Travel

We are having a bit of heart failure at the total cost of our next adventure. We did some adding and figured out how much money we have spent on travel while living in Japan, it isn't pretty. We had intended to save as much money as possible while living here so buying a house wont kill us when we retire. While we have saved a bit, it is a little bit of a shock to think of how much we could have saved. Mandy will be going to college in three short years as well, I sure hope she gets a scholarship. Looking back we have decided we have no regrets. We don't have any debt, we have a bit of savings and we are seeing the world. We will have to work until we are 90 but we can look back and remember the time we saw the Great Wall of China.

I am glad I am married to someone who has the same vice as me, travel. I wonder what is your vice? What do you spend too much money on?

It is fun living on a military base, all my neighbors make approximately the same amount of money as we do. Everyone spends their money differently. Some have great furniture and beautifully decorated homes, some go back to the US a lot, some have big savings accounts, some have really nice cars, I have none of that, but I have been a lot of places.

Pictures

Yesterday, I spent the entire day running around trying to get all the paperwork together necessary to apply for a Visa for our China trip. Somehow running around when preparing to go on an adventure of a lifetime is more fun than frustrating.

Moving to Japan we were not able to take a vehicle with us, European overseas bases allow you to ship one car, but not Japan. So we sold one of our vehicles and put the other into storage. When we arrived we found that in Japan there are a number of taxes and fee associated with owning a vehicle and we decided to only purchase one. One vehicle for the entire family for four years. Luckily there is a shuttle bus which stops near my home every half an hour and takes me the three miles to the main part of the base. Sometimes I drive Jeff to work, sometimes he car pools, sometimes Jeff takes the bus and sometimes Lily and I take the bus. I haven't been on the bus since the first snow fall, standing outside in the cold doesn't sound fun to me. We have been having some warm weather, in the 40's and Lily needs to practice riding a bus for our big trip to China. So yesterday I found myself standing at the bus stop. Of course the temperature dropped to 20 and there was wind gusts in excess of 50 knotts. We were without our gloves or hats and quite chilly. A stranger actually stopped and offered us a ride. But, we took the bus and ended up having a blast.

We got off the bus at Jeff's office and picked him up. I guess he told me that I needed to bring our passports with me, but I swear he didn't anyways we had to drive all the way home, get the passports and then drive back to main base. Totally defeating the purpose of our bus ride. Along with passports we needed Visa pictures, we needed all this just to buy tickets for our trip. I have had this roll of film in the car for months now and since I was going to the photo shop I got my pictures developed, now I can show you Lily's Halloween costume.



I can show you a pictures of Thanksgiving dinner.







I posted the rest of the pictures on this roll of film over at flikr including pictures of our trip to the Tofu Factory and our grand adventure visiting the Japanese Monkeys in Wakinosawa Japan.

Happy Birthday Amanda

Today is Mandy's 15th birthday. We are busy here with last minute cleaning and party preparations.

Our passport issues have been resolved! It looks like we are on our way to China. The trip isn't until April. We were getting nervous about getting our renewed passports in the mail in time for the trip. It ended up only taking a week. Thank you very much to the American Embassy here in Japan, you rock! Now we just have to buy the tickets and we will be on our way! We had considered going on a trip to Tokyo instead, no passport needed. We did some research and found out about Disney Sea in Tokyo we were all excited and Mandy and I drove to the ticket office only to discover it was closed for the day. We then stopped by the post office and discovered our passports. Wouldn't that have frustrating to buy the tickets to go to Tokyo and then discover the passports at the post office. It seems my guardian angel is on my shoulder as always.

I have a test coming up this week in my computer class. Maybe I should quit playing with my blog and actually read the chapters. One good thing about taking classes while being the mother of a teenager is that I see her point of view. We are very similar in our slacker ways. One of the hardest things about school is learning where you stand in regards to integrity. Do you do all the work? Do you do as much work as necessary to get the grade you want? What is the actual point of school? Is it the grade or the knowledge? I have always tried to do all the work, even when I already have an A, I will read every word and try my best, then I get too overwhelmed and frustrated. Hence, I am 36 years old and still working toward a degree. I have yet to find the balance of doing too much and not doing enough. As I watch Mandy struggle with these same issues I am trying to find the wisdom to be quiet and let her find her own personal work ethic.

