Things have been moving along here in Japan. We are still
having a great time! This weekend Anton’s scheduled allowed him to have 5 days
off with us!! We spent Friday at a shopping mall near the base. It is so
difficult being in a different country when you really have no way of
communicating. All of the signs are in
Japanese and no one really speaks English once you get out in the “wild”. So we
took our time getting lost and trying to find anything. The mall was huge, as
in tall. There were 6 floors of store after store. There are no walls between
the different stores; it’s just a large room with sections of different stores.
What’s strange is that you’ll be walking through a home store and then all of a
sudden you see a case of fish. They have grocery stores just random throughout.
One stop shop really. Maggie loved looking at all of the new things. Currently
Japan is really into Frozen! Frozen is everywhere. Also, every few stores have
a children’s section where children can hang out and play while the parents
shop. We’ve seen this almost everywhere
we go in Japan. Japanese stores are not meant to have huge American strollers
in them, so that was an adjustment, but we still had a great time looking at
everything. After some hardcore window-shopping we stopped for some Japanese
KFC. It’s not really like American KFC at all… But I knew they had chicken...and
that it was cooked. So we gave it a try :) haha it was pretty good. What’s nice
about the restaurants here is that outside each of them is a case of plastic
food. A plate of each item on the menu (most places only have about 5 different
plates to choose from…none of this 20 different option thing like in the US),
the plastic food looks very appetizing to say the least haha. ;) But its good for
when you can’t speak Japanese and you just point to what you want, and you know
exactly what you are going to be eating. The plastic food is very popular! We
heard there is a street that just sells the plastic food, and a lot of tourists
make sure they grab some plastic food to take home ;).
On Monday and Tuesday, we continued our exploring adventures.
Inside of Tokyo is the Sensoji Temple. It was destroyed during WWII, but was
remade for people to come and visit. There are temples around it that are still
functioning and run as real temples I believe. There are many shopping vendors
surrounding the temple, so many that we didn’t even see them all after walking
around for 4 hours. The temple is guarded by different gates with different
statues, symbolizing protection etc., and outside the temple is large pit for
burning incents. There were lots of different rituals people were performing
that we were not sure exactly what they were doing, but it was totally fun to
observe. The inside of the temple has SO MUCH GOLD!!! There was netting up so
you could only go so far, but it was pretty amazing to see. Maggie enjoyed it
so much she refused to nap. We stopped and got lunch at a REAL ramen place, and
it was pretty good. The flavor of soup I got was very seaweedy, so that was a
little different. But I was proud of myself for “trying” something new. It’s always so funny to me how the Japanese
think that babies can sit and eat at the table. After we let Maggie try and have
her own chair, bowl, spoon, and glass of water we ended up having to take turns
holding her on own laps while we ate. Luckily, Maggie was all smiles to the
tables around us, so no one was to sick of the thrown spoons! After attempting
to eat soup with the chopsticks, the waiter noticed my struggle and searched for
a fork for me! That was nice…. it’s so funny how much I miss the small things
from America. It’s always hard to sightsee around Tokyo because the traffic is
always a NIGHTMARE. Sometimes it will literally take you an hour to go 3 miles.
It’s why so many people take the train…but when you have a small baby with a
stroller, and has tough nap schedules, we always want to go with the car. Maybe
we will try a train the next time.
On Tuesday we went to some more shopping centers and enjoyed
being tourists. One cool thing we have noticed is they have “second hand”
stores where people will donate their old “Louis Vuitton” or “Gucci” items, and
the store will resale them as “used”. But they are actually fantastic condition
and a way better price. I enjoyed window-shopping there the most. We went to a
super awesome Italian place after. It was like someone’s home, and then they
use the main floor as the restaurant, and you can watch them cooking from your
table (this is how most restaurants are). The food was fantastic even though it took
forever to get it. Everything was made from scratch! Also, at every restaurant
there is always an option of a side of rice! They sure do love their rice here.
That night we went to a “Big Boys” restaurant, and had my first experience of a
Japanese salad bar…it was terrible…haha but now I know. We aren’t sure if we
ate the wrong food or what because we couldn’t understand anything they said to
us…so we just kinda ate what we felt like and called it good.
It’s been fun exploring Japan more…but I always have a happy
sigh once we get back on base. Even just seeing signs in English is so
refreshing. :)
Anton has started school this week, its only one class for
now, but its really not taking any time. We think this will be a pretty easy
master’s program, which we are stoked about!
In typical Kodra fashion, change is in the air. We have been
dealing with pass and paperwork issues since Maggie and I got here to Japan 4
months ago. It’s been a disaster this whole time. After trying multiple
different routes, and seeking help from multiple different people, we have
decided the best thing for us is to move back to the states. They really want
Anton to stay out here…but me and Maggie can’t handle that. Luckily his company
has the exact same job in San Diego and they are willing to move Anton there.
So within the next month we will be heading to California. We are sad to leave
Japan, but are so grateful for the fun adventure we have had here. California
will be a fun new change!!!
