Sunday : )

On Sunday, the boys and I just stayed home and they splashed in their pool out back and they also both swung on the swings. Noah likes sitting in the baby swing now. Noboru worked a swing shift, so the boys and I had dinner without him.

I did however, place two orders for some clothes for the boys online. I placed orders from Ralph Lauren and Gap, they will be shipped to my dad's condo in the US, and then he'll ship then onto me, unless I decide to just get them myself when I get to Guam on the first week of September.

So that was our Sunday, pretty uneventful actually. Ha ha ha. Just rested mostly and we watched some great TV shows in the evening and had some shave ice/kakigori. : )

Our neighboorhood summer festival : ) Part 1

Today was the summer festival in the little housing community where we live at. All the kids who live here were invited to carry the rope through the community. They said to make sure your kids are wearing something they could get wet in. So, I had Branden wear his swim trunks and a t-shirt. All the little boys around him are in first grade and a few are in second grade. So they were between 6 and 8 years old. They asked how old Branden was, and he said, he was 4 years old,/yonsai.Then they all proceeded to tell us their ages. Ha ha ha. Kids! As if we all were wondering. We weren't at all. But it's nice they were all so friendly. : )


Here's one of my neighbors houses. A lot of the people who live here, have husband's who work in Tokyo, however they wanted to live in a quieter area so they chose to live here in the country-side of Chiba. Their husbands take the hour long commute to work by train in droves each day. Rumi's husband does this as well. Noboru however works at Narita airport so he works very close to where we live.






Here's Branden and two cute little girls checking out a very large dead bug! These bugs come out every year at the middle to end of summer, they make loud noise and then they just die. The name of them, escapes me right now. But they look like enormous cockroaches or something. They look gross! The little girl in the straw hat kept picking up the offensive looking dead bug and showing it to me. Blech! I personally hate all creepy crawlies. I just smiled and went..."oh wow" (in Japanese of course) and I told her how huge he was (the bug). I was actually thinking how I wanted to wipe her hands with a wet wipe! But I wouldn't ever say that! Branden didn't touch the thing! He does touch rollie polies and frogs though. Yikes! : )



The oldest kids got to carry the float. I also wanted to mention, the kids carrying the float, the girls actually. Well, as we made a few stops from walking. They happened to realize that a foreigner was among them. One of the preteen girls saw me first and I was holding on to the stroller at the time. She then, said something to the effect of me being a gaijin. Then, the other girls said, gaijin doko? And I was thinking "oh great not this crap again." My feeling is, I know I'm American. I'm sorry about this but I can't change this fact. I just want to be treated like normal. No better, no worse. Just normal. Having 5 girls all chatting about the foreigner attending *their* summer festival. Makes me feel super uncomfortable. Never mind the fact that I actually live in this community right along with them. I started wondering if someday my kids will be embarassed by having a foreign mom. My parents say, no way! However, the girls staring at me today, like I'm a freak show didn't help. People pointing at my son sitting in the stroller. You know, the look. A Japanese person looks at my son, takes this double take, you can see the sheer shock. Then the sheer and utter staring starts. My husband says the staring shouldn't bother me. But it sadly does sometimes.


People in the houses all came out and squirted all the kids with their hoses. This lady and the man in this picture know me already. They see me every day since I usually pass their house when I get Branden from the yochien bus. And, I do make a point about trying to get to know all my neighbors, well as much as I can. Every day when I am out front cleaning off my porch, I greet all my neghbors who pass by. Everyone on my block/street knows me. And about 30 other people know me, during my walks and whatnot I take. However today, the day of the festival, I did not see one single person I knew! It was so weird! So I was as shocked at not knowing any of them, as they were as shocked by having a foreigner in their midst! Ha ha ha! :)
















This is the center of the community where we live. It's a grassy hill/park that's lighted really nice at night. And the tennis courts are on the other side and the kids playground is there as well as the community center. The center has hula lessons and karaoke for people during the day time and evenings. They also offer tennis lessons. This old lady keeps inviting me to attend the hula class. This is the path I walk twice a day with Noah while we drop off Branden at the bus stop.






This is the house with the lady who was squirting the hose in the other pic. See? As I cross the little path, the lady is usually tending to her garden each day. So we usually greet one another daily.

