Ramen!

Mmmm. We went out to eat tonight. There's a ramen shop that everyone calls Thunder Ramen because it has a lightening bolt on it's sign. It was the most amazing ramen I've ever had. I could get through a lifetime of college if all the ramen came like this stuff.
It was also the first time I sat at a traditional Japanese style table. My feet fell asleep. Shaun said his legs were cramping by the end of the meal. I don't know what he's complaining about because he was allowed to sit cross-legged.
They had these adorable little chairs for kids. Hobbette enjoyed them. She also liked bean sprouts and had no qualms about telling the whole restaurant. Very loudly. "Inside voice" had no effect but to be honest she wasn't as loud as Hobbit. He also was excited to be out of the house.

We built a fort today. It was another hot day and I was a little concerned about spending too much time in the sun so I opted to play indoors today rather than take her to the playground across the street. Hobbette was a little confused about what I was trying to accomplish at first and was undoing the work. Then when I finally got the sheet on top she laughed and ran under it. We had story time and snack time in the fort but it didn't last much longer than that. She eventually ended up just sitting the in middle of a pile of pillows and sheets.

Finger painting

I missed a day. Don't worry, nothing exciting happened. I got a few more errands done (thanks to the umbrella stroller... See? I'm learning). And I found out Shaun is switching shifts. That's it really.

Today, however, Hobbette did some finger painting. I was pretty excited. Probably more excited than she was. Ever since she was born, I've been waiting to do fun stuff with her. Finger painting is the first of many. I even got her to say a few of the colors. She made two masterpieces before she decided that eating the paint was more fun. Don't worry, it was edible. I got the recipe from a website. It's just flour, sugar, water and food coloring. I'm going to put up some pictures just as soon as I figure out where Shaun hid the cord that connects my camera to the computer...
We also did a few more errands. One of which included picking up recycling bags from the Self Help office. The guy working there was very impressed with Hobbette's shoes. And she was happy to show them off. She even did a few jumps for him. What a flirt.

Learning curve

I have a new found respect for single parents everywhere.
How do they get anything productive done? I've had help for the past three months so I haven't had to learn how to juggle two small children. Well, let me tell you. The learning curve sucks.
A 10 minute errand took me a half hour and by the end of it I was frazzled and hot and ready to throw in the towel on the rest of the day.
I went to the library to make a few copies. Not a big deal. Add children and it's a huge ordeal. Getting out of the car and across the parking lot is a marathon. Inside, I had Hobbit over one shoulder and needed my other hand to do the work. Hobbette? There was no stopping her. DVDs and books all at toddler level? I think I actually saw the librarian cringe.
That was the only productive thing I got done. I think I'm going to try something different tomorrow though to see if I can't accomplish more with my day. I'll strap Hobbit to my chest to free up my hands and stick Hobbette in a cheap umbrella stroller to keep her stationary. See? I'm learning how to be a mother of two. Slowly... but I'm getting there.

During my wandering on Monday I saw a sign for the Weasel's Den (we're the wild weasels here). I had remembered on my many tours and briefings that the Weasel's Den was an indoor playground. I decided to take the kids and check it out. It was amazing! I can see why it's so popular during the winter. Hobbette had a blast in the infant section but we didn't stay long. The place doesn't have air conditioning. I'm defiantly coming back though.

One hour...

That will teach me to leave the house...
I have a lot to do this week: get reimbursed for my plane tickets, get Shaun's cost of living allowance switched from a single person to a family of four, look into home insurance just in case an earthquake does more than just shake the house a little... All sorts of things. So, I decided to get a jump on my errands and run out first thing in the morning. I left around 10 and gave myself an hour to get as much as I could done and be back to start lunch.
What a horrible hour.
I decided to get the financial stuff done first. I had a vague idea of where the building was and I knew the building number so I didn't think it would be too difficult to find. I got lost. No idea where I was. I wandered a bit more, found a familiar place and backtracked a little.
Then I noticed my gas gauge. New priority: find a gas station.
Back home the gas station was connected to the Shoppette. So I wandered in the direction of the Shoppette. Found it successfully but they didn't have a gas station. I went in and asked the first person I saw for directions. It was a good thing too because I hadn't thought of wandering in that direction.
I pulled in and discovered the gas cap was on the other side of the car. Tried again and discovered that the gas cap couldn't be opened from the outside. I spent five minutes looking in logical places for the lever until I gave up and found the car manual.
It was in Japanese.
I looked at pictures until I found one with an arrow pointing to the gas cap and found the corresponding page. The picture for the lever was so vague it could have been anywhere. More searching in logical places. In the process I found all sorts of nifty storage places. Eventually I found it hidden under the seat.
At this point I go into autopilot. Filling a car up with gas is something I've done many times. It's not hard. You can't really screw it up. Or so I thought.
I was planning the rest of my day when a woman at another pump innocently asked me if my car ran on diesel. I froze. I had put 3.5 gallons of diesel in my car. I was pretty sure my car didn't run on diesel. What should I do? I didn't know what would happen if you put diesel in a non-diesel vehicle. Would it still run? Had I just ruined my car?
Luckily there was a repair shop connected to the gas station. I went in and explained what I had done, feeling like no one could be that stupid. I was told they were booked with appointments, were short on mechanics and it would probably take all day to get around to fixing my car.
I was on the verge of tears. I got the kids and set up camp in the lobby. How was I going to get through the day? I had only packed the essentials for a one hour trip: one diaper per kid, no toys, no food. I didn't know anyone, didn't know how to get in touch with Shaun and I had no way of leaving until my car got fixed. Could I carry two children to the Burger King I passed on my way here when they got hungry? The shop had no air conditioning... Hobbit was going to get hot and Hobbette was going to get thirst... Things were looking pretty bleak.
And then an angel offered to take me home. Her youngest was a few months older than Hobbette so we only needed to grab one of my car seats from my car. She lives in the building across the street from mine and said she knew what it was like to get somewhere new and not know anyone.
That woman is getting brownies.

