Halloween

Hannah Lee went trick or treating in our neighborhood with some of her school boy friends. She was Ariel the mermaid, and I was Pochohontas the Indian Princess. Since Halloween is mainly an American tradition, the houses were few and far between that participated. We hurried back home to let Hannah Lee hand out candy from our home. They came at a steady pace and in big crowds at a time. Most of the girls costumes seemed to be witches. Some were not dressed up at all, and just had grocery bags to put their candy in. They seemed unsure of what to do when the bucket of candy was offered to them. I would say "take" and they would only take one piece, and say "thank you very much". Most of them would say "Kawaii" to Hannah Lee which means cute in Japanese. Several took photos, and one even wanted a photo with her, and asked her to pose by making her fingers into the peace sign, which she did. We had lots of decorations outside, and Halloween music playing...it was really fun!

Last Night with Leslie

We have a Philippine babysitter named Lily that Hannah Lee loves to hang out with once a month so Adam and I can go out on a date. Leslie got to join us this time, and we had a night to remember. We started out at a nice Italian restaurant. We ran into a huge India celebration event at Yamashita Park on the way, and got to browse at all the goods from India. After dinner we started bar hopping, having one drink at each place and checking out the atmosphere. We started at Flash Back Cafe by the Yokohama Stadium which ended up being my favorite. It had music memorabilia hanging everywhere, and classic music videos playing on the TVs by the tables. Next we went to China Town, first bar was very tiny with a sea ship theme, and a talkative bartender. He asked where we were from and when we said America state of Tennessee, he pointed to the Jack Daniels bottle. This has come up before, and seems to be what most Asians know about Tennessee. Last bar was pirate themed, and we were the only ones there on a Sunday night. After we got enough wine in Leslie, she finally agreed to go to Karaoke with us. As you can see by Adam's passionate singing, we enjoyed it immensely!

Hakone Tour

Adam and Hannah hung out together all day on Saturday, and let Leslie and I make the long trek to Hakone in hopes of seeing Mt. Fugi. After bus, several trains, and an incline railway up the mountain, we finally made it to the Hakone Ropeway. This is a air ride over the lake and on a clear day supposedly a view of Mt Fugi. We did not see Mt Fugi, but we did stop along the way at the sulphur volcano to eat our life giving boiled black eggs. The legend is that for every egg you eat, you get 7 more years of life, but if you eat more than 4, you die. Leslie and I ate two each. They tasted great, I liked the salt included. You might think the black egg eating is strange, but it is nothing compared to the old lady and her husband carrying around a toddler sized fake baby as if it were alive. She had a hello kitty diaper bag too!

Leslie was thrilled to get off the ropeway because it was a little scary for her being so high up. Our next mode of transportation was the Pirate ship. Again, we thought we would see Mt. Fugi because it was a sunny day, and the brochure told of two spots for pictures, but we did not. We found a Japanese restaurant after getting off the boat and had dinner before making our way back to Yokohama. On the bus going back to the train station it was so crowded we actually stood in the doorway on the bus right next to the driver. We visited with a couple visiting from Sydney, Australia and that made the uncomfortable situation go faster. After spending all this time with Leslie navigating the train system, I feel more confident getting around to further places than I can go on my bicycle.

Outings with Leslie

Leslie is enjoying bicycling all over Yokohoma and getting the up close perspective on things. It is fun for me to hear a different point of view, and have an extra set of eyes to catch fun things like the woman walking her pet pig! I took Leslie to receive her first Acupuncture session from Jun, my therapist, and we got to meet the chiropractor that also works in that space. She has met some of the other school mothers, and even got to have a tour of Hannah's school. Everyone is very welcoming to her, as if she were their guest. Hannah was excited to have us in her class, and quickly made a bracelet for Leslie which you see in the last picture. These pictures were taken in Sankien Gardens. This is the place I blogged about back in July. We got to have a green tea ceremony, and it was great! I loved all the ritual and care that was taken in every action done. We were given an English translation on how to receive and drink the tea...there are many steps. We were given two sweets that had pagoda's stamped on them. The sweets and green tea were very tasty to me. After the ritual, they taught us how to make the tea ourselves. I taught Leslie how to make the Bento lunchbox art, the paper cranes, and Japanese bookmarks.

Kamakura

Adam, Hannah, Leslie and I visited the popular temples in Kamakura. With the arrival of Zen from China starting in the 1100's Buddhism came into the hearts of the people, and they built 5 historic temples to embrace their faith and to be used in every day life. Kamakura is the preservation of this lifestyle. The different buildings are joined together by stone stairways that bring harmony with the natural environment. The small buddha you see beyond the flowers sits among many other duplicate buddha's that honor dead babies. The Great Buddha is a National Treasure, and you can try to get an idea of how big it is by seeing the people gathering around his knees. There are many things to see in Kamakura, but we only had the energy for two since cutie pie was with us. We ate a meal at a little place that had a beautiful carved wood wall that had a tiny door that the waitress crawled through to get to the kitchen to get drinks and food for us. It reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.

Tokyo Adventures with Leslie

Our first stop today was in a rich part of Tokyo called Ginza. We went to Cafe Ginza Paulista which was John Lennon and Yoko Ono's favorite coffee cafe. Yesterday would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday, so we were excited to get to experience this special spot. Then we went to Shibuya which is where the young people love to hang out and show how eccentric they can be. We walked 15 minutes from the station to Harajuku to visit the famous Yoyogi Park. We were thrilled to catch a show of the "Rockabilly" performers. I posted a video of them on my Facebook page. They have huge attitude and great dance moves. They love drinking and smoking and getting their pictures taken. The park was huge, with many performers throughout the park like a pantomime, jazz band, drummers, goth kids, dancers, etc. It was all very amusing. We ended up at a restaurant called La Boheme which had great Italian food.

Friends

The Drake family (David, Jaclyn, Abby, and Dawson) left Japan and they are stopping in Hawaii on their way back to Winchester, TN. We are sad to see them go, we had lots of fun times with them. We are very excited that our friend Leslie will be here October 8th for ten days!
I went to see the movie "Eat, Pray, Love" on Friday morning while Hannah was in school. My Japanese friend Sayuri went with me. The movie was as good as the book! It was the cleanest theater I have ever been in, and there was no smell of popcorn. Next time I will investigate further to see if there was even a concession stand. I did not see anyone eating or drinking. It was very interesting to me to see that when the movie ended, instead of everyone rushing to get up and move on to the next thing, everyone actually sat through the entire credits and did not attempt to get up until the lights came on!!! It was soooo different from what I am used to. I relaxed into it, and actually enjoyed seeing how many people are involved in making a film, and then at the very end it tells you the titles of the soundtrack. This movie had a great one. Sayuri has a 4 yr old daughter named Lisa that Hannah holds hands with on the way to school. Sayuri told me that when we were at the Sumo event, Sylvestor Stallone was there! I saw the crowd on the other side of the arena rushing to someone and taking pictures, it must have been him!!!
I have been very grateful because my friend Abby has been taking care of my cats Hunter and Chyna since we have been gone. I got word from her that Hunter died on his 14th birthday. He had a good, long life. Abby buried him in her pet cemetery.
We are elated to find out that my friend Beverly delivered a healthy baby girl today, named Sierra Isabella!!! The TN phone has been by our side getting the updates of her two days of laboring. "Bella" has a black hair mohawk, long eyelashes, and she took to breastfeeding immediately.