Dave & Jen Visit Japan! Day 1

Dave and Jen arrived to Tokyo International Airport (which they discovered was named Narita after a stressful few seconds at the check-in counter in Rochester when they thought they bought tickets to the wrong place :) ) on Wednesday February 17th. It's going to take me a couple weeks to get through our whole trip so I figure I should insert a date here or there.

Since Glenn was in California for training, I had to make the drive to Narita by myself for the first time. I was stressing about it, but I made it without any wrong turns and was waiting for them right outside of customs- yay me! We made the drive back without any complications and went to one of my favorite local restaurants, Dohtonbori. This restaurant is an okonomiyaki restaurant where you cook a cabbage, egg and other ingredient "pancake" on a small griddle at your table. They let me do most of the cooking.

Dave also discovered the joys of ordering food in Japan where the menu is not translated in to English. He ordered what he thought was a beer, but it came with a beer and a glass half full of shochu (a rice vodka type alcohol) and a stir stick. I guess you mix them together!

 

Jen tested my restaurant-picking skills this week since she doesn't eat fish, but I think we were very successful on her first night in town!

We called it a pretty early night since they were jet-lagged and we were waking up at 4:30 am to catch a very eary shinkansen ride to Kyoto. Jen was up at 3:30 am though. No need for an alarm when you are jet-lagged!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

 

I hope you have a wonderful 27th birthday! We need to catch up soon!

While I'm congratulating...

I should congratulate Annie and Dave on the August/September arrival of Baby Wrigley aka Jenarbra!

You two are going to make the best parents and I can't wait to meet her/him some day!

Let's just plan on meeting in Norfolk in September 2011when we all move there, sound good?! Great, I'll see you there! Congrats!

Congrats Chris and Emily!

So many things to update the blog about, but lets start with one of the most exciting- my bestest friend, Emily, and her boyfriend Chris got engaged!!! Please note my post on February 18th, I predicted it! He DID get her something small and sparkly for her birthday!

I can't wait for the September 2011 nuptials! I'll be moving back from Japan around the same time. Congrats you two love birds!!!

We'll be back soon...

We've been busy busy sightseeing all over Japan! We went to Kyoto for two days, then a tour to Mount Fuji a trip to Kamakura and now we're headed to Tokyo Disney for 2 days. I'm going to be exhausted, but I'm loving seeing Dave and Jen. More updates in a few days! Maybe Glenn will be in a picture eventually as well. His flight home from Cali was delayed so we didn't get to see him last night, but I'm hoping he's on a plane right now!

Happy Birthday Laura!

Happy Birthday, Laura! Japan misses you! This picture is from Laura and Tyler's last weekend in Japan. Laura ordered a drink that came with a sparkler, so fun! We miss you guys still! Here's to meeting in Norfolk in 2011 (I hope!)!

Happy Birthday Emily!

I hope you get something small and sparkly from this guy! Have a great birthday!

Dave & Jen Visit Japan!

I'm off to the airport to pick up Dave & Jen! It's the first time I've driven by myself, so I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous! I've made the trip 3 or 4 times with Glenn so I should be okay. I'm bummed Glenn isn't here to meet them, but he'll see them when he gets home this weekend.

It's going to be a busy busy 10 days, but I can't wait to see them! Dave's been practicing his peace sign since July!

We're off to Kyoto tomorrow and then Fuji, Disney, Tokyo and Yokohama!

Valentine's Day

As I posted on Sunday, Glenn is gone this week. Just in time for family to arrive, but such is they way of a Navy wife, I can do it on my own.

Glenn was really sweet and ordered me flowers before he left. He told me they were being delivered because I was going to be gone in the morning. When the NEX came to redeliver, I was a little shocked at the size of the flower arrangement he picked out, but it is beautiful! My entire living room smells like flowers or as my student yesterday said, "Oh, stinky!". I don't think she's mastered the good smell words and bad smell words. :)

 

In addition to my beautiful flowers, I hung out with two beautiful ladies on Valentine's night, Rachel and Emily. Their hubbies are also gone, so we decided to celebrate together. We went to Rachel's house for a few glasses of wine and then went to her local yakitori restaurant, Daikichi. Here is us and her favorite restauranteur!

A great Valentine's day!

Happy (early) Valentine's Day

Since Glenn is going to be in California over Valentine's day, we decided to celebrate a week early. Mostly because Glenn really wanted to give me my present I think. He got me a new red iPod nano! My old iPod can't leave the car because it has to stay plugged in to work. Now I can watch TV shows at the gym from my iPod, yay! Glenn got a new pair of jeans and slippers since he managed to loose both in the last few months while on trips.

We decided to make a fancy dinner at home to celebrate and we made one of my favorite foods in the whole world- crab legs. Even though we live on an island famous for it's seafood, we actually had a surprisingly hard time finding king crab legs around here. We did find some at a local supermarket, but they were frozen and really expensive and we knew we could buy frozen ones at the commissary so we gave those a try. They turned out really well and for $20 for 2 lbs, you can't beat the price!

