National Foundation Day...a holiday in Japan, day off school. So, mini getaway! Palm Terrace Hotel, Kua’Aina Burger at Ikspiari and Blue Water Shrimp at Aeon Makuhari Shintoshin

Tuesday, February 11th was a holiday here in Japan. School would be closed, so the perfect time to have a little getaway/overnight stay. Last month, we decided to book a hotel stay at that hotel near Tokyo Disney. We have 4 free hotel stays to use up, before the end of March, don't think we can use up all 4, but we at least used up 1, for this little trip. Plus it gave us something to look forward to, this little mini over night get away. : ) Then, the snow storm happened and we wondered if we would indeed be able to make it? But it turns out we did. : ) So, Monday as soon as the boys got out of school, they came home, dropped off their randoseru/backpacks. Noah did his homework since he got off school at 3pm and we waited for Branden to get off at 3:45pm. Branden came home dropped off his stuff and we hit the road immediately. Everyone had an overnight bag packed beforehand. Just jammies/PJs, next days clothes, not too much. : ) Also I know different areas of Japan, got hit with different amounts of snow, here are the pics of the snow in Izai/Chiba New Town. Where we live.... we also got slammed with snow! And Chiba New Town/Inzai was also slammed, with a ton of snow. This pic was taken in Chiba New Town. Lots of snow on the side of the road. This was taken Monday evening, so a couple days since the snow came (Saturday), it still had not melted at all. In fact it snowed a bit more even. 

Chiba New Town, a bit more city-ish but again tons of snow, snow in the middle of the road/median, huge amounts of snow the the right. Again not melted at all. And the roads start to freeze as it turns to night, the streets become black ice. Driving on a sheet of ice. Same for our area as well. 

Still Chiba New Town, look at the level of snow. 

Chiba New Town, 1 car abandoned pictured here. Snow all over the road and again once the sun sets the roads will become a sheet of ice. Usually snow melts in a day. Not this time....let's see, it snowed last Saturday and Monday it will still here. It even started lightly snowing on Tuesday as we were driving back to home. @.@

Look at the street on our side of the road, where's our driving lane? Under snow, that's where. Hahaha. : ) Shovels were sold out everywhere. It just....never snows like this here... really. So sorta really weird. 

Sun is indeed setting... there is ice patches on the road already. 

There was still the same amount of snow there Tuesday when we came back home. And I was just at Costco Chiba New Town yesterday and yes still snow on Wednesday. And snow is supposed to hit us yet again this coming Friday/tomorrow. Anyway....we made it to Urayasu just fine, where the hotel is and Ikspiari is. : )  Checked into the hotel, dropped our stuff in the room and headed to the mall for dinner. 

Walking around Urayasu ready to grab a bite to eat! : )

Yumm, Kua'Aina Burger! We have been thinking about you, for the past couple weeks, almost month, we were so ready. : ) 

Noah picked the chicken strips and he shared fries with Noboru. Last time we ordered Noah his own fries and it was just, way too many fries, we didn't eat them all, so this time, we didn't make the same mistake. 

 Noboru and Branden both had picked the cheeseburger and fries. We all had sodas. 

I had the teriyaki chicken sandwich and half onion rings, half fries. It was a delicious dinner, we were relaxed and happy. We walked around the mall a bit, the boys each got a fish pen at Sony Plaza and we headed back to the hotel. 

We went to Lawson's in the hotel, we each picked a drink and a snack, went back to our room. We had eclairs, Noboru picked instant ramen or udon. We each showered and we again...just relaxed in the room. Went to sleep after an hour or two. And I woke up first, brushed my teeth, did my hair and makeup, got dressed, woke up everyone else. And we went downstairs to the breakfast buffet. 

The buffet here is always pretty cheap, I think the kids are 500 yen each. Adults are 1000 yen. So not a bad price for Japan. And we really filled up. It was a nice leisurely breakfast, because we had planned heading to the new Aeon Makuhari mall, omg, is it huge! So since the mall didn't open until 10am, we just slowly enjoyed breakfast. It was nice. 

I had pancakes, croissants, cheese bread, and the omelets, I made sandwiches out of omelets. : )

There was a stamp rally at the hotel for kids. 

I sliced my croissant in half and put the omelet in there. lol. : ) 

A pretty good selection. 

We stayed at the Palm Terrace Hotel (for free) and had a very affordable breakfast the next morning. It was an excellent way to spend the day off school we thought. : )  

This is the Lawson in the hotel. And behind that is a Disney store. 

