More of the House…

I finally got all of the boxes unpacked and all of the odds and ends put away… It only took me a week and a half… for organizing my whole life that’s not bad… I also found out my whole life weighs 6300 pounds.
Here is my new studio… with my super awesome easel and of course my pig intestine and rusted barbed wire sculptures
Here is the other corner of my studio… with my favorite chair in the whole world… that is also a bed… that has mini mouse sheets on it… notice the beads hanging from my curtains… I thought that was genius!
Guest bedroom, I have lots of room for anyone who wants to come and visit!!! HINT HINT!!! And look at all of the gorgeous trees in my back yard!!! I love it so much.
Giant closet in guest room, this is really Sebastian’s bedroom, he sleeps in here all day before he goes out at night, I think cause Kona never looks in there.
Mater bedroom, this room is so big we do not have enough furniture or stuff to fill it up. Right outside that window there is a tree about 4 feet away from the roof, when Sebastian is done for the night he climbs up the tree, jumps to the room, opens the sliding screen on the window and come gets in bed with us… thank goodness no more 5 am crying to wake us up to let him in…
Our tiny little bed, all of our friends see it and say “wow you guys must really love each other”… Nope Lisa is just too cheep to let Derick buy a bigger one… No I really like our small bed... its nice… But notice there is nothing hanging on the wall above the bed… that’s because of all the earthquakes… we have had two since I have been here and I slept through one and was on a bus during the other so I haven’t felt any… I am so mad…
Our giant closet!!! Derick thought we had a lot of clothes till we looked into our neighbors house… THEY have a lot of clothes… thank goodness now he’s not trying to get me to get rid of mine.
Dining room table… getting ready for a dinner with some friends… I just thought it looked so cute!
Our little breakfast nook are with coffee pot (the promise of an eventual espresso machine) teapots, tea, sugar… its super convenient!

American Day

Every year the Air Base puts on “American Day.” People come from all over Japan to attend American day. There are booths outside the base with food from many different states… Missouri of course was the funnel cake booth… we are so fat… there were hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, tacos, brisket, all kinds of stuff. Then further into town the Japanese have their own booths too and a Parade runs in-between the two. It was rainy and a little cold but very much fun!
Derick, Kona and I went out at like 10 am when it first started and walked around… not everything was open so we looked around a little bit and decided to come back later in the day. But while we were there we got a little group of Japanese kids following kona… old people are scared of her and little kids think she is amazing. These kids were so cute I just had to take a picture with them. They had so much fun petting Kona. An old lady was watching and came up like she wanted to pet Kona but she was so scared to just stared for like 5 min. and finally she came up with the courage to touch Kona’s tail. It was really cute and hilarious.
So I decided it was too cold to look cute in my little jacket and umbrella (and its too hard to shove funnel cake in your mouth if one hand is holding an umbrella) so I changed into a hat and hoodie and we headed back out. First we went to the hanger on base that was showing the Japanese F2 and the American F16. This is us with the F2.
This is me and Derick in front of the F16.
This is over in the Japanese booths… notice the mini octopus (dipped in batter and fried up fresh for your order) right next to the chocolate covered bananas on a stick!
Derick bought me a miniature candy covered apple… I did not realize candy apples were hard… it was a slightly unpleasant surprise… but in the end it wasn’t all that bad!
At the local gym off base they had sports games like volleyball and tug of war for any adults and in this one room they had wheely things for kids… I thought it was awesome… Derick was not so impressed.
These are more pictures of the types of foods in the Japanese booths. They love to put things on sticks and so naturally they love corndogs
I am not really sure what all of this is but it smelled great!
It was a pretty nasty day but the turnout was great! There were so many people anyway. We had so much fun and ate lots of great Japanese and American food!

Oh Japan…

Random photos that I think are blog worthy:
Its funny enough that Japanese people cannot pronounce L’s and replace them with R’s… even funnier is that they often do this in their writing as well… Actual sign in a town probably the size of Columbia “Low Cost Rog House!” Even funnier I think is that they got one right just not both…
Me and Derick playing “Mario Cart” in a Japanese arcade! What could be more fun then mario cart with a steering wheel and pedals!!! I dont know... plus they took our pictures and posted our faces on top of our characters faces (we both chose Yoshi) and we looked AMAZING... well Derick looked special... but they didnt have alot to work with!
We bought a rack to hold our DVD’s at the Green Store (large furniture store called the green store by Americans because the sign is green and we cant read the real name) and this is how all the pieces came… perfectly labeled and arranged! AMAZING! I love the Japanese!
Finished DVD rack.. I think we might need another!
Two super cute floor mats I got at the green store… only 799 yen! I know amazing!
No this kiwi is not funky… it is yellow… and delicious… we found these at Universe our favorite local grocery store… They were sweeter then green kiwis... I make fruit salad alot here... I dont know why... fruit is way expensive here... not as expensive as lettuce though... I have started eating salad with out lettuce.. just a pile of carrots, cucumber, onion and feta... still good!
Oh herrooo kiwi!
Kona sleeps all day… what is new?

