Let's get this Party Started

We had a few of the Kengekitai people over today-it was our first time having Nihon-jin guests in our home. We made American food-mini hamburgers, potato skins, guacamole, and salsa. Nakano, and Etsuko, two of the women in Dave's class brought wonderful Japanese food. There was a rice dish with homemade pickled ginger and ginger sesame chicken.Reika and Kaname brought a bottle of wine, which was thoughtful, since I don't think wine is very popular here, so it can't be a common hostess gift as it is in the states. I was nervous that it might be awkward and we might not be able to communicate, but I forgot how much English people here know, even when they say they don't speak English at all.  The day ended with our jerk neighbors calling the cops because our guests unknowingly blocked their car in.  Instead of coming over and asking us to move the car he called the police; he is in the U.S. Navy by the way.  Our ace to play was that when the police arrived four Japanese people walked out of the house and chatted it up with the cop with whom the neighbor could not communicate.  Apparently the cop thought it was a jerk-move to call him as well.  So Reika helped smooth it out and as Ma Ingalls says, "All's well that ends well."

Reika is helping set me up with English students here in return for the gaijin guinea pig projects. Teaching English is a very common job here for American spouses, so hopefully it will give me something to focus on while I am here. She also thinks there is a market here for American style baked goods which I like to make. I've been baking things and taking pictures for her so that she can catalog what I am able to do. Today she brought a cake from Costco (there is a HUGE Costco in Yokohama) so that I could get an idea of the type of American sweets people would want. The cake says Happy Birthday in Japanese. It was no body's birthday, but we lit candles anyway.

We took a photo of the group at the party, The stereotype of Japanese having a penchant for photography is an understatement.   As soon as we mentioned "picture" cameras were whipped out of nowhere.  It is worth mentioning that whenever someone is good enough to offer to take our photo we kindly hand them the camera and indicate with pointing, nodding and repeating "picture" the shutter button; to which the person usually responds with a wave off and look of wasted time as if to say, "yeah, I got it!"  Our photo today at the party was great, it is posted above.  Jennifer and I (obviously in the center) to my right is Etsuko, she is one the class's English speakers.  She seems very refined and excited about our interests in Japan.  Kaname is in front of me.  He is an aspiring actor in Japan and has been performing with Kengekitai for two and a half years.  He looks very convincing and often intimidating in a strong silent way when he is in full sword garb.  To Jennifer's left is Nakano, she is the class leader and has been doing Kengekitai for quite a while.  Like Kaname, she is also an actress and very funny.  She is most impressive with a sword and I would never want to be on the receiving end of what I think she is capable.  

BTW:  We posted some of the photos of Jennifer's recent cookie baking for the Japanese bake sales.  The photos are in the "current photo" show.

Japan's Next Top Models

The past few days have offered great chances at Japanese immersion. We have been hanging out with our new friend Reika who we met through David's Kengekitai group. She works as a liaison between the Yokosuka business community and the navy base, trying to connect the American customers with local Japanese restaurants, stores etc. We have offered ourselves up as her gaijin guinea pigs, so that she can test things out on us first.

Tuesday she took us to a local restaurant and wanted to get our opinion on how the experience seemed to us as Americans-if it was welcoming, easy to understand and if it was a venue in which other navy personnel might be interested. We are going to write about our experience for her gaijin circular.

We ate Shabu-Shabu, which is sort of like a fondue or hotpot style of eating. A big pot is placed on the table filled with vegetables and a mixture of dashi (Japanese broth) and soy milk. A tray of paper thin slices of beef are served to each person. The beef is dipped into the liquid with your chopsticks (hashi) and swished back and forth. "Shabu Shabu" is what the Japanese call the sound of washing clothes back and forth in water, so the beef is being "washed" with the broth. We were given ponzu and sesame sauce. It was really very good. Also we had some very interesting Japanese black pepper. It came out of a regular pepper grinder, but was much spicier. Yum!

Another of Reika's ventures is to have a professional photographer with whom she works to offer traditional Japanese family portraits to the navy families in the area, complete with traditional clothing. She asked if David and I would pose as the models for the advertisement. We didn't realize just what we were getting ourselves into when we agreed.

We went to see a Kimono wearing expert who is licenced by the Japanese government to teach other instructors in the art of the kimono. Her house was down a little back alley next to a Buddhist graveyard and up a steep flight of stairs. The house was crowded with boxes of fabric and accessories for the traditional wear. Reika told us the woman and her helper are in their 70s, but they were incredibly energetic. They had a lovely dinner set for us when we arrived, which we were not expecting. It was our first time being invited into a Japanese home and we felt completely unprepared. David and I were both trying to recall everything we had read about Japanese etiquette and quickly folded into the seiza style-sitting on your heels with the tops of your feet on the floor. The ladies laughed and urged us to sit comfortably.

