Cherry Blossoms??

This picture is just inside of the main gate, as you drive on base. There are cherry blossom trees lining both sides of the street. Actually, pretty much anywhere you drive around here, on or off base, there are cherry blossom trees. All week I've been just waiting for them to bloom because according to the cherry blossom forecast, they were supposed to bloom by today. You can just tell by the pink tint of the branches that those little buds are ready to burst. But then the weather had to get all cold and gray and rainy again for the last couple days and so now the trees are refusing to bloom. Booo!!

Chris and I are planning on going to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Hirosaki on Saturday but the rumor is that there may not be any cherry blossoms yet in spite of what the forecast predicted. Hopefully we'll get lucky and the weather forecast will be off too. Right now there is rain predicted and a high of only 57.

Yokomachi

I love Yokomachi. It is a grocery store off base where I've started going to get produce and fresh bread. On Tuesdays, they have a 100 yen sale (100 yen is about $1). All throughout the store, and especially in the produce section, there are items on sale for 100 yen. They also have a small farmer's market section. In the farmer's market section, every item has a label with the farmer's name, address and phone number.

About two thirds of the produce is the same as what I would see in the states. The other third is brand new to me. There are LOTS of different kinds of mushrooms I've never seen before, several types of potatoes and radishes that I don't recognize, and a whole section of fresh herbs that I can't begin to identify.

Almost every week I bring something new home. My favorite "new" item so far has been the purple sweet potatoes. The skin is a deep purple, but the inside is a bright yellowish green. I didn't really know what to do with them, so I boiled them. It seemed like the most logical thing to do. They turned out to be the sweetest sweet potatoes I have ever had! I didn't even add any type of seasoning to them (unless you count butter). I think if I was that sweet potato farmer, I would have been proud to put my name and address on the label too!

Squatty Potties and Technical Toilets

So this is the infamous and intimidating Japanese "Squatty Potty". It's really not that bad, but I've heard that in some places you have to bring your own toilet paper. It seems so basic and primitive (but many would argue that it is more hygienic, since you're not touching anything)...

Now, on the other side of the spectrum, a lot of places I've been have toilets with their own control panel. This is a picture that I just took off the internet. It's pretty standard that there will be a heated toilet seat, but as you can see from this picture, there are also a few different bidet options, a "powerful deodorizer" and even a button that makes a flushing sound. That's right, a flushing sound, without the flush. This, I've been told, is to save water. Apparently Japanese women will often flush the toilet continuously while they are using the restroom to cover any embarrassing bathroom sounds... this button serves the same purpose, but also saves water. How very green!

How is it that a country that has experienced all the comforts of this electrical toilet would still be willing to tolerate the squatty potty?

Greenhouse

Sunday we ended up driving around Hachinohe for a little while looking for an outdoor store that we had heard about.

The driving here can be a little scary. The roads are narrow, even in a busy downtown area, and it's hard to remember to look on the left side of the road for stop signs and traffic lights. Also, it is perfectly acceptable to put on your hazard lights and stop in the middle of the road if you get a cell phone call that you need to answer. Oftentimes traffic can be backed up just because someone is taking a call. Luckily (although it is annoying at times) people drive really, really slow here. The speed limits just about everywhere are 40 km/hour. That's just under 25 mph. On the outskirts of town, where there are just fields and open roads, the speed limit jumps to a mind boggling 60 km/hour - still only about 35 mph! If you really want to get up some speed, you have to use the toll roads. There you can drive 70 km/hour (42 mph). It's practically like driving on the autobahn!

Lots of people ride their bikes around town. It doesn't stop them from sporting the latest fashions though... It's not uncommon to see a lady like this one - brand name clothes, high heels, Coach purse, juggling an umbrella and riding a bicycle through the rain. Everyone here always seems to manage to pull off the latest looks, no matter what they are doing. Running, bicycling, dining at a restaurant, grocery shopping... it doesn't matter. It's almost guaranteed that they will look good. If you see somebody in just jeans and a t-shirt, they're probably not Japanese.

We finally did find the store we were looking for, in spite of the fact that there are no street names anywhere here. The store was called the Greenhouse, and it was great! All kinds of backpacking, rock climbing, hiking, biking, snowshoeing and camping gear and all the companies and brands that we're familiar with in the states (North Face, Patagonia, Colombia, Marmot, MSR, Jet Boil, etc.). There were also a few items that we had never seen before - like the ultralight chopsticks for backpacking. Of course, they only stock shoes up to size 9, so Chris is out of luck, but there is always online ordering!