This may be one of the biggest Aeon malls (I think this is #3 biggest of the Aeons, but don't quote me on that, lol), and they do have some pretty awesome stores in there, but, it's a pain walking around there. Imo. I much prefer a regular Aeon. :  ) The mall is broken up in pieces and put together by these walkways pictured here. There is 1 kid cluster, so if you want to check out kids clothes for example, you have to walk to the kids cluster part of the mall. We were looking for shoes for Branden, so we had to walk the entire length of the mall to look for sports shoes in the sports cluster part of the mall, long long walk ways between each cluster. We parked at the Grand mall cluster, where the Blue Water Shrimp was. And main food court, however the sports shoe cluster was the opposite end of the entire mall, so we walked through many a clusters, pet store cluster that had a pet shop and pet pool @.@ All and everything for your pets needs inside the pet cluster, then walked through the kids cluster all the way to sports cluster at the opposite end of the mall. Then walked passed every cluster taking the walk ways back, there are windows and also parts where there are no windows and since the weather is freezing, we would walk through overly heated mall temps, then freezing outside temps, cluster,cluster, cluster walk way... freezing walkway to another cluster of the mall. And the corridors to the walkways were quite narrow and since everyone was stopped and blocking walking traffic, it was hard to walk around the hoards of people and folks. Just the whole cluster cluster, narrow corridor, walkway was weird. Maybe in Spring or in warmer weather, I'd feel differently. The positive and bright side is...you will definitely get your daily exercise coming here! : )

A walkway, we walked this to get to the sports area. See Costco in the back, sorta smack dab between all the clusters of Aeon Makuhari. Hahaha. : ) 

This is the grand mall part, whatever that means. But the main food court is in there, though there is a smaller food court in the kids section, at least I think it was in the kids section, we got Noah's KFC from there though. Put it this way...if you went with a friend, take your phone, you will more then likely get lost if you guys separate and go and look at different stuff. : )

I had heard of this store, from Denmark. we walked around, didn't buy anything. There was however, a Hawaiian shop and it knocked my socks off, the prices were fair/comparable. Meaning a big and cute picture frame for 1200 yen/ 1400 yen. Just all sorts of cool stuff in the stuff from the Hawaii store. 

OMG! A free standing Kiehl's! I love Kiehl's! If I didn't restock in Denver, I would have bought something in there. I know Kiehl's delivers in Japan, but shoot, I'd go back to this mall just for the Kiehl's and the Hawaiian store. They also had a big H&M store in there too. Yay!

Blue Water Shrimp. They've had one in Yokohama for a while now. But now they have one in Makuhari now too. Very cool. We've been to the original one in Honolulu many times. 

Prices were comparable to the prices in Hawaii. Not double the cost at all. Same price/cost. 

Next to the Blue Water Shrimp is Honolulu Coffee. 

We checked out Blue Water, but we walked the entire length of the mall, corridors, walkways and clusters and all, to get to the sports section. We wanted the blue ones in this pic to the right, behind the pink shoes. The blue with pink laces. Price is reasonable for Branden's shoe size. However, same as last week, they had 25.5cm. But Branden needs a 26cm size. His shoes he's been wearing since last June are 25cm and he needs a 26cm. We tried the 25.5 and there's almost no room to grow at all. So we left this mall with no shoes and we checked every shoe store in the whole mall and nothing. : ( Gah!!!! 

We thought this was cool! Here at this pizza place you can bake your own pizza that you make. : ) We make ours at home from scratch, so we don't need this place personally.... but this is very cool for folks who might not get the opportunity to make one at home. 2 thumbs way up for this place! : ) 

We did pick up Noah some lunch at KFC in the smaller food court along the way. In another cluster/section/area. 

We 3 picked spicy garlic shrimp. We picked the 10 pieces of shrimp., came with a scoop of rice and a salad.  

The three of us loved it! It tasted the same. Price was the same. It was really nice. Good thing, Noboru checked online last week, all the restaurants this mall had, we had been waiting to try this shrimp since last week. : )  We did walk around the mall for about an hour after eating our lunch. So, it would be fair to say we walked ourselves silly Tuesday. Hahaha. 10,000 steps easy! We walked from one end of the mall and back again, we also like I said walked around this grand part of the mall all levels for a good hour on top of that too. We then headed to the car and headed home via Chiba New Town.  About 2 and a half hours later after lunch, we had dinner.....