Our neighborhood festival : )

Noah during one of the breaks all the people took. They had little stands of Aquirius Sports drinks in little paper cups for all the kids to drink. We even filled up Noah's sippy with a cup of that. And they also had snacks set up. They didn't want any of the kids to over heat. They had so many stops. Seems we walk 2 minutes and there would be another 100 cups of sports drink waiting for the kids!

Yes, it was a hot day. You can see the sweat on Noah's forehead in these two pics and the look of, "I'm melting"










Even at this stop they all had gummi snails for the kids to eat. Aside from some people staring a bit, we all had a fun day!

Friday

With the exception of going to Akihabara on Monday and out to dinner on Tuesday, our family has just been hanging home this week. Not doing too much! The reason is like I said, I've got less then 2 weeks now before Branden starts yochien again after being off for summer vacation. And I've just been hanging out at home. Kicking back and enjoying myself completely. Lazy bum that I am, ha ha ha!

I've been staying awake every night now from about 1:00 am every night until about 3:30 am at the latest. I do it because I'm naturally a night owl to begin with. Ever since I was in high school and college. I hate mornings. But with a child in yochien, I've got to be a morning person, whether I like it or not. Ha ha ha! However with this summer break, I've been staying awake super late. Well after the boys are fast asleep. I watch crap on TV that I love, junk food for my brain! But it really helps me unwind from the day. It's the only time of day, just for me. So after everyone's in bed, I sit on the couch with my pillow and watch stuff.

Tonight, I watched American History X, with Noboru after the boys went to sleep. Sometimes though Noboru is sleepy and I don't mind at all, watching TV by myself. Suits me fine as well. LOL. About the movie, I've seen it before, but it's a good movie. And also a sad movie. Sad, meaning sad that events like that even had to happen in the first place.But it's a good movie, so we watched it.

I still can't believe in less then two weeks I have to start waking up at 6:45 am. Ugh! I don't even want to think about it right now! Ha ha ha!

So anyway, not much going on here, just same ol' same ol', making dinner. A bit of cleaning here and there and the never ending laundry that needs to be washed, ha ha ha : ). But mostly enjoying the end of summer break.: )

PS, whoops, oh yeah, I forgot to add, the pictures were of tonight's dinner. Just ribs, veggies and a can of Bush's baked beans. And some biscuits. We had rice as well, but I put it in a separate dish.

And ginger pork for dinner! : )

This is the ginger pork sauce I always use. I know many people make their own. And I totally respect that and think that's awesome! And if I wasn't chasing down two boys all day long, I might try making mine homemade as well. But with two kids, forget about it! : ) I buy this and it's the best! I tried another brand and it was sorta watery and not very flavorful. This one has tons of grated ginger, you can see it on the bottom of the bottle. This is the most flavorful one, I've found in Japan. And I won't change brands ever, seriously! But of course use whatever brand you all like. It's just what we use in our house. : )
The pork has got to be thin! That's the key with ginger pork. I bought some pork in the US and tried to make this for my family back home. It sucked! Because the pork was so thick, it didn't truly marinate all the way through. Also, it was too meaty being so thick. Ginger pork has got to be thin.

Easy peasy! Threw the pork into a gallon freezer bag, threw half the bottle of sauce in and made sure the sauce was soaking all the meat and then threw it into the fridge for hours. Forgot about it actually, until my stomach started grumbling around dinner time. : )
Fried it in the tiniest dot of olive oil. And when it was done, right before ,I was going to get it out of the pan, I threw the remaining sauce on it to warm it up. Quick, easy and good. Also quite affordable. I gave Noboru and the boys some miso soup to go with this as well. : )

Grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch!

Today the boys once again played in the back yard in their small little inflatable pool with slide. They splashed and splashed away out back, while I sat on the terrace underneath our umbrella. We all came in, they got changed and I made lunch. I made two grilled cheese sandwiches all cut into toddler sized slices. And a plate of french fries.

Noah, I swear, he ate 3 slices of sandwich all by himself and about 6 fries. This kid eats more then anyone I've ever seen for his age, yet he's lean and mean and has no fat to speak of, go figure!

