Branden tested and he is now a #3!!! When he completes and passes level 1 he will get a big trophy and his picture will hang at the swimming school holding said big trophy for a whole month. Looks like that time is growing closer for Branden! And we couldn't be prouder! He's such a good egg, he really is. But then you all know that, you've all been watching him grow up all these years through this blog. ; ) Sniffle sniffle. ; )
Monday evening, I had to get all of B's stuff all packed for swim school at the elementary school. In Japan all the kids learn to swim at the elementary school, I think this is a very cool idea. Starting in the 1st grade all the way up throughout elementary school. Now both my kids swim at a private swim school. Since B was a little guy in yochien and same with Noah at age 3. But that doesn't mean that Branden doesn't still enjoy swimming at the elementary school because he totally does! He loves swimming at shogako a lot.
The Spongebob towel has to go to the elementary school now and stay there unless he can bring it home to be washed but otherwise it now has to stay at the elementary school. And his spare towel is outgrown, so I can see a trip to the Narita mall back to the swimming towel department is in our future, ha ha ha. @_@ Heck what can ya do. He needs one for swim club too. He'll just take his spare until we can get to the Narita mall. According to his card and his sensei last year, Branden was the best swimmer at the elementary school in the ichinensei class 2 years ago when he was an ichinensei and during his ninensei last year. At elementary he's ranked a dolphin which is as high as you can go at our school. He is looking forward to swimming quite a bit at shogako this year. They'll be swimming 2 or 3 times a week and for 2 consecutive classes now. Such as, the 3rd and 4th period will be spent swimming. So they will be swimming quite a bit at the elementary school this year. He's really looking forward to it.
Got everything set and ready to pack. 1 swim towel...check. 1 pair of swim trunks navy blue. Check. 1 swimming cap, check check. And 1 pair of flip flops. And double check. And the swim bag, check.
Note says the same thing each year. Make sure you name every item...and I did, I wrote his first and last name on each flip flop. His swim bag, and sewed his label on his swim trunks. Phew.
Tucked his flippies in the zippered compartment.
And got everything packed up and Branden has since taken it to shogako. They start swimming next week. But they needed to all bring their stuff early.
Tuesday was "Chiba Day" Now what does Chiba Day entail? What does it stand for? What should we do to celebrate this wonderful magnificent day you ask? ; ) LOL. You sure got me! I haven't a clue and wasn't particularly interested to track the answers to those inquiring questions down. : ) To me, it meant I got to sleep in until 7:20am. It was drizzly so that meant a load in the wash and then the dryer. So much easier. I had been wanting some more cheese. And though this is like half way closer for me then say Costco Makuhari. This is still quite a drive. Both the boys got strapped into the backseat in my little red car and off I drove. The music in my ipod played and it was a nice drive. A trip I'd only be willing to make once a month for sure. : ) I wasn't doing my weekly shopping, just picking up some cheese. They have a huge section of cheese. This is a gaijin paradise, their cheese selection. Every single type of cheese I can even imagine. This was only half of one side of the cheese area they had a whole other backside too.
Huge blocks of cheese.
Ricotta, cubed misc cheese, teeny tiny blocks of cheese, mascarpone cheese.
Parmesan..so many different types of mozzarella. Shredded, buffalo mozzarella. You name it, they had it cheese wise. Now you know our family loves cheese, don't we all though? ; ) All I can say is we were in cheese heaven Tuesday, the boys and I. ; )
This meat said, Hokkaido BBQ college. Never knew they had an actual BBQ college. But I guess you learn something new everyday. ; )
This is another reason why I made the long drive, these chicken leg quarters. 5 of them for super cheap. Though they have them at a store closer, the price here is better plus the cheese was the big draw for me.
What I brought home Tuesday from Joyful Honda, aka Japan Meat.
Gyoza, they make some *delicious* gyoza. 2 huge blocks of red cheddar and 2 of those microscopic sizes of sour cream. Sorry but we do get the tiniest sizes of sour cream in Japan... it's unbelievable. Ha ha ha. I'm sure Costco has bigger sizes, but for regular stores, it's like they're just so so small. But, I still needed those for when I make fajitas this week. ; ) And the price was cheaper for sour cream at Joyful Honda then at Cainz. Cainz 290 yen and here 248 yen. Figures I recall that, but seriously a savings is still a savings. So, I try to remember stuff like that.
These pictures don't do these justice they're so big. They're way longer then the size they sell at Costco but thinner, so they could be about the same size of the Costco blocks but the length is just so funny to me. The length of my forearm. From elbow to wrist. When I see this cheese, I see augratin potatoes, homemade mac and cheese, fajita toppings, grilled cheese, I see endless possibilities. Happy sigh. : )
Whole wheat bread and a cheap loaf of regular bread and then left Joyful Honda. But before we left...I bought the boys a 100 yen ice cream from Mc D's before making that trip all the way back home. The boys and I had grilled cheese sandwiches on whole wheat when we finally arrived home from the Joyful Honda. Yumm.
