f3@r t3h b3@rd

This some news adapted from an email I sent to a friend:

Kerri and Rowan are getting back tonight from being gone for over a month in the US. They were going anyway to visit family and it turned out her dad was sick in the hospital so they went straight to Kentucky just in time to talk to him one last time before he went under. He lasted a week and a half more and died. Of course, it's sad and an emotional journey, but there were many things that made it better than it might have been. First it was good that they were able to see and talk to him lucidly one last time. Then she was able to be there with her sister to help wrap everything up legally and financially in Kentucky and then they all came back to Oregon together, so she didn't feel like she was skipping out on family responsibilities once again because of living overseas. And of course best of all is the knowledge that because of her dad's faith in Christ we will be certain to see him again some day and look forward to the time we will all be perfectly healthy and glorified in our new bodies!

Meanwhile I spent the last extremely long month mostly alone. It's always fun for the first two weeks before it starts going stale. I was able to churn through a bunch of games that have been piling up, and I made a huge dent in the number of local restaurants for my review blog (http://jcfoodreviews.blogspot.jp/). I also caught up on several podcasts where I went back and started at the very beginning and listened to all of them up to now (The Reformed Pubcast and These Go to Eleven). I've also been concentrating hard on growing my beard, at least 10 minutes every day. I started back in February and I think I'm about to the length where I'm ready to give it a little trim to not look quite so crazy. The picture above is actually from a month ago so it's probably a bit longer now, but not much. I did finally start trimming the 'stache...putting moustache wax in every day was more of a pain than it was worth. Part of my motivation in growing it has been to not have to do extra stuff in the morning!

Otherwise I was able to volunteer to setup/teardown at church on Sundays since that requires getting up early and staying late, which given how far away I live means getting up at 5am and getting home around 2 or 3pm. The fam would not be happy with that Sunday schedule.

Oh! I also found an excellent shisha smoking spot finally. A new arabic(ish) food restaurant opened up a stone's throw away and they do shisha outside on the balcony, and they guys know what they are doing. They even let me buy my own bowl and kaloud lotus which they keep on site for me. I think I'll be over there about once a week.

The summer is almost over, and we've had deliciously cool weather the last couple of days as the remains of a typhoon passed over. I was able to sleep without the a/c for the first time in a really long time. I love fall here, so looking forward to it getting cooler yet.

Rowan starts up his 8th grade homeschool year when he gets back, so that'll keep us all busy I'm sure. I'm going to be more involved now as Kerri wants me to handle the higher level math, science and religion stuff now. Should be an interesting dress-rehearsal for high school.

Well, I think that brings things up to date! Going to head to the airport in a little while to do a restaurant review.

Izu Trip

Hello hello!  It was 4th of July weekend here and I got Friday off, so we decided we should go somewhere new to us, but close by.  We thought Izu peninsula (neighbor to our own Miura peninsula) sounded like fun so we used booking.com to find a place called "Hotel Winery Hills" that was a decent price for 3 people overnight.  They also had a tatami room in addition to the two single beds, which made me happy as I prefer futon on tatami now.

We didn't know much else about the place, other than it was located pretty centrally in Izu so we could drive around the peninsula and get back to it easily.  We discovered that the "Winery Hills" part is due to it's being co-located (nearby) to an actual winery!  There was a free bus and tour, so Kerri and I checked it out.  The winery itself is lovely, though it was dark and rainy, so I had to take some slightly doctored pictures to make it look pretty:

We did some tasting and found a couple that we think we liked and took home some bottles.

Earlier, we started out from Yokosuka and took the coast road all the way down, avoiding the toll roads, so we could take in the view.  We weren't expecting Izu to look much different from our area, but we had the extra fun of an incredible downpour most of the way.  "So bad it makes everyone slow down" kind of rain.  Then we found our directions taking us up what looked like a major road (the 80) but turned out to be a little used pass over the mountains in the middle of the peninsula.  This road narrowed down frequently to one lane, and was very twisty and turny.  Combined with the rain, it made for some harrowing experiences.  As we lost cell phone signal, we began to wonder what would happen if we got stuck up in the mountains with no way to get help!  But we made it fine.