We went to the Ohsho in Chiba New Town/Inzai for supper. Noah had ramen and karaage.

We all had plenty to eat. It was a lovely 24 hours. It was just a nice little get away. We didn't even get away very far. Hahaha. : ) Still in Chiba. But...it did us all, a world of good. : ) 

Snow on Tuesday, in Chiba New Town. Did it melt away? Nope, as you can see, it is still here. And still there yesterday, as I went to Costco yesterday. And like I said, snow is expected to hit us tomorrow all over again. @.@ Holy goodness! : ) 

Snow still here on the way home....though we were making 1 last pit stop to Narita in hopes to find Branden his shoes in 26cm. 

Snow level is pretty high. Again not Hokkaido type high, but totally high levels for here. 

Now we were in Narita, this is a rice field right near the Aeon mall in Narita. 

The fish pen, both Branden and Noah each got a fish pen like this. 

Sometimes, it seems we have lady luck on our side, which is sorta nice considering it took us ages to track down Branden's shoes anyway. You will not believe this but...the same exact shoes we were looking for, were on sale for 2980 yen. Under $30 US. @.@ And the reason was, they just happened to be the last pair..the other shoes had actual reasons/notes jotted and written on the tag that said defective or something...these were fine and the reason was blank so, we tracked down and kindly asked the person working at Sports Authority and they said these were the last pair so that's why they were marked down! At Aeon Makuhari, they were nearly 6000 yen! $60US. @.@ And yes size 26cm. Last pair, so marked down? We'll take em'! And we did check these shoes out... with a fine tooth comb so to speak and they are perfect. 

Nice color with room to grow.

Adidas on the toe. Just really nice and the price was awesome. 

Also, Branden got a sweatshirt from Uniqlo, from the men's department. Very cute. :  ) Anyway that was our over night trip in a nut shell. : ) 

Noboru’s trip to Okayama, Pizza Hut and a 3 day weekend (Coming of Age Day)

Thursday, January 9th, 2014, at noon, I dropped Noboru off at the station and he made his way to Tokyo Haneda airport. Flew via ANA to Okayama. The plan was for Noboru to meet the seller at 8pm, he would be picking up Noboru at the station there. However, as luck would have it, the 1 time Tokyo gets hit with snow would be that very day! Hahaha. So, Noboru's flight was delayed because of the snow by 1 hour. No worries though he made it safe and sound and that is the most important thing afterall. : ) Met with the seller and Noboru did email him explaining about the snow delay. Anyway after a lot of paper work, and Noboru paying the other half of the car when he actually saw it and signed the paperwork, they shook hands and Noboru dropped him home and he left. That same night, Thursday night, Noboru took a ferry from Okayama to the city of Takamatsu in Shikoku. From Shikoku he drove to Tokushima and from there Noboru boarded the longer distance ferry 12 or 14 hours type ferry that would be taking him to Tokyo, Friday at 10am. Taking the ferry would be 2,000 yen more expensive than driving, considering driving in Japan, it is all toll roads on the highways. Also, he would be driving alone and would be exhausted. I worry about him and don't want him killed driving on little sleep and neither does he, so it was better for him to pay an extra 2,000 yen ($20 US) and not have to worry about driving or exhaustion and sort of just take it easy and enjoy the journey. And he did. This pic is of the ferry that would take Noboru from Tokushima to Tokyo. He and the new to us, mini mini van. Micro mini van? @.@ Both went on the ship and Noboru got to enjoy his trip. : )

They have private rooms for families. But you know he was alone and so he picked just a regular room with bunk beds (not a family private room). Noboru said the boat was pretty much empty and there was no one else in his sleeping area, not even remotely. :  ) 

Again not a whole lot of people on board which was fine by Noboru because he was the only one in the sento/bath. And wow look at that ocean view, how truly pretty! What a nice clean bath too. I line messaged him after he sent me this pic and I said..."how pretty....sparkling clean bath and wow what a killer ocean view, enjoy, have fun and I love you!" He replied back and said "thanks." He messaged me an hour later saying he felt fantastic and so relaxed. : )

