First, work was good for both of us. For me, I was actually finishing up my time at Kashiwagi. I will write another entry on that later, but since it's just a part time position, it's not worth finding and paying for reliable child care. I'm very excited to be able to spend at least the first year as a mom at home with my baby. Ideally, I would have liked to have worked much longer, but the students have a summer vacation from mid-July until the beginning of September so that wasn't an option. This is the end of their first trimester grading period, so it was a good point for me to part ways. I helped find a replacement teacher and even though I only met her once, I think she will do a great job and the kids will like her. I will miss my co-workers and the students, but again, I'm excited for my new job as a mom to start.
Bryan's work is good. It's mostly pretty much the same as always, except he's taken on more responsibilities recently. Unfortunately for him, this means more meetings and being in charge of more projects and people, but that's normal for Navy dentists. He's currently learning how to work with architects and read blue prints, as he's the representative from the dental department for the clinic's upcoming renovation. I'm pretty sure he'd rather be seeing patients, but he seems to still get some entertainment out of the whole thing.
Life at home is good. We are doing a lot of relaxing and taking advantage of our last kid-free months. Bryan participates in more "activities" (golf, bowling, softball, volleyball...you name it, he does it. He starts badminton next week, not kidding.) than anyone else I know. His BFF here, James, is leaving at the beginning of September and then Baby Gal arrives, so he's got to get in all of his fun stuff now, before major responsibility are upon us. However, we are very excited about preparing for Baby Gal's arrival. We put together her crib and have bought/received many things for her already. Her dresser is full of 0-6 months clothes and she has more shoes than I ever plan on putting on her. There are some major perks of having your first child at 30 and while in the Navy. 1. The majority of our friends already have children and have lots of great advice to share. 2. These same friends also have a lot of baby clothing/gear that they want to give away. 3. Navy families are generally pretty good purgers. When you move every 3-4 years, you don't want to bring along stuff that you don't need anymore. Therefore, they give it away or sell it for super cheap! See where I'm going with this?? We have been given sooo many great things, including an awesome car seat, a jogging stroller, tons of clothes, lots of toys that are in great shape, and many more things that you need. Thank you, thank you, thank you, friends!!! It took awhile, but we finally have all the gifts organized in her room.
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| Baby Gal's room is ready for her! |
On a related note, major shout out to Ashley, as she spent a lot of time organizing a mailing shower. We registered on Amazon.com and she surprised us by collecting money from my friends and other family members, asked what items they wanted to give me, and then ordered it all, so that it arrived within a few days of each other. Of course I'm sad that I couldn't have a real shower back home, but this was a great alternative. We waited until almost everything had arrived and opened it all last night. We received so many great presents and are super grateful for everyone's generosity, cooperation, and kind words. We can't wait to start using them all!
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| Lots of fun gifts from home! |
My friends here also threw an awesome shower for me too! They know me very well so it was held on base in a private room during Sunday Brunch. They decorated it really cute with a Bun in the Oven theme since I love baking. They made a little oven and had what we call "crack bread" from the local bakery called Bun Bun as favors. They also had lots of pink and my favorite flowers, stargazer lilies, as centerpieces. It was really pretty! Huge thank you to Kat, Kristin and Rachel for putting it together. And of course a thank you to everyone who attended and brought awesome gifts.
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| See the little oven and yummy "buns"?? So cute! |
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| My June Yamato shrine sale (flea market) findings: A beautiful yukata (not sure my goal for it yet), a vintage purse and a pink serving platter. |
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| In the US we have UPS and Fed Ex trucks. Here in Japan, we also have FedEx trucks, but the Yamato shipping company (also known as the Black Cats due to their logo) also uses delivery carts that can be pushed or pulled on a bike as well as scooters. I think this is still efficient since our part of Japan is so densely populated and you can't easily get a big truck down the side roads. |
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| Most of June's weather can be summed up pretty well in the two pictures above. |
Because the weather made me want to stay inside, my new hobby kicked off well. I've been wanting to learn how to sew again (apparently what I learned back in 4H in the 4th grade didn't stick with me too well), especially since Baby Gal is on the way. With a little extra motivation from my friend Kristin, good ol' Pinterest, and a trip to Nippori Fabric Town (a whole street full of fabric stores in Tokyo!) I marched down to the NEX and bought myself a Singer Simple sewing machine. There has been a lot of cursing and watching of YouTube videos, but I'm slowly catching on. My first projects were prettying-up cloth diapers to use as burp cloths. From there I moved on to two pennant style banners for Baby Gal's room, a car seat canopy cover (just to keep the light out if she's napping), a stroller blanket, and some car seat strap covers. Turns out when you're trying to make things that are supposed to match, like the car seat straps, you should be a lot more careful with your measuring. Lesson learned!
My next project is to make a quilt. I have collected some Japanese prints that I'll be using, but I want a few more colors to add in still. Tomorrow I'm headed back up to Nippori to find more colors for the front, as well as to choose the backing and the background color for the front. The quilt is my major reason for wanting to start sewing and I have really high expectations for it in my head so I'm nervous to actually begin. But after tomorrow, there will be no excuses!