Izu is super green right now, and very mountainous. It frequently reminded us of driving roads in Oregon near the coast and the coast mountain range.  But if we opened the windows the relative humidity and temperature felt very different (much higher and warmer).  Our first destination was an old gold mine in Toi.  It was kind of cool, but only Rowan and I could do it as Kerri's ankle was sprained the other day during roller derby.  We had the place to ourselves and hardly saw anyone else.  It was mostly just an old tunnel with little animatronic scenes of people working in the mines.  There were some small English signs to explain things which was nice.  Then there was a museum where you could touch gold and look at dioramas.  Rowan was pleased to pick up some gold flake for his mineral collection (gold has been difficult to come by for some reason) at a reasonable price.  

After this we headed over to our hotel.  I was a bit disappointed by the hotel, mainly by the horrible stale smoke smells in the room and hallway.  It was then I realized I never had the option to specify a non-smoking room, probably because there were none.  Oddly, I was the one having the hardest time with it, Kerri and Rowan didn't seem to mind too much.  There was an onsen there (or just an ofuro, not sure if they have volcanically heated water there) and we availed ourselves of the facilities.  Unfortunately, the swimming pool doesn't open until August, so that was another expectation not met.  Though there was a main restaurant, it was buffet style only and way too expensive, so we ate at the smaller restaurant next to the onsen which had decent enough food at much better prices.

The hotel is also attached to several large sports facilities.  There were immaculately kept grass fields, including a baseball diamond and a soccer field.  Strange, but interesting.

The next day we headed south to the town of Shimoda, one of the first ports opened officially after Commodore Perry first made it clear that Japan would be opening ports whether they wanted to or not.  There is a famous Black Ship festival here every year, but we've never been.  We then travelled back up the eastern coast all the way to where the toll road begins and drove the rest of the way back via toll roads for speed.  All in all a fun short weekend trip.  It's nice to have seen a new area not far past Hakone that we can easily get to, and there were so many things we saw from the car that we'd like to go back and check out some time.

Kerri and Rowan head back to the US for a month in a couple of weeks (I keep telling Kerri she needs to stay home and heal or she'll be in trouble for her trip), so I'll be getting to try out all sorts of local restaurants I wouldn't normally have the chance to check out, so if you're interested in those adventures, stay tuned to my food blog:  JC Food Reviews.

Yokosuka Matsuri

Our local town matsuri (festival) was this past weekend.  See some pictures here:

http://jcfoodreviews.blogspot.jp/2015/05/special-edition-yokosuka-matsuri-food.html

Some news

Hey there...there's nothing earth shattering going on, but we have had a bit of a change in our lives recently.  Over at one of our other blogs I have a post up explaining that we have stopped trying to start a new church in Yokosuka.  We found a great church (Grace Harbor Church) up in Tokyo that is surprisingly not too difficult to get to, so we will be attending up there.

Related to that, we finally got an electronic toll card (ETC) for our car (30% discount on weekends).  JapanETC Card is a service started recently by someone who used to work on base, and it's the easiest way to get one of these cards.  It used to be almost impossible, but now it's very easy.  I highly recommend them!  And oh wow, it's soooo nice to have ETC.  Aside from the quick entrance/exit from toll booths (20 kph) there are the additional benefits of 1) don't have to have change, 2) no receipts floating around, 3) Kerri can knit in the car again because she doesn't have to manage all that stuff!

We've been ramping up our planning for Rowan's 8th grade year.  As we get ready for high school we are kind of thinking of this as the "dry run" before the real thing.  Things are getting exciting!  Kerri and Rowan will be back in the US for a month or so from July to August.  I plan on using that time to review lots of interesting places for my new food review blog.

Kerri continues to be heavily involved with roller derby.  A while back she was invited to help with a commercial for a local soft drink.  That was quite the story, so you can ask her about it it some time.  She hasn't broken any bones yet, though on Saturday at the "Running with the bulls" event on base, she scraped up her fingers.  That's what comes of skating around on streets whacking runners with foam swords!

