Hello At Last!

After returning to Japan just over a week ago and then entertaining my friend Toni from England, I'm just now settling into home life back in Yokosuka! It was hard to come back after such a wonderful time in the States, but I'm slowly remembering that life here isn't so bad and that we have a myriad of things to be thankful for!

We're starting to gear up for the arrival of our little one this summer - now that my stomach is truly looking like there's a baby inside, it seems like a good time to start getting the nursery ready and such! Of course, we'll have to start by bringing in a dump truck to get rid of lots of other stuff since we're lacking in storage space (and incidentally baby's seem to require quite a bit of gear - even for us low maintenance types!) Josh and I are hoping to begin "the clean out" tonight.

As for recent Japanese adventures...Josh and I did have a lovely time in Okinawa. It's a great place to go for a bit of sun, sand, and relaxation. Hopefully next time we'll venture out to one of the surrounding islands that you can only get to by ferry!


It was really nice to have my friend Toni here (our first guest from overseas!) for a week. We ventured to some of the popular places where Josh and I had already been - Imperial Palace, Ginza (in Tokyo), and the Big Buddha. We also discovered a few new things such as: a Ninja restaurant (where you travel into a dark cave-like place and are greeted by costume-clad ninjas who serve your meal and provide magic tricks and entertainment while you eat), a Samurai festival (called Kamakura Marsuri) in the local town of Kamakura (here we watched reenactments of an archery contest where samurai shoot arrows while riding at a full gallop on horseback - the contest was originally developed hundreds of years ago to strengthen the mental power of samurai warriors), and we even hit the road for a day and drove to the local beach towns across the penisula (caught some great views of Mt. Fuji, stuck our feet in the Pacific, and ate grilled corn and pineapple ice cream on the island of Enoshima!)

The weather is very cold and rainy here, so it's a good day for cleaning! Guess I'd better get to work now!!