Shizuoka Prefecture - Birds, Castles and Caves (oh my!)

On Saturday,  I took an MWR tour with four friends from the squadron. We headed south to Shizouka prefecture. When I have subsequently talked about this trip to students in the past few days, I've noticed that the tour sounds kind of lame, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I'm sure that's because of the company I was with. We made everything a great time despite the all day rain. I'll probably break this up in to a few posts because it was a 13 hour day and we saw lots of things!

First, we stopped at Kacho-en Bird Park. This is an aviary/zoo and it was a wonderful place because the animals are free to roam and fly (except for the owls that will eat the other birds/hurt people). I think this is my favorite picture of the whole trip:

Nicole was not a fan of the birds landing on her at first. Oh and Lauren got pooped on, that was funny.

We got to feed the penguin-san! They were so cute, I want to take one home with me!
Then we saw birds, birds and more birds. Some outdoor birds:

There was even a bird "show". The secretary bird was my favorite. It eats snakes and kills them by stomping on their heads! They did a demo with a fake snake for us.

Then we went inside and saw some of the water birds. Who knew flamingos were aggressive? One of them bit me while I was trying to take a picture with it!

This is much better:

Aren't they cute?

This is my oldest brother, Adam, and his family- Laura, baby Brooke and Connor. 

Aren't they cute? Glad we got to talk on Father's Day!

Tray Hack

I bought the Skala tray from IKEA when I went there a few weeks ago. I thought IKEA would be the perfect pick-me-up after Glenn left again on deployment. Who doesn't love IKEA? Just me? That's fine. I love wandering the room setups and imagining the house that Glenn and I hope to own someday. So many options and at prices I can actually afford unlike most Japanese home stores.

I liked the design of the tray, but I thought it was a little boring and I didn't think the finish was very durable. I often eat at the coffee table especially when Glenn is gone so I thought a tray would be useful for carrying my bowl of cereal dinner and glass of wine.

We have an entire drawer full of travel brochures, maps, tickets stubs and all sorts of Japanese memorabilia. I thought it would be fun to use all of this to dress up the plain tray.

Here is the entire tray and an up close shot. 

I used Modge Podge to glue down the paper scraps and then 5 coats of the Podge on top. Waiting for it to dry between each layer. I had high gloss Modge Podge so it has a glossy finish. I hope we have it for a long time and it reminds us of our time here.

What's for Dinner? Chicken Curry

I never knew I liked curry until I moved to Japan and tried it for the first time, but it is delicious! We have several Indian restaurants around base that we like. I also know that most Japanese restaurants serve curry over rice so even if everything else on the menu isn't appealing, that is usually a winner.
I bought curry rue a few weeks ago and decided to try it out the other day. The curry rue comes in a package of 8 cubes. It looks similar to a giant bouillon cube. First, I set the rice cooker to make about 3/4 cup of rice.Then I cooked some chicken and added some veggies. You could use pretty much any veggies you have.
Once the meat and veggies were cooked, I added about 2 cups of water and 2 of the rue cubes.
Cook until the mixture is a thicker than soup, but not too thick. I cooked mine a little too long so it was more stew like.Put some rice into a dish and cover with the curry mixture. I was pretty happy with how it turned out although my entire house smelled like curry!

Huh?

What do you think they teach here?

Not what I wanted to hear...

"The previously scheduled port call has been canceled and WILL NOT be rescheduled. There is no other follow up news regarding our schedule. I know this is frustrating and I will let everyone know any updates as soon as I hear."

Especially after I just bought an $800 ticket and booked a hotel.... thank goodness for trip insurance! I'm so sad!

Mike's and Margaritas

On Friday, I went to dinner with Rachel, Christina, Nicole & Emily to Mike's Mexican. It's hard to find quality Mexican food in Japan since they aren't big spicy food eaters. Plus, I think I was spoiled after living in south Texas for a year and a half. Mike's does a decent job of making Mexican food so when you head to Mike's, there is a pretty good chance that the restaurant will be mostly full of Americans. This time was no exception, a group from Zama had booked all but about 5 seats of the restaurant for their farewell. Seriously, Americans are loud! Why is that?!

Can you tell who's pregnant or had kiddos to go home to? And who didn't? Haha. :) Thanks for a fun night ladies!

What's for Dinner? Soba Noodles with Grilled Shrimp and Cilantro

I might just have to give myself a pat on the back after Thursday night's dinner. It turned out really well for improvising a few ingredients in the recipe! Agave syrup? Tamari? What? No ones cooks like that Food & Wine magazine. I made soba noodles with grilled shrimp and cilantro!

Here are my ingredients:

Please note that I have no idea what exactly the bottle with the yellow label is. I got it from Laura when she moved. I googled tamari and it said it was a soy sauce like substance, but with more body. This bottle smelled like soy sauce and was a little thicker. I now dub it a tamari substitute. I also substituted white sugar for agave syrup. The wise internet says you should substitute 2/3 agave syrup for however much sugar the recipe calls for. So I did the opposite conversion and added more sugar than the recipe called for.