Work remains fairly constant, no rumors of mass lay offs or anything at the moment, which is always nice.  If things remain stable, we're planning to remain here through Rowan's high school, which would put his graduating around 2020 (just in time for the Olympics!).  By then we will hopefully know where we are going next in Japan.  It's hard to imagine, but we will have been living here almost 9 years if that comes to pass.

Other than Kerri's trip to the US, we don't have any big travel plans coming up.  We are going to try and go "camping" (i.e. staying in a cabin with onsens near by) at the end of May, but that's about it.  My vacation situation at work is such that I have to use all of it each year or lose it, so I have to build up my balance again each year.

And that's about all that's going on with us!

JC's Food Reviews

I've started a new food blog for anyone interested.  It's over here:  JC's Food Reviews

It's just a fun little project representing my own opinions of the many restaurants in my area.  As many of you know, for me, it's all about the food, so hopefully I'll do better at posting over there.

I'm not abandoning this blog, it'll still be mainly for any family news or travels.

Speaking of which...there isn't too much news to tell.  Kerri and Rowan will be heading back the US for a month from mid July to mid August.  Meanwhile life continues pretty normally for us.  We're still doing a bible study on Sundays that we hope will turn into a church.  Kerri and Rowan are kind of in between on homeschool, and Kerri and I have been in discussions about Rowan's 8th grade year coming up as we look ahead to highschool.

My job is going well and I'm enjoying a season of relative busy-ness.  I'm also working on an ESL certification to get ready for the future.  We were calculating that if we get to stay in Yokosuka through Rowan's senior year, that places our eventual departure somewhere in the 2020 timeframe, which is a nice round number.  A lot depends on what happens when the contract I'm working on changes hands at the end of the year, but if we can stay here to give Rowan stability through high school we will try for it.

Otherwise, life is pretty mundane...oh, and we live in freaking Japan!  Sometimes you have to remind yourself how awesome life actually is.

Hiroshima Trip

This year is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the end of the war in Japan.  Since we hadn't been to either location yet, we figured it would be a good time to do so.

Hiroshima is 9-10 hours (estimated by Google) away from us by car, and after looking into the other options, we decided it was the cheapest option for us due to the great car rental options available to us on base.  For about $60 a day, we get a car and free toll tickets.  We estimate it saved us about $400 for this trip, and avoided wear and tear on our car.  But I hate driving long distances...so I wasn't sure how it would go.  Luckily we happened on the idea of listening to audio books and sermons to make the time go by faster.  We had recently started listening to C. S. Lewis' "Out of the Silent Planet" as a family, so we decided to see how much of the space trilogy we could polish off on the trip.  We ended up getting through to the end of Perelandra, and got caught up on Rick Booye's sermons from Trail Christian Fellowship.

Our first stop were some friends that we had never met.  There's a blog I've been following since before we arrived in Japan called "Life in the land of Wa" and we had just begun emailing each other a month or so before our trip when we found out that they live near Hiroshima and we'd be passing right by.  They offered for us to spend the night with them and we gladly accepted.  So we got to meet their family and spend time in their lovely home.  It's so wonderful to be able to just sit and talk with people in similar circumstances and with similar beliefs.  We talked all evening and most of the next morning before bidding them farewell.  They also introduced us to a new fabulous ramen restaurant for dinner.   I had heard of Ippudo as it is also international, but hadn't ever tried it before.  I must say it was excellent (especially the spicy ramen).

The next morning we drove the relatively short distance to the famous island of Miyajima.  They are famous for their beautiful shrine and oysters.  In fact, the annual oyster festival (kaki matsuri) was in full swing that day!  When we got to the town across from Miyajima, we drove all over the place looking for a parking spot.  Finally, past all the official parking spaces, there was a lady directing traffic and she took pity on us and gave us her spot.  The lines at the matsuri were insane!  We waited in some of the shorter ones to get a bite to eat, then walked through town (snacking along the way) to see the famous tori gate.  Unfortunately the tide was out, but it was still pretty.

