Sushi virgin

I admit it. I've lived in Japan for well over a year now and I just recently tried sushi. Some of you are agape; some completely understand why I've waited. I'm not quite sure in this modern day and age why anything should be tried raw. But, I did it. We went to the sushi-go-round in American Village (right by our house). The sushi is on a conveyor belt and we sit around it like at a bar.

Going by me are some cooked shrimp on rice (my personal "favorite"....like a shrimp cocktail without the sauce), octopus and who knows what the last thing is. Rob did eat some of that octopus.

The sushi is on different colored plates with a varying cost for each item. If something looks *good* then you pick it up.

Afterwards the waitress comes around with some sort of magical electric wand and waves it over the dishes. Somehow this is a scan and it prints out a receipt. On a side note, there is no tipping in Japan. It's wonderful to just buy a meal and pay for what you bought. You'd think this would mean cruddy service because the servers aren't motivated to work, but quite the contrary. There is exceptional service everywhere.

Here are some eel with rice and teriyaki sauce. It was warm and this is what I'm eating in the video below.

California roll with avacado and salmon (I think). This was sorta doable because of the strong sesame seed presence to cover the other tastes.

I did not try this one. It was some sort of fish eggs that actually "popped" in Rob's mouth while he ate them. Yuck!

Rob being a good sport.

Melissa not being such a good sport.

A video of me trying sushi for the very first time.

3 months old

I was just looking at pictures of my kids at around 3 months old to see who Kate looks like the most. What do you think?

Noah

Ben

Isabella

Kate

Forest Adventure Park

Thanks to the Marine Corps we had free babysitting from 8am to 5pm on Saturday. Yeah! We decided to venture to Forest Adventure Park. Since practically everyone I know has been there already I figured it was time for me to go too. Our friends Melissa and John Petrini came too and we had a blast. Here are the highlights.

This is Rob about to run down one of the many zip lines through the jungle. Note the ocean behind him. Yeah, we live in paradise.

Here's Rob flying down the cord. Click to enlarge.

Rob's nice run.

Melissa taking a turn. Note the giant valley below. It was a far drop, but soooo much fun.

Crossing a rope bridge going over a valley.

Rob taking off. Kowabunga!

Our friend John coming in...shows how fast we were going.

This is the last zip line called Tarzan. There is a free fall for a moment before the line catches you and slams you into the net. I have a nice bruise from catching my leg on the net as I landed into it. First Rob jumps, then Melissa.

A nice shot of the ocean and jungle right after the Tarzan fall.

This was a ridiculously hard swinging bridge that made you almost do a split each time you took a step.

If that last bridge was hard, this one was terrifying. These are rings hanging down that you had to walk through while hold the very rope you are putting your weight on. I attempted it, but Rob had to save my butt halfway through it.

The happy couple.

Fun with a leaf blower

Our neighbor had a leaf blower out the other day and we were having some fun with it. Maybe Rob should consider using this instrument in the dental chair.

Our backyard

This is what our backyard looks like most afternoons.

Random Kate @ 3 months

She started rolling over this week. Bummer! ...I mean, um, way to go, Kate!

Kate's first taste at a winter in Buffalo. Well, maybe not. She didn't like being stuck in the icebox as you can tell by the scowl on her face.

Kate is happy sucking on her fingers. While it's nice to have her self-pacify, I hope she doesn't continue this habit. She usually takes a pacifier and is swaddled tight at night so hopefully this is a short lived phase.

Someone's got her Daddy's eyes

I'm so happy that Kate has her Daddy's eyes. I hope she keeps those baby blues....none of our other kids did.

What happens in 3 months?

Noah and Kate as a newborn.
Noah and Kate at 3 months. What a difference 3 months can make.

Mt Fuji marathon of pictures

I will warn you now....there are a lot of Mt Fuji pics posted here.

If you ask Rob how his Mt Fuji hike went, he'll say something like, "Exhilarating!" or "Epic". If you ask me, I'd say, "Excruciating". Let's take a walk down my memory lane. Here we are about to embark on our journey from the 5th station. We were pumped. We were excited. We were already seeing our breath it was so chilly. We also have what almost every climber buys before the trip...my walking stick. More about that later.

Sign at the beginning of the climb

In good spirits. Well, Rob was in good spirits the whole way. They had signs like this one directing us throughout (in case the throngs of people weren't a dead giveaway). I thought, at first, this was going to be a nice "walk in the park" so to speak with a peacefulness and oneness with nature. It was far from it. The mountain was PACKED with mostly Japanese climbers. They say about 30% of the climbers are foreigners. It was crowded and NOT peaceful.

