Aunt Jemima in the house

We love pancakes, that is, we, with the exception of Gabrielle. She loves waffles, but hates pancakes. What kind of sense does that make? Anyway, our grocery store on base has finally started carrying Biquick Shake n' Pour pancake mix. Not new, I know, but it's new for us. You just add water to the jug, shake and pour! The pancakes aren't as light and fluffy as when I make them from scratch, but for a quick and easy, hot b'fast, they're awesome!
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I love adding p'nut butter to the batter, like my mom used to do, but I'm the only one who likes them that way, so I only add it to the last cup of batter.
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Ethan enjoying the end result.

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Did I mention that I LOVE TOKYO?!?!?! Day Two

We slept in Saturday morning then headed for Tokyo Tower on foot. It took us about 30 minutes, but we were just ambling along taking in the sights, I probably could have made it in 20 on my own. Click here to see the rest of the pictures. Along the way was this woman and her performing monkey. It was really just creepy. The monkey obviously wanted no part of the show and he kept shrieking and showing his huge fangs. Of course we had no idea what the woman was saying but she just kept laughing...really creepy.

Ethan taking in the view of Tokyo.

I'll let you take a guess at what this thing is supposed to be. No, it's not a giant penis in overalls, which is the obvious first guess. I have absolutely no idea what the band aid is for.

We had a good time, we took the elevator up to the first observatory, but the girls took the stairs back down (about 600 steps). Afterwards we had lunch at Wendy's (the first one we've seen in Japan) and wandered through Roppongi and Roppongi Hills. After a nap and some TV Otis and I drove over to the New Sanno hotel, about 10 minutes away, to get some dinner and check out the hotel (Otis had never been there). We headed home on Sunday around 12:00 because we were sure we'd hit a 3 hour traffic snarl, but it only took 45 minutes! Again we couldn't believe how lucky we got! It's exactly 46 km (28.5 mi) from our house to Hardy Barracks.

Here's Ethan amidst a gaggle of adoring fans. Everytime we stop we get a swarm of women and girls, he's just so kawaii...even when we pull up next to a Japanese woman or girl at a stop light they're smiling and waving at him. Sometimes he hams it up and waves and blows kisses, which sends them into hysterics, but a lot of the time he's his usual stinky self and turns his head away, refusing to acknowledge them at all.

Did I mention that I LOVE TOKYO ?!?!? Day One

Damn good thing we brought a map!!

It was actually a very easy, though expensive drive, straight down the Chuo/Shuto expressway: $13.00 for tolls each way. It only took us an hour to get there!! We couldn't believe it! We only made one wrong turn and just stopped at a convinience store for directions.

We didn't know before, but Hardy Barracks is the headquarters for the Pacific Stars & Stripes, the military newspaper for all of the Pacific area. HB consists of just 2 buildings: the hotel, pictured above, and the S&S building. Our room was great: no frills but it had a queen size bed in the bdrm and a sleeper sofa in the living room with a full bathroom (complete with cadillac potty) in between. We had a fridge, microwave and dvd players, dvd's are available to check out for free in the office. Not too shabby for only $50/night ($35 for the 1st person, $5 for each additional person over 3 years old). The only down side is that there's no food nearby. They offer a free continental b'fast and there's a small convinience store on-site, other than it's a good 20-minute walk to the nearest grub.

Just cause he's so cute! This is Ethan waiting for the subway. We arrived in plenty of time to head for Roppongi for dinner.

It started raining as soon as we got to HB, but I was not about to spend our first night in the hotel! So we grabbed our umbrellas and headed to TGI Friday's. The food was delicious, but not something we'll be doing again any time soon!!! :( The girls both had appetizers as their meals: Gabi had a 3-piece chicken tender plate (just chicken, no fries or anything) and Meg had an order of chili-cheese fries. Otis and I both had bacon cheeseburgers with fries (Ethan just ate off our plates). Add in 3 sodas and 1 pina colada for a grand total of.......$81.00!!!!!!! I knew it'd be pricey, but DAMN!!! When I say we won't be doing it again anytime soon, of course I mean "us" as a family, it won't be nearly as expensive when I go by myself!!! LOL!

Stay Tuned!!

Tomorrow we're heading off for what will be, I'm sad to say, our first real trip to Tokyo. Yes, it's pathetic that we've been here for 7 months (has it really been that long already?) and this will be our first trip to Tokyo. Otis and I went to Ginza for a few hours once, and I did my quick trip to the YOSC conference a few weeks ago, but that was just one day and I didn't make it very far from the hotel. So this will be our first real trip; the first of many, I promise!!

We are staying 2 nights at Hardy Barracks, a tiny Army (or maybe Navy?) post right in the heart of Tokyo, Roppongi to be exact. We've decided to drive so we'd have a bit more flexibility with our schedule. Not sure if that's going to turn out to be a very good idea or not; it's supposed to be a very simple drive, a straight shot down the expressway, but it's not unusual for the 30 mile drive to Tokyo to take 3 + hours! The plan is to go to Akihabara, Tokyo Tower and Odaiba, we'll see how well we stick to the plan. I just have to keep telling myself that I have years to see everything, on most of our outings I'm usually running around in a panic trying to cram in every possible site and activity as if we're leaving next week. I just so don't want to waste a single minute of our time here!!