It was getting close to 4pm, so we decided to head to our "hotel" 88 House.  It was in the middle of a ravine about 10 minutes drive from Hiroshima.  Typical with Japan, we took a sharp hairpin turn off of the main road and found ourselves next to a little river and several rice fields.  The house itself used to be a bonsai shop, and though built in the old style, it must have been either renovated recently as it didn't look or feel like it was old.  The proprietor was very nice and when we asked about a local onsen/sentou (public bath house) he gave us directions to one nearby.  So we promptly drove over there and used the facilities.  Then we drove back and stopped at a local store that sold mostly varieties of nikuman (siopao/meat buns) with local types of meat.  Then we passed out at our hotel at about 8pm.  The futons were very comfy and the place heated up nicely for the night.  Our one complaint about the place was the lack of a full washlet.  The shared bathroom was very clean, but I'm sorry, this is Japan and there is no excuse for not have a real washlet.

The next morning we slept in, ate hand made local rice onigiri with miso soup for breakfast, and made it into Hiroshima proper by 10am or so when most stuff started opening.  We went straight for the Peace Museum.  It was of course very sobering, and a different kind of weird to be able to touch so many things that were there at the explosion.  I am glad we watched the documentary "White Light, Black Rain" prior though.  It was in some ways more personal as it focused on the experiences of several individuals who survived but were still affected by it.  That documentary was in my opinion more disturbing than the Peace Museum, but like I said, there is a different sort of reality to be experienced by physical contact with objects that were there.

After that it was lunch time, so we made our way down to the famous "Okonomiyaki Village" (Okonomimura) where floor upon floor of little okonomiyaki stalls greeted us.  We walked every floor and chose the one with the cute older lady who seemed the least annoying.  What a strange feeling to be "solicited" so insistently for something in Japan!  We chose kaki (oyster), hotate (scallop), and cheese/mochi types and watched them carefully prepared in front of us.  This was our first time eating Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, and we all loved it!  Personally, I'd prefer this style any day over Osaka style.  The main difference is that Osaka style (which is what we have mostly over in our area) is just mixed up ingredients and then fried like a pancaked until done.  Hiroshima style is layered carefully one at a time.  I hope we can find some Hiroshima style places near us at home.

After lunch we walked over to the actual Hypocenter directly below where the bomb detonated (a tiny back road area with no one around) and the Peace Dome.  The Dome was sadly being surveyed so it had scaffolding all around it, but the area by the rivers was lovely.  Then we walked up to the castle, which was very lovely and the grounds were quite peaceful.  We didn't go inside (we've done that many times by now), and it started to rain, so we walked almost all the way back to where we had parked.  Near by was a Shisha cafe called Kugrass so we stopped in there.  Previous shisha experiences in Yokosuka had put me off shisha in Japan, but I had never tried shisha prepared by a Japanese person before (in Yokosuka it's done by middle eastern folks, and you'd think they'd know what they were doing, but you'd be wrong).  It was a quiet, cute little cafe, well ventilated so even Rowan didn't have an issue with smokiness (he's quite sensitive).  The shisha was amazing, some of the best I've ever had. Perfectly smooth, cool draw, smokeless coals, and it never got nasty towards the end as it sometimes does.  The masala chai tea was excellent too.  I really hope they get more business.

We had decided we wanted to eat dinner at an excellent indian place we had heard of (Roopali) but it was a bit early for dinner so we decided to drive down to Iwakuni and the marine base there to fill up our fuel tank with cheap, subsidized american cheater gas.  We arrived as it was getting dark so had to ask for directions around the base, and we didn't get to see much of it in the misty rain that was falling.  Mission successful, we headed back to Roopali.  In Yokosuka there are tons of Indian restaurants nearby, but none of them approach great, let alone excellent. The curries are uncomplicated, the naan is sweet, and bread selection is...well...only naan. So we are always looking for "real" indian food wherever we go. The best we've had so far was a total accidental find near Yokota Air Base, but that's quite far and we hardly ever get up there.  We were hesitant to spend one of our food time slots while visiting Hiroshima on another probably bad Indian place, but this hugely popular spot looked worth it. We were very glad we risked it. First, there's more than one kind of bread on the menu! They had naan and roti, and lo and behold, the naan wasn't sweet! And the roti was big, thick and brown. Oh so delicious. Also, they let me order a *salty* lassi, even though it wasn't on the menu! Oh heaven! The curries were popping with flavor (not just spiciness though they did that well too). The boneless tikka chicken we ordered was also amazing. Of course we ate way too much, but it was so much fun. Highly recommended if you need a real indian food fix. It is a little expensive compared to other Indian places in Japan, but worth it.  After that we headed home for our last night at 88 house.

