Wordless Wednesday: Frenemies

All Ready for Christmas

Just in case you can't tell. Glenn is hanging a pickle on the tree. I was attempting to tell him about the pickle ornament my family has, but he thought it was a crazy made up tradition that I made up so he hung a real pickle on the tree. You hide the pickle ornament on the tree and whoever finds it gets to open the first present. That's how we do it at least.

Then he googled it and realized that it is a real German tradition. Ha! Our tree is all ready, now Glenn just needs to come home. We put the tree up so that Glenn could help me before he left. We broke all of Glenn's rules and put it up before Thanksgiving even! The travesty!

Race for the Cure

 On Saturday morning, a few of the spouses from our squadron headed to Tokyo to run in the Race for the Cure. It was a beautiful day and it actually made the running really fun! We ran around the Imperial Palace following the moat for the most part. The air was cool and the leaves were beautiful. If running was always like that, I would probably do it more often. Three of us ran the 5K race and two people in our group ran the 10K race.

 I finished the 5K with a time of 32 minutes. I was pretty happy with that for it being my first race! In all there were about 1500 runners between the two races so it was a good turn out especially in a country that doesn't have as much awareness for Breast Cancer like the US.

 There were some other Atsugi-basers there too!

  What a great day though! It actually makes me want to go running again. That's new!

Karaoke Night

A fun night of Karaoke at Moon Studio while Glenn was home. There ended up being quite a few of us so we had to move in to the big Party Room. I'm so happy we have such a great squadron here!

Glenn and I

Rich, Johnny 5, Luffa

Angelica and I (someone's glasses broke)

DIM, Luffa and Mike (& Toni)

Happy Lawson Thanksgiving

I wish I was here today. Every year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving is my dad's family's big Thanksgiving. My grandma's tiny house can barely fit everyone and people usually end up coming in shifts because there just isn't room for all 60+ of us. I think this year there will be 2 or 3 new family members that I haven't met yet either!

This picture is from my Grandma's 85th birthday party this summer. Another event I missed, but I hope we can make it back for Thanksgiving next year. Hopefully we'll be in Virginia and can make the drive up to Ohio. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We miss you!

Glenn's Birthday Party

I'm way behind on posting these, but since I'm missing Glenn extra today, what better day to post them? Since Veteran's day was a long weekend for most people around here, we headed to Tokyo to celebrate Glenn's birthday. We went to Baird Brewery where we went earlier in the summer.

The beer is still as good, the food just as yummy and the friends as great. Thanks for coming to celebrate with us!

The rest are from the train ride home. It takes about an hour to get home from Tokyo so bear with me...

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year is going to be a little different. No Glenn. No family. Just my Navy family. Something that I am very thankful for this year. It's hard to be 9000 miles away from family, but without this gang, it would truly be unbearable.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope everyone is with their family today, whatever family that might be. Have a good one!

Happy Thanksgiving USS George Washington!

I'm thinking of the thousands of sailors today on board the USS George Washington who are training and defending so many people today. I'm thankful for everything you do even though you took my husband away today. :) Be safe out there!

How to Import Something into Japan

1. First I bought the table in Bali on August 6th. We had our address worked out and shipping to Japan worked out (only US$165!) Seemed pretty easy. Pay for fumigation as well.

2. Wait and wait for the table to arrive. Email the company to see if they were actually going to ship the table after several months passed. One month delay to due Ramadan.

3. DHL arrives at my house in November. Is my table here? No, just an envelope of paperwork.

4. Stare at the Bill of Lading for a few days, trying to figure out what it is.

5. Call the 'Delivery Agent' list on the paperwork. Wrong number.

6. Stop by Fleet and Family Service Center on base and have a native Japanese speaker call around and find the correct number.

7. Finally give Shimamura-san my email address and wait for an email with arrival notice information.

8. Figure out what a custom clearance agent is.

9. Decide to let Shimamura-san act as my clearance agent.

10. Make a trip to Tokyo to drop off the Bill of Lading paperwork.

11. Receive the Customs Bill. Yell obscenities a few times. Must pay by Japanese bank account wire transfer. Are they SURE it costs this much to import something that costs this much?

12. Gather a ridiculous amount of cash and make a trip to a Japanese friend's house so she can transfer the cash from her account and I can give her cash.

13. In the mean time, contact a shipping company that speaks English and can deliver to Atsugi base. I contacted a company that was also making a delivery the same day for our annual bazaar. I already had the gate access passes for the bazaar so I knew the process.