Kono pan wa oishii desu!

The bread is delicious! (and I actually know a sentence in Japanese:-))

I never would have thought that I would be able to find so many amazing baked goods here! Each grocery store off base here has a bakery and every single thing I've tried has been incredible! I've not purchased any bread at the commissary yet because the fresh bread that I'm able to get here is so incredibly delicious. Today I got a few of the pastries too, just to try them. They're delicious, of course. They are not near as sweet as what I would find in the states, but they are so rich and I think I like the subtle sweetness better than the super sweet donuts and pastries back home.

Curry

Yesterday I went to a Japanese cooking class offered on base. We made Japanese curry... YUM! The class was taught by two sweet old Japanese women, and I can just imagine how much their children and grandchildren love to go to their Grandma's house for dinner....

It was fun to watch them work. They used a curry base, but they obviously added in their own style of cooking. Some of the girls in the class were pretty concerned about getting exact amounts and measurements written down and kept asking how much of everything they were using, especially when it seemed to vary so far from the directions on the curry box. Finally one of the translators explained that curry in Japan is almost like chili in America - everyone has their own style of doing things. Tonight I'm going to try my hand at it... I have fresh vegetables from a local market, panko bread crumbs (for the fried chicken cutlets), 10 lbs of Japanese rice (that was the smallest bag), a box of curry roux, various add-in spices and sauces, and a very vague recipe that doesn't even begin to describe all the cooking I witnessed. Chris is a good sport for putting up with my kitchen experimentation.

Little by little, starting to feel like home...

Friday we received our unaccompanied baggage! YAY! This small shipment was shipped via air, separate from the rest of our household goods, and was meant to get some of our more important possessions to us quicker. So... I have my own dishes! and pots and pans! and vacuum cleaner! The only problem is that we are pretty sure that our file cabinet was part of our small shipment when we left Ohio... but for some reason we don't have an inventory sheet anywhere. So tracking down our file cabinet is on my to-do list for this week.

The other things in the photograph - coffee table, chair, tv, etc. are things that we are borrowing from friends or the Furnishings Management Office here on base. So I probably won't post any more pictures of the house until we get more of our own stuff.

Lake Towada and Hachinohe Beach

We finally tracked down some local maps... The book store here is consistently out of English atlases of Japan. They always have plenty of US atlases, of course, just nothing that would be helpful for us here. But we got some travel brochures in English and decided to venture out to see Lake Towada on Saturday and Hachinohe beach on Sunday.

This is a fairly typical scene here once you get a few minutes outside of the town. The roads were MUCH narrower though as we started getting into the mountains.

Beautiful Lake Towada.

These shrines are literally everywhere... But this is my favorite one so far. Just up the hill from the lake, very peaceful and secluded.

On the way home - this is just one example of some of the bizarre ways they prune their trees and shrubs around here.

The beautiful Pacific.

Huck's first view of the ocean.

He had no idea it was going to come back at him. He's still trying to figure that one out.

Oh the joy of running on a beach...

Huck follows Chris everywhere... no matter how steep, he refuses to be left behind.

He's always ready to play.

Weekend successes: We didn't get lost. We can now recognize the Kanji symbols for Towada and Hachinohe. We didn't scrape a guardrail or hit another car while driving on the impossibly narrow roads. When ordering ice cream or donuts from road side stands, we asked how much they cost (in Japanese) then understood the response just enough to pay the correct amount. It was a great weekend :-).

Getting our feet wet... Tours of Misawa and Hachinohe

We went on short tours of Misawa and Hachinohe as part of our introduction to living here. We visited a Buddhist temple, a samurai museum, a fish market, a train station and a Shinto shrine.

This is the Buddhist temple we visited. Most Japanese follow a hybrid of Buddhist and Shinto religions. I can't tell you much about either religion, but it's impressive to tour the very elaborate temples and shrines.

Outside the temple was a graveyard. This very elaborate stone (it's probably 12 foot high) is a family "plot". All the members of a family are placed here after they die and are cremated. We were told that one of these plots is extremely expensive - the equivalent of about $150,000.

