Tokyo Tower and other Shenanigans

On Saturday George, our friend Adam and I went exploring in Tokyo and went to Tokyo Tower! It's a replica of Paris' Eiffel Tower. The one here in Japan is several meters taller (I don't remember exact measurements), and it's painted orange and white. We got a very late start to our day and I don't think we left the base until 2ish Saturday afternoon! We usually drive to the other side of the base, park our car there and then walk the 15 or so minutes to the train station. We decided since we were already running so late to try to park down near the station. We failed to find a spot to park and ended back at the base where we walked anyways. Ha.

We rode the train into Tokyo, which was about 70 minutes. Sometimes if you catch an express train it's a little shorter, and if you have to change trains, sometimes it's longer, but we made average time. And we are getting SO much better at using the trains. I am really proud of us!

The Zojoji Temple is next to Tokyo Tower, and it's beautiful! I had read on my favorite Tokyo travel site to visit the tower and temple in the same day because they're so close to one another. So we did. We washed our hands at the entrance to it, following suit of the people before us (we're still learning all the customs and courtesies), and went in to view it. You could smell the incense burning from far away! :) We finished with the Zojoji Temple pretty quickly. Besides the beautiful architecture, there isn't a whole lot to see or do at the temple's we visit, but I can always appreciate the time we spend at them and the experience gained from it!



We waited in line for about 20 minutes to get tickets to go up to the observation deck of the tower. 20 minutes was nothing because when we got in line there was a man holding a sign that said it was a 50 minute wait! We were very pleased with the 20 minutes! They had a "combination ticket" where you got to go to the observation deck, see the Guinness Book of World Records Museum, a 3D show, and a Wax Museum for 2100yen, or 24ish dollars. George and I talked Adam into the combo ticket (poor Adam).



We made it to the deck and observed the sights. This was our third tall building observation deck in 3 months, with the Seattle Space Needle and Yokohama Landmark Tower being the first two. So while we enjoyed the view at the Tokyo Tower, it was nothing spectacular compared to the other two we'd recently seen. And I may not be giving Tokyo Tower a fair chance because it was a very hazy day, late in the afternoon. One thing this did have was a glass floor! You could stand over the glass and look straight down. I was really excited about doing this, and it made me feel as much anxiousness as you would think it would make you feel!





There was a line to get back on the elevator and someone (ahem... George) suggested we take the 600 stairs down. We contemplated it and then all of a sudden, we were doing it. It really wasn't that bad. Just when I was thinking "Why didn't we wait for the darn elevator?!" I saw a monkey. No joke. A monkey... wearing a dress. I've already told you in previous posts how much I like monkey's. And throw clothes on one? Score! This made me hurry along and I don't even remember the last few flights of stairs! There was a monkey show that was ending by the time we made it down, but they were really cute and I got to take a picture of them!




We did the wax museum next, which was pretty awful. :) George and I had never been to one! There wasn't a single sculpture in there that was terrific but I did see get to see wax Beatles and I found that to be VERY exciting! Paul and Ringo were decent but I couldn't even really tell George and John apart. But it was still cool and they had a lot of Beatles paraphernalia to look at, so overall, I was happy. Also, I recently watched a youtube video of Ozzy Osbourne standing in a wax museum and when people would try to take pictures with him he would come to life and scare them. I had this in the back of my head the whole time. So while I was looking at one (maybe the Alice in Wonderland people) George grabbed me and made a "Rahr" noise that made me scream and jump. He never tires of scaring me. I'm skiddish. What can I say?

Me and the Fab Four. :)


This was supposed to be Julia Roberts. That's Jodie Foster in the foreground.


A full replica of The Last Supper, this one was really neat!




Next we viewed the worst 3D movie I'd ever seen. 3D makes me feel dizzy and ill in general, but it came in the combo pack so we did it. It was in Japanese of course but even if it had been in English and we'd understood it, it still would have been awful. There ghosts and zombies and floating people and blood and it was really weird. Thank God it only lasted about 10 minutes! After that we walked through a very silly haunted house.

George and Adam with their super cool glasses on!


