Ice Skating

After the flea market, we stopped for ice skating. I have only done this once in my life in my teens, but I have roller skated the last 3 sundays in TN, so I felt confident taking Hannah Lee for the experience. She actually did better with ice skating than she did with roller skating! It was really fun! Hopefully Adam will join us next time.

Flea Market

We made it to the Nissan Stadium for our first Japanese Flea Market experience.

It was verybusy with lots of miscellaneous items for sale. We found several treasures.

Hannah Lee loved the cotton candy, jumping dolphin, and water display.

Jet Lag Japan

Hannah Lee, Grammy, and I had a reasonably good flight to our home in Japan. We have seen all hours of the days and nights still recovering from Jet Lag. Hannah Lee and I are thrilled to have Grammy help us with this transition after having so much fun with our TN visit with family and friends. Adam left for Japan, then China, then Thailand on Jan 3rd, and we will not see him again until Jan 29th. This is really hard on all of us to be separated. Hannah Lee was able to attend school on Thursday and Friday and that allowed us to make the trek by foot, bus, and train to Costco to get food back in the house. Having the extra body and backpack allowed me to get more than usual to stock up our home. Grammy and I bicycled Hannah Lee to the store "Homes" to get her a new goldfish. She chose to name it UT like her old fish. We also got to view Mt Fugi from our back yard yesterday morning! Today we will go to Nissan Stadium for a flea market experience. We will also attempt to find the hotel that Grampy will be staying in and be there for his arrival from TN. He will be working here this week for Nissan, and we will all get together when Adam arrives next weekend for one day together before Grammy and Grampy fly back to TN.

Disney Land

Hannah Lee has a girlfriend in her class that she loves to run with. I love to hang out with her Mom, so we decided to all go to Disney Land together. It was very busy with long lines, we only rode 4 rides, but they were good ones. We saw two parades that were very theatrical, with great costumes and dancing. We saw an indoor "bear singing show" that had the mechanical puppets. It was really entertaining. We loved walking through the Swiss Family Robinson Tree house. When we were leaving and getting our lighted Christmas tree photos I had two Japanese teenage girls ask me to take a photograph with them. I was surprised, and flattered. They each wanted a photo with me by themselves with the tree in the background. Who knows what that was all about???

Christmas Performance

Here is just a tiny taste of the Treehouse Ladybug class Christmas Performance!

Bonsai

Sky Mall in Tokyo

Adam and I used our once a month date to check out a very unique mall in Tokyo, and do some Christmas shopping. The ceiling looks like a beautiful night sky inside the mall, and creates a romantic atmosphere. Enya, and soft Christmas music was playing. The store we wanted to shop at was the Hello Kitty store. It has a cafe that sells pancakes, and girls can get their nails done. It was pink everywhere!!! On the ground level of this building is a different story. It is totally catered to dogs. In fact there was dog performances happening while we were there. This was obviously a mecca location for people who's dogs are their babies. The retail stores were stocked full of outrageous expensive outfits for dogs. They had a huge variety of doggie strollers that cost at least $700 U.S. dollars. One huge, fluffy, dog walked past us that looked like a stuffed animal, it was surreal. We knew we needed to get off that floor when we tryed to order food, and realized it was a "dog food" menu only.