 

We also made potatoes, salad and had some champagne (leftover from Christmas for mimosas that we were too hungover to drink :) ). I miss you today Mr, but I'm glad we got to celebrate! Come home soon!

 

New Brooke Pictures

Adam and Laura have their hands full with a baby girl that sleeps all day and is up all night, but they posted a few new pictures on Facebook. Man, I LOVE Facebook!

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

What's for Dinner? Shredded Beef Tacos

This meal is probably one of Glenn's favorites, but is also one of the easiest. Glenn could also eat tacos/burritos/etc for every meal of everyday though. I start with a 4 (ish) lb beef roast, a jar of salsa and a can of green chilies. Put them all in the crock pot covering the roast with the salsa and chilies. Depending on how long I am going to cook the roast, I also add 1/2 a glass of water. If you cook the roast on high aka faster, you may not need the water. I usually cook the roast for about 6 hours on low. (I forgot to take a picture beforehand)

After about 5 hours, remove the roast and shred the meat and then return it to the liquid.

Then let the meat simmer for about another hour to soak up more sauce.

After it simmers for awhile longer, we pull the meat out and then pour the liquid in to a pot (measuring it first) and bring to a boil. Once it is boiling, we add rice (depending on how much liquid you have). You get a main dish and side dish out of most of the same ingredients. Note: if I could the meat for too long (like last time when I cooked it for 8 hours), you may not have enough liquid remaining to make the rice too.

VFA-115 Meet & Greet

Last Friday was the other 115's Meet & Greet at the O'Club. Their squadron arrived over the holidays and they finally had an event at the O'Club to say "We're Back!". The Eagles were here about 12 years ago and then left and now they are all back replacing the Golden Dragons (still miss you guys...). The Eagles seem like a fun group and Friday night definitely one of those nights. For those of you from Iowa State, it reminded me of FAC which I miss dearly. FAC was Friday After Class where we went to the bar at 3 or 4 or 5 pm to get the best specials. You were home by 10 at the latest and got a good night sleep before you did it all over again. (How did we DO that in college?) Well the Meet & Greet started at 5:30 and Glenn and I were home by 10:30! Here are a few pictures from the night!

A few of the Eagles wives- apparently they didn't plan to all dress alike, but I'm not sure I believe them... especially since their colors are black and yellow.

Glenn and Skipper- these are their special Friday flightsuits.

Nic and I drinking Patron shots #1 of 3.

Meeted and Greeted- Kellie, Cassie and Midori.

I don't even know. Rachel, Doug and me.

Setsubun

Setsubun (節分, Bean-Throwing Festival or Bean-Throwing Ceremony is the day before the beginning of each season in Japan. The name literally means "seasonal division", but usually the term refers to the spring Setsubun celebrated yearly on February 3 as part of the Spring Festival (春祭, haru matsuri). In its association with the Lunar New Year, Spring Setsubun can be and was previously thought of as a sort of New Year's Eve, and so was accompanied by a special ritual to cleanse away all the evil of the former year and drive away disease-bringing evil spirits for the year to come. This special ritual is called mamemaki (豆撒き, lit. bean throwing).

Mamemaki (Bean-Throwing) is usually performed by the male head of the household. Roasted soybeans (called fuku mame (福豆) are thrown either out the door or at a member of the family wearing a demon mask, while the throwers chant "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" (鬼は外! 福は内!)^. The words roughly translate to "Demons out! Luck in!" The beans are thought to symbolically purify the home by driving away the evil spirits that bring misfortune and bad health with them. Then, as part of bringing luck in, it is customary to eat roasted soybeans, one for each year of one's life, and in some areas, one for each year of one's life plus one more for bringing good luck for the year to come.

I stole the above description from Wikipedia, but this holiday was last Wednesday when I meet with one of my student, Yuki. Yuki is 24 and speaks fabulous English, so we mostly just get together and chat about her upcoming wedding so I use the term "student" loosely. Anyways, Yuki brought me a small envelope seen in the picture above and explained Setsubun to me. I always find Japanese traditions so interesting because they make so little sense sometimes. Let's throw beans! Why not? But then again, we say a fat man comes down our chimney, right? That makes no sense either.

So I was really excited when Yuki gave me some of the fuku mame beans and a demon mask. I tried to get Glenn to wear the mask, but he refused to participate so I had to wear it. I'm trying to be demon-like, can't you tell?

I didn't throw any beans, but I did eat 27 of them. They tasked mostly like a plain nut to me. Not so much like soy beans. Stella was a fan too, she got 4. Here's to a lucky year!

What's for Dinner? Peking Duck

Glenn was feeling inspired after watching a Good Eats episode and I saw ducks at the commissary one day, so we decided to try and make our first duck. In the end, it was pretty good, but I don't know if I'll make it again because our house smelled like roasted duck for 2 days.

 

We served it with a brown rice that actually came with the duck.