See those little bells dangling from my stick? Well, aside from them being really annoying (I took mine off after about an hour) apparently this little pile is a tribute to the Fuji gods. We COULD have left them in this pile on our way down, but we kept them for posterity sake.

This is a sample of the terrin on this beast of a mountain. It is certainly not a paved recreational walkway. There were parts when I was actually needing my hands to climb up rocks. A lot of it was this volcanic rock.

Here's a pic of a guy burning a stamp on our sticks. At different stations and pit stops along the route you could get stamps burned into your walking stick. They kept a brand in a fire and you could pay 200 yen to get your stick branded. Roughly speaking 100 yen equals $1. The sticks themselves were 1200 yen. Each station was 200 yen. We got about 12 stamps so that's 3600 yen just for our walking sticks. Oh, times two because there are two of us. Not only is this the most expensive wooden walking stick ever, it also helped my sorry butt up this hill. Being 2 1/2 months postpartum and not in that great of shape I used that stick like it's never been used. I bonded with it and I'm really glad I have that war trophy forever now.

Taking a short break.

Sign says, "Beware of wind gusts". Yeah. Towards the top I thought I might actually get blown down the mountain it was so windy.

Note how Rob is actually smiling in the above and below shots.


Here I am dying. I'm not quite show how far into this journey I am, but I do know that I am dying. I started getting altitude sickness. For me this was a loss of appetite, nausea, a HUGE headache, dizziness and loss of vision. That's right....LOSS OF VISION. By the time we got to the top I couldn't even enjoy the majesty of it all because I couldn't see the outlines of the clouds. It was all a blur. Around this time I heard someone say it was 2k to the top. I can't believe that because it still took us about 5 more hours to get there.

This was a commonplace stance for me. I would stop to catch my breath. I would think I was okay. Then I would take 5 steps and be completely and utterly winded again. My lungs couldn't keep up with my heart pumping the blood through. It couldn't oxygenate the blood for as hard as it was pumping. Every step I had to tell myself, "Just pick up your foot, now move it forward, now set it down and transfer your weight. Do it again". It was miserable and I just kept thinking the top MUST be close.

Here's a nice picture of us smiling. I couldn't see the camera and since I didn't want every picture looking like I was dying I tried to smile and look normal. I think I was a pretty good actress in this pic, don't you think? The sun is finally starting to rise and we aren't at the top. We were supposed to be at the top for sunrise (we started hiking at 10pm). At this point I want to cry because I've let Rob down. I know he would have made it to the top in like 10 minutes without me, but he loves me so much he stuck with me and didn't even tease me. He held my non-walking stick hand and encouraged me to not give up. Truth be told, I didn't have an option. See, the path down is NOT the path up so I had to get to the top in order to come back down. So I kept moving.

The exact sunrise.

The torii station before reaching the summit.

If I may brag for one more moment about my fabulous husband I will. Here he is re-proposing to me. He did it the first time on top of Angel's Landing at Zion's Nat'l Park in Utah. He had to drag me up that mountain too. Well, I've been wanting a simpler wedding band so unbeknownst to me he searched far and wide for what I wanted. He had the ring and even got down on one knee. Of course I don't really remember it because of the altitude sickness, but isn't that sweet? Yeah, he's the best.

At the summit.

Yeah, Rob!

Coming down and I'm feeling a TON better. It's amazing what oxygen can do for a body.

All in all, I'm glad I did it so that I can say that I did it, but I will NEVER do that again. It took us almost 9 hours to summit and 3 1/2 to come down (but 45 minutes of that was stopping to pump). We made our bus to come back by only 15 minutes (did I mention that it was an hour subway ride and a 2 hour bus ride to get to the 5th station?) I was exhausted and put the kids to bed at 6:30pm so that I could crash too. Whew!


I showed you before a picture of all 4 kids on the stroller. For a moment, captured here, we actually had 5 kids on the stroller.

Our Fuji summit was made possible by our friends, the Neals. They climbed it one night while we watched their kiddos and they watched our munchkins while we climbed. A perfect scenario for all parties involved as we wouldn't have been able to do it with our significant others any other way.

The next day we headed out with the Neals to do some touristy stuff. Here we are visiting a Buddhist temple. I hope I'm not completely disrespecting them.


Here we are pretending to act like shiza dogs. They are outside every entryway in Japan. One side is the male with mouths closed. The other side is the female with mouths open.

We found this nifty hand washing station which was nice because our kids were filthy.

Walking back to the subway station. THIS is the Tokyo I expected to see. Crowded with lots of lights and tall buildings.

Here we are on the airplane on our FREE flight back to Okinawa. Yeah, we're on netting for seats, but did I mention it was FREE!