This is a Samurai house museum in Misawa.

Inside the Samurai house - Things here just weren't meant for taller, or even averaged-sized Americans.

Hachinohe is about 45 minutes from Misawa and has the coolest fish market ever. We were told that the fish was as fresh as it could get (being located minutes from the Pacific has it's advantages), but what we didn't realize was a lot of the seafood was still alive! The clams spit at us as we walked by, the crabs waved their pinchers, some of the fish were still swimming around in styrofoam coolers!

This little boy was dancing all over the place.

Most of the vendors had samples out. This sample was teriyaki squid. We tried it. We also tried seaweed, and octopus, and a variety of other things that I really couldn't identify.

Boiled octopus samples. It was very chewy and very salty.

During lunchtime, they open up these tables and put hot coals into the center fire pits of each table. You can buy your very fresh seafood and cook it right there at the market. We're planning on returning there someday during lunch to check it out.

Our last stop in Hachinohe - the Kushihiki Hachiman Shrine. This is the torii gate indicating the entrance to the shrine. The white zigzag papers hanging on the rope ward off bad spirits.

Before you enter the shrine you must purify your hands and mouth. This water fountain has several ladles so that visitors can rinse their hands and mouths properly before passing through the torii gate.

After purifying your hands and mouth, and passing through the gate, you approach the shrine where you pray. There is a very specific way to pray. First bow, then toss your coins in the offering, then ring the bell to let the gods know you're there, then bow deeply twice, then clap twice, then bow again... something like that. I can never remember the order.

This is Chris and our amazing Japanese tour guide who explained everything to us.

This is where prayers are written on wooden tablets and hung to be answered I suppose. Our guide was reading some of them to us... prayers for luck on entrance exams, prayers for luck getting into college, etc. Some things never change, no matter what culture you're in:-)

Here you can buy your fortune for 100 yen (about $1). If it's not good, you can hang it from one of these strings and maybe it'll turn out okay anyway.

I live in Japan... weird!

We (Chris, Huck and I) got here on March 22nd, safe and sound after a very, very, very long trip of about 40 hours from Dayton, Ohio to Misawa, Japan. We were exhausted, disorganized and in bad need of a shower.

Luckily, we were paired up a with a sponsor (Laura) who was in charge of making sure we had everything we needed, including transportation, food, housing, etc. She and the entire squadron met us at the airport terminal to welcome us and help get us and all our things to the hotel on base. She even stocked our room with snacks and laundry detergent.

Ever since then, we have had no shortage of people willing to help us get settled and feel at home here. I couldn't ask for a better introduction to Japan!

When we first got here and got off the plane, I was initially struck by the thought that I could have just as easily been in Chicago or Denver or any other cold, snowy city in the states. Things didn't look all that different. Of course, that was probably because I landed on an American military base. When we ventured off base a few hours later, that was when I started realizing that I was most definitely on the other side of the world. They drive on the left, all their signs are in Kanji, or Hiragana, or Katakana (yes, they have three distinct forms of writing), the roads are scarily narrow, the cars are laughably miniscule, the people are impossibly polite, the food is often unrecognizable (and often it's just better not knowing what it is), the trees and shrubs are impeccably pruned (often into bizarre and complicated shapes), and the architecture is, well, very Japanese. And I love it all! I love when the cashier at a Japanese grocery store politely indicates the total and then respectfully and patiently turns away as you fumble through the yen coins trying to figure out the value of each one and place the appropriate amount in the money tray. And I love the feeling of success when I remember how to bow and say "thank you" in Japanese after paying for the groceries. I love how the construction workers usher you through a work zone, bowing politely as you drive through. I love the simplicity and beauty of Japanese food. I've even signed up for a Japanese cooking class offered on base... this month we're learning to make Japanese curry. I love how the Japanese say "McDonalds." It has about 5 syllables once they get done with it.

I'm definitely looking forward to the next few years. I have a feeling it will go by really fast.

Ok, ok... I'll start a blog :-)

I feel a little silly starting a blog... as if our life is so interesting that others would want to follow it! But I want to be able to stay in touch with friends and family, and keep a sort of online journal about our experiences here in Japan, and other places in the future... A blog seems perfect for all that, so here I go! Please bear with me as I figure this whole blogging thing out!