World Traveling Military Family

Hirosaki Castle

View from 3rd story window of castle

View of Moat from 3rd story widow of castle

Bea and I outside of Castle

There is neat park called Statue of Liberty Park in Hachinohe.  It has a mini-scaled version of the Statue of Liberty.  It's only about 30-40 mins from where we live.  We've been there several times as it's a great place to do on nice days.  We just recently went when we had family visiting and I tried to take some more interesting pics of the statue.  It's supposedly located directly across the globe from the Statue of Liberty in the United States.  That's about all we could make from the sign as it's in Japanese :)  For this park/statue there is no entrance fee, and no walking up inside it.  It's a scenic and photo opportunity, who would've thought we'd see the 'Statue of Liberty' in Japan.

One of my first pics of the Statue

Side View

Expanded view

Trying a new angle

Up close

Giving you and idea of the scale, the kids are at the base of the Statue

Sign with Statue located in the background

When traveling in Japan we have noticed at the temples there are usually Dragon water fountains.  These fountains spout out water which you collect in a metal cup and then drink.  Mr. B and Boo have been brave enough to sample from each fountain, while the rest of us just observed.  Thankfully neither experienced any stomach problems from their sampling. 

Japanese Dragon Water Fountain, depicted as a skinny dragon minus any wings

Boo drinking from the above fountain, this one was located near Lake Towada

Mr. B and Boo at the Dragon fountain located at the Big Budda 

Mr. B taking a drink

Boo taking a drink
 

While this sculpture is huge, it's nothing compared to what Mr. B and Boo saw in Sapporo!

Us in front of the Sculpture

Close-up

Maidens Statue

Scenic view of small island on lake

Ferry going around lake

Scenic View

The swans on the lake, people were stopping and feeding them

The first year we moved here (2006) we went to the local Misawa snow festival, for the past 2 years due to crazy weather and little snow there has been no Misawa snow festival.  So it's a good thing we went the 1st year or we would've never got to experience it.  It was a bit chilly but we all bundled up and headed out.  They had lots of huge snow sculptures and their love of American cartoons could be seen, we seen snow sculptures of SpongeBob and Chicken Little.  They also had a snow hill made for sledding, organized snowball fights, food and that night a live performance by Power Rangers followed by fireworks.  The Power Ranger thing was a little hokey and not our style but the kids enjoyed it.  

The boys with Chicken Little sculpture

Us and the boys, Bea is sleeping in her stroller :)

Sponge Bob and the boys...notice the peace sign?

Mr. B and Bubby with a sculpture...and these are little compared to the Sapporo sculptures!

Mr. B and Bea sledding down the run

Bubby and Bea (who just woke up) with the Chicken Little sculpture

One of the neat experience you can have here in Japan is teaching English to the Japanese.  They are very interested in learning English.  I taught a class of 10-14 women Conversational English for 6 months, then I started subbing full-time and had to pass my class on.  I taught once a week for 2 hours and made $100-$150 depeding on the number of women in each class.  It was a great cultural experience.  I decided to invite the women who could come to an American Thanksgiving at our home, knowing me this is adventurous as I don't enjoy cooking! Thankfully Mr. Bill and my good friend D stepped up to the plate and did all the cooking for me.  The Japanese women loved the meal and trying the foods, especially the turkey.  They asked me how long it took to cook the turkey, and since I had no idea I called in Mr. B (who was chatting in another room) to answer the question.  Imagine the look of shock on their faces when the found that Mr. B did all the cooking!   And that he cleans!  They all got a good chuckle out of that.I thought they were going to steal him right then and there.  They even made comments about stealing him, and how lucky I am...I have to agree I'm pretty darn lucky :) They were shocked because Japanese men do not cook and certainly do no clean!  They also enjoyed talking and practicing their English in a real setting outside of the classroom.  The kids enjoyed the experience and the attention, Bubby always gets his head rubbed out in public by the Japanese, they love blonde hair and think it's lucky to rub.  Here is a pic of us and some of the women from my class after the meal.