After his bath and the message saying how relaxed he was, he sent me this picture saying, "gorgeous sunset wish you were here with me" I was like awe. : ) I replied to him "beautiful...enjoy enjoy, wish I was there too but, see you tomorrow, all is fine here, no worries." he sent me one more pic of what he was eating on the boat and called right before he went to bed, talked to Branden and talked to Noah and said he was proud of the both of them. Backing up a bit, the day before, Thursday evening, Branden read Noah's renrakucho (stamped it and made sure Noah's homework was all finished, phoned dad/Noboru and said he made sure Noah was done. Branden did his own homework and stamped his own renrakucho (communication notebook between parents and teacher). And Noah did tell me directly what his homework assignment was and showed me his work but Branden just doubly made sure, good older brother that he is : ) Friday morning the both of them got up and both dumped the trash, flattened out all the cardboard. I did go around the house to various little trash cans and dumping them into the big trash can, checking the fridge too making sure nothing was old or needing to be thrown out. But yeah the boys were amazing while he was away and Noboru called them Thursday evening and Friday evening while he was away to check in on them besides me. And the boys looked forward to his call. : ) 

Thursday after dropping Noboru off, I went and drove to Narita city and picked up some Pizza Hut. Right now, the Pizza Hut in Narita is having a special, 50% off if you pick up the pizza. I figured with Noboru being gone, I'd like to make our 2 nights here as fun as I could, for both Branden and Noah. So, Pizza Hut was a nice surprise. : ) Thursday night was the night Noboru was transitioning himself and making his way to Tokushima. Friday is when he was in the boat and slept in the bunk bed. : ) 

Two large pepperoni and mushroom pan pizzas and 1 large baked fries. They both get out of school on Thursdays at 3pm. Here in our town it was so bitterly cold, though we got no snow at all. Cold enough we should have, but nope no snow. I heard Tokyo got it, hence the delayed flight. : ) But nope not here. Thursday the boys ate pizza, did homework, went to swim school, came home and had more pizza. Took showers and put on their pjs, Noboru called them and asked how they were. They were happy, they told daddy (Noboru) how mommy bought pizza and they went swimming. Noboru reminded Branden that the next day was trash day and that it's usually his job but since he's not here, he was counting on them. The kids went to sleep and Noboru and I talked for a minute or two. All was quiet and well here. 

Friday, after sending the boys to school, I did a load of laundry, vacuumed the upstairs and downstairs, cleaned the house, pulled the laundry out of the dryer and folded it. At noon, I set the rice cooker. Cut the chicken, for the chicken teriyaki bowls. Wrapped it and put it in the fridge. Picked up the kids Friday from school. They brought me all their notes. Branden told me about his upcoming ensoku/field trip to Tokyo and he will be needing a lunch for that. But that's in a few weeks. But at least I have the heads up. The boys finished their homework. I meanwhile made dinner. I usually will make this when Noboru isn't here, but Noboru does like this too, and I make his with thigh meat. It's a very Americanized chicken teriyaki bowl. Something you might get at a food court in the mall in the states. And what I notice about eating in a food court in the US, is families share food. Say someone is eating Subway and someone KFC or someone Burger King, they will say, "hey can I have a few fries", "oh yeah sure, no problem" and so, that's how this meal came about. Someone would surely be sharing a few fries with someone else. So it's a total food court type teriyaki bowl, even with a few french fries. Just 3, because that's how many people would share, I'd say, if I were to take a guess. : ) Just white/chicken breast meat (skinless), mushrooms, some steamed broccoli and 3 fries, and a light sprinkling of seasoning on the chicken. we had that for supper last night. It's very filling. The boys went upstairs and took their goggles into the tub, they were going to enjoy a nice hot bath/soak after a shower first. I meanwhile just read through some emails and by the time they came down, both Branden and Noah were melting from the tub, they had on their jammies on and hung out on the couch for the rest of the night. I went upstairs and took a quick shower and a soak in the tub and then came downstairs in my Frosty fleece-y night T and a pony tail. We popped popcorn and watched Pearl Harbor on TV last night. Noah konked out before the end, but Branden and I finished it.

This weekend here in Japan will be a 3 day weekend. It's a holiday here (Coming of Age Day) and schools are closed. No school for Branden and Noah this coming Monday. 3 day weekends are so nice. :) Anyway that's it for now, I have a bits and pieces/catch up type post to do, but I am just going to chill out here at home and enjoy the weekend. Noboru got here this morning and the only thing we have planned to do today is to hit that cheap 20% off time at the cheap meat store. lol. : )
PS, Our little red R2 came from Okayama, the mini mini van, we just bought just now, also came from Okayama and the Mazda MPV came from Osaka, lol. Hahaha. Just something that made us laugh when we realized that, this morning. : )