My friend Mariko was super generous and brought over two boxes of fabric for me that she no longer wanted. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with half of it, but the other half will be awesome for making adorable pillowcase style dresses, Ergo strap covers, and maybe some other pieces for Baby Gal. There's a lot of other really cool pieces that I'll eventually find a use for too. Thanks, Mariko!
In sad news, Bryan's co-worker and our dear friend, Amanda, has left us. She is such a fun lady and we already miss having her and her crazy amount of energy around. In good news, she will eventually be coming back to Japan, but to Okinawa (waaaaay far south of us!) so that gives us a good reason to take a winter trip to the beach.
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| Bryan and Amanda, at a farewell dinner, patiently waiting for our shabu shabu broth to get hot. |
Every spring I have great expectations for planting. Every summer, I am disappointed in what survived. I blame the fact that I have no grass and potted plants are more finicky (or so I tell myself). My pumpkins all died and my sunflowers are scrawny and look terrible. However, my Stargazer lily did well again this year :-) And that's all that really matters, as it's my favorite.
Bryan and I LOVE Thai food. Our favorite restaurant is this little hole-in-the-wall place that you have to ascend a very tight spiral staircase and then duck your head as you go through the little door. You order and then you wait. And then you wait some more, and then some more. And then, after at least 45 minutes, some of your food will start to arrive. As soon as you lay eyes on it, you know it was totally worth the wait. There is one cook and one server/assistant. If it's busy, expect any even longer wait. But that's okay, because everything is made to order and tastes amazing. I asked the owner/cooking lady to teach me how to cook, but she just laughed at me and said her English wasn't good enough. Lies!!! I think she just didn't want me to stop coming to her restaurant (can't say I blame her). I have looked up some online recipes and have had fairly successful results, but it's never the same. *Deep sign* I feel it will never be the same. But I will continue trying! And part of my efforts led me to take a Thai cooking class. It was in Yokohama and involved trekking up a rather large hill, so unfortunately, I haven't been back. I'm hoping after baby arrives and sometime before we leave, I can attend a few more. We made a crab curry, a glass noodle soup, Thai tea, and my favorite, a coconut milk rice dessert topped with fresh mangoes. Amazing!!! I found it on meetup.com and it was just in some lady's home. There was me, a German gal who is living in Tokyo for work (she speaks English) and a couple of Japanese ladies. The Thai lady spoke both Japanese and English, but taught mostly in Japanese. I just had to jump in to ask questions a few time when I needed clarification. Overall, it was a great time!
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| So, so good! |
Once I'm back in Ohio and I think of summers in Japan, several thoughts will quickly come to me: hot and humid, fireworks, and festivals. The hot and humid can't be avoided. The fireworks and festivals are plentiful and shouldn't be missed!
I went with Rachel and her fun kiddos to see the Yokohama fireworks. I have no good personal pictures to share, but just believe me when I say it was by far the best fireworks show ever. The fireworks are launched from a barge in the Yokohama Bay. We were very lucky to avoid the crowds and watch them from a small military base on the other side of the bay, rather than from the Minato Mirai area, like approximately 1 million other people did. There are color changing fireworks, smiley face, heart, bow (like the one Hello Kitty wears) shaped fireworks and more! There are 15,000 fireworks launched over an hour and a half. They launch them for about 15 minutes and then take about a 5 minute break, which I assume they use to set up the next set and let the smoke clear a bit.
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| Pretty cool, huh? This photo is from DeepJapan.org. |
Festivals are really fun here. While there are festivals throughout the year, late July is Obon season.
Obon (お盆?) or just Bon (盆?) is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist-Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.
I think my favorite part of any festival is probably the traditional dress. The ladies wear yukata, which is a casual version of a kimono. They're cotton instead of silk, but you still wear the obi, the wide belt. Yukata seem to be mostly worn by ladies, but there are men's versions too. Men also wear jinbei, which is a similar look, only shorts and a shirt. I don't know what they're called, but there's also the outfit that some guys wear that consists of very short, tight white shorts and a festival jacket. They make me giggle a bit.
I also love to watch the drumming and dancing (I love the food too: yakitori, kakigori, fried baked potatoes with a huge scoop of butter, yakisoba, takoyaki, mmmm!). I've posted videos before (shortly after we arrived in Japan), but this year I actually participated in the dancing myself! A bunch of the local ladies taught us the local traditional dances. Each city has their own dance that is performed at their festival, plus others. Dancing and wearing yukata while pregnant isn't ideal, but our first year we had just arrived, last year we were in Hawaii, and next year we probably won't be here. So pregnant dancing happened! It wasn't as hot as I expected, I just looked huge. Turns out yukata are not very forgiving of large bellies. Oh well! It was still fun :-)
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| These pictures are from performing at the Yamato Awa Dori festival. |
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| This is also from the Yamato Awa Dori. The local ladies lead the way in the parade and we follow. |
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| These pictures are all from the base's Obon festival. |
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