Branden ate about 4 mini sandwiches and about 12 fries. As usual, I ate the left overs. Ahh life as a mom, cough cough, I mean the human garbage disposal. Ha ha ha! : )

A brief update about Branden. Branden and I have been working on numbers lately. He can count to 50 all by himself. Obviously he knows the ABC's song already, since he was about 2 years old actually is when he learned that song. And I was going through the month's of the year with him as well today. I try to spend about 15 minutes each day going through things, I think he should know. If it's super important, we spend more time with it. But with it being summer and all. I don't want him to stress about this and just be a kid. But yes, we do study a pinch each day. He's knows the month's of the year. But he has not memorized them fully yet. He confuses November and February and when he is saying January February March, etc...he will say November where February should be, ha ha ha. So we are working on that at the moment. And for being age 4, he's not doing bad.

So after a pinch of study time. I read both of them a Spongebob book. And then I watched Branden play his Leapster game for a little while. This game is really good. It helps him with math and adding right now. His favorite character Spongebob, shows him two handfuls of change and asks him which hand has a larger amount. Or it asks him to give Spongebob 68 cents for example and he has to get each coin, some are pennies and some are nickels, and quarters etc. he has to add it himself! I love playing this adding/counting game with Branden, it's one of our things we love doing together. And he is working on shapes right now as well. It's goes beyond, a square and circle and stuff. It's like octagon, semi circle, obtuse and so on. He's got it and he's actually really good at this. He's working on the hardest level right now.

No swimming school this week, because it's obon this week. And I'm not able to go to Costco this week. Shit! However we have to go next week or else. Because we are having company on August 26th and the August 28th, so we have to go before then.

Jun called us today. He told Noboru some big news! Jun and his wife are having a baby! Yes, they are due at the end of march. I'm just thrilled. He's such a wonderful brother in-law and the best uncle to our two boys! He shows up for Branden's undokai/sports day. He's really wonderful! I am so happy for them! : )

And at this rate, I don't think we will be going anywhere for obon. : ( We really wanted to, but with Noboru having to work (he doesn't have off for obon at all, since he works for an American company, sigh) and we'd only be able to stay one night and driving or staying someplace far, would be out of the question. We sorta came to that conclusion the day we went to Akihabara. So we scratched that idea out. Bummer! However, Noboru requested his days off, September 4th through the 8th, and if he gets his days off, we will pop over to Guam. So please wish us luck that he gets his days off. We've been wanting to go somewhere, do something. Ha ha ha! Hopefully he gets his days off in September! : )

The grocery store and another backyard BBQ : )

This morning, we ran to Japan meat/Joyful Honda grocery store in Chiba Newtown (yup that's really and truly the name of this city, ha ha ha), bought a week's worth of groceries. Loaded them all into the car and drove home.

I'm glad this store has a bunch of things that up until now, I thought were mainly only available at Costco. BBQ ribs for example, I miss eating and making a big ol' slab of BBQ ribs. of course we have Tony Roma's or the Outback Steakhouse but it's about the length of where Costco is, so it's far for us. I've been seeing the slab of ribs at this grocery store for month's now. The price is about $19.00 US and the reason I've not bought them! However today I finally just went ahead and bought them anyway! They also sell whole chickens. In the US buying a whole chicken is no big deal and can be purchased anywhere. But in Japan, it's been pretty hard finding a whole chicken.

However Costco sells whole chickens all year round (as I'm sure everyone knows already :). And plus they have the already roasted ones in the deli, yumm. Also the Co-op grocery store that used to be where I used to live used to sell whole chickens around Christmas time. So, I know they can be found, you may have to look but they are around. However Japan Meat sells them all year round just like Costco, and for me this is a lot closer! So I've been buying them here for the past month. The price is cheaper then the ones at Costco, I think. These are 680 yen.. They also have whole chickens from Brazil, and they were like 450 yen, I didn't buy them though only because they were twice as small. So small in fact, I thought they were cornish game hens at first. The whole chickens from Japan for 680 yen are normal sized though, which is why I've been buying them.

I bought 2 pork roasts. I wanted the pork loin but it was over 900 yen! Too expensive. So I bought another type of pork roast and bought two since they were the same size but one was like 380 yen and one was like 420 yen. So affordable enough. I also got thin sliced pork for ginger pork as well.

I'm going to be making ginger pork this week, BBQ pork ribs this week, BBQ pork sandwich (yup we all liked it so much Noboru asked me to make it again), Lot's of chicken breasts (great for karaage and other things), ground beef. Gyoza.