After dinner, the fun began. David was dressed in two outfits, a men's kimono and then a traditional wedding kimono and hakama. The ladies dressed me in several different kimonos-they were beautiful. I had no idea there were so many layers-it took at least 20 minutes to put on each one. The final kimono I wore was the women's wedding kimono. They also dressed me in a geisha type wig-it was much better than the plastic one I have on in the photo earlier in the blog. I can't wait to see the pictures, we will post them here as soon as we receive them from the photographer. The photo posted here is after the photo shoot-Dave and I are bright red- we were so warm from all the clothes changing. It was definitely one of the best experiences we have had since we have been in Japan.

Praise to Buddha

Sunday did not start out to be especially exciting until we decided to go for a walk.  We were making out way to a near-by park with beagle in tow, when we happened across a mysterious staircase. In the spirit of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys,  we gamely climbed the steep stairs, Finchy pulled when we got tired, and found a power transfer station at the top, not to exciting, but read on...  There was a narrow path that lead around the station further into the woods and hills.  It was like being a child when one gets lost in the woods with a friend and sees a slightly worn trail exclaiming that it is a "secret path", at least we remembered doing this, so it was fun.  The trails and stairs seemed to climb into infinity until we circled around a bend and found an enormous statue of the Welcoming Buddha carved into the cliff face (photo accompanied).  The park continued to go on and Finchy began to vocalize her low rumbling "woof" as she does when there are life forms near by, but she is too afraid to really let 'em have it with a beagle bay; she's a wuss.  When we can to the next clearing there were people rock climbing in all forms up the surrounding cliff faces.

I came to find out the area is know as the Takatori outdoor gym, but we had no idea this was all here right outside our door step.

Bizzy

We've been so busy lately-the past week has just flown by!
David was really excited to be working on a training project with the Japanese Navy. He was with the crew of the Makishio (a Japanese submarine) for about a week. The crew held a party for those who participated on the project and I was lucky enough to also be invited. The food was amazing and all of the members of the crew were incredibly gracious. I don't think David ever saw the bottom of his sake cup. The next day we were invited to tour the submarine. I had a great photo op on the Japanese periscope. Strangely, I think the man in the background looks a little like my father (who is not Japanese). I have visited David several times on the USS Connecticut and am used to seeing his, and other ships on the pier. It was strange this time to visit a ship flying a different flag.
On Monday we went to the Ikea in Yokohama. We needed a rug for the dining room and bedroom and all the other little things that Ikea is good for. It was our first time driving on Japanese highways. It actually was not scary at all-just expensive. Ikea was about twenty minutes from our house, but it cost us about fifteen dollars in tolls each way.
We went to a "Shogun Dinner" on Thursday at the Officer's Club. There was a huge variety of Japanese foods, which was cool because often in restaurants we are unsure of what we are ordering or eating. We were able to get a better idea of what some of the dishes are. There was live music-it was really nice. We posted a video of the live entertainment, which was traditional Japanese music, it really set the atmosphere.
I think we are starting to get settled in here well. Our neighborhood is really lovely. Dave just came in from outside and said he thought he saw a mop left leaning on the fence that turned out to be a snow owl! We'll have to take the camera with us when we take Finchy out from now on!

Happy Feast of St. Valentine

We actually celebrated Valentine's Day last night. We both went to the NEX to get gifts and cards and ended up running into one another. It was funny so we decided to go home and celebrate on Friday night instead. We drank champagne and played bowling in the new Wii. Saturday morning we both had sore arms and Jennifer got mad at the boxing trainer because she thought when it wouldn't register her hits the Wii was being biased because she is a female. We certainly hope every one's Valentine's day was wonderful and wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day. In Japan Valentine's Day is when women give not only the significant men in their lives what they call "obligation chocolate" but also their male co-workers and especially their bosses. March 14 is called white day, this is when men reciprocate with white chocolate.
Today we went to Yokohama, it lays betwixt our residence and Tokyo. One of the bigger attractions is the Yokohama Chinatown. We had lunch, it was great. One of our first biggest Japanese faux pas occurred, We realized once we have already changed trains three times taking an hour to get there that we had no yen. We had forgotten to go to the ATM we knew worked near our house and when it came time to pay the bill we presented our kureddito-kado and were informed the minimum payment for credit cards was 5000 yen ($50). They made an exception in our case, but we were appreciative of their graciousness and mortified. We bowed the appropriate 45 degree lowest bow.

