My Parent's Visit

It has now been 9 months since we came to Japan minus the 1 week trip back home in March. That means Brad and I have spent more time in Japan since we've been married than we have in the U.S. Crazy! It also means that it had been 7 months since we've seen family. So of course we were so excited when my parent's decided to come and visit!

My parent's arrived on Brad's 24th birthday so we had 2 things to celebrate! It was so nice to hug my parents after such a long time! We celebrated with goodies brought from home and some yakitori (grilled skewered pork and chicken with miso sauce) from Hibiki and then I made a pseudo ice cream cake out of ice cream sandwiches for Brad.

This was Brad's "cake" that I made out of ice cream sandwiches. Cake and regular size ovens are hard to come by here and these ice cream sandwiches are delicious!

Besides yakitori we were both excited for the gifts brought over from family: most importantly Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, Reese's Pieces, oatmeal, Burts Bees chapstick, P90X, a cute shirt and necklace, and a video game. (****on a side note I'm excited to say that our grocery store is improving and as of last week now has its very own Mexican food shelf! Yay for not having to trek it a ways to get taco makings any more!****)

Since we didn't have that much time to tour Tokyo with my parent's we hit a bunch of sites on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we visited Asakusa, Akihabara, Ginza, and Shibuya. We saw the beautiful temple, tried some new "festival" food, and bought some souvenirs in Asakusa.

The souvenier shops you have to pass through on the way to the temple. 

There was a processional of children all dressed up for some kind of ceremony that paraded through the crowd. 

In Akihabara we tried onigiri (salmon mixed with rice wrapped in seaweed--it's a popular on the go snack item) and takoyaki (fried octopus and batter balls) and saw a lot of  what my parents call "Merry Maids" in Akihabara. :) Akihabara actually has a lot of maid cafe's or cosplay restaurants where women dress up as maids and refer to the customers as "Master" or "Mistress" and serve you food and drink. We have never been to one of these cafe's but women dressed as maids are always standing on the sidewalks advertising their cafe. If you really want to know more you can read about it here. 

I didn't take this picture but just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. 

Next we went to Ginza which is a famous high end shopping district in Tokyo. We looked inside Gucci, but alas nothing was good enough for our tastes. Haha, I'm just kidding!! I think that is the first high end designer shop I've ever been into and I couldn't help but feel like I was in a museum, and that the people shopping there were maybe just a little crazy for spending that kind of money. They did have some cute clothes though... :)

A bride and groom taking pictures in the cross walk in Ginza.

Next we went to Shibuya to relax at Starbucks and watch the busiest intersection in the world. I love doing this because it is so much fun to people watch! Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, I let my Dad be the main photographer for the weekend. 

And then we met up with Chris and introduced my parents to the amazingness that is Japanese style karaoke. It was so much fun!!

My Mom and Dad singing a duet. I can't remember what song, but they rocked!

My Dad and Brad singing After Midnight by Eric Clapton together. Love it! 

So that was just Saturday... whew! 

On Sunday we went to Harajuku which is famous for it's shopping and people dressed up in crazy costumes. Brad always gets excited because they have a Doner Kebab stand there which is basically grilled pork and cabbage in pita bread with some sauce on it. So of course we had to show my parents it. Then we went to Meiji Shrine and saw a traditional Japanese wedding, some gigantic spiders, and of course the shrine itself.

I felt bad because there were so many people at the shrine and they were trying to take their wedding pictures in the midst of all of it. Very pretty though!

My Dad has some much better pictures but these spiders are all over the place! I don't know what it is but starting in July they showed up and they've been steadily growing bigger and bigger since then. They always hang upside down from their webs whether it be in the trees, power lines, outside your door etc. Ew! At least I've never seen one inside...

Then we went to Yoyogi Park which Brad and I had never been to before. It's a huge park right in the center of Tokyo and is popular for visiting on the weekends, first dates, seeing cherry blossoms and also seeing the Elvis impersonators. There were about 5 different groups of people out at the park just to dress like Elvis and put on a show. The funny thing about the impersonators was that they definitely put more effort into their costumes than actually dancing like Elvis. It was hilarious!

Watch and enjoy the craziness of the Elvis impersonators. 

I'm just sorry I missed taking a picture of the guy with hair that stood about 2 feet tall. Shoot!

We ended the weekend by getting some sushi at a conveyor belt sushi place in Shinjuku. Whew! We tried to pack in everything that we could and had so much fun playing host and showing my parents what we love about Tokyo!

From Monday to Thursday while Brad and I worked my parents went to visit Hiroshima and Kyoto using their JR passes and riding the shinkansen (bullet train). When they got back on Friday they got a chance to visit my school and meet some of my teachers. Then after a quick trip to Tokyo we had to say good-bye. It was hard to say good-bye but it was so much fun having them here and instead of it being 7 months with out seeing each other, now it will only be 5. We had so much fun with you Mom and Dad! Thanks for coming and visiting us!

Catching Up and Brad's Birthday!

Whew! This past month flew by!