Cry baby

"Was I the only one who felt like I couldn't let my kid cry in the Cry Room?"

My husband asked me that after church today. I have to admit... he wasn't the only one who felt that way. We made it halfway through mass before Hobbette started getting cranky (it was her nap time) so Shaun went to check out our new church's cry room. I stayed for a while longer before Hobbit started to complain that he was hungry. So, I joined Shaun... And a whole bunch of other families as well.

It was packed. Standing room only. Forget trying to sit to breast feed. But it wasn't like the rest of the church was so full they couldn't sit with the rest of the congregation. 

And it was quiet. Well... Except for Hobbette who was in the process of telling the room how excited she was about the chairs that were her size. 

I proceeded to bounce, walk, shush, jiggle, sway, and anything else I could think of to calm Hobbit down. Then I noticed that some parents were taking their children out into the hall. Wait... what? Parents took their crying babies out of the cry room to cry in the hall? But... it's a cry room. You were suppose to take your crying babies into the cry room to cry... 

Needless to say I ended up in the hall with the other crying babies and eventually found a conference room with a free seat to breast feed at. I didn't get to participate in the rest of mass but from what I could tell it was nice. Shaun said he liked the choir, so that's something.

Festival!

Today was the Misawa City Festival. There were three parades back to back: a costume parade, a dance parade, and a float parade. It was pretty hot and someone didn't get their afternoon nap so we only stayed for the costume parade.
It was... interesting.
We saw power rangers, and characters I'm pretty sure are from an anime, and then a long line of guys dressed in what appeared to be long skirts. Until they turned around. Then you saw skin. I think they were wearing the traditional uniform of a sumo wrestler.
There was an entire street lined with venders selling all kinds of things. Trinkets, little guppies, fried foods, octopus balls and noodles. We decided to try a Japanese pancake. It was filled with noodles and cabbage and topped with a fried egg, ham and a white sauce. It was good. Even Hobbette liked it.

For supper I cooked the prawns. I had no idea what I was doing. They were so big I thought I could just steam them like crawfish; head, legs and all. I was also paranoid about accidentally eating them under cooked. As a result I'm pretty sure I over cooked them. And next time I would definitely shell them before cooking. And I'll probably find a recipe instead of guessing. But at least I'm planning on having a next time so it wasn't a complete failure.

Fishes!

Another tour today, but this time we went a little south to a fish market. I have never in my life seen so many different kinds of fish and seafood in one place. And there was so much! And every bit of it was caught fresh that morning. Our tour guide said the fish is so fresh a few years ago she saw an octopus running down the aisle in an attempt to get away.
There were samples all over the place. Most of the time I had no idea what I was looking at or what I was eating.
Shaun was determined to buy something. Anything. But he made me pick since I was going to be the one cooking it. There were strange things a translator said was a sea pineapple. They're also called halocynthia roretzi. According to the article I found it tastes pretty foul. It was a good thing I didn't dive right in an buy it or something else I couldn't identify... I settled with giant prawns and slices of what I think is tuna. We also got a small container of seaweed paste. The only reason I got that was because it was one of the samples I tried and it was very good. I was told to put it on rice.
We were a bit hungry so we stopped by a little shop selling sushi. The woman there went nuts when they saw our kids. They started chattering away. Given the giant language gap I think at one point they asked how old they were. When they found out Hobbette was only a year old they made a gesture like she was very tall for her age. That was about as far as I was able to translate the gestures.
Shaun said he heard kawaii which is cute so I guess that's a good thing. But kawaii can be easily confused with kowai which is scary...