Update

On the potty training...Miss Lily does not get the concept. Whenever she starts to pee she screams and starts to run, she appears to think that she is being attacked by something and tries to outrun the pee. Of course this leaves a lovely trail of tinkle across my living room carpet. She loves to help me clean it up. We are all going to die from pee germs.

On the traveling...We did not make it to the Enburi festival in Hachinohe. We suck. It was only 15 minutes down the road. Didn't that picture make it look fun? Well one more year here, I will have to go next year. We are making a list and checking it twice of all the places we want to go in our last year living in Japan. So sad. We were so ready to leave, so ready to get on with our lives, so ready to discover a new culture. We are gypsies! Anyways the last year of an assignment we tend to go crazy with the I just have to go here, and here, and here. This is our list so far. China is number one, we will go there no matter what. A tour of Japan, is number two - we want to take the girls to Tokyo Disney and see Tokyo, we want to see Kyoto and Hiroshima. We are planning to drive on this adventure and I get to buy more maps and navigate. That is by the way may passion. More than were we end up going I love the getting there. The planning. I am so excited, I already have two travel books about Japan!! Yeah!

On the blog...Have you noticed that it changes every time you come here. I am crazy in love with learning how to change it all around. I am currently taking my first computer class, everything I know is self taught so this will be interesting. Since I have to take classes to graduate and since I love to learn about computers I am going to merge those two things and take more computer classes. Maybe I will actually figure out what I am doing and find a future career. If I haven't mentioned it before when Jeff retires from the military and is earning his pension, I get to be the primary bread winner of the family and he gets to be the primary care giver of the family. The thing is he is working on his Masters degree and I am still working on my Bachelor's degree. It will all work out.

Miss Lily

Over the course of the last six months Lily has changed so very much. Six months ago she was a difficult child. She had terrible fits of screaming at least once an hour. She ran away into the street, escaped from the house, if her feet touched the ground she took off. Screaming and running that was our sweet little Miss Lily.

Now she is the complete opposite. I took her shopping today and she was an angel. She helps me get what we need and places it in the cart. She never runs off. She was even tired and didn't have a fit at all. We spend our days reading, coloring, doing puzzles and dancing. She gets through her entire gymnastics class following directions and not throwing fits. What caused this miracle transformation?

Honestly I think it is a combination of a lot of things. I have worked very hard with behavior modification and with eliminating all of the hidden sources of wheat and corn from her diet. Perhaps due to all the work and effort I have put forth in those areas I feel like they must be at least partially responsible for the change. Then there is the fact that she is older and more mature, she has learned to talk.

But, last week when Jeff was out of town for a brief four day trip, she went back to her old self. Normally he spends only one or two hours with her per day. But, his not being there to tuck her in at night had this horrific effect on her disposition. By the time he came home she was having fits all day over every little thing. It was absolutely driving me crazy. Every time he called me instead of asking about his grand trip to Korea I went on and on about the screaming.

About two hours before we went to the airport to pick up Daddy I made the mistake of telling Lily that Daddy was coming home today. I told her we had to clean up and then we would go to the airport and get daddy. Normally I can't do any type of housework without the help of sweet little Miss Lily. She "helps" me with the dishes, vacuuming, everything. Instead she went and put on her shoes (never done that before) put on her jacket (never done that before, knocked the entire coat rack to the ground to get her jacket). She came to the kitchen where I was washing dishes and said, "let's go". And she was ready. I convince her to clean up the house first. Then we went to the airport, and got Daddy! Yeah, you should have seen the child's face.

The next day Daddy let me have a break from sweet little Miss Lily. She was an angel. Laughed and played with her daddy. Every five minutes he kept telling me how sweet she was and how much he enjoyed taking care of her. I told him I am going to go away for a few days. He said, ok no problem. Can I come and visit you?