Shinto Shrine

We went to this Shinto Shrine, I was incredibly gorgeous! Shinto and Buddhism are the two main religions here in Japan. They are not two competing religions they coexist peacefully… the saying is the people in Japan live Shinto and die Buddhist...
This is the entrance outside of the shrine, there were white papers tied to everything. We were told that when the white papers where tied to things it mean they were sacred… the tree to the left of the big rock had papers tied to it because it was over 400 years old
This is us right inside the gate next to a carving of some beast. There was this statue and one just like it on the other side, they are supposed to eat any evil or bad spirits and keep the shrine free of them.
There was so much carving and detail, it was really pretty
The three monkeys.. see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil
This little guy was guarding a little mini shrine, I had to take a picture, I love his bandana’s
Me and Derick next to a couple giant Hatchinohe Horses, these sculpture are everywhere in this town although most are much smaller.
cool stuff...
more cool stuff...The entrance to a Shinto shrine is marked by this red gate called a Tori gate... you see them EVERYWHERE here.
Before you enter through the tori gate you are supposed to cleanse the bad spirits from your body by using the ladle to wash your right hand then your left hand then swish the water in your mouth, spit it out and wash your right hand again... I had a hard time deciding if I should participate in any of the things, I decided the cleansing ritual was okay and did it out of respect of the people who had come there to worship so as not to "bring my bad spirits in" but I did not ring the prayer bell and do all the prayer ritual which alot of people did. And I did not buy a fortune... I don't really know whats kosher with all of this non Christian religion stuff.

Fish Market

We went to the fish market in Hatchenohe (I am not sure on the spelling of that) anyways… Hatch is a pretty big town about 30 min. away. They have a large very reasonably prices home furnishings store we go to, a Toys R Us and two KFC’s… so they have stuff… including stinky, slimey, fishey things… I felt like I smelled like fish for two days after this…
You’ll notice the clams and fish, octopus legs… some of the venders you point to which leg you want on an octopus and they go lob it off and wrap it up… uggg… I have opened my mind to eating fish… but not like this, I mean heck if somebody wrapped up a cow leg I couldn’t eat that either…A box of rays that I almost stepped in while I was busy surveying the least stinky route to take… thank goodness Derick caught me at the last second… I think I would have died…
We got there pretty early and they were still setting out their goods.. this guy was throwing curled up crabs into icy water… I assumed they were dead and leaned in for a closer look, this crab is not dead and as soon as he gets in the water springs to life and tries to escape… right at my face… I literally screamed bloody murder in the fish market and every person in there looked at me and started laughing… I peed my pants a little.
Whole octopus for only 1000 yen ($10.00)… what a deal… I passed
Lots of stuff that stunk
Lots of really really big crabs… which just look like spiders on crack to me and give me panic attacks.
When you have to bring the fish out on a dolly don’t you think that means its too big?? Do people actually buy the whole thing, why don’t they just cut it up… it was staring at me…
There was a room at the fish market where they were having a bonsai tree show (this was much more interesting to me) and all of the bonsai trees in the show were azaleas!!! Super cool, these trees were ancient, probably hundreds of years old.
This is was the other part that I especially enjoyed… there was a baked goods sections with all of these packages of delicious deserts and snacks, and on the packages were little Tupperware containers of samples (YES!!!) it was going very well until I ate one cracker that started off sweet and delicious and then took a horrible turn to salty and fishy and I looked at the package… it was a sweet cracker covered in dried pieces of s quid.. the dried squid got all stuck in my teeth, I almost died… the second time that day…

New House: Moving in and Unpacking

The movers came Monday with all of our stuff, we had 7 crates full, this is the first 5… Its a lot of stuff but at the same time its not…
This is the first four crates dumped in my front yard… yaaayyyy…
This is my garden in the front of my house… it is so cute! I have peony, clematis, celosia, fuchsia, lilly of the valley, seedem, ornamental grass called bronze curls, and some other stuff I don’t know what its called! But its super cute!!!! The hard part about planting a garden here is you cant read any of the labels because they are all in Japanese, so I can only plant plants that I know already how to take care of or that I know their name so I can look it up later on the internet.
More garden
This is the front of my house… this is only one day after my stuff arrived so I haven’t had time to plant anything in the planters yet… but don’t worry, I will get there!
**These were all taken one day after the movers came so its not really done yet, don’t worry I will update them when things get done for real**
If you go in the front door and turn left this is what you would see leading you into the kitchen
This is my kitchen
This is looking the other way down my kitchen
This is the living room, that doorway on the left goes to the kitchen
This is the other side of the living room and the door on the right goes down a hall back to the front door, so my front door kitchen and living room all make a big loop.
Sorry you cant see the upstairs yet… its way to messy!