Not ready to leave...

All my fabulous friends behind. It's the part of the Navy that I hate. The good-byes. The community at Atsugi is so tight knit and I LOVE it. It's a daily occurrence for me to start Stella on a walk and end up chatting with a friend at her house for hours. I love the Gilberts.

I love that we leave our cars and front doors unlocked. That I feel comfortable to tell my friends to pop in and borrow whatever they need. This is the only community where it's going to be the entire airwing in one location. It's going to be rare for us, in the future, to be stationed at the same place as the jets and the prowlers and so many fun wives (and husband) in one place. I love it!

Clearly, I love Ms. Madori as well. Karaoke was just too much fun.

I am ready to get my iPhone though. So soon!

GNO Tokyo!

When the boys are gone, the girls will play! I headed to Tokyo a few weekend ago with some very fun girlfriends to Gonpachi restaurant. We got there a little early so we stopped for some drinks at the Mexican restaurant across the street.

Sadly, no one ordered the Appli Pie.

Dericious.

We ordered the course menu and it didn't disappoint. Yummy food course after course!

An hour long train ride didn't deter us. We were off to Karaoke once we got back close to base!

I'm excited to get back to America, but nights like this are going to make me miss this place SO much. Good friends, no jobs, a fabulous city out our back door. It can't be beat!

GNO: Shin's and Karaoke!

Last Saturday, me and a few girls headed out for some delicious sushi and karaoke in Zama.

We decided to try a few new things since Amy's sister-in-law was visiting. She wanted to be a little adventurous...or we wanted her to be. A little octopus...

Sea urchin and scallops with all of it's other parts...liver, "legs" and something else.

Salmon and avocado! Yum!

After sushi, we headed down to the street to a karaoke bar. They only had a 4 person room available so we all crammed in, along with some of our new friends!

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)

Japanese Karaoke

I've posted about karaoke in the past, but I went to a new shop in Yamato a few week ago. This shop had a unique feature... I'll get to that.

Erin's friend was in town visiting so Krystal and  met them for dinner and drinks. We went to a restaurant that didn't have an English menu OR pictures so we just described a few things we like and then told the waitress- "your choice." It worked out pretty well and we like what we got.

We headed down the street just a bit to the karaoke bar. It was a small little bar and there were about 4 other Japanese people at another table in the bar, it was pretty quiet.

We proceeded to choose several songs and drinks and get started. Here is Krystal choosing songs on the hand help computer thingy.

A round of Lady Gaga... hats and tambourines optional.

Now here's the best part... based on how well you sing and how on key you are, the karaoke program gives you a score and then a present for your score...

An okay score....

A good score....

Unfortunately, we got in the teens and twenties on most of our turns! :)

Karaoke!

Several weeks ago, Glenn and I went out with our VRC-30 friends. They fly the C-2. They were welcoming their newest pilot so we went to Mike's Mexican for dinner and then out to karaoke! When I go without Glenn, sometimes I sing, but Glenn and Nicole are just too good to keep up with!

Glenn tends to sing Billy Joel and he's pretty good at it so I guess I understand why!

Annie and Annie Deux

Annie's best friend, Annie, came to Japan to visit so on Friday Laura and I went over to Annie's for dinner, drink, rock band and karaoke. We made a few PDubs (Amy B if you are reading this, that is what Laura and I have named Fresca + Captain) which may sound bad but they are ridiculously delicious.

We had dinner at the Noodle Shack which is literally a house down the street from Annie that serves delicious noodley dishes. I had the Age Yakisoba which was basically a veggie stew of some sort over fried noodles. Reminded me of this dish my mom used to make (Mom, you'll have to help me out here) but in an asian sort of way (aka, not as good). An adorable little restaurant though with an eigo (english) menu to boot! Always a bonus when we can read the menu. A side note on how adorable it is, if you order take out or delivery, they deliver it in the actual ceramic dishes and you just have to leave them on the doorstep of the restaurant the next morning!

Then we headed back to Annie's for some pre-karaoke courage and rock band practice. I never do the singing part in rock band but actually found it fun! Glenn, you would be proud of me.

Then off to karaoke! What started as 1 hour, ended up as 3. We often picked up the phone in the room and just said "futatsu bieru kudasai" (2 beers please) because they understood that well enough! We never mastered the 4 beers please. This may sound easy but "2" is actually "ni" but two of something that you are counting is a different word "futatsu". Still working on that. :)It only got more ridiculous after this so I'll spare you the pictures. :)