Young and Old

Gray day, still no visitors . . . looks like it’s time for another park.  We can no longer go more than two consecutive days without some sort of adventure; I think we are seriously getting spoiled.  What are we going to do when we are back in the States??? 

I’m not quite sure how I’ve gone this long without showing you a tomb.  These things are EVERYWHERE (even more than parks are everywhere)!  You’ll see them randomly stuck into hillsides, usually overlooking the ocean.  There are two main styles; the one you see here is the older style, called a “turtle-back tomb” and is said to represent a women’s womb. 

Newer tombs are generally this “house-style” which is cheaper (even being made out of solid marble) and uses less land.  They are frequently found grouped together in little “villages”.  Generations of families are interred here, cremated and put in urns, and living family members gather at the tombs on sacred days to leave offerings of food, sake, and flowers.

The tombs were just down the hill from a baseball field and playground . . .

This is actually only half of the giant log structure/obstacle course.

Swings and a roller slide round out the fun.

Logan and Jake catch a view of the baseball game from the top of the play structure.

On the way over to get a closer look at the game, I spotted these flowers growing on the side of a small shrine and thought they made a pretty picture :)

These kids were GOOD!  I was also impressed by the fact that they (the kids, not the coaches, not the parents) were completely involved in cheering each other on.  Notice #15 in the picture even has a drum!

  Jake tried explaining the finer points of the game to Logan.  Logan said “ball” and “oooh” when he saw someone get a hit—I think he’s got the basics down :)

Little of this, lot of that

I’d heard so many good things about a place called Cocok Spa, but somehow it took 8 months for me to get there.  It lived up to the hype!  Their (relatively inexpensive) pedicure included an hour long foot and leg massage and this exquisite toenail painting! 

In other, non-foot related news . . .

Logan checks out a shisa at the Nakamura Old House.

This illustrates several of Logan’s favorite themes: pushing things, trucks, and stuffed animals.  (Yes Grammie, he’s related to you!)

Bathtime fun!

This one is for Uncle Jonathan.  Do you remember giving us this for Christmas several years ago?

Then we took the tent down and Jake built Logan a box castle, complete with a shield for defense.

Sarah and E haven’t gotten here yet; they are flying Space-A (trans: stand-by on a military flight).  But tomorrow is looking hopeful for their arrival.  When they get here you’ll certainly see lots more adventures!  Until then . . .

Rules for Visiting

With our first real visitors arriving next week (YEAH!), I’d like to go ahead and set down a few “rules” for ALL our visitors. 

Things to expect when flying in:
       --The flight and time change are gonna suck; you’ve probably   
       already considered this but I thought I’d mention it, just in case.
       --If you fly into Naha (most of you will), the drive between the
       airport and the base will not be what you expect.  There are
       sections of Naha which look a little like a cheap, concrete
       Vegas.  This floored me when we first arrived.
       --ALL the buildings are concrete and most of them are fairly
       unattractive.  Also, 90% of the signage is, predictably, in
       Japanese (the other 10% being in both Japanese and English). 
       These two things combine to make your initial views of the
       island a little overwhelming.

It’s okay though; it all gets better!  You’ve seen a lot of those better parts here and we’ll make sure you see a bunch of them in person :)

To make your stay more comfortable:

1.  Driving  Rules of the road differ significantly here from what you are used to in the States.  It’s not just a matter of being on the other side of the road.  You will routinely see things such as:

--Cars parked on the side of the road, blocking half a lane of traffic and moving vehicles swerving into other lanes or even into oncoming traffic to go around these stopped vehicles.
--Cars driving in the rain or dusk without their lights on.
--Children riding completely unrestrained, climbing around the inside of the vehicle, hanging out the windows, etc.  They do have car seat laws; they just aren’t enforced.  (Car seat laws ARE enforced on base, however, so Logan and any visiting children will be buckled in.)
--Motorcycles and mopeds “white lining” in traffic.  This is not illegal and is widely practiced.
--Cars failing to slow down for yellow lights and a sort of “lag time” applied to red lights where two or three more vehicles might try to squeeze through the intersection.
--Cars sitting patiently waiting to turn left on red (left on red being the equivalent of right on red in the US).  Turning left on red is illegal here.
--An utter lack of street signs.  Major roads are numbered and intersections are named, but that’s it.  You get used to navigating by landmarks and counting street lights.
--Surprisingly few accidents.  We’ve only seen two since we’ve been here.

