Tian an men Square and the Forbidden City

I had the opportunity this Thanksgiving to go to China with a tour group from Misawa. My friend, Alison, joined me; then she got her friend, Brooke, to join us too.

We took a bus from Misawa to Narita Airport in Tokyo (an extremely long 9.5 hour bus ride), then hopped a plane for a quick 4 hour flight to Beijing. That took all of Wednesday, and we were exhausted by the time we reached our hotel that night.

Thursday morning, we started out in Tian an men Square, just a few minutes from our hotel.

Tian an men Square, looking towards the Forbidden City.

I learned almost all I know about China from the new Karate Kid movie. It's sad, I know. This is on the way to the Forbidden City, which you would know too, if you had seen the movie.

Apparently, red hair isn't very common in China. I got asked for pictures at least once or twice each day. Weird.

I love these brooms. Everywhere you go in Japan or China they use these stick brooms. You never see synthetic ones.

Forbidden City. Can you believe that this place has been around for over 600 years? Looks like it's in pretty good shape to me. It was used to house emperors for over 500 years. Now it's just a fun place to visit.

Forbidden City. So, the Forbidden City is HUGE! There are something like 10,000 rooms. I guess that's why they call it a city and not a palace.

These giant iron and copper vats used to always be filled with water and placed all around the Forbidden City for fire protection.

Earthy Tranquility... Supreme Harmony... Heavenly Purity... Aren't these names the best?

More of the Forbidden City... Like I said, it's huge.

Beijing skyline from the Forbidden City

Imperial garden

This is an overlook of the Forbidden City. We walked from the very top of this photograph (Tian an men Square) all the way through the Forbidden City and out that large gate. The picture is taken from coal hill, made famous when the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty committed suicide here.

This is supposedly where the emperor hanged himself in 1644 after being chased out of the Forbidden City by a peasant uprising. And now it's a tourist attraction.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year I broke a cardinal rule... I put up the Christmas tree before Thanksgiving. I'm a little bit ashamed... I always hated when people skipped over Thanksgiving.

But I have an excuse this year - I'll be in CHINA over Thanksgiving! Woohoo! I'll miss having turkey, but I hear Peking Duck is pretty tasty. I'll post plenty of pictures when I return:)

Chrysanthemum Festival

Hirosaki is the town where Chris and I went for the Cherry Blossom Festival earlier this spring. In the fall they have a Chrysanthemum festival. Last weekend Denia, Alison, Laura, Sarah and I went to the park for the day to see the fall colors and eat festival food.

Denia (on the left) is from Texas and isn't used to crisp fall mornings... Alison gave her a hat, I gave her gloves and a jacket... she barely survived. Winter might be rough on my good friend Denia:).

I LOVE this red bridge. It's beautiful in the spring with the cherry blossoms, but in the fall it's nice to be able to see the park without the cherry blossom crowds.

I like to think of these as bonsai apple trees... they were all over the park. We really wanted to pick the apples... I don't think that would go over well here in Japan.

I love taiko drummers... but this was the first time I had seen little tyke taiko drummers.... So cute! They played a couple traditional Japanese songs, and then they did "Thriller" by Michael Jackson... not joking.

Chrysanthemums, as I found out on Wikipedia, are the same as mums... Okay... I know that sounds really obvious. But I wasn't the only one that wasn't sure about that one.

This is the 400th year for the Chrysanthemum Festival... or maybe there are 400 apples on this sign... or maybe Hirosaki was established 400 years ago... or maybe there are 400 residents of Hirosaki... anyway... it's a neat sign.

Oh. My. Goodness. These are gigantic, mutant Chrysanthemums.

Wow... They're almost a little scary. Spider-like. Or like a bad toupee.

Traditional Japanese woman, meet traditional American woman. Do you think this mannequin is supposed to be life-sized?

I remember this... this is the scene in The Last Samurai when Tom Cruise meets the samurais.

I'm told that none of those Japanese signs said "please do not sit and pretend to drink tea with the mannequins on display". So I think this was perfectly fine.

Wow... there must have been so much work going in to dressing each of these guys every day! And then the flowers wilt and you have to do it again the next day! How frustrating!

Inside the Hirosaki castle tower.

View from the top castle tower window.

This woman was making these delicious peanut crackers... they tasted like peanut brittle in a cracker disguise. All the goodness of peanut brittle and nothing stuck in your teeth! Yum!

Lovely weekend, with lovely friends, in a lovely place. Plus we got to watch Casper the Friendly Ghost on the bus on the way back from Hirosaki, so it made for a pretty spectacular day:)

Ramen!

I LOVE Japanese Ramen. Now that it's getting colder, I'm as excited about Ramen as I am about chili.

Ramen MUST be served in gigantic bowls. I think it would be a crime if you were to serve Ramen in regular cereal bowls. There's just too much goodness to fit in cereal bowls. I've lived here 7 months now, and ever since our first evening here, and our first experience with a real Ramen restaurant, I've wanted to find some great Ramen bowls.

There was a huge Asian Bazaar a couple weekends ago, and one of the vendors had the exact bowls that I wanted. Time to try out a recipe! I bought the bowls, and after finishing my shift at the bazaar, I opened the box to find that they had sent me home with plates! NOooooo! I was pretty angry. So angry, in fact, that the very next weekend I drove myself right out to that vendor's business location and bought a set of bowls.... to compliment the set of plates that I decided to keep.... Ok. So I ended up getting over the plates pretty quickly.

That evening a couple of friends joined me to make some Japanese ramen. It turned out pretty well... but I'm glad I have the whole winter ahead of me to try out more recipes.

This ramen has Chinese noodles, green onions, pork loin, normal sprouts, and bamboo sprouts.

Happy Halloween!

The other day, Alison and I were at the kennel making reservations for our dogs for a trip we'll be taking later. They had dog Halloween costumes for sale. We were talking about how much each of our husbands hate the idea of dressing up dogs for Halloween.

But our husbands our deployed...

Hmmm...

Ok... One shark costume, and one dogzilla costume... SOLD!

I'm sure Chris and Justin were thrilled to get their Halloween cards in the mail this year... Hehehe:)

Happy Halloween!

Lowen and Huck at Oirase Gorge

Fall is beautiful here in Japan. Beautiful weather, beautiful leaves, beautiful scenery. My friend, Alison, and I have been enjoying the fall weather for the last month or two as we run or walk our dogs. Last weekend we decided we needed a little variety so we took the dogs to Oirase Gorge and Lake Towada for the day.

Lowen is an American Bulldog. She is Huck's new best friend.

I don't see as much dog breed variety in Japan as I did in the States. I would say 80% of all the dogs here are Shiba Inus, and maybe 10% of the dogs here are dachshunds, and the rest of the dogs belong to Americans. Huck draws a lot of attention when we have him out and about, but it's nothing compared to the attention Lowen got. We had at least 5 people ask to take pictures of Lowen, or with her.

Alison and the dogs.

Probably my favorite picture... I caught Lowen mid-yawn. Just looking at her makes me yawn too.

We were a little early for the peak fall color, but it was still beautiful.

After Oirase Gorge, we visited Lake Towada. This is on the way to one of the more popular shrines near the lake.

I've seen a LOT of shrines in Japan, but so far this is my favorite because of the setting.

Lake Towada

Aww... a 2-person paddleboat shaped like a swan. How romantic:)

Very popular bronze maidens statue. I can't remember what's so important about it.

It was a good day, and our dogs slept the whole way home.