three pictures of Ella

Kira Kira Light Festival

December 1st I took Ella out at night, in her cute white bear hat, to see her first Christmas lights. She loved them. I loved them. It was a good time. It was also the Kira Kira Light Festival, sadly, something we missed last year. Like my mom says, the Japanese are very good at celebrating life with so many holidays ans festivals. Well, this was definitely a celebration. On December 1st everyone gets together to toast the Christmas & Holiday season. There are several things going on at the same time - not unlikely in Japan.

Look, it's Christmas Godzilla and all of his friends!

Different organizations and businesses from around Sasebo purchase tables, stock them with beer, snacks, and party hats and all meet up after work. Here they party through the evening with everyone coming together to toast at 7:00PM. It's great. Everyone standing around in their business suits getting wasted in the middle of the Arcade. Giving cheers and shooting off balloons, it's quite exciting. While all of this is going on there is also a festival with oyster's, flowers, and other various treats for your liking. Most amazing of all, there is a costume & skit contest. This is a situation that honestly feels like a Japanese Christmas Game Show. People of all ages dress in their best (or most hilarious) costumes and put on a small skit about Christmas. Words can't really describe the insanity that pursued - so I just took lots of video. [Next Post]

I will leave you with some pictures of the evening to tide over until I get the videos posted.

Look who we ran into! It's Aunt Manami and her concierge training team.

Happy start of Christmas!

The Holiday's Are Here

It's official. Ella and I have gone walking everyday while Brandon has been in Yokosuka, getting things started at our new home. Here are some pictures from around town. We haven't made it down to see the Cornell yet though. We will wait for Brandon to come back for that one.

The Tamaya window display. I would love one of those old fashioned tiny Santa's in the snow.

Card displays are everywhere.

Make a Wish - Look! That kid wants to be a chef!

The Arcade is lined with Christmas Trees.

Winter flowers.

I was planning on buying three of those green trees to use as Christmas decor but that would be silly, considering me move the day after Christmas.

fried rice for one

Taking care of the bean by myself while Brandon's away hasn't been all that bad. Except that I got hungry today. So in honor of our favorite dude, I made myself some fried rice - Brandon style: with lots of Saracha. I think he would be proud because I made sure my pan was really hot before I added anything. That's the most important thing or at least that's what he tells me whenever I ask how to cook something. Yum!

baseball extravaganza

What the what?! Just realized we never posted anything about our amazing Japanese baseball game experience. Maybe it's because I was slightly distracted by my ginormous baby belly. Who knows? Anywhoo. . .here it goes!

We had waited a year to finally score tickets on one of the baseball games. We got here pretty late in the season last year and tickets were hard to come by at that point. We decided it best to go through the base tour company for this one, I can't even begin to imagine the mis-adventure that would have become of us trying to buy tickets from some creepy on-line dealer, plus we saved a tone of yen by not taking the train round trip. So, it worked out. Perfect timing too as it was tight around Brandon's birthday and he got to do the ONE thing that he had been constantly talking about since before we moved.

The baseball experience here is fantastic. It's like going to a college football game in the states. Everyone is so into it. Covered in Hawks (Fukuoka's team name) gear from head to toe, wearing scarves and giant claw hands while they fly flags and scream battle songs out of megaphones. Literally, we saw people doing all of that at the same time. There are official cheer sections where both the home and opposing teams have bands that play fight songs. Yes, bands like marching bands. Yes, fight songs like rehearsed cheers. Meanwhile, the announcer is a 6ft tall German radio DJ guy who is screaming super pumped up Japanese to the rest of us and there are concessionaire's running around selling KFC & serving beer out of keg back-packs. Yup, that's about how it went. Like we were inside a giant baseball game show. (The run on sentence is supposed to symbolize the intensity.)

All in all it was a great day, we even got on the jumbo-tron. It turns out they like to display the Americans who also love baseball. . .weird.

Seventh inning stretch balloons. We let them go for the home team, the Hawks.