I figure, we have just 14 days left until Branden starts school again! Shit, can't believe in two short weeks I will again be waking up early and making obentos all over again, sigh! So, I'm going to enjoy every bit of summer we have left! Sleep in late! Stay awake as late as I want! And, have enough BBQ's, that when summers come and gone, we will have had no regrets at all! Shave ice galore! Summer will have been enjoyed to the fullest by us. Fireworks, festivals and all!

So, we got more shave ice syrups as well. Summer will go out in a reign of glory, ha ha ha! Eat so much BBQ we will be tired of it. Eat so much shave ice, we won't want anymore. Go to every festival we can. Two more weeks of it at least. : )



As soon as we got home from the grocery store, Noboru started marinating some meat. He wanted to BBQ in our backyard. He has told me he marinated the meat 5 times. It was well marinated. I personally thought he overcooked the meat. The chicken and pork riblets (not the slab of ribs) he bought for BBQ'ing all looked a bit on the toasted side. I didn't say anything, because I was glad I didn't have to cook. And he did try, and he rarely cooks bad, so I didn't see the need to make him feel bad. He mentioned to me already he though he burnt it. I told him it was well marinated though : )

We all had shave ice after supper. It was a good day.

Capricciosa and karaoke! : )

Noah taking an afternoon nap today on the couch.

I did a few loads of laundry in the day time. For dinner, we went to Chiba New Town, we wanted to go eat some Chinese food. We were thinking, fried rice, karaage and ebi chili, and gyoza! Noboru wanted ramen as well. However, the restaurant was so full there was a long wait, about 45 minutes to be exact. We were all so hungry, we chucked the idea. We then drove across the street where they have the complex/building of restaurants. We thought Indian would be great! Remember, we liked that place! However, would you believe it was closed for obon! Grrr! Ha ha ha! By this time hunger has taken over and we thought, let's just walk upstairs and have some Italian at Capricciosa. So that's what we did. We ordered the special for the family of three. Yes, we are a family of four, ha ha ha. but Noah certainly doesn't need his own ice-cream yet, he shares with us. So, all of us ate and had a good time.


Here's my pasta on my plate. We got one pasta sauce with fresh basil. And the other was with garlic. We all decided the garlic one tasted much better. So next time we go there, we will just get two pastas with garlic and tomato. The family of 3 meal, comes with two large pastas and 1 pizza and 3 desserts. And with 3 drinks for dinner and 3 drinks for dessert.















Vanilla ice-cream with warm bluebery sauce. Yummm! We each chose this one, even though you can have cheesecake or chocolate cake etc.



After dinner, we were not really wanting to go home. So we went to the local karaoke place. We usually sing for 2 hours, but tonight we sang for 3 hours. I think because we haven't been there in such a long time. Here's a pic of Noboru singing Shima Uta. I sang a few Beetles songs. Cherish by Madonna, I will survive (Gloria Gaynor), Tubthumping, Nothing Compares to You, by Sinead, ha ha ha. Hotel California by the Eagles, and a whole bunch of other songs! It was fun! We all had a really good time! : )

Akihabara (electric town)

This morning when we all woke up, Noboru said, "get dressed, let's all go to Akihabara today and take the train." I was happy because well, I've been wanting a digital camera for the longest time. I've never owned one before, if you can believe it. However my digital camcorder takes pics, so that is why I haven't pushed for one. However the past couple month's my camcorder/camera has been going crazy! It started taking funky pictures, they wouldn't be focused right at all. The camera would go weird around lights and show a weird yellow tinge. At first it only happened once in a great while. But the past month, it started happening more often. And the past two weeks, it happened most of the time. To take 1 picture would take a long time, and sometimes the special moment, would be long gone by the time my camera behaved!

Noboru knew the headache my camera was giving me. I had researched about digital cameras on Amazon, read all the reviews. I decided the best one for me, was the Sony T9. Everyone raved about it. One guy who reviews cameras said it was the best one, he's seen in a long time. Noboru had been researching it and we both liked the Sony T9.

With obon under way, and traffic jams all over Japan, we knew taking the highway and driving there was outta the question. We never ride the trains,only because with us living in the country it makes more sense for us to drive. So we were all a bit unsure how our family of 4 would be on the trains. We took the bigger roomier "green car", well Branden is at the easy age and so he was no problem at all. And Noah was surprisingly no problem at all either. He looked out the window with Branden all the way there. When we arrived in Akihabara, we suddenly heard about a huge power outage in Tokyo. We worried if we would be stranded in Tokyo! We thought, "oh great the one in a million time, we ride the train, we get stuck?" However lucky for us, Akihabara (electric town) was unaffected completely, phew!