In other Miss Lily news... She is not potty trained. I tried a couple of times but she was so very much against it and we were working on so many other behavior issues that I put it off. She comes into the bathroom with me and sits on her potty while I use the toilet and we talk about it. Everytime I change her diaper I tell her next time maybe you would like to go pee-pee in the potty instead of your diaper. I tell her then she can wear her Care-Bear panties. Now she has decided that she no longer wants to wear a diaper at all. If you come anywhere near her with a diaper she gets so upset. She only wants to wear her panties. Yet, she has never used the potty. So when she wears her panties, well you do the math. I don't want to tell her no she can't wear her panties because that seems like a huge step in the right direction, but I really get tired of cleaning up pee and well you know off the carpet. I also have a pee cat who refuses to pee in her litterbox and a pee dog who pees whenever she is upset at me, like when I look at her wrong. I am thinking of changing my name to pee-girl. Today we bought 12 new pairs of panties that sweet little Miss Lily picked all by herself and we are going to give this a go, wish me luck.

Hachinoe Enburi Festival

I really want to go here...

The Hachinohe Enburi Festival was originally held about 800 years ago to petition the gods for a good growing season and a bountiful harvest. Today it has evolved into a major event that is intended to also hasten the coming of spring. Particpants perform ritual dances and wear special costumes that mimic clothing worn by farmers hundreds of years ago. They also wear elaborate headgear which is the key to making their petitions come true. The headgear is considered sacred. Dancers’ actions resemble the planting of rice and other farming actions.

Other dancers dress like ancient gods of good fortune. They dance in groups of five and there are about 40 different groups that take part throughout the four days of the festival.

But, Jeff is out of town. I wonder if I am brave enough to take the girls there on my own? We are also hoping to go to see the Great Wall of China this Spring, however, we are currently having tons of passport issues. Will red tape keep us from visiting China?

When we returned from our trip to the US over this past summer we swore on a stack of bibles we would never take Miss Lily on another airplane, except to leave here for good. We are telling ourselves that she is different now than she was then. It is almost a year's difference. When I took her to the US at 9 months I swore I would never do it again. When I took her to Hawaii at 15 months I swore I would never take her on a plane again. But, this last time going to America was soooo bad. I guess it is like child birth, the memory isn't so bad as the experience. I am sorry to everyone who has shared a plane with me and my screamer. If we are able to go I will take some nifty pictures of Lily at the Great Wall of China and she will have that for the rest of her life, the screaming if it occurs will only last in that moment in time.

I am so worried about what I will feed her. I am so worried about the screaming. In the end I think it will be worth it. So pray for my passport issues to be resolved unless you plan to be on an airplane traveling from Japan to China in Spring, then you might want to pray for my passport to get lost in the mail.

Japanese Onsens

I live in a remote region of Japan famous for its hotsprings or Onsens. I have never been to one. My friends keep trying to convince me to go. There are literally dozens of Onsens in my area. Some are naturally occurring hotsprings where one can sit outdoors in hot sulfur laden water. There being more than 40 inches of snow on the ground from this month alone, sitting outdoors in the snow in steaming hot water sounds exotic and fun. There are indoor Onsens too. The thing is that everyone is naked. My friend says that one takes a shower and then walks from the locker room to the Onsen completely naked. Then one climbs into a big tub of hot water along with several other naked people. Sometimes you get bunched in there pretty tightly. It isn't so much that I don't want other people to see me naked, I just get totally creeped out by the thought of mingling with a bunch of naked people especially in water. Everytime we go camping, our Japanese friends go to the onsen before bed. Camping in Japan means that you sleep outdoors but you do not go to sleep without first soaking in some hot water with your friends. So my dear Internet friends, I ask you, would you take advantage of this opportunity to experience another culture, would you take off all your clothes and soak in a onsen with a bunch of naked people.

McDonald's: Fries Have Potential allergenic - Yahoo! News

McDonald's: Fries Have Potential Allergens - Yahoo! News
I have always known that My Lily has a reaction to eating these fries. At least now Mickey D's is labeling them properly. She also has a reaction to eating the hamburgers, even when we purchase them plain and with no bun.