Being a tourist at home

Today I played tourist. We visited a Buddhist shrine, samurai museum, a park, the international center and a mall. I loved our tour guide. I could tell she loved showing people the city. 

I think I'm going to have to go back to the park sometime on my own. There's a petting zoo (Hobbette loves petting zoos... As long as the animals don't bite or make sudden loud noises...) and pony rides on the weekend. There's also a farmers market there. There seems to be farmers markets everywhere here. She pointed out at least half a dozen different locations.

At the international center we learned a lot about the different things you could do in Japan including a lot of things in the Aomori Prefecture (kinda like our states). She said they have wild horses to the north that are very sweet. If we go see them we should bring carrots and feed them. There was so much information I'm glad they had pamphlets. It seems like they're celebrating some sort of festival at least twice a month. The next one is this weekend. We'll have to go to the parade.

My favorite had to be the mall though. The shops were interesting and there was a lot to see but I was really interested in the food. Shaun insisted I try the octopus balls. I had one earlier at the Viking but he said that was not up to the standards of the ones he had at the mall. He was right. They were amazing. Our tour guide had been talking them up as well and she was really happy to see us try them and even happier that we liked them.

I was a little humored by the lady who took our order though. When I pointed to a random picture of what appeared to be soup she pretty much said that we didn't want that and we should order the chicken and noodles. I'm not sure if she was afraid we wouldn't like it or what but I saw many of our fellow tourists end up with the same dish. The chicken was very good though. Hobbette ate most of the chicken from my plate and Shaun's plate leaving us with nothing but noodles. If she ate it, you know it had to be good. 

Tomorrow: The Fish Market!

Oh, God. Oh, God. We're all going to die.

I can officially drive in Japan.
Yeah, I'm scared for the people of Japan too.
I literally almost had an accident as soon as I got my license to drive too. I'm serious. I didn't even get out of the parking lot. Shaun thought it would be great fun if I drove us to the Base Exchange.
"Sure, why not?" I thought. "It can't be that different. I mean, other than driving on the opposite side of the road. And having the steering wheel on the opposite side of the car. And all the signs are different. And there are a few rules that are a little different. And lets not forget the narrower roads..." (I was right! The streets are narrower than American streets!)
So, we all piled into the car to go shopping. I had a few false starts as I realized that the shifter was in a different place (but the peddles weren't). I pulled out of my parking space and made my way to the street only to realize that I was still driving like I was in America and ended up on the wrong side of the driveway.
Just as someone was trying to pull into the parking lot.
There was a moment of panic, arms were flailing and a lot of "Oh, no! Oh, no!" being shouted as I attempted to correct the situation before I killed everyone. The woman in the other car waited patiently and laughed hysterically. I'd like to think that she had once been in my shoes. Perhaps with a slightly calmer approach.
We eventually made it to the Base Exchange and home again without further incident. I'm going to need a little more practice before I put the nice people of Japan at risk.

Getting out of the house

We decided to go out to eat tonight.
In Japan.
With a vague idea of how to get to the restaurant.
I was the navigator.

We got lost.

Shaun found a map on the base web site that had listings of restaurants and hair salons and other popular places to go off base. It seemed straight forward at the time...
The streets are narrow. Really narrow. I had a hard time discerning the streets from the driveways... and back alleys... and sidewalks...
And everything felt so tight. Maybe it was just me but it seemed like the houses were tall, narrow buildings stacked as close together as they could get.
And the signs! It was probably just because I couldn't read them but all the signs were so interesting. This must be what small children experience when they see brightly colored commercials on TV. I just wanted to study them.
I got easily distracted which may, or may not, have been a contributing factor when we got lost.
So, we just wandered around for a while until I spotted something that matched a location on the map. Then there was a bit more wandering. More discovering places on the map that were not our final destination. Wandering. And finally, the restaurant!
It's called the Viking and it's known to cater to Americans (its all you can eat). Each table has its own little grill. You fill up a bowl with all kinds of meat and grill it all right at your table. And eat it. We were debating whether a lot of people left there with food poisoning to no fault of the restaurant's. There was some very interesting choices of meat. Among the more interesting meats were liver, intestine, tongue and little whole fishes (complete with eyes). We tried them all. The intestines were a bit chewy but everything was very good. There was a lot of guess work involved to determine if they were done cooking so if you don't hear from me soon I may have died.

First night...

The first night was a little rough in the new house... 