We walked through the Guinness 'museum' next. It was pretty outdated. It still had Hank Aaron listed as holding the most home-run record and a few others we found that we knew were no longer accurate. It was still fun to read through them. They had a few objects from movies and whatnot, but overall, I'd recommend if you go to the tower, see the view then head somewhere else! I felt bad we made Adam pay for those tickets. He was wiser than us but was a great sport about it all! :)

We found a little Irish pub on the way back to the train station. Adam got a chicken pizza and George and I both had fish and chips. The food was pretty good! We took the train home and made it back safe and sound!

After we got home I went out and had a girls night out, complete with dancing! It was a good time! We spent Sunday hanging around the house!

We have the Friendship Festival this weekend and there is an estimated 300,000 visitors coming to the base. Everyone keeps saying this, but I don't know if I can believe it until I see it! Then Monday I am getting my tonsils removed! I will probably blog plenty that week because I'll be home in bed, but George has promised to take good care of me! So please keep me in your prayers and good thoughts for a speedy recovery!

Much love,

Chelsea

A good shot as we were heading home for the night!

Why you shouldn't clean...

So today I spent the majority of my day cleaning. I don't care much about cleaning. I realize it's something that must be done, but honestly, I do not care for it. George knew this getting into this marriage and I'm truly surprised at how much patience he has with me and my cleaning habits. :) Anyways... here is a very short story as to why you shouldn't clean. It's dangerous...

Today I vacuumed the bathroom floor, then mopped it. In doing this mopping (with a washcloth, bucket of soap and water, down on my hands and knees), I moved a wooden shelf out of the bathroom and put it in the hallway so I could clean underneath it. While the floor was drying, I went to throw another load of clothes in the washing machine. I filled my basket with dirty clothes, and because the entrance to my bedroom is so narrow, I couldn't turn the 180 degrees around and walk facing forward out of the bedroom. So I backed out of the bedroom. I forgot the vacuum and shelf were still in the hallway. I tripped into the vacuum, knocking it down, making my self flip backwards, landing on top of the vacuum cleaner, hitting my head on the shelf, knocking the shelf over, clothes flying all over the place, the laundry basket landing on my chest, with my back bent a way it shouldn't be bent.

I really hate that this fall was not caught on camera. It is straight out of a movie. How do I do these things to myself? I don't know, but my back is very sore, and I scraped my leg pretty bad. Not to mention what happened to my poor vacuum.




So let this be a lesson to all of you. Cleaning is dangerous. Don't do it.

Love,

Chelsea

George's Birthday!

I'd like to take a few minutes to write about the person I love the most in this world, my husband, my Panda, George. He really is a wonderful husband, an even better best friend and a great father to our doggy Cheyenne. His birthday was this past weekend and fittingly, he deserved a birthday party!

The services the base offers really are terrific. I went to the Outdoor Recreation Building to have my bicycle fixed. They assembled it, put the tires on, pumped them up, put the pedals on and tested it that it still worked. While I was there I saw they rented a party pack. I decided then and there to throw George a birthday party in the grassy area near our apartment. I rented a tent, 2 tables, 15 chairs, a grill and a giant ice chest for $55, including delivery. I sent out a Facebook invite to our friends here on the base, and the party was on. Lucky for me, George's b-day fell on a Friday this year so it's easy to organize. I considered making it a surprise party but decided that would take too much effort. :)

Friday finally rolled around. George flew that morning and afternoon so I was pretty much on my own to get all ready for the party. I cleaned the house and started making the food a day in advance. They delivered the tent, grill etc. around 3 and guests were due to arrive around 6. I have wonderful neighbors, really, I can't brag about them enough! They are each fantastic! The reason I brag about them is that I had 3 come down and help me set up the tent, which was a fantastic help. I looked at the bag with the poles, rods, metal thingys and tent cover itself and decided we were no longer going to have a tent because I figured I'd never be able to get it set up. Adam was home that afternoon and came down to help me out, then Caitlin and Jane joined us as well! We had it done in about 30 minutes, and I'm not even sure it took that long! Thanks, especially to Adam for being the brains of the operation and figuring out how the whole structure worked! Jane ran to the store for me and got tablecloths, because trust me, these tables had been very beaten up. And Caitlin was an excellent tent holder. She knows what I mean. :)