There is an interesting place to visit that is about 30-45 mins from our house, it's called Shipwreck Beach.  It's a beach, unfortunately littered by lots of trash, that also has 3 wrecked ships on the beach.  The reason it's so trashy is because the Japanese use the beach for a dumping ground for trash.  Despite the trash it's a pretty neat place.  You literally have to drive up a road made of shells to get to the beach.  The creepy part is that when the weather starts warming up, as early as April, the shells are COVERED in spiders and you have to walk across them!  That is not a part that I enjoy!  You can sometimes find floats along this beach and this is where our friends found their Greater Argonaut shell.  It is also a great place to find sea glass! This is where we've collected all of ours from.  The kids love exploring here.  Plus if your into Geocaching there is one hidden here, that is how we first found Shipwreck Beach.

Some of the wreckage

Us by one of the ships, see they are good sized

One of our first pics of the ships at the beach

Another view of the ships

Taken from top of a cliff near the beach

The piles of seashells and where we park

Driving away from the Seashell road

Huge pile of seashells!

We took a day trip awhile ago to the Beef & Garlic festival in the Garlic capitol of Japan.  We had pre-bought tickets for the 'meals' which were a plastic container with raw beef, garlic, vegetables, and a super yummy sauce.  The sauce is a locally produced soy/garlic sauce and it's soooooo yummy!  We bought a bottle to bring home with us and have since bought a 2nd bottle at the fish market.  It's soo good for flavoring meat!  As we walk into the festival there are some crazy dressed up characters so we all stopped to snap a picture with them:

Us with the Characters, the sun is in Bea's face and she wasn't too crazy about taking a picture with them!  

Then we walk into the heart of the festival and find this huge air blown-up garlic and stopped to take a pic:

After taking  a picture of the huge garlic we walk along and look at some booths with local sellers where we are offered deep fried garlic cloves...it's hard to not be rude saying no to the Japanese so we all took one and braved a taste.  It was not a tasty treat!  It was kinda gross, Mr. B said it tasted like a potato but I don't think it did, so since none of our family liked them we all handed them to him, after eating 5 deep fried cloves and a few mins later he wasn't thinking they were so good after all, LOL!  

Then we happened upon a booth with an interesting treat.  It was literally dried fish on a stick!  People were walking around gnawing on these!  Now I've seen the Japanese walking around chewing on baby octopus on a stick, but never a huge ole' fish!  

Fish on Stick booth

Close-Up of Fish on a Stick...don't they look tasty...NOT!

So we walk over to the cooking area where we choose a grill and spot on the grass to sit.  The guys get to work grilling up the meat and vegetables.  

The guys cooking our food

After they got it cooked we tasted it and it was Delicious!  The beef was so yummy in the sauce with the garlic!  Everyone ate it all up!  We had a fun time and it was an interesting experience!

As we were driving into the festival I noticed that the lampposts were shaped like garlic!  I took this picture and when we came home it quickly became one of my favorites:

Garlic lamppost with scenic background

Mr. B took the kids fishing yesterday (Sat.) morning.  They used Doh-jos (not sure how to spell so spelling as it sounds) as bait.  They look like a cross between an minnow and an eel.  Apparently they work great as bait.  Mr. B got Bea's pole all set and in the water and within minutes she had her first fish!  She caught 3.  Boo caught 6 and Mr. B caught 1 because most of his time was spent putting on bait and untangling lines.  Bubby didn't catch any.  Mr. B called me to come pick up Bea & Bubby after an hour and a half, they'd had enough by then.  Thankfully the fishing hole is 5 minutes down the road so I ran and picked them up so Mr. B and Boo could keep fishing.  They had a fun time.

Boo and 1 of his fish

Another fish

Bea with her fish and Bubby with a Doh-jo in his hand

Bea with another fish

Japanese guys squatting and waiting to perform an act, it was a 5-10 minute part of the parade that they stopped and did every so often

2 guys acting like they are fighting/wrestling 

This poor American kids got dragged into the action, I can only imagine what he was thinking!

Rear view shot (literally) I have no idea what or who they were supposed to be, we were thinking Sumo but then realized they are way to skinny to be Sumo.  Thankfully it was a warm day so they wouldn't get too chilly!

So I got to field many questions from my kids such as "Why are they wearing diapers?", "How do they walk around like that?", "Why are they walking around like that?" and "Why can we see their booty?"  Gotta love kids ;)  Mr. B had missed the action because he was away at training for a few weeks so I had to take pics, because I wanted him to see what he had missed.