I've been wanting to participate in this fun photo project I saw a while back but I just never think about it...until today! The idea is to take 10 photos on the 10th of each month, one an hour for 10 hours. I didn't have my camera with me for most of the day, so these are all iPhone photos, but I think this is a fun way to document your day.
Today we babysat a couple of cuties
we played tennis
my husband taught them how to be creepers (aka, searching randomly through Google earth)
we went to church
then to lunch, where we got lots of cherries in our lemonade
we attempted and failed at nap time
we went to see Cars 2 (which I loved, and all the stuff that they show about Tokyo was hilarious and true)
due to the lack of nap time, one of us didn't make it through all of the movie
we went to the park
where we played until mom and dad came home
We had a really fun day, but we're exhausted and going to bed early tonight!
I haven't enjoyed a 4 day weekend this much in a long time. Our weekend was filled with the perfect balance of excitement and relaxation.
The 1st day of every month, a Shrine a few towns over has a huge flea market type sale. They sell a variety of used Japanese goods like kimonos, obis, pottery, and small trinket items. There is a West Point cadet here TDY for a month and she wanted to pick up a few of these items so some of my neighbors and I took her to the sale on Friday. It was was crazy hot but a lot of fun looking at all the stuff. After shopping we had lunch at the TGI Fridays there.
While we were out shopping, Jason spent the morning/afternoon fishing. He had me convinced to eat this guy for dinner...until I saw it mid-cleaning! YUCK! I prefer not to see my food in that stage.
Friday night we went to a local Mexican joint with a bunch of our neighbors. YUM!
(sorry no photos)
Saturday morning I had an ESL lesson, then Jason and I spent a few hours at the pool over at Atsugi. Our favorite thing about spending time there, McDonald's fountain soda for me and Baskin Robins ice cream for him. 2 things we can't get on our base
Then we headed to the 4th of July celebration at a park on our base.
They had a petting zoo set up and I think that was everyone's favorite part of the afternoon.
we really miss our "binny pig"
The kids were fearless around the animals
so were the adults
yes, that's my husband with 3 rats crawling on him!
We had a great time with friends
found the cheapest form of entertainment ever!
and Jason and I even put on a little show!
There's a bit of a back story to those last 2. We are both big fans of ska music, so at our wedding, we had the DJ play a song by Reel Big Fish called "Sell Out". Here we are dancing to this song at our wedding.
My mom likes to refer to this as "crazy dancing" but it's actually called "skanking". As you can see, out of the 200 people at our wedding, there were 6 of us that knew what was going on. It's one of my most favorite moments from our wedding day, one I will definitely never forget! So, when the Army band started to play this song on Saturday, I forced my hubby to go out in front of all of Camp Zama (and probably most of Atsugi) and dance with me. My neighbor was kind enough to snap a few photos of us doing our thing.
After some fun at the park, we returned to our neighborhood where we had a fabulous view of the fireworks from our neighbors house.
Awesome neighbors, Cristy, Melody, myself and Kristin
some of Camp Zama's firework display...
not to shabby for not having a tripod
We had a great time celebrating America's birthday together
We spent the actual 4th of July relaxing at the pool with some friends.
It was the perfect way to end the long weekend!
(Sorry this turned into the longest blog post ever!)
Last week I had the privilege of giving a little back to this awesome host country I call home. I found an organization in Tokyo called Second Harvest Japan
that prepares meals for the homeless every week and is also currently packaging food that is donated to send up north to families that are still struggling after the earthquake/tsunami and decided to volunteer some of my time. The people of Japan have been some hospitable and warm towards me since I've been here, I feel donating a little of my time is the least I can do to say thank you.
My friend Melissa, her son, and I rode the train into Tokyo where we spent 2 hours (it was supposed to be longer, but we finished quicker than expected) with about 15 other people packing boxes with food.
Each box contained a large bag of rice, miso paste, soy sauce, cooking oil, vinegar, water, 2 cans of corn, 4 cans of tuna, 4 small boxes of candy, a mystery box (I think someone said it was a box of broth of some sort), a bag of MSG, a bowl of noodles, some type of dessert bars that looked like nutrigrain bars and hand wipes. We also included a letter from the organization and a coloring page from a student in NY.
It was over 100 degrees with the heat index that day, and I'm sure a lot of my sweat literally dripped into those boxes, but I was so excited about what I was doing that I didn't barely noticed.
Melissa and I after 300 boxes were complete. We can't wait to go back and do it again.
We decided we were hungry after packing all that food, so we grabbed some Japanese convenience store food before getting on the train back home.
yakisoba on a bun with mayo and ginger. it's one of my favorite "on the go" foods here
what I thought was a salad turned out to be noodles with veggies and salmon and some Italian dressing. Also quite yummy!
lastly, I had a rice ball that was stuffed with tuna salad and wrapped in seaweed (which I removed before eating)
it was all way better than the chips or fast food we'd grab in the states.
(sorry for the crappy photo quality, the train was a little bumpy and the iPhone wouldn't focus)
Upon our arrival back at our home train station, we were greeted with a gorgeous double rainbow
Our neighbors have the most gorgeous hydrangea bush outside their house
this is the harvest from out mini garden this week
a fun day in the sun...
resulted in some red legs
my husband misses dressing up so much that he refused to change out of his church clothes Sunday
today my pantry went from looking like this...
to this...I've been putting it off for a while and I'm so glad I finally did it, I feel so much better!
Jason picked this guy up on the way home from dinner the other day. Right after I took this photo, it FLEW at my face! I was not expecting that and I screamed and ran like a little girl. I hope this is my only up close Japanese beetle sighting!
how is the commissary going to be completely out of milk??!!?
I got a couple of awesome packages this week, one included this t-shirt and some buttons and stickers from Dave at ShootTokyo
the other one had me sitting in the mail room parking lot for 10 minutes bawling my eyes out. Last year I went fabric shopping with a friend and fell in love with this fabric. She started to help me turn it into an apron, then PCS season happened and we never finished it. Well, she finished it for me and mailed it to me! Isn't it FABULOUS! I cannot wait to wear it!
She also included some drawings from her children which is what got to me. Some times I'm not sure which side of my love/hate relationship with the Army is stronger. I love the Army for all the opportunities it's brought my way, including the friendships I've made but I hate the Army for ripping these friends away from me!
