March 2014: A Visit Home and Steph & Alan Visit Japan

 For most of the month of March, I was back in the USA. I was lucky to spend a weekend with my great friend, Kate, in Atlanta and then almost 3 weeks back in Ohio with family and friends.  Sadly, I didn't take any pictures (I don't even know what I was thinking, probably the major jet lag!), but it was so, so good to see everyone.  I haven't spent much time with Kate lately, but I love her and her family dearly.  She has a cutie daughter and then recently just had twin boys as well, and I'm just amazed at how easy she and her husband make it look.  Crazy!  I then spent some time with my in-laws, checking out some real estate perspectives in the Oxford area as well just getting in some quality visiting time.   I stayed with my sister and her family for the majority of the visit.  Gaby is always a fun ball of energy and I finally got to meet my nephew Owen.  I'm very grateful that they let me take over their basement and come and go, and don't get upset.  It's nice to have such a welcoming home-base while I'm back.  We got in some good shopping, eating, watched Gabs at gymnastics twice, and just enjoyed each other's company.   I had a super fun day with Steph, Val and Jess, at Easton, where we enjoyed brunch and shopping.  Shout out to the Spring Break 2008 crew/my favorite past co-workers ever, Jen, Ashley, and Lisa, who drove down from the Cleveland area, and spent the day with me.  I also enjoyed spending a day with Sarah and her kiddos, and afternoon with Valerie and her new baby, shopping with Laurie, visiting Jen and both sides of my family back in Pennsylvania, and even more people that I'm forgetting at the moment.  Don't hate me!!  It was a whirlwind trip and jet-lag really does mess with your brain.   Oh, and I met a total of 9 new babies.  9!  Elijah, Cristian, Owen, Alden, Aiden, Irie, Liam, Olivia and Kylie.  They range from 6 months to 1 month.  Whew!     But it was really good and again, thank you to everyone who went out of their way to meet me and/or host me.  It means so much to me that you all are so flexible and accommodating whenever I'm home.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!  I can't wait til I'm back in Ohio and can return the favor. 

 We were very lucky to host another great set of friends recently, my great friend Stephanie and her husband Alan.  Steph and I date back to college when we were PMA housemates.  We both moved to Columbus right after college where we were awesome shopping buddies and she's just a great gal to chat with anything about.  I was very excited to hear that they wanted to come see my home-away-from-home, but at the same time, I get nervous too!  Plane tickets are very expensive and for anyone to say that they want to spend a whole week with you (and you be a tour guide), that puts a lot of pressure on me to provide a good vacation!  But it was a good kind of nervous, and I'm pretty confident in saying I did a pretty good job of giving them a good sample of what Kanagawa and Tokyo have to offer :-)  

I landed at Narita Airport at 4:05 and Steph and Alan landed about 15 minutes later.  We decided that we would just endure the jet-lag together.   I must say that the jet-lag didn't slow us down a whole lot though.  We kept quite busy:  Tour of NAF Atsugi, sushi-go-round, Baystars game, hiking/sightseeing in Kamakura, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Harajuku sightseeing, a trip to Tsukiji fish market, seeing Yokohama's Chinatown, a hotel stay at New Sanno, a day in Hakone and  other day to day things like mastering the trains, grocery shopping, recycle store shopping, dinner at Wans, ramen for lunch, and more.  Phew, I feel exhausted all over again, just thinking about it.  Totally worth it though.  Here's the highlights!

Our first Fuji-San viewing, from the flight line of base. 

They took down sushi like seasoned professionals! 

The Baystars did NOT win and it was a big strange watching baseball indoors (at the Tokyo Dome), but still a good time. 

Kamakura!! 

Rubbing a belly for good luck.

Isn't this just pretty? 

Daibutsu, "Big Buddha", at the end of our Kamakura hike.

There were a lot of beautiful kimonos and yukatas in Kamakura, I think because there were several weddings taking place at the shrine. 

More Kamakura!

More pretty ladies.

Taking in some pretty gardens. 

Part of the shrine at the shrine sale we went to in Shinjuku.  It was the tiniest shrine sale ever, but we still found some beautiful obi to have as souvenirs. 

Holy rice balls at the markets outside of Tsukiji.

Tsukiji is the busiest fish market in the world.  Very busy.  Lots of trucks, scooters, and those orange things carrying fish.  And they WILL run into you if you get in their way. 

It's full of crazy sea creatures!

Oh no!  Where did the rest of him go??

We're pretty sure they were telling a "fish story".  Every box is full of some kind of fish or tasty sea creature.

These things are one reason that the ocean is a very scary place!

Tsukiji is just aisle after aisle of this view. 

Fun picture at Shibuya Scramble, the busiest intersection ever.  We were there during mid-day, so it was much calmer than it is during rush hour. 

Ramen, Chinese style, while in Yokohama's Chinatown. 

While in Hakone we were treated to amazing views of Fuji-San!  And a happy sunny day.  This picture was taken in the hot spring area, right after riding the Ropeway. 

In the Ropeway car.

We didn't have a shortage of tori gate sightings! 

I wish I had a picture of either all of the caffeine we consumed or of us all crashed on the couch at the end of each day.   It was a fast and busy 6 days, but we were so happy to host our friends.  Let me know if this has convinced you to make a reservation at Hotel Hornfeck!