not the good beach

This weekend we decided to go exploring to see what we could see. We could totally have asked someone where the good beach is to swim at, but for some reason we just felt like exploring ourselves. The beach is only about two miles from our house.

But this was not the beach to go swimming at. There was a lot of garbage on the beach and also lots of jelly fish. We made the best of it and ate a picnic and walked and explored.

And now we know where not to go for a beach day!

Found this cemetery on our explorations and found it interesting.

Eating has been the tricky thing here so far. But these ice cream bars from 7-11 are our current obsession. It almost makes up for the fact the 7-11 here don't have Slushies, but not quite.

So yesterday I made a shopping list and meal plan and was determined to get what I'd need to cook some meals here. The kids and I wore our backpacks and I prepped them they'd need to be patient with me and we walked to Donkey to do our shopping. I stared and stared at the aisles of bottles and tried really hard to get staples. My kids were so good and I spent sooooo long, but I still only came home with about half of what I wanted. Luckily a Honda helper came over last night and I asked her about the things I bought (and only half of what I bought was what I thought it was) and she offered to take me to the store to get what I needed. It was soooo much easier and we were done in about ten minutes!!! I labeled the bottles with sharpie in English. Tonight I think I'll make gyoza for dinner!!

I think meals are finally going to start coming together. My Sensei showed me how to use my rice cooker. I have plenty of food in the fridge. Hooray for eating!!

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Bon Odori

There is so much to catch up on with blogging! I didn't bring my computer with us on vacation to Tokyo, so I am a tad behind. Before we left, Husband's co-worker invited us for a BBQ during the day and then we'd go together to Bon Odori at the kid's school. Obon (or Bon) is a festival to remember your ancestors. Often people have family reunions and clean the graves of loved ones. They cooked us sooo much food and so much of it was unusual to me and so fun! He cooked fish on a grill. He cooked it whole with salt on the outside. It was delicious!! He also cooked beef tongue, which was good. And, chicken skewers (some of which were chicken cartilage). It was all yummy, although I was so stuffed and couldn't eat much. It was also hard to eat because it was very hot outside. The family has three kids and they played in a little baby pool that barely fit all 5 of them standing up. But they had a blast anyway....

jelly soda

We went shopping yesterday with my sensei and she showed us the place to buy cheap snacks. My kids spotted these Kirby Sodas and asked what they were. She told us jelly soda. Well, of course we had to try that!! They were thick like jelly and had hard cubes of jelly in it. It was sooo weird!! The only bummer was that it must have had artificial sweetener in it. My kids and I are sensitive to that stuff and we don't have to have much before we feel it. But, we saved them for husband and when he got home he enjoyed the uniqueness as well! The other day we went to the school to register the kids. The school is sooo big!! G will be in grade 2 here and there are 5 classes of 27 kids! We got to go on a tour of the school. It's very old. I'm pretty sure it only has squattie potties not western toilets so that should be interesting for the kids. G has a friend from New Zealand in her grade alread...

swimming

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Tweedles in Japan

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