I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to be told that a food does not contain wheat and then watch Lily get sick because it really does have wheat in it. The labeling rules are such crap! I am so grateful that they have been improved and this new admission by McDonald's is a really positive step in the right direction. Yeah.

A couple of weeks ago Lily had a mild cold. I haven't been able to find a cold medicine that she can take. She has only been sick with a cold a couple of times and I should be more pro-active. So I didn't give her any meds during her cold. She had a really runny nose and we went through a couple of boxes of tissues but poor Miss Lily had to live through the cold the old fashioned way.

Then, a few days into the cold she woke up in the middle of the night with a cough. She coughed for hours. So I got her up and gave her some medicine, and that medicine contained some incident which caused an allergic reaction. I knew this would happen as I used this same medication the last time she was sick. The label does not list any bad ingredients, but her reaction is my only barometer. So after taking the medicine we sat up for an hour and watched late night TV and her cough went away. She went back to sleep and the whole scenerio was repeated the next night.

After those two doses on two consecutive nights Lily's cold went away. However, now she was embroiled in the mist of a horrid allergic reaction. This includes rashes, diarrhea, lethargy, and lots of screaming discomfort. So after the cold was over we had another week and a half of feeling lousy. Just because I gave her the medication. I never know the right thing to do, let her cough and get no sleep for two nights or feel awful for a week and a half. The biggest problem is that she is allergic to both corn and wheat, so the meds that don't have wheat have corn and vice versa. I am hoping she will never get sick again. I have called the manufacturers of all the cold meds that I have access to here in Japan and none have ok for Lily. So I guess I have to go through the doctor and pharmacy. Fun.

So yeah, McDonald's. According to the new law wheat has to be clearly marked on products along with many other allergens, but not corn, so basically I am still screwed!

The French Riviera

The other day I was reading a pithy comment about men in speedos over at Geese Aplenty and it reminded me of a trip our family took to the French Riviera, specifically Cannes, in May of 2001. We were on a pretty tight budget and therefore drove over from where we were living in Pordenone, Italy. It was about a 7 or 8 hour drive, through Verona, Milano, Genova, Monocco, Nice, etc. Our hotel was several blocks from the beach, very reasonably priced. The parking for the hotel was at the train station, several blocks in the other direction.



Our room was so small... Imagine me laughing here. We had a double bed and a roll away single bed these two beds took up the entire room, with about a foot at the bottom of the beds where we could walk sideways. So it went: wall, double bed, single bed, wall all squeezed in and right up against one another. The wall beside the single bed was actually a window. The window was just about as big as the entire wall. There was no air conditioning and this being May it was a little warm. So the first thing we did was open the window. Right across the street, there were three naked women getting ready in their own room. We tried not to look. Poor Jeff was in the restroom and missed the naked women.

We spent a lot of time roaming around. This vacation happen the weekend after the film festival and we were hoping to run into a celebrity. No such luck. We walked the streets, saw the churches and strolled along the beach. When we arrived at the harbor I insisted we stroll along the docks to look at all the beautiful yachts.

As we came to the end of a dock or pier I am not sure of the correct terminology here, Jeff and Mandy were yelling for me to turn around and go back. I was thinking why would I turn around, I am almost at the end. I was looking forward to sitting at the end of the dock, watching the tides. Just as I came the the last yacht, I noticed a very tanned, very old (over 90) man in a tiny black g-string, he said hello, I said hello. Jeff and Mandy were gone by then. Jeff was so horrified to have been that close to a very old man in a g-string - a g-string so small you could see some hair and maybe a little ... not that I looked - that to this day we tease poor Jeff about it. If you tell him there is a guy in a g-string behind him, he gets the heevie-geevies.

Ah, the beauty of France.

Karaoke

Living in the birth place of Karaoke, I thought that our recent adventure into a Karaoke bar was worth a mention. Mandy has her own little Karaoke machine, but as for real life singing in public this was my first time. It is my understanding that Misawa has several of these places.

