Beer Fest! and Our House

Heeeeeeeyyyyy, friends!   It's kind of a blah day out today.  It's Sunday.  It's hot, but not sunny.  Meh.   I ironed new curtains (that took awhile) and put together 2 new shelves.  That's productive, right?  I was trying to think of something else productive, but that does not require heaps of energy.  So here I am, updating the blog.

First, I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my Mt. Fuji post.   A couple miles out from the 5th Station of Mt. Fuji (where almost everyone starts climbing), the road has grooves in it and as you drive over, a song plays.  I loved this and hope you do too!.  There was a car commercial like this, I do believe.  I wasn't able to record it, but I found someone else who did.

Yesterday we went to the Yokohama Beer Fest.  *Fun fact:  Yokohama is the 2nd largest city in Japan, even thought it's just a hop, skip and jump from Tokyo (the largest, of course).*    It was pretty pricey to get in, but once you did, there was all-you-can-drink beer.  It was mostly Japanese beer, but we also found some from the US and Germany.  Some of you may find it strange that I went to a Beer Fest, since perhaps you know how much I don't like beer (I find it to be gross and watery or just gross and it's sooo many calories, so I just avoid it and haven't drank enough to find that "acquired taste" that so many people tell me about).   I humored Bryan and tasted a few, and I honestly was hoping to like several, but I only found one that I wanted to drink more than a sip.

I don't think this was real beer.  More like grapefruit juice with a splash of beer.  I'm a lightweight these days and I didn't feel a thing, despite Jimena getting me many pours.

The festival was held at the Osanbashi International Passenger Terminal, which is actually a cruise ship dock.  The parking in underground, the convention hall is on ground level, and then the deck is built on top of the convention hall.   We were free to go out and relax outside.  I laid down and was trying to bask in the warm sunshine, but security yelled at me.  Perhaps they thought I was a total lush and was passed out??  And on a related note, there were many Americans in attendance.  Of course they were the obnoxious drunks while almost all of the Japanese stayed classy.  We did well though.

The deck with the Yokohama Bay Bridge in the background.  The whole place was designed so that you feel like your on a ship.

The convention hall under the deck.

Nice part of the Yokohama skyline with some ships.

Almost the same as above, just before sunset. The ferris wheel was really cool.  Perhaps we'll ride it some day and go to the top of the Marine Tower.

Changing subjects...

I made coconut macaroon kiss cookies Friday...so, so good!  Yes, of course, it's a pinterest recipe.

Yes, they are as delicious as they look.

We also went to Super Viva Home Plus.  I love saying that.  Just in case "Super" wasn't enough, they had to add the "Plus".    We found some more stuff to make our house more homey and functional, including curtains for our bedroom (yay!!), more shelving for the kitchen, and shelves to put in our one kitchen cupboard. That's right, one kitchen cupboard.  We've got to make it as useful as possible!    No pictures of our kitchen; it's a mess and I don't feel like cleaning it.

But, this does make a nice segue to my next group of pictures:  Things that make our house distinctly Japanese.   Our house is very much an American style home on the inside, but there are several things, that I thought some of you would be interested to see. 

There are two of these intercoms in our house, one upstairs at the top of the steps and one in the kitchen.  As you can see, it has a little screen.  When someone rings our door bell, a video camera right above the doorbell comes on automatically and we can see who is on our steps.  Neat, huh???   Then I can pick up the phone and talk to them!  Or, I can hit a button and call to the other phone inside of the house.   For being such a safe place, they're really into home security.

This is the view from our front door.  There is a door between the entry and then living room/kitchen so that we can keep the cool air in that room, which we use a lot. 

Japanese homes don't have central air conditioning.  Instead they have wall mounted units in rooms that are frequently used.  We have one in the living room/kitchen and in both of the bedrooms.

Reason #227 to visit me: Since the bathroom isn't a main room, it doesn't have an air conditioner/heater.  Therefore, in the winters, it can be a bit chilly.  Don't you worry though, my tooshy will be toasty since my toilet has a seat warmer!   In fact, my toilets can do a lot.  This is it's control panel.  Whoa!!!, huh?!?!?  The top buttons are to flush--big flush or little flush.  And then the rest is for the bidet.  Yes, bidet.  You can control if you'd like the water to spray you in the front or the back, as well as how much water pressure and how wide of a spray you would like.  There are also options for cleaning the toilet too. 

This is my downstairs bathroom.  The toilet is in a separate room from the full sink and tub/shower.  I say full sink because there's a little sink on top of the toilet tank that automatically runs when you flush it (only for big flushes though). Yes, it is clean water, not dirty toilet water.

This is more of our downstairs bathroom.  The washer/dryer and vanity are one part, and then to the right is the shower room.

Yes, a little shower room.  The door closes and you've got all that space to shower.  There's a full length mirror so you can check out your naked self too. 

Here's more of our shower room, which also includes a soaking tub.  And yes, our tub has a control panel too.  Japanese don't use the tub like we do.  They only get in the tub after showering, so they're clean because they keep the water for multiple uses.  There is a re-heat button, as well as an auto-fill button so you can walk away while the tub fills, but it doesn't overflow.  No jets though :-(

This is our kitchen water control panel.  It's very similar to the one in the bathroom.  I honestly don't know what all of the buttons do, but I do know that if I want hot water, I have to hit the green button on the right (it's a little annoying, but I got used to it quickly).   I can also control how hot I want the water to get.

This isn't extremely cool, but appreciated.  All of the doors have magnets on them and so does a little spot on the floor where they open.  This way, I don't have to prop them open or worry about them banging the wall behind.  So it serves the purpose of the little spring things we put behind the doors and door stoppers, all in one.  A bit more complex to install, but very nice.

Not exciting, but I thought I'd include it.  It's the vanity to the upstairs bathroom where I keep all my toiletries.  The toilet room is similar to the one downstairs.  

That's all for now.  I can't wait to show you more pictures of our house, but there's not much else to see since our stuff isn't here.  Once we have furniture and hopefully things hanging on the wall I'll post more. The whole house is covered in thick wall paper that we're not supposed to make holes through, so we're hoping to use 3M Command velcro strips. If you have any other ideas, please let me know.

Hope you enjoy your Sunday-funday!