Moreover, you can expect us to follow many of these same practices.  When in Rome . . .  If this is going to make you uncomfortable (i.e. instigate driving tutorials, grabbing of the wheel, stomping on the imaginary brake pedal), we recommend you sit in the back seat and close your eyes if necessary.

2.  Toilets  Just as a reminder, we only have one full bathroom in the house, along with an inconveniently placed single toilet off the laundry room.  Obviously this isn’t a huge problem, but Sunday morning might be a little tricky.  We appreciate your flexibility and cooperation :)

For the women: public toilets are generally squat-style, meaning a porcelain hole in the floor.  They are not hard to use and are almost always cleaner than American public restrooms, but they are different than what you are used to.  I can give you a quick primer if you have any questions.  Actually, I’ve gotten so I prefer the squat-style because it’s easier than hovering.

3.  Mold  Mold, unfortunately, is a fact of life around here.  It’s an island so it’s humid and the house is rather old.  We do our best to keep it under control obviously, but it’s a never-ending battle.  I originally thought that it was a relatively simple matter of dusting: where there was dust, there was mold.  But I have since found mold on places where no reasonable person would ever consider having to dust, such as the underside of the desk.  If mold is an allergy issue for you, we apologize and recommend you bring a supply of medicine.  If you see any while you are here, please let me know—I won’t be offended at you “critiquing” my housekeeping and I would rather clean it up as soon as it’s discovered.

To make your stay more fun:

1.  If you are so inclined, there are a very few words of Japanese that you will hear frequently and which you may wish to use to ease your way around.

Konnichiwa (cone knee chee wa)—hello/good day
     *This is the best all-purpose greeting, but there is also Ohio
       Gozaimasu—good morning and Konbanwa—good evening.

Sumimasen (sue me mah senn)—excuse me

     *This word is EXTREMELY useful and can be used as a polite
       lead-in to an English question.  “Sumimasen, where is the
       bathroom?”

Kudasai (coo dah sigh)—please
      *You can use this to order something by simply pointing at
        the item and saying “kudasai”.

Doumo arigatou gozaimasu (doh moh ah ree gah toe go zigh
       mas)—thank you very much

      *Variations of this phrase are abundant and
       include “doumo”, “arigatou”, “doumo arigatou” (like the 
       song, Mr. Roboto) and “arigatou gozaimasu”.  Any of these
       are acceptable.

Kawaii (rhymes with Hawaii)—cute

     *You won’t need to say this one so much, but you’ll hear it
       quite a bit in reference to Logan or any other children
       (particularly blondes) that may be traveling with you.

 

2.  Bring your spirit of adventure.  We have had a wonderful time trying new things since we’ve been here and we HIGHLY recommend you do the same.  You’re not in Kansas (North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Hawaii) anymore, so don’t expect it to be the same; try not to make comparisons, just appreciate it for what it is.

On a similar note, we’re not going to do anything to intentionally try to scare you or gross you out, but you can expect us to eat/do many of the things we’ve become accustomed to and encourage you to do the same.  Relax, the food is good, Japan is extremely safe, and chopsticks are fun!

 

3.  Lastly, if there’s anything in particular you’ve seen pictures of here on the blog which you would also like to do while you are here, let me know and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.  Parks I can promise you; cherry blossoms I cannot.

We are REALLY excited to start having visitors.  We’ve already envisioned showing you around and frequently say to each other “Oh, so-and-so would love, laugh at or have a comment about this!”  Call for room availability and weather updates before you come (summer=hot), and we’ll see you when you get here!  Hope the list of “rules” is helpful to you!

Sakura Matsuri (trans: Cherry Blossom Festival)

During the hour drive north to Nago on Saturday, we were hoping for two things: that Logan would nap on the way up (no) and that there would be good weather for the festival (yes).  Logan was great despite missing his nap and the day worked out perfectly!