We were invited to a going away party. I had never met the host, but it was a friend of Jeff's. The cost of the event was way outside what we normally pay for an evening out. Yet, we still went. Our dates are usually just the two of us so it was fun to go out with a bunch of adults.

So for the cost of a small car, a party of about 25 people got a private room, all you can eat Japanese food, and a book of songs thicker than the phone book. Oh and all you can drink beer, ouzo, and sake. For some reason Jeff and I didn't drink at all. Perhaps it was the 1/2 mile we had to walk through the snow to get there and knew we were going to have to walk back to the car. Perhaps it was the knowledge that we had kids at home to deal with. But, this I think was the first time I wasn't drinking at a drinking party. That certainly added an interesting element to the evening.

We were just about the first to arrive, Jeff is chronically punctual. There on the two long tables were piles and piles of raw meat. This was a yakiniku restaurant, where you cook it yourself. Those piles were not so appetizing to me. In fact the little grill in front of us didn't work very well and we had burnt raw meat. The other food was pretty good. Then the singing began. It was fun, once we got through YMCA everyone was singing. Well, everyone except the little group doing shots. We had several professional Karaoke singers. They stood up at the stage area and serenaded us. The rest of us poor saps passed the cordless mic around while staying seated at the table. Once everyone was drunk, it almost felt like a private date. When you can no longer converse with people it is as if they are not there. Jeff and I had a really nice time. We laughed so much. It is hilarious to see the difference between the songs I know the words to and the songs he knows.

I have never before done Karaoke in the US or Japan, I wonder if it is pretty much the same everywhere. All I know for sure is that Mandy keeps telling me I should be on American Idol. No, not because I am a good singer, but because she thinks that if Simon got a hold of me I might actually stop singing. You see my singing tortures Mandy, poor girl.

Your Power Color Is Magenta

At Your Highest: You energize yourself and push others to suceed. At Your Lowest: You feel frustrated and totally overwhelmed. In Love: You are suprised by who you attract. You're a love magnet. How You're Attractive: Open and free spirited, people want to explore the world with you. Your Eternal Question: "What is my next source of inspiration?"

What's Your Power Color?

These boots are made for walking

For Lily her snow boots are like a security blanket or a binky is to other children. Usually the only time she is without her boots is when she is in the shower or in bed. Yesterday as Lily and I were getting out of the shower the telephone began to ring. Still dripping wet from the shower I ran to answer the phone. As I was hashing out the details of when and where I would meet up for Lily’s playdate, Lily had put on her snow boots, climbed onto my bed and was jumping up and down. Yes, jumping up and down completely naked, dripping wet and wearing her precious snow boots.

Winter is back

Remember last week when I was all excited about a beautiful day, how we went for a long walk, how the sun was shining and all was good. I spoke too soon. It has not stopped snowing since I wrote that post. My back is aching from shoveling, shoveling, shoveling. My arms are aching from trying to build a snowman in snow so deep I sank to my thighs. Then jumping for an hour in a jumpy castle to let Lily get out all that pent up energy. For some crazy reason I decided to jump with her. All that caused me to fall asleep at 7:30pm. Our family was in the midst of a massive debate over TV. Some of us wanted to watch Lost, and some of us wanted to watch Smallville. I went to bed, I wonder what they watched? Winter is back in Japan.

Remembrance of Betty Friedan (1921-2006)

Even as a stay at home mom, I am proud to be a feminist. I am in awe of the sacrifices that so many women, most especially Betty Friedan, made which changed our country forever.

The Military and The Media

I find that when I speak or write that often what people hear me say is very different than I intended. That is one of the wonderful things about blogging, that I get honest feedback and I can retool my message to better convey my idea. I wish it came more naturally to me, but perhaps with patience I will find my voice.

I am the wife of a US military member. When I watch the news coming out of the US I am often frustrated by the way the US Military members are portrayed. The other day watching Larry King, when the caller from Ohio asked her question about why the media is honoring a journalist who was wounded more than the service members I was thinking to myself, Yeah! Exactly! And the answers given were incredibly frustrating to me.