So my phone I had all these years on the left. It died. The screen went out. I honestly wanted the same phone, but then Noboru searched online and found out my trusty phone on the left. Actually has so many complaints. Seems in Japan so many people had their screens go out too. And Samsung apparently admitted that there is a faulty wire, something that should have been recalled type stuff. A defect. But they didn't recall them. So overtime of sliding the phone to turn it on or talk, for a lot of us who had these phones the wire/sliding mechanism gets disconnected making you have a dead black screen. After hearing that...good grief. The scramble was on for me to get another phone. I need a phone...with me running here... zipping there. I REALLY need one. I'm not really a gadgety type gal. My slidey phone on the left had a TV and you know, I never not once ever watched TV on it, lol. It also had bluetooth. Nope, never used that either. My husband kept telling me my cell played music, like an MP3 player or whatever and still...nope didn't use that function either. Drove my husband bonkers actually. Anyway...so many free phones at Softbank. That iphone was free for 3-4 month's from like October to January. Nope didn't get it. And even still, I gather I could have got one. I told my husband, as long as it's in English, I really don't care. He searched the softbank website and finally asked me...how about that girly phone Cameron Diaz was selling/promoting here in Japan. That new pantone phone is what it's called. The Pantone can be switched over to full English. So, I said, go for it. And there you have it. Yes, I probably have the most simplest phone in all of Japan. That's okay. As long as it picks up and dials and it's all in English and it's teeny tiny, that's for me.
I picked a citrus wallpaper for now. Especially since the weather's heating up and I rather like seeing that when I open my phone. Anyway...moving along. : ) Long story short I have a different phone now. ; )
Anyway back to Tuesday's day off for Chiba Day, dundundundun! ; ) After we got home and had the grilled cheese on wheat, the boys played with the neighborhood boys for a while. Until 3pm. And at 3pm, I just went and did the weekly shopping back at Cainz to get it over with. I did that because I had been shopping on Wednesday's lately however I had my movie "meet up" with my friends on Wednesday. And so, I could either shop the day before or the day after. If you know me at all...you'll already know, I hate procrastinating anything. And I prefer get things out of the way. So, I figured, just get it done with and so the boys and I left the house at 3pm. And went and picked up, a nice beef roast that I'll dice up this week to make beef curry. A nice pork roast as well... for something else. Picked up my usual Downy detergent, a bottle of dish soap. And wanted just a bottle of shampoo, however the shampoo was 578 yen for 1 bottle, however this set was 758 yen for a shampoo, conditoner plus treatment. I thought it was a better deal, so I picked that up. We headed home, with a full weeks worth of groceries, meat, veggies and whatnots in the car and we had dinner.
I fried up that pork we bought at Joyful Honda earlier that day. We had rice and veggie. It was simple, by now I was exhausted. Flat out tired. The doorbell rang.
While I was cooking, the kids looked at the security monitor/cam and answered the door after recognizing the person. They didn't call me to the door. Hmm, I was still in the kitchen tending to the pork. Our neighbor, Rumi-san brought us some vegetables.
What kindness...honestly. To know these types of people and have them in your life. For someone just to give you something just because. It truly affirms my faith in humanity honestly it does. Just to know there's good people out there like Rumi-san.
I do not know where she gets her potatoes, does she grow them herself, does she buy them at a farm? wherever she finds them I'm not sure but, they're gorgeous potatoes. I have since been trying to think what should I do with these potatoes? Should I make baked potato soup? Augratin potatoes? Hmmm. Yes mentioning it twice in 1 post...augratin potatoes must be on my mind. ; ) Slurp, maybe I should make some soon.
Wednesday, the dearest most sweetest ladies and myself went to the movies. We caught the 9:30am showing, yep it started at 9:30am. So, Wednesday, I made sure both the boys got sent off to school okay, obento made. And I was at the movie theater parking lot at 9am or 9:05. The doors did not open until 9:15am, so we stood near the door until they opened. A few other people stood outside waiting to enter as well. We quickly bought our tickets. And went and enjoyed the movie. I told them....I had not seen the first Iron Man. I was a bit worried if I would be able to follow along or if there would be huge gaps in the story for me, but it was fine. I really enjoyed the movie. In fact, I'd like to see the first one now. Maybe in July, we can rent it. After the movie, we went to lunch. We went to a ramen restaurant. I had the tantanmen. It was very delicious. Noriko-san and Jogo-san I think are very open minded people, very up to date with current events. Such as the World Cup, etc. So there's always 100 different things we can talk about. They are NOT boring ladies by any means, there is no huge gaps of silence. It's always fun and lively chatting with them. We talked about soccer and the world cup. Japan had won the night before. We also discussed hanging the laundry. To be or not to be was not the question for us that day.; ) Actually for us it was to hang the laundry inside out or not. There are good reasons for both actually. According to many websites in English hanging clothes inside out prevents your clothes colors from fading by the sun. However now we also discussed for people with allergies and pollen issues it might not be a good idea to hang clothes inside out because it could make their skin itchy etc. So there were actually pros and cons both ways. And as usual with most things we decided it's basically up to personal preference. If you're family suffers from allergies you may want to not hang your laundry inside out, yet for some who may be more worried about colors being sun bleached, you may want to hang inside out. Anyway we enjoyed our time together and our conversation flowed and flowed and flowed as always. It was a lot of fun. Hope everyone has been enjoying their week! : )
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