By the way, how are you enjoying the cold spell that seems to be running up the East Coast again?

 

The festival is held in a very large park and the centerpiece is a set of stairs leading up the cherry tree-covered hillside (and up, and up, and up!) to a small shrine.  Note the Shinto stone lanterns on either side of the path and paper lanterns strung in the trees!

 

Logan refused to hold still and this was the best we could manage :)

 

View from near the top, looking down.  What you can’t see is the ice cream vendor to the left of the Torii gate.  She seemed to be doing brisk business and of course we had to have some ourselves.

 

Just beautiful . . .

 

Looking down onto the “festival” part of the experience, vendor tents lining the street all the way back, big bouncy things, lots of food and lots of people!

 

Festival food!  The faint of heart can get things like corn dogs and cotton candy.  We prefer to point to random interesting-looking things and eat whatever we get.  This time one of the items we ended up with was octopus dumplings; they really weren’t bad!

 

We found some time when one of the bouncers wasn’t overrun with big kids and let Logan go for a while.

 

The street vendors are very colorful.

 

Of course we had to find the playground.  Logan was a fan of the zip-line.  Yep, that’s another roller slide in the background; you’ve got to try one if/when you come visit!

 

So happy . . . 

 

A parting shot for you.  Hope all is well; take care!

Castles in the Sand

This weekend, despite the fact that we had a long weekend, we managed to accomplish NOTHING.  Logan has a slight cold and I’m just generally exhausted these days, so we stayed home and relaxed.  But that gives me a chance to catch up on some yet-to-be-posted adventures that we’ve had recently.  First up: Katsuren-jo and Ikei Island beach.

Katsuren-jo must have been mighty impressive in its day because only the inner portion is left and, even after seeing several similar castles, I was still pretty well blown away by this one.  Sitting atop a hill, it commanded an incredible view of the surrounding area and the Pacific Ocean. 

This little fellow was quite friendly and very cooperative about having his picture taken.

The view from the second level of the castle, where the seiden (throne room) was, looking up towards the top.  Notice Logan trekking along, carrying his cup.
 

And a portion of the view from the top.

  Then we traveled a bit further and got off the island for the first time since arriving here!!!  (Well, except for Jake who went to Korea for work.)  Not that we made it all that far, but there are several out-lying islands on our list to explore this year.  Ikei-jima (“jima” means “island”) is accessible by car and had several gorgeous beaches.

Check out the color of the water!

Did you know morning glories grow on the beach?  No kidding.  Sarah G can back me up on this, because we saw them on the beach in Hawaii too.

Hope you are rested up and relaxed from your long weekend as well.

Earthquake!

Quick update: Magnitude 5.3 earthquake about 8:00 tonight.  The epicenter was 90-ish miles west of us, in the middle of the ocean somewhere, so it didn’t feel like much here but I definitely noticed it.  Only lasted about a second.  No damage.  In fact, I feel a little bad saying this in light of the mess in Haiti, but it kind of made me smile.  Haven’t felt anything like that since I was a kid in 29 Palms!

Logan-speak

A quick update on our quickly-changing boy.

lie dis—“like this” because apparently Mommy says “Would you like
             this?” instead of “Do you want that?” and Logan has picked
             up on Mommy’s version. 

hi and bye—sometimes require prompting but frequently these are
            spontaneous; said to objects and places as well as people

yess and no

socks—refers to both socks and shoes

something that I can understand as “outside” but which I have no idea how to spell 

car—this word appeared earlier, but then was replaced by “bbrrrrr”;
           recently the word “car” has reappeared. 

per—diaper

moo-moon

hug—Mommy’s favorite new word :)

Hats have become fun,

as have shoes.

Logan can also indicate a large number of body parts on command.  Here he is responding to the line “Yawn, stretch, touch your toes”.

  He’s becoming quite skilled at building/stacking.  (Yes, I was handing him blocks—the OCD color pattern is mine, not his.  The dinosaur on top, however, was all his idea.)

I know I’m biased, but I think he’s a pretty cool little guy!  Makes me even more curious about what the next one will be like.

Hope you’re having a great week!