This was my favorite part of the recipe- crispy garlic! It was like garlic chips in my pasta. Delicious!

Shrimp marinating in lime zest and oil. Yum! You must include the cilantro too. It added so much extra flavor to the dish. I suppose for you not-in-Japan people, you could use spaghetti or angel hair instead of soba noodles, but I think soba noodles taste ok cold. I'm not sure I would feel the same about spaghetti.

I'm not going to go through every step cause that's what the recipe is for. I highly recommend squeezing some fresh lime juice over everything before you eat it! I'm going to make this again on Monday when my friend Nicole comes over cause it was that good.

Baird Brewing Company Harajuku

Glenn and I often define "vacation" as "day drinking" so it was no surprise that while he was home last weekend, we sought out places to spend our vacation. Glenn had read about Baird Brewing Company Taproom in his Food & Wine magazine's 'Best of...' lists. Since Tokyo is only an hour train ride away, we decided to check it out with some squadron friends.

Glenn, me, Jimmy, Mai, John, Angelica, Russell, Toni and Mike

Our reservation was at 3 pm and by the time we drank, ate, took a train home, took a cab to the gate, walked to our house from the gate, it was 11 pm. It was a long day of drinking! That may explain the rest of these pictures...

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, Dad and Tim!

Have a great day!

Papa

My mom sent me these videos from their trip to Louisiana in March. Brooke was only 2 months old then and it was the first time my dad had met Brooke.

I thinks it's the cutest video of little Brooke and since Father's Day is tomorrow, a perfect tribute to Papa. Love you, Dad!

Hakkeijima Sea Paradise

Nicole and I headed to Hakkeijima Island on the Seaside line a couple weekends ago to check out the roller coasters and aquariums near Yokohama. Well, we got a late start so we decided to only check out the 3 aquariums. For 2700 yen you could get a combo ticket to see all 3. Next time we go back we'll have to try out the rides.

The Aqua Museum aquarium was fantastic. It not only had a dolphin and whale show, but it had animals other than fish. They had pengiuns, seals, walruses and polar bears too. I also love that in Japanese, you call all animals -san. So a pengiun is pronounced pengi-san which means Mr. Pengiun. How cute is that? We caught the polar bears when they were very active and they would jump in to the water, wrestle eachother and then do it again. It was so neat to watch!

This aquarium also had a huge tank with sharks and the biggest school of fish I've ever seen.

After the Aqua Museum we headed over to the Fureai Lagoon area. If my nephew were visiting or I had young children, I would definitely take them here! The Lagoon's mission was to give visitors the closest experience to the animals. Which meant you could pet, touch and feed dolphins, beluga whales and many other sea creatures.

There were only a few opportunities each day to touch the animals so Nicole and I were sure to get in line for "Friendly Time" as the schedule called it. They gave a bunch of warnings and instructions in Japanese, but all we ever understood was "one touch". Got it. Take your turn and get out of the way!

There was one area of the lagoon where kids could take off their shoes and walk through the "tide pools" and touch a star fish and feel sea cucumbers. Very interactive for children! Fun for Nicole and I too. :) Too bad many of the star fish were minus a leg or too despite the signs that said not to pick them up.

Pengi-san playing soccer! Too cute! We didn't know what they rest of the show was about or what he was saying, but it didn't matter. They were so cute! The goalkeeper is not a real penguin though. :)

Hakkeijima island has a lot to offer and only takes about 65-75 minutes by train. I definitely recommend a trip there!

Brooke tries Cereal

Ok, mom, I trust you...

Hmmm...not so sure about this...this kind of tastes like crap...

Get it out....get it out....bleh....make it stop....

Seriously mom, what is in my mouth??!

Or at least that's what it looks like to me. :)

And he's gone again...

Glenn was home for a short "port call" back in Japan. I rearranged my class schedule, he didn't have any duty and we spent all but 90 minutes of those 5 days by each others side. It was blissful. We were lazy at home, we did some sightseeing, we did some day drinking. I miss you already baby. I wish I knew when I was going to see you next!

Enoshima Beach

Glenn and I decided to take a Friday afternoon drive to explore Japan and enjoy the beautiful weather we have been having despite the fact that June is rainy season. We headed south on Route 467 towards Enoshima. Stella loves to play in the sand and we thought it would be fun to enjoy the beach. We grabbed some lunch and brought it with us and had a little picnic on the beach too! Enoshima is south of Atsugi base along the Sagami bay. I've been to this area twice before with Hillary and with Laura, but Glenn has never been to this area. I'm pretty sure he sees enough ocean and beach for several lifetimes though. :)

Stella loved digging holes and smelling all the dead fish that had washed ashore.

She was afraid of the waves though! They were too big for her tiny legs.

Love you baby! Thanks for a great day!