14. The day of delivery, Glenn and I contacted 6 friends to meet at our house to help unpack the 4 crates.

15. Destroy 4 crates, pack two in to a van, attempt to get the other two up the stairs. This might take awhile.

16. Let the table hang out in the dining room til we get more friends to help us set it up (after we unwrap and wipe it down).

17. Enjoy my beautiful new table! Finally!

What's for Dinner? Cranberry Chutney

 It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without making this recipe in my house. It's my favorite cranberry sauce of all times. I even made it early so I could have it for Glenn and I's Sunday night Thanksgiving. I think my mom cut the recipe out of the newspaper many years back and we've been making it ever since.

Here's the recipe:

• 1 12 oz. bag of fresh or frozen cranberries
• 1 lemon, zested, cut off the pith and cut the inside into 1/4" cubes
• 1 jalepeno, minced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/3 cup onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup crystallized ginger, diced
• 1/4 teaspoon dried mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick, remove before serving

Bring everything to a boil and reduce the heat until it thickens. Don't write blog posts and forget about it because then you get cranberry jam like I have this year. Still as delicious, but not exactly what I was going for.

I hope you like it!

My New Table :)

It took almost 4 months for it to arrive and several phone calls and lost in translation moments, but my beautiful table from Bali arrived on Friday.

Our first meal at the new table was "Thanksgiving" dinner that Glenn and I made last night since he will be gone for the actual holiday. It was perfect.

Thanks to the several friends who helped us unpack, carry and lift the very heavy table. Each leg weighs over 100 pounds and the table top is at least 400. It took 4 grown men to lift it on to the legs! The table top is about 11 cm thick as you can tell from my hand and Stella's head.

I love it! Merry Christmas to me! Thanks, baby!

It's Here!

What's this crate you see? That would be the legs of my dining room table! It has arrived from Bali!

Pictures coming soon!

Once we get 5 more friends to come over and help us lift the top on to the legs. It is crazy heavy!

Hakone Roadtrip

 Glenn had a 4-day weekend thanks to Veteran's Day so on Friday we decided to head to Hakone for some lunch and to check out the area. Stella is a pretty good navigator so she came along too! We took the Tomei expressway south from Ebina to Gotemba and drove along the mountain roads til we reached Gora station. You can take the train pretty easily to Hakone as well, but for 1500 yen and only about an hour and 15 minutes of driving, it was faster and cheaper to drive.

 First stop: Lunch! We stopped at Gyouza Center.  A place we had heard much about. The entire menu is different types of Gyoza (aka fried/steamed dumplings). Glenn's favorite were the Chicken Roll Gyoza where they took a chicken wing, filled it with the normal gyoza filling and then fried it. Delicious! We also tried the Stamina Gyoza (90% Garlic filling), the original, the crab meat and the kimchi gyoza. We took a few of those kinds for takeout. I definitely recommend this place if you are in the area!

 Our next stop was Gora station area. We took Stella for a walk and enjoyed the beautiful leaves. It didn't occur to me that it would be 20 degrees cooler since we were closer to the mountains so a jacket would have been nice. :) The leaves were just perfect though. I didn't really think about the leaves, I just wanted to go to Hakone with Glenn, but our timing was just perfect!

 Next we went to the Hakone Open-Air Museum. It is a huge sculpture garden and a substantial Picasso exhibit as well.

 A beautiful day exploring Japan with Glenn! Too bad Stella had to stay in the car at the museum. :)

 

I love this time of year

Hakone, Japan. Friday November 12, 2010.

Tiny Dancers' Chairs

Last week, I went with my friend, Ann, to her student's daughter's flamenco dance show? Huh? Yeah, that's what I thought. This happens a lot though, surprisingly. Not flamenco dance shows, but random events of this nature. As I've mentioned before, in Japan you don't just have a casual hobby. You have a serious, time-committing, I'm in the fan club and have been for 10 years hobby.

So we took the train to Shibuya to watch some flamenco. We got there an hour early so we could get the first tickets and pick our seats first. There were tables or chairs to choose from. We chose a table and waited for the show to begin. Ann and I were thoroughly amused by the size of the tiny tables and chairs. Seriously, my foot is next to the chair and it was the same size. They were child size or grown Japanese person size.

As you can see, they were not made for Americans.

We couldn't take pictures of the flamenco show, but here is Ann and her friends. I'm glad I went with her just so she had someone to commiserate about it afterward. Seriously, you've got to have some strong ankles and some earplugs for flamenco. Who knew?