This one is short, enjoy Valentine's day and the long presidents' weekend! The photos are of Chinatown and the women in the mall buying obligation chocolate.

Yokels

Finally! It has been a while and we apologize. We are fully operational now, we have moved into our house, the pets are here and we have internet (wireless!). The car has been a dream, it is freedom we were okay living without and had even prepared ourselves for the possibility of not having one here; since we have bought the car it appears we have forgotten how nice it is not having to walk an average of 12 miles a day to conduct day-to-day errands etc.... We ended up buying a 1998 Nissan Cube for about $2000. It is nice and small, but has an incredible amount of cargo space for its size. The car has a kick-ass GPS, but alas it is all in Japanese; we cannot even use it to determine our location, let alone enter destination addresses for navigation. Driving is surprisingly natural, however we have both mistakenly activated the wipers when we really meant to use the directional signals, a basic Gaijin mistake. The scariest part about driving is not what one would think (driving on the left side of the road), it is avoiding the thousands of motorbikes that whizz by and weave through the traffic. They are fearless on everything from bicycles and Vespas to Harley-Davidsons. We are going to have to ask a Japanese friend (when we get one) to help us at least input our address into out GPS so we can always find our way home, in this case I think we shall name our car Lassie. Now if could only fetch the C-clamp.

The house, which is called Lumiere by the owners, is fantastic. It is one of the bigger houses in which we have lived, comparable to our house in Washington. It stands an impressive (well impressive for Japan) 1300 sqft (120.7sqm) atop a hill overlooking Oppama. The neighborhood is called "Shonan Takatori". The floors are beautiful and the layout is very clean and modern. The kitchen is small, but the house is setup for an American style range and oven so we were able to get one installed. There are also two rooms that are able to be partitioned with sliding frosted glass doors. We are not sure why one of the bedrooms is arranged with this feature, since there is a slight breech in privacy with the glass and there is no way to block out the light in the adjacent room, but it is still cool. The toilets are interesting, since they are separated from the actual sink and shower portion of the bathroom they have little faucets on top of the tank for washing your hands, very efficient. The number one greatest part about the house is the Japanese shower, with which we can never live without following our time here. In our next home we will demolish the existing shower and bathroom to replace it with a Japanese style one no matter the expense. There is no way to describe how incredible the shower is, to find out you just have to come visit. It is an enormous walk-in closet with a deep tub at one end and a shower head the sprays water at you like warm rain. We ordered a new sofa for the living room and once it arrives the house should be complete. We have gotten a few new things, but for all the niceties the house has one drawback. It is freezing. There are times when it is highly possible that inside the house is colder than the outside ambient temperature. We sleep under five layers of blankets and have to keep a heater on all night. Each room has a heater/AC unit mounted and are operated via remote control and are required to be operating if one should want to sit comfortably in the room. Turn it off and within seconds a shivering chill permeates through the room. Our fear is that it will be just the opposite in the summer.

What they don't tell you about your Japanese house when you are Gaijin
-Your lease states that you cannot wear shoes. (This wouldn't be as bad if the house wasn't reaching absolute zero)
-Throughout the day there are sweet little jingles that can be heard from passing trucks that are reminiscent of the ice cream man that we are still unable to figure out, only that they are not the ice cream man.
-The hot water has to be turned on every time we want to use it, there is a small panel on the wall in the kitchen and in the bathroom that makes a pleasant sound followed by woman speaking something in Japanese. It works every time.
-None of the closets have hanger bars and some don't have shelves.
-Recycling is intense, They collect garbage everyday (which a municipal service), the garbage has to be in clear biodegradable bags. Each day is a different type of waste (combustibles, plastic, glass & cans, non-combustibles). If you misplace and item in the wrong bag they do not collect you garbage and leave you a friendly note on the bag reminding you of the appropriate location of the misplaced item. We have four color-coded trash cans on the kitchen to aid in our sorting.
-Doing laundry down-right sucks. The base provided us with a washer and dryer, but the washer cycle takes forever and nothing comes out of the dryer, dry until it has been run through at least three to four cycles.
-To park a car at the house the police come to measure the spot to ensure the vehicle will fit and then issue a permit, it takes three days and costs $20.
-The three-pronged outlet does not exist in Japan.

We also recently took a trip to the surrounding areas of Mt. Fuji. It was the first time we saw snow here and it was beautiful. We will post something in more detail, but enjoy some of the photos in the new slide show. We have added an archive photo album under the current ones for your enjoyment!