We ended up with way more food than we had imagined we would have. We bought 24 hamburgers, 24 hotdogs, 6 brats, wings, a crock-pot full of Santa Fe Soup (more credit to Aunt Joy), a veggie tray, chips and salsa, and all the fixings for the burgers and ha-gogs (as George would sometimes say). I decided at the last minute that the tent looked bare and because I hadn't even really thought to get balloons (what's the matter with me?) I made George a very pathetic, very last minute, but made with love, "Birthday Banner". I got it hung up, and guests began to arrive.

George's sign and some of our guests/friends/neighbors.




We had a really great time! Overall at least 40something people came by to wish George a happy birthday! We stayed up chatting with friends and cleaning up until 1am! I'd call the event a success. We had absolutely zero food left. All of the burgers, hotdogs, brats and soup were eaten! We had a few carrots left from the veggie tray, but the rest of it was gone! We did have a tons of sodas and beer left over, which are STILL, eight days later, sitting in a cooler in my living room. We have nowhere else to put them! Hahaha!

Oh! I didn't mention George's birthday cake! I made my very first attempt at baking my first homemade cake. I've made homemade icing before and I've made homemade cake batter before, but never together for the same dish. George requested a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, so after some searching I found a recipe that fit this criteria on the Wilton website. After my attempt at decorating a pie for the 4th of July (see previous posts) with cake icing (what was I thinking?) I felt I could give it another attempt on George's birthday cake. It certainly didn't look professional, but I think it was a great try and I'm sure the next time I do it, it'll look even better! The cake itself was a little dry but the icing was some of the best I'd ever tasted! (If I do say so myself).

The cake! (Stupid candles)


We had a bit of a glitch with the candles! I went out of my way to find nice candles for his cake and bought the wax letter candles that spell out 'Happy Birthday". I placed them in the cake and then tried to light them. We seriously tried for 20 minutes... but never could get them to light!!! We took the cake under cover to do it, tried everything we could think of, but the wicks had finally given out because they wouldn't stay lit! Oh well, I held up a lighter when we sang and let George blow that out! A minor mishap, but what can you do?




For the rest of the weekend we kind of took it easy! We were pretty exhausted from the week and Friday's festivities so we just hung out around here. On Sunday we went to Fussa's Tanabata Festival. There was food, performers, swarms of people, drinks, music and just general festival stuff. We walked around for an hour or two, saw a very short magic show, tried lots of food on a stick, and explored the area.

George at the very entrance to the festival. I wish I had taken more pictures once it was crowded!



As we were getting ready to leave the festival, a man grabbed George's arm. He was a much older man, maybe 75-85ish range. Through his very broken English and our even more broken Japanese we gathered that he:
1. Asked George if he was from our base. Yes.
2. Asked what branch he was in. Air Force.
3. Asked George if he was a communist. No.
4. Man tells us that he is a communist. Okay...?

The man had a more negative stance than we cared for, and never offered a smile. I finally grabbed George's arm and said, "Are you ready? We need to go." It made us both uncomfortable. We don't really know what he was saying and perhaps he was not a communist and was thanking us? Ha. We have no idea but didn't care much for the experience!

At the festival we ate chicken on a stick, steak/sausage(?) on a stick, and George had a pita pocket of some sort, with chicken and lettuce. All of it was pretty good. Some of the other things we saw there were baked potatoes, lots of fish, cucumbers on a stick, pickles on a stick, bananas dipped in chocolate on a stick, and liquor being sold on the street, which I assume means they lack liquor licenses here. (?).

We walked back towards the base and went to a Chinese restaurant along the way to have a proper dinner. While we were there we could hear the fireworks going off from the festival, so along with 2 of the 3 employees of the restaurant, we stepped outside to watch them. We gazed at them for a few minutes then went back in to finish our meals. George got a spicy chicken-fried rice dish and I got "chicken soup casserole" which really was Ramen noodles, with a warm broth, chicken and vegetables. It was really good.