It was my fault. We got home, I showered because it felt like I hadn't in three months, and we ate at home. Our first meal was Japanese fast food. Shaun ran out and got food so we could recover from our flight for a while. Very thin slices of beef on a bed of rice with a teriyaki sauce. It was really good and probably a lot healthier than American fast food. Hobbette scarfed the meat like there was no tomorrow but tried to shake the rice off her fingers. Then I decided it was nap time. Hobbit fought two burps the size of grizzly bears and then passed out. Hobbette struggled through her bottle before passing out herself. I told myself that I'd take a little nap just to recharge my battery. That was at 3. When Shaun came in to wake me a 4 there was no way I was leaving that bed without one of us losing a limb. He made the wise choice. No one moved for a good six hours. By then it was dark so we changed diapers fed Hobbit and convinced everyone that it was still bedtime. We only woke up once more around 2 and then then kids made it until morning. It was rough for me because I didn't know where light switches were, (for some reason the bathroom lights are outside of the bathroom...) I kept forgetting the diapers in other rooms because I hadn't gotten around to unpacking luggage yet and I haven't figure out the best way to keep Hobbette asleep but still hear Hobbit when he wakes up in the middle of the night. As a result, whenever I got up with Hobbit, Hobbette also woke up. I'll get things worked out eventually...

Adventure!

I'm going on an adventure. 

It was a long time preparing but I finally have every one's passports in hand. The tickets are purchased, the bags are packed and we're on our way. 

The hobbits and I left in the evening, past any of our bedtimes. Hobbette fought sleeping in the plane during our first leg of the journey much to the dismay of our fellow travelers. She finally gave in about halfway through the flight and passed out. Hobbit made friends with the gentleman who sat with us, cooing at him and smiling. He was a very good baby. 

We made it to Seattle, pick up our baggage and managed to find where to check in for our next flight without too many problems. We got there around 11 pm but had to wait until 2:30 am to check in. Hobbette eventually fell asleep in her car seat again after the excitement of deplaning and I got a chance to make a few friends while waiting in line. Unfortunately most of the people were going to Korea, not Japan. Everyone was on the same flight but lucky we were stopping in Japan first. Families got to check in first which was amazing because the line was incredibly long. Seriously. Think about how long the lines are to ride roller coasters at an amusement park. After check in we had to go through customs again (not cool with a very tired little girl) and hike to the other side of the airport (with a little help from a tram). I had to stop a few times to readjust luggage, change diapers, and feed Hobbit but we made it to our gate. Everyone fell asleep with a little coaxing and life was quiet until 7:30 am. 

I boarded with two children, two car seats and two carry-ons with a lot of help from sympathetic souls. I had the three middle seats all to myself (there were seven seats to a row with two walkways. Two seats on either sides with three seats in the middle)  life was looking good. Unfortunately, for safety reasons, I couldn't sit in the middle so Hobbit was in the middle. That the people behind me laugh when it came to changing diapers. I could pick up Hobbit and truck down one aisle to a bathroom but when I came back to put him back in his seat I would have to walk all the the back to the bathroom so I could cross over to the next aisle to get Hobbette. Then I'd have to do it again to get back to my seat. It made it look like I was making four trips to the bathroom in a 15 minute period. 

Grandma and grandpa got Hobbette a pair of child safe headphones for the trip and it was hilarious to watch her listen with eyes wide then take them off and stare at them for a while before she'd hand them to me to put them back on her head so she could listen wide-eyed again. She never did make the connection that the sounds she was hearing were connected to the screen in front of her playing the in-flight movie. They also had the added bonus of being the only thing I could "recycle." Every other book or toy lost its appeal after the initial playing and was tossed on the floor if I offered it again later but I could get a good 15 minutes of wonderment every time I offered the headphones. 

The last half hour was probably the hardest of the whole trip. I was losing steam, Hobbette was tired, cranky and wanted out of her car seat in the worst way (who can blame her) and Hobbit had a bubble stuck that was making him very loud. 

A rosary was said, saints were pleaded with, and a poor man in the next row was asked to tell my daughter to "knock it off" because she'd only cry louder if I told her to. He said he couldn't... He has a soft spot for little girls. 

We landed and I had three flight attendants help me haul everything down the stairs and into the building because my trick of strapping the car seat to my rolling luggage couldn't handle stairs. We got our luggage and I was mistaken for a commanders wife (apparently there were two Mrs. Williams on the flight with two children. She had a dog though so I missed an opportunity for special treatment when they figured out they had the wrong one). The line to get through customs was long and there was a little play area for kids so I just set Hobbette free and was content to be the last one through customs (they were humored when I asked them to stamp Petunia Bacon's passport by the way...) Shaun was happy we made it and we went home.