Looks like Singapore is on the back burner for now. Otis is really swamped at work and they're really short-staffed so he can't get enough time off for an extended trip, we're moving to Plan B with lots of short 2 - 3 day trips instead, easier on the wallet for sure.

YEES Alumni

Megan is attending Yokota East Elementary School, the same school I went to as a kid. It's gotten bigger with the addition of two classroom buildings, two huge playgrounds and a lunchroom (when I was a kid there was no cafeteria, everyone walked home for lunch every day) but the rest is still exactly the same. Although now their mascot is a panda; when I was a kid our mascot was our principal's little weiner dog, East, who came to school every day and followed our prinicpal, Mr. Lenz everywhere he went. On a side note, for some reason I vividly remember learning to spell the word PRINCIPAL while in the 2nd grade at YEES. I missed it on a spelling test and my teacher made me stay after school until I figured out how to spell it. In a moment of pure genius I asked to go to the office to call my mom and tell her I'd be late getting home; when I got her on the phone she told me how to spell PRINCIPAL and I raced back to class to correct my test. That memory just popped into my head! I literally hadn't thought about it in 30 years! Anyway, at Christmas every student got their picture taken with East, the weennie dog, to put in the Xmas cards we made for our parents. I still have mine :)


Now, every Friday at YEES (now renamed Mendel Elementary School, in honor of Joan Mendel, a teacher at the school for over 30 years, who recently passed away) is Spirit Day and the kids wear their school T-shirts; today Megan wore MY 30 year old YEES school T-shirt. It was pretty cool. I'm so thankful that my kids are getting the same great opportunity that I had to grow up here!

Happy Hinamatsuri!

Today we went to a Hinamatsuri party in Kodaira City, about 10 min away by train. The party was at a local elementary school with about 15 Japanese girls and 15 American girls + parents.

Hinamatsuri means "Doll Festival" and is celebrated as Girls' Day in Japan (kind of Mother's Day but for girls). There was an exhibition by a guy with tops (the spinning toy) and we learned a traditional Japanese dance, the girls got to put on kimonos and have their pix made with the doll display and we did a small gift exchange. It was a lot of fun and a great chance to experience some real Japanese culture.

I got some great pictures, click here to see the rest. It's hard to really tell in the pictures, but there are 6 different sashes around the girls' waists; it took 2 women 20 minutes to completely dress 1 girl.

Coocoo for CoCo's

Tonight we had dinner at CoCoIchibanya, better known as Coco's, a really popular Japanese curry restaurant. The one we ate at is directly across the street from a McDonald's which has seating and a playplace on the 2nd floor. The kids ate at McD's, the seating and play area are right in front of a huge window and we could see them from our table at Coco's; this is a great way to eat dinner out on our own but with the kids at the same time :)

This Coco's is tiny, only 3 small booths and maybe 7-8 seats at the counter. At Coco's you choose what type of curry you want, they have several different plates with things like chicken, pork, beef, crab cakes, eggplant, fried quail eggs...then you choose your toppings, everything from garlic chips and cheese to fried oysters and natto (fermented soy beans)...then you choose your level of spicyness from 1 - 10. Each level had it's own description/warning, level 1 says something like: For those who enjoy spicy food but also enjoy tasting the flavor of their curry. The menu tells you that only people who have eaten a full plate of 5 spicy are allowed to order 10 spicy! I got level 2, it was spicier than I like but not too bad, O had level 3. It was good, everyone talks about Coco's all the time so I really wanted to try it.

Curry really isn't my thing, but it was good and I'm glad we went. The very best part was topping off the meal with a Choco Bite from McD's!!! So f****** yummy!!

Snow Day, the Trilogy!

Snow again! There were still some patches of snow around from last weekend, but the majority of it was gone. Again the timing is perfect, it started snowing yesterday around 4p and it was still coming down pretty heavily when I went to bed at 11p, so the kids have all day today to enjoy it. We made 'ghetto' snow boots for the kids (taped plastic bags over their shoes), Ethan hated them but they worked great for the girls. Gabi's feet are HUGE, she fit in my size 9 boots! But I was wearing them, so she had to make do with the ghetto boots.

Last night about 9p it was still snowing really hard and it had gotten pretty deep. I had the blinds up on our sliding glass doors so we could watch it and suddenly the 3 year old girl from 2 doors down went running past in her pajamas. I stepped outside to make sure her parents knew she was out and all the families from the 3 buildings (ours and the ones in front and behind us) were coming out in the snow, so of course we all had to suit up and join them. It was a lot of fun, Otis even joined us and even Ethan had fun. We had a huge snowball fight and everybody made a snowman. Gabi and Otis did most of the work on ours. I'm sure Megan will end up sick again, she was just getting over her cough and she got totally soaked in the snowball fight.

Here are all the snow day pictures, the last 10 are from last night.