Showing video footage of the coffins of service members, showing wounded service members in a hospital, showing the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, those are powerful images used to convey political messages. Those images are sensational and capture a viewers attention, boost ratings and make tons of money for journalists, but are these images the whole story? Showing these images to the enemy is detrimental to the military giving power and momentum to the enemy. They don’t have a chance at all and giving them false hope with a few sensationalized images just prolongs the war and harms the US military and Iraqi people. Listening to the panel of some of the most powerful and influential members of the US media on Larry King it seems that is exactly what they think, that if they cannot show the coffins their hands are tied and they cannot tell a story. The fact that this is the only story they see disgusts me.

Bob Woodruff went to Iraq as a journalist to help inform the American people about what is really going on in Iraq. The media is an incredibly important facet of a free society. We are currently split in our country about what to do in Iraq. Should we have invade? Should we stay or go? The media is supposed to be presenting us with a fair and balanced description of both sides of the argument. To help us see past the rhetoric of people with a specific agenda and to see the commonalities and differences of both sides of the debate. To help us make informed choices in who we vote for and what questions we ask. Instead they are showing us sensationalism. I don’t see any fair and balanced journalism coming out of America. Having said that, I still respect Bob Woodruff for his attempt to bring us this story. All the media coverage of his getting wounded focused on him as a man and a journalist and none of it focused on the politics of should we be in Iraq. Why can’t the media offer the service members the same respect, without agenda or sensationalism?

Instead of hearing 5 killed, 7 wounded in a road side bombing in Iraq today. Portraying the events in this way has a certain amount of political sway, it makes a statement, it plays on the emotions and encourages the position to pull out of Iraq. It isn’t fair or balanced journalism. It isn’t respecting the job being done or the people doing that job, it is sensationalism. I would like to hear stories that are respectful of the people and the job they do, stories without sensationalism and without a political slant. For instance, 5 people from such and such unit were hit by a road side bomb today. This unit is out of this state, they have been in Iraq for this long, they have accomplished this many missions, including this, this and this. Today they were on their way to do this and were wounded in action. Their injuries are major or minor, they will be sent to Germany for evaluation, their family is hoping they will make a speedy recovery and be able to get back to the job they love. That is pretty much the story they told of Bob Woodward, showing respect for someone’s accomplishments and gratitude without making it political or sensational. It isn’t that the journalists don’t have access to this information, I see these stories everyday because like the media I have access to the military’s journalism. The stories that come from the military are certainly biased in that they are designed with the intention of showing all the positive reasons we are in Iraq. And to show all the positive things we are accomplishing. While that is not the entire story it is at least a large part of the story, a part that is not currently being aired. I think that when people complain about hearing the number of people dead and wounded every night on the news this is why they are complaining, that only one side of the story is being told. Both sides should be told, but in reality neither side is being told, all that is shown is the sensationalism.

Like my friend Angel said, sending a journalist with no combat training into a war zone is another showing of disrespect for the level of training and accomplishment of the men and women serving in Iraq. Do journalist with no fire training run into a burning building to get footage of a fireman doing his job?

The men and women in the military represent the best and brightest, the strongest and most courageous Americans. There are over a million of them. They all have different political opinions and motivations for being in the military. The media can show respect for the job they do without indicting or condoning the war. The fact that the most influential journalists of America sat on the panel on the Larry King show and said that without caskets or a famous reporter their isn’t a story to tell is the epitome of greed. This tunnel vision of journalism for sensationalism only is one of the major reasons we (Americans) are so hated around the world. This greed for viewers attention instead of fair and balanced journalism is not representative of the American public. It is only a representation of the corruption and greed in the media, but it is the American that the world sees. So I was upset in the way the military is presented by the media on a day to day basis. Now I am furious that it is intentionally being done. Without the blood dripping from the coffin, the military is inconsequential to American journalists.

See the post below if you want links to the Larry King show or transcript of the show.