The next morning we started the long trip back home, which took about 10 hours.  We did stop several times for breaks and lunch along the way.  But we made it back in time to turn our car rental in and avoid a another day's charges.  It was nice to have the next day off of work too, and we used the time to clean around the house and do some grocery shopping.

Overall, for our first really long road trip in Japan, it went very well.  I still don't like driving much, but it really helps to have something to listen to (i.e. audio books/sermons) to make the time go by.

Roller Derby in Yokota!

Last weekend we spent the night at Yokota Airbase because Kerri had a roller derby game there.  This was my (Jesse's) first time to watch an actual game, and it was a lot of fun!  The Yokosuka team won due to overwhelming numbers, skill and solidity, at least, that's why my limited perspective told me.  I'm still pretty new to the sport.  We'll get some pictures up soon.

We decided to stay Saturday night at the base because it's so cheap ($60 a night) and their base store has different (cheaper) stuff than our base's store.  So we were able to get some clothes for our upcoming trip to the Philippines (last two weeks of November).

And of course, there was the food.  Not on base, yuck!  We had heard of a nice Japanese Sakery that brews some beer too, so Kerri and I set off to find it in the rain after the game, leaving Rowan at the hotel happy with Chili's mac'n'cheese and a portable gaming system.  After about 45 minutes of walking we found the place, but it was almost 9pm and they were closing up.  It looks lovely though and we'd like to try to get there some other time (http://www.tamajiman.com).

So we decided to find the first thing we could and eat there.  As we approached the nearest restaurant we saw in front of us a small sign advertising curry.  Now Japanese curry is not like Indian or Thai curry, and while we like it now and then (and used to make it at home at least once a week), we weren't looking for that tonight.  As we got closer, we saw an Indian flag and two guys working behind bar seating in what was likely a repurposed ramen shop.  We went in and were amazed to see, in addition to the usual naan bread, chapati on the menu!  Our hopes were rising.  We had yet to have truly good Indian food in Japan.  Most Indian food is toned way down in terms of complexity of flavor to accommodate the Japanese palate.  Makes good business sense, but the food suffers.  They also rarely have more than naan for bread, and it is slightly sweet, to the point where I refuse to order it anymore.  We asked if we could order chapati and they said yes, and proceeded to make it from scratch in front of us!  We also tried a roasted chicken that was a nepalese specialty, samosas, and a couple of curries.  As each dish arrived we were blown away by the strong and complex flavors.  It was truly the best Indian we've had in Japan.  It's a tiny place with hardly any room to work, but those guys churned out amazing food.  (http://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1329/A132902/13149952/).

Now, finding one "best in Japan so far" restaurant would have been enough to make this weekend a huge success, but two?  Are you crazy?  On the way home that night (another 45 minute walk), we passed by a Thai restaurant just outside the main base gate.  It had a colorful tuk-tuk in front and was brightly decorated.  We decided to give it a try the next day.  As with Indian food in Japan, so with Thai.  While there are some decent Thai places in Yokosuka, none of them are what we would consider excellent Thai, again with the toning down and simplifying of flavors.  So we didn't get our hopes up, but hey, you never know.  The next day before we left for home, we had lunch there, and again...blown away.  The best Thai we've had in Japan so far.  All the sweet/sour/spicy flavors were represented.  You could even order a plate of lettuce and herbs to eat your food with.   Rowan wanted roasted chicken that they were cooking on a barbeque in front.  It was deliciously marinated.  We got some fermented sausage fried rice, red curry, and ground chicken with Japanese pumpkin (kabocha).  Nothing was one-note flavor, every bite was a surprise.  We wished we could have tried everything on the menu, but sadly, we got full, and we don't get out there very often.  (https://ja-jp.facebook.com/khaomangai.16)