Facebook

I avoided the social networking sites for as long as I could, but finally joined Facebook.  I was actually surprised how many people I knew was already on Facebook.  And I quickly found many of my old high school friends on there.  Then my poker friends and work friends.  Facebook makes it so easy to keep in touch with friends that I’ll probably spend more time there and no time on this blog.  I’ve already started uploading pics to my Facebook profile and eventually some videos.  It also makes it easier to restrict access, although I would prefer if it had some way to create my own groupings that I add my friends into rather than creating groups that my friends add themselves into.  So don’t expect much/any updates here until I get bored with Facebook.

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Happy Birthday Mia!

Had a quiet birthday tonight. Tomorrow, my extended family from Oregon will be coming up to celebrate her birthday. Including aunt, uncle, cousins, their kids, and my sister-in-law's parents, we'll have 14 adults, 6 kids, and 1 dog (possibly 2). With the large number of people, we're actually having it at my brother's house which is quite a bit larger. I'm having the main courses catered, but I'm cooking the side dishes myself, so I'll be busy in the morning prepping all the groceries. I'm not sure how Mia will react to having so many people, but I hope she is ok since she's quite clingy to Airi and myself right now.

Oh, and Jenn, Mia thanks you for the birthday card :)

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Mia’s first steps

Six days ago, about a week and a half from her 1 year birthday, Mia tries her first steps.  She had been “walking” by holding onto things, but finally tried to walk without any help.  It’s closer to stumbling than walking, but she was quite proud of herself and so were we, of course.  Almost a week later today, she’s able to take up to 8 steps before falling and is improving every day.  Here’s a video from the day she started walking, we wanted to make sure we had a video of it.

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Last night in Nagoya

Mia is already asleep and I’m all packed.  Airi is still up spending some time with her family and also finishing packing.  We’ll be leaving the house around 8am (Saturday).  The flight is around 10 hours and we’ll be landing at Seatac around 7am Saturday.  So in a way we’ll be time traveling, although it takes 10 hours to go back one hour…  although in in-flight meals still suck, they do have a decent number of free on-demand movies (some are somewhat recent (like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist which was pretty good since I watched it on the way to Japan, although there was a “sex scene” that didn’t make sense to me since they we’re fully clothed…).

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Monkey Park

Today we went to a local (~30 min drive) place called Monkey Park.  As you would guess, it’s all about primates.  The main attraction are areas where you are in the same enclosure with the actual monkeys.

Most of the monkeys were in their own cages, but two of them were in enclosures you could walk into.  This monkey (I didn’t bother to write down which type it was) was in one such enclosure.  You weren’t supposed to touch or feed the monkeys, but they would get right up to you.  The other enclosure had the Ring Tailed Lemur (I guess not technically a monkey) which was probably my favorite since they were very friendly.

Not a great picture, but you can see a whole family of Lemurs hiding in the umbrella right under Airi and Mia.

At the end of our day (~2pm) it was time to feed the monkeys in Monkey Valley.  There were 160 monkeys in this pretty open enclosure and you could buy food to throw to them.  The monkeys would sit on this wooden structure and clap waiting for food. 

At feeding time, they raked a big fire pit and inside they had been cooking sweet potatoes, all the monkeys would gather around the staff member and get a piece, because it was still hot, they would dip it in a nearby pool to cool it before eating.

At we were heading home, we stopped at a local buffet restaurant for a late lunch.   It wasn’t too expensive (~$12/person), but this was a Japanese BBQ Buffet, so you picked a plate, loaded it with meat and there was a gas grill at each table you could cook your meat with.  There were also prepared food as well as DIY ramen (meaning you took frozen ramen noodles, dropped it into boiling water, waited 30 secs, then dropped that into a bowl, added broth and your choice of toppings).  They also had sushi and real ice-cream (scoop yourself) in addition to soft serve.  Overall, I thought it was really good.  The only problems were keeping Mia entertained while Airi and I took turns eating.  Also, although it was “all-you-can-eat”, you were actually limited to a 90 minute stay.  Which explains the reasonable price and the good (but certainly not great) quality of food.

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Gong hei fat choi – Year of the Ox

It’s Chinese New Year (a few days late, but it lasts a week).  We went to Kobe since they had a China Town to check out the festivities.

 

That’s Airi’s mom on the left and sister on the right.  The China town area was actually pretty small (much smaller than the one in Seattle).  They had street vendors on both sides and it was relatively crowded (although not as crowded as the Nagoya subway).  We rode the bullet train from Nagoya to Kobe.  It was a pretty smooth and comfortable ride, although we all took a nap since we got up early (left the house at 9am).

The day before, we went to the Nagoya zoo with two of Airi’s friends from school and their kids.  The zoo itself was pretty old but it was fun although pretty cold.

A week ago, we went to see Nagoya castle.  The only thing missing was some samurai and ninjas.

A few days before that, Airi’s family took us to a hot spring.  Near the resort, there was a village that was still (mostly) authentic feudal Japan.  It’s a tourist attraction and likely much busier in the Spring, but it was pretty neat seeing all the old architecture.  The illusion was somewhat broken when you’d see a modern car parked next to an old building (since people are working and living there).

That about catches up on most everything that has been going on.  Only 2 more days left before we fly back to the Puget Sound.

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Hanging out with the father-in-law

This actually happened on the 15th, just haven’t gotten around to downloading the pictures.  My father-in-law (Otousan is Japanese for dad) wanted to spend the day with me.  Of course he spoke very little English (and with a heavy accent) while I spoke very little Japanese, but we managed to get by (it was just the two of us).  Airi’s mom (Okaasan is Japanese for mom) dropped us off at the train station.  From there we went to downtown Nagoya and took a subway.  Here’s a pic of an underground mall area that connects the train station to the subway station.  Otousan is on the left.

 

After the subway, we walked around for a bit.  Otousan wanted to take me to this temple.  We walked through some old parts of downtown and in the middle of tall skyscrapers somewhat hidden from view was this shrine.  You see lots of mixing of new and old (especially architecture style from feudal Japan).

We had some ramen for lunch and on the way back home to the train station, I saw a Nissan gallery in the underground area and they had the new GT-R SpecV on display.  This is a limited edition version of the regular GT-R (~$70k) that has higher end suspension, higher end brakes, and tons more carbon fiber to lower the weight.  It’s mainly aimed at racing enthusiasts and costs ~$170k.  I don’t think the SpecV will be available in the US and the differences between the SpecV and the regular GT-R don’t seem to justify the price.

 

More to come later.  I’m using the new Windows Live Writer software from Microsoft to write this blog entry, so it’s actually much easier (especially for inserting pictures), so this may prompt me to make more frequent updates.

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