There were a gazillion people all over Akihabara! And with me being used to living in the Japanese country side, I was not used to being around the hoards of people like that! It was nice getting the things we needed to get. However, I will be honest and forthcoming to say, taking the train sucks! I think if we were going without kids in tow it might not have been so bad. But as a family of four, plus the stroller. Ugh, definitely hard.

In Japan, some train stations have escalators but a lot don't and you just have stairs. I'm telling you, with two kids in tow, plus the stroller, and our stroller is super light btw. However going up the stairs, down the stairs. Up again and down the fleet of stairs again. All while carrying the stroller, plus the heavy electronics we bought. And yup, without the car, I realized how tough it is to actually have to lug everything by hand. Clearly I was not used to taking the train. And Noboru hated it as well. Branden was exhausted, but he couldn't take a nap like he could have if we would have had our car. So he kept having to walk and walk and walk. And if you are reading this and you have kids, you'll know what I mean when I say, even kids who walk...can get tired and want to be carried and want big hugs.

So with kids and stroller and heavy equipment all in tow, it was truly exhausting! All in all, it was about 6 long grueling hours. And on foot, with no car and no air conditioning. We felt every dot of the Japanese summer! We got our car at the Narita train station where we left it. We were so happy to see our car, tears almost came out! Ha ha ha! We were in zero mood for cooking. We drove through the Mc Donald's drive thru and the boys and I got something. They got kids meals and I got a chicken pita sandwich and a salad in a cup. Noboru stopped off at Yoshinoya for himself and we went home. We all ate. After that, I was so exhausted I said....no showers for us tonight. Until I saw Branden's and Noah's toes! Their toes were completely black with dirt! Was it from walking around Tokyo? Was it dirt, or smog? I'm not quite sure. I've honestly never seen their feet look *that* dirty before. Not even when we went to Disneyland or Disney Sea! I then looked at my toes and they were completely black as well! What the heck? The boys and I all jumped into a cool shower and got squeaky clean. I made sure to wash everyone's feet three times.

I got all our pajamas put on. The boys fell right to sleep. Not even a dot of TV. I sat in front of the TV for about 10 minutes. Not really watching per say, more like reliving the entire day in my head while starting at the TV screen.I felt too sleepy, so I went to bed. Noboru fell asleep right away too.

Here's the pics from our day in Tokyo at Akihabara! : )

Branden in the train.


Noah in the train. : )




In Tokyo, but on our way home! : )


The things we got are, a digital camera, a camcorder, and a region free portable DVD player. We had a portable DVD player for the past 2 years. But it broke/stopped working 2 month's ago. So, since they had them there and they were region free. We figured, why not! The portable DVD player keeps Branden entertained on long flights. : )

Just a lazy Sunday at home : )

Noboru is working a swing shift tonight. Meaning he won't be having dinner with us and he won't be able to leave work until midnight, poor guy! He'll be fine because he'll eat at work with his coworkers. Meanwhile, I've had a nice day. The boys played outside in the backyard in the small pool. I ran to the store to get something *easy*. With it just being the boys and I, I've got no one to impress, ha ha ha. And why not make it an easy night. I got the pre-made sauce. Just boil it and mix. I boiled the pasta. And made some garlic bread real quick. Dinner was good, and fast. The boys ate it up. And we took showers and got cleaned up and then we all watched Nanny Mc Phee again. Just a nice good night at home.



Yup, during meal time at home. I strip Noah down and he eats his meals in just his diapers. Branden was a clean eater when he was little. But Noah, he likes to get good and messy and really enjoy every inch of his food. After soaking countless amounts of onesies in Oxyclean and pretreating them in the Tide stick pens. I figure it's easier for him to just eat in his diaper. And bibs? Ha! He's too smart for them, he clearly mastered the bib thing long ago. The velcro ones he rips off. The tie ones, he reaches in the back and unties. And some bibs, he just plainly worms out of. So, we decided month's ago, if this is easier and he's more comfortable eating this way. So be it, then. And we've never had a problem since. I do however put clothes on him when my mother in-law comes over to visit. She might have a heart attack if she saw, I let Noah eat that way. But yes this is how he eats most of the time when we are at home. And yes, that's pasta stuck to his chest as well. Ha ha ha!

A hearty eater! : )