are hard. In the US, if someone moved, you knew you would see them again when everyone came home for holidays or summer breaks. Or, I could just fly to Arizona and visit my friend out there. This is different - we have friends moving to Hong Kong, Melbourne, Geneva, Amsterdam, and Sapporo. Maybe we will see our friends in Sapporo for a ski vacation in the winter, but everyone else - well, I am not sure the next time I will be in Amsterdam. So it is hard. But we sure our having some fun parties in the midst of it all. Check out the party pics...more will come after this weekend.

Swim Lessons

We have done about 8 weeks of swim lessons this summer. The problem with a big city is that there are not lots of opportunities to swim. We have several splash parks but my kids cannot swim near like my friends' kids at home who live at the country club pools in the summer. I do not want Miss M to be an Olympic Swimmer, unless she wants to, but I do think it is important that she know how to swim and not be afraid of the water. She is on a wait list for some Japanese group lessons that are indoors and year round. We have a trial lesson in August as she is moving up the list! But for the summer, we have been doing something outdoors short term. She likes it when she is in the little pool. She does not like it when the teacher moves her to the big pool. Oh well. I probably would not like it either if I could not touch and did not know how to swim! Here are a few pics of swim lessons.

Legoland

A few weeks back we went to Legoland in Odaiba. We have only been here one other time, when it first opened and on a Saturday. Not a good combination. I thought this visit would be better but realized after the fact that we reserved tickets on a national holiday. In Tokyo, when you do things on a weekend or on a national holiday such as Legoland or Disneyland, it is always jammed pack full of people, which is why I try to avoid those situations. But since we already reserved and bought the tickets, I took the kids. We had a good time, but I promised Miss M we will go back mid-week when school is back in session and enjoy legoland with about 20 other people rather than 100. In spite of the crowd, the kids had a great time. If you ever get the chance to visit a legoland, I highly recommend it.

Scrapbook Day July 13, 2013

For Scrapbook Day on this month it was a Saturday! We love Saturdays because it means Daddy is home to hang out. We hosted Community Group for our church that morning and then went with another family to our first movie as a family. We took the kids to see Anpanman, a Japanese cartoon show that they love, that was on the big screen. This was the first big movie for both of our kids and we were not sure how they would do. They had a blast! The K Man loved the big chair and his oversized juice. Miss M loved the gourmet pink popcorn that was strawberry flavored. Every time Anpanman came on the screen, the K Man would scream "Anpanman!" I am not sure what it is about this character, but Japanese kids LOVE it! Anpanman comes on every Friday afternoon at 4:20 for 30 minutes and we try not to miss it. Even before Miss M watched the show, she knew about the character. You can see him everywhere in Tokyo and somehow the kids learn who he is. Pan means bread in Japanese so he is this super hero made from bread. All of the characters are named after bread...Shokupanman is super bread man, Mellonpanna is a sweet bread which you can buy at most local bakeries, and Currypanman is a character based from curry and they make a curry filled bread at bakeries as well. A few days later we found an Anpanman mask and a girl Power Ranger mask at the grocery store. We bought one for each kid and you can see the K Man sporting Anpanman's face. We also had fun the next day taking Daddy to the splash pool that we go to at least once a week and showing him some of our daily life while he is at work. It was a fun scrapbook day/weekend...our first movie as a family. As Kan said, it was like the Visa card commercial...you keep swiping the card for tickets, popcorn, and drinks, but the look on your kids faces enjoying the movie is priceless.