George received a new bike from me for his birthday, as well as a travel book about Japan (can you believe we didn't own one?) and a book called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. We've already gone through and are marking off the places we've seen. I have more than George does right now, but I'm sure with all of the traveling he does with work, he'll have way more than me in a few short years!!! And we're looking forward to seeing a lot of those places together!

Anyway, the point is, on Sunday we went for a bike ride together! We rode to a restaurant that is like a mock Steak-n-Shake (oooh I miss that!) and had lunch then rode all the way around the base, around the flight line (which is pretty cool) and back home. We calculated it to be about 6 miles, which was plenty long for my first bike ride in say, uh, 4 years? My behind hurt more than anything, but my knee took a very close second. I had to keep stopping to take a break! OH! We had another Fuji Sighting! YAY!

It was a wonderful weekend, and I'm glad I got to spend it with George. With all the traveling he does, being in the "real Air Force" instead of our pilot training bubble makes me appreciate each and every day with my husband that much more. It's such a great feeling to know that we are together on this incredible adventure in Japan. There is no one else I'd rather experience this short life I have with, and am so grateful that he feels the same way. So Happy 25th Birthday George, I love you!!!

An Insignificant Post

Happy August! Things have been relatively quiet around here. Well... maybe not quiet and possibly not even uneventful but we haven't done a whole lot of exploring. George went on a TDY (aka, business trip) to Okinawa a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be a 6 day trip but ended up being an 11 day trip. He traveled back and forth between Okinawa, Japan and the Philippines. He had a great time. He even brought back a few souvenirs for me. I got a new wine holder, a beautiful wooden salad bowl, servers and eight individual salad bowls. I also got a new hammock and a purse. George may try to rig it to hang on our balcony (the hammock, not the purse. :)

This past weekend we stuck around this area. Saturday night we had dinner on the base at Chili's... (which I eat at twice a week... minimum). After dinner we went to our friends (and neighbors house) we played a little Rock Band and I got to sing Taylor Swift... yes!!! Then we played a board game called Balderdash. It was really fun. I'd recommend it to anyone!

On Sunday we invited a few friends over which kept growing and growing until there were 11 of us! We rearranged our dining room and added a card table. It was a tight fit but we did it! George grilled peppers, onions, chicken and steak. I made homemade guacamole, and worked on the rest of the food in the kitchen. We served fajitas. It was a hit. It was nice to have so many people over, we enjoy playing host and hostess.

I thought that since I don't have a ton to tell you about in this blog I would start a list about things that I've found interesting here in Japan... some are fascinating, others not so much, but each is something I've gone... “huh... that makes sense.” OR “huh... I wonder why they do that.”

1.Drive on the left side of the road
2.When you reach in a vending machine the flap that guards the drink that falls out opens towards you instead of pushing the door in.
3.The balk lines at intersections are set way far back (like more than 20 feet) to allow plenty of room for the big trucks to turn.
4.Big trucks (or semi's)... the whole side of the truck opens up... instead of out from the back. (I'll see if I can find a picture to describe it better)
5.It's the law to have to stop at all rail road crossings.
6.At these rail road crossings at night, it's customary to turn off your lights so the oncoming traffic isn't bothered by your lights.
7.Also, at red lights it's common to turn off your lights so the car in front of you isn't bothered by you. And if you're first in line you turn them off to not bother the traffic coming the opposite way.
8.After you wait at a rail road crossing, there are speakers that talk to you... the one on the base (yes, a train runs through the base), says “thank you for waiting blah blah blah.”
9.The yellow traffic lights seriously last 2 seconds.
10.People don't talk on the trains. Everyone is silent.
11.Tipping is considered rude, and offensive. This one... we don't mind too much.
12.Credit cards are rarely accepted.
13.Money doesn't go from hand to hand. When you pay someone at a store, 9 out of 10 times there is a rectangular tray you place your money in... instead of just handing it directly to the cashier.
14.The local radio stations run on a different FM frequency than they do in the states. So the radio stations begin around 70.1 to 85.9 instead of 88-107ish.


I realize this list is varied, but those are just some things I've noticed here in Japan that are pretty pointless and you really don't need to know them... but hey, I don't feel like I have much more to blog about.