After Octoberfest we went out to celebrate Brad's birthday by going to eat some yummy Frijoles and then stayed at a club all night until we could catch 1st train home. This was the first club that we had been to since coming to Japan and it was a lot of fun to just completely lose track of time and dance! It was funny though because I think there were more foreigners in the club than Japanese people. I'm always curious about where other foreigners are from, what they are doing in Japan etc. but unfortunately there seems to be kind of like an unwritten rule that foreigners don't really talk to each other here. I kind of equate it to the feeling of your freshman year in college. For example, you're walking around on campus and you walk past someone that you went to high school with. You weren't friends with this person in high school and have never really talked before. Should you say hi to them out of recognition? Or because you never talked to them in high school should you just keep walking? I feel kind of the same way walking around in Tokyo because, let's face it, we stick out.  But I guess nobody wants to be stopped every few minutes just to have the same conversation over and over again. But I do love how international Tokyo is! You never really know what language you're going to hear spoken each day. 

Anyway, we had some burritos, did some karaoke, went to a club, and had our only theft of the year--our umbrellas during a typhoon! We left our umbrellas where everybody else had left them at the club (in the umbrella rack where they want you to put them so you don't drip all over the floors inside) and when we came out ALL the umbrellas were gone, there was not one left. Haha! So we were walking though Tokyo in the middle of the night during a typhoon. Oh, I also forgot to mention that I had decided to wear my very cute, yet very uncomfortable black boots out and ended up walking through the busiest station in the world in my socks because I literally could not take another step in my very cute boots! :) 

Here's some pictures:

Yum! Honey Toast! On your birthday at the karaoke place that we go to, they give you free honey toast. Well, apparently they were confused when Brad was spelling his name for them so they decided to write it twice just to be sure... lol

When they bring the honey toast they also take your picture. This is a picture of a picture by the way...And that's Chris' very nice friend and coworker Aki in the picture with us. 

And that's about it for pictures that weekend...

Octoberfest

Last weekend Brad and I both attended our first Octoberfest. Japanese people really do have a great love of beer. I expected there to be a whole lot of sake when we got here but to be honest I think Brad and I drank more sake in the US than we have here. The drink of choice is definitely beer. A couple weeks ago they had the Japan Beer Festival (which we didn't go to) and now an all German beer Octoberfest!

That would be 1L of beer...

Notice the cool pretzel necklaces that Chris made for us out of dental floss. Everyone around us thought they were so cool and asked to take pictures with us. They also asked where they could buy them. Also of note--I'm jealous of the grocery store near Chris' house because those were the first pretzels I've had in 8 months. And next...what do you do when you have a beer and a pretzel necklace? You have a competition of course!

The authentic German band.

It's amazing how much more social people are once they have a beer (or 2) in them. Japanese people in general are pretty reserved so even if they are curious about where you are from or what you are doing in Japan, they rarely ask you about it. Not so here, everyone was coming over to ask about us, the pretzel necklaces, and to see if we were German and could translate the ditty the band played before doing a tent wide toast. And lucky for us we made friend with a German fellow (sitting behind me) who was able to help us all out. (By the way--the beer that I'm drinking there is probably the best beer I've ever had, but I can't remember what it's called!)

Next up: You can tell this is towards the end of the night.

I just think it's hilarious that we're in Japan singing along with a German band about West Virginia!

Who knew the conga line was a universal thing?


To say the least, this was definitely one of the best nights that we've had here in Japan followed by arguably the very worst morning ever!

A Japanese Mexican Festival

Like I mentioned in the last post, food is definitely the thing we're missing most here (except our grocery store is now finally carrying oatmeal and bratwurst! Just no tortilla chips and salsa...) So when Chris mentioned that there was a Mexican festival going on in Tokyo we had to go! The festival is held in Odaiba which is a man made island off of mainland Tokyo. I had never been before but for Chris and Brad it was a return trip. Odaiba kind of has a similar relationship to Las Vegas in terms of extravagant buildings and attractions, as well as some good shopping.

A replica of the Statue of Liberty with the famous rainbow bridge in the background. (Really colorful huh? I'm not sure why it's named that...)

The Mariachi Band

We were dancing to the music... 

After we ate at the festival we went and walked around the huge mall that was right next to us.

Creepy doll exhibit that was going on at the mall.

Then we headed to a huge Toyota dealership that's also attached to the mall.

Brad taking a reaction time test. The lights blink and you're supposed to push the button before the time runs out.

One thing that we love about living here and definitely will miss is not having a car!! I remember freshmen year I missed driving my car so much because that's the only place that I could sing. But now since we have karaoke, I don't have that problem. :) And it is so nice to not have to worry about insurance, gas, etc. And we don't have to have a DD. The trains are so convenient here and even when you have to be on them for a while the time flies by. Japan also has the cutest little cars! Everything is so much smaller here but there are really very few sedans on the road. There are either minivans (which are actually quite high tech and possibly even bigger than minivans in the US) or they are little hatchback sedan/mini suv type things (think Nissan Cube, Honda Fit, and Toyota Yaris--except there are way more models here than are available in the US). When we went to the Toyota dealership, which is more like an interactive museum/ shop, they had a test track, cars on a ferris wheel type thing ready to be tried out, and all the models of the cars open to sit in/check out, plus some futuristic cars...

Behold--the cars of the future....

I'll post everything on Picasa but it was a really cool place!

Next we saw our first monkey in Tokyo! Japan has monkeys all over the place but we had yet to see one...and we still have yet to see one in the wild. I think we'll need to wait until winter and then go to an onsen (hot springs) where they like to hang out. We have a few videos so if you want to check out the others just go to our youtube page. 

So it was a pretty good day. We got to have some Mexican food, see some cool cars, and see our first monkey in Japan!