I don't have the recipe because it was one Glenn found on his iTouch app, but I'm sure you can google peking duck. Good work Glenn!

Farewell DB and Brown Starr!

I thought December was a busy month with squadron events, but I think January was just as busy! Last Friday we had a Hail and Farewell for our newest and soon to be leaving members. Logan is off to Mississippi for a VFA (jet) transition and Matt is headed to maybe Norfolk for a RAG instructor tour or hopefully Maryland for Test Pilot School.

Farewells are always fun because you get to tell stories about the stupid things that they have done over the last three years in Japan. Always entertaining. We had the farewell at a nearby restaurant called "Stinky Steak". Not the actual name, but I don't know the Japanese name and most people just call it stinky steak because of the garlic option for your steak or sometimes "Steak and Wine" because you can order a magnum (1800 mL) of wine for 1000 yen ($11). Needless to say, the night always ends up fun!

Here is Glenn telling a funny story about Matt Starr (call sign: Brown Starr).

Farewell Logan! (call sign: DB aka Danger Boy)

COW Party

A few weekends ago we had a party for Glenn's Commanding Officer's Wife aka COW party. It's a fun tradition where she receives a party for pretty much staying married for 20+ years to a man who is still being promoted. In the Navy and US in general, not a bad feat. Since our squadron is the Liberty Bells and she is our COW we threw her a COW Bell themed party. And of course she received more cow themed gifts than she will ever know what to do with!

Two of our O4 (LTCMDR) put everything together along with Catherine's favorite foods - cheese and chocolate!

Another Navy tradition that I love. And of course we all dressed in squadron colors- green and yellow!

And who can think of Cow Bells with out thinking of a little more cow bell?! We brought her hubby in to play the part of Christopher Walken in the famous SNL sketch-

Yet another reason why I married him...

Glenn is an amazing sandwich maker. I know this sounds trivial, but when he is gone for 6-months, one of the things that I miss is when he makes me lunch and he makes delicious sandwiches. I guess I just don't have the patience to get out the George Foreman grill to make the cheese just perfectly melty while the sandwich is just toasted. He's got some awesome sandwich skills.

This was his newest creation he made me this weekend- a cuban. Ham, turkey, pepperjack cheese, a little dijon mustard and some dill pickles. I had to recreate it the next day as well cause I was still thinking about it. Love you baby!

Glenn's LT Wet Down

One of the things I love about the Navy, is its deep history of traditions. The Wet Down is one of these.

For those of you who are unaware of this tradition, here's a Wikipedia run down for you:

Wetting-down is a raucous ceremony observed in the U.S. and British Naviesincluding the U.S. Coast Guard for newly promoted officers. Formerly, it always involved tossing the new officer in the sea, hence the name.
The wetting-down celebration is always paid for and hosted by the newly promoted officer, who invites his or her friends, which usually includes several officers of the same rank at which he or she has most recently served.
Normally the party occurs at a bar or pub frequented by officers. The location of the party is a big clue as to the form of the ceremony: when the party occurs in a dockside bar, the officer's friends are expected to (carefully) throw him or her into the sea. If the location is a park many miles inland from an otherwise available ocean, then the officer has very likely elected to dispense with the "wet" part of the party.
Being located in a bar, there is typically a great deal of drinking of alcohol. There must always be at least one ceremonial toast. Friends present several rowdy speeches expressing their appreciation of the new officer's good comradeship and copious faults. Often one of the speeches describes an embarrassing event in the new officer's career, which occurred under the old rank.

Glenn promoted to LT last May but since they were on cruise, they decided to wait til they got home and combine the party with several other promoted LTs. The party was held in Yokohama at a Brazilian steakhouse called Travesso. If you've never been to a Brazilian restaurant, I highly recommend it, but go hungry. It's pretty much a meat buffet. Drool.

Ok so this is pineapple, but they come to your table with giant skewers of meat too. Wow, I sound like a glutton. Go, you'll see.

 

Congrats on getting promoted (6 months ago) Glenn!

Deliciousness: Melonpan

Cassie and I have started meeting for lunch once a week to try out new restaurants in the area (and so she can get a baby break every once and awhile). Last week, we checked out a little cafe/bakery in Yamato (the town east of us) and I bought a deceptively delicous green bread called melonpan. Pan means bread in Japanese so melon bread, you get it. Green food typically means green tea so I was weary at first, but in the end- big success.

 

For those of you that know me well, you know that breakfast breads are my biggest weakness and would be my last meal if I were to die tomorrow. By breadfast breads I mean, cinnamon rolls, monkey bread, croissants, muffins, danishes (with cream cheese please) and everything else that falls in to that category. Melonpan, you now join the ranks along with cinnamon rolls. It's a special list to be on.

Snow!

The Kanto plain area actually got some snow last night! Today it is wet and melty, but it's kinda nice to see a little snow.

Stella was not a fan at all though. Wherever she could walk to avoid the snow- she would.

A nice way to start February!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday Dad! You get better looking every year! We miss you a lot!