Settling In

Things have calmed down a lot since I got back from Tokyo.  I’m finally over my jetlag!  YAY!  I spend most of my day running after Tai.  He is one of the most energetic puppies I have ever seen, and his personality is about four times the size of his body.  I think he has some kind of size complex since he refuses to eat the little pieces of dog food or chew on his little bone.  Instead he eats the largest pieces in the bowl and wrestles the much larger bones from our older dogs.  He just doesn’t seem to understand that they’re bigger and stronger than him and could basically eat him. 

He’s also a very vocal dog, and I’m having a lot of difficulty getting him to stop barking in the house.  *sigh* Is this even a tenth of what new mothers feel like?  LOL.  Probably not!  I’m sure their lot is much worse. 

He also has really weird eating habits.  He prefers to drop his food on the carpet before eating it and will eat anything he finds on the floor or the ground.  I’ve even had to stop him from chewing on live spiders!  *shudder*  It was awful.

Speaking of spiders, I don’t know if it’s just this part of Tennessee or if my parent’s house is special, but I have never seen so many HUGE spiders!  They’re fast, too!  My sister and I have killed at least four or five gigantic monsters in the last week and a couple of their smaller friends.  What can I say?  I’m on a mission.

I’m still working on my parent’s finances and have begun the monstrous task of tackling their taxes as well.  When I’m not chasing my puppy around the house, I’m usually working on budgets or similar projects for them.

So, life continues on…

Meet Tai

This is Tai Wan Mei, my new chow puppy.  We just call him Tai for short.  His name means perfection, and he is a perfect mess.  He has tons of energy and keeps me on my toes.  I got him from an old family friend who raises chows.  She’s been diagnosed with cancer, and the money from the puppies is going towards her funeral arrangements.  He’s extremely feisty and rather protective.  My favorite thing about him is his ears since they’re darker than the rest of him.  He also likes to grab his own tail and roll around on the floor, which is also highly amusing to watch.  However, he doesn’t seem to like my mom very much.  Oh well…I’m sure he’ll get used to her.  Tai also enjoys sleeping on our air vents.  I guess he just gets really hot.  LOL.

In short, just look at that face!  He’s so stinkin’ cute!  There’s no way I could say no, especially given the situation.  So, now I have a new friend!  That’s all for now!

Until next time…

Last Couple of Pictures from Tokyo

These are the last couple pictures.  They’re shots from the hotel lobby towards Tokyo Bay.  The lobby was on the sixteenth floor, so it was a great view to see every day.  Just wanted to finish up the pictures.

 

Pictures from Tokyo

Sorry, it took a little longer than I thought to figure out how to get the pictures off of my camera.  But, here they are.  I’m sorry there aren’t many.

The first picture is the sign in Nagano Station for the Winter Olympics that were held there.  I said that these were my pictures from Tokyo, but most of them are actually from Nagano.  That’s where we went to see our concert.

I wanted everyone to see the mountains of Japan.  The best way I can describe them is as a combination of the Rockies and the Appalachians.  They’re really big and craggy but still covered in green.  These pictures don’t really do them justice.  Once of the best parts of going to Nagano was riding the train through the mountains.  I would have taken pictures from the train, but I didn’t have a window seat.

The next picture is a classic Japanese house.  I just wanted to show a picture of one.  I took this picture on the way to our concert venue in Nagano.

The next picture is fountain just outside of Ohsaki City, which is a three floor shopping complex directly connected to Ohsaki Station in Tokyo.

In the next picture, you can just see that the top of Tokyo Tower is still bent from the huge earthquake in March.  Tokyo Tower is a huge tourist attraction, so of course, it has lots of souvenir shops.  One t-shirt in particular had a picture of the bent tower with a saying such as “Together Since March 10, 2011″.  I really liked it.

The last picture is the only one I remembered to take of my food.  Apparently I’m too hungry to take pictures by the time I sit down to eat over there.  This is actually a picture of the display in fact, taken after I had finished eating.  This is a chocolate mint cookie special crepe.  It was a seasonal special.  Crepes in Japan are major stall foods, but as you can see, they put all kinds of things in theirs like cake, cookies, and ice cream.  They also have more non-dessert types with tuna and chicken in them.  I LOVE them.

That’s it for now.  I think my sister has a few more to share that I’ll post later.

Ja ne…

Jetlag is a Drag

So, I’m back home now, and I have finally overcome the horrible effects of jetlag for the most part.  It was much worse this time than it has been in the past, mainly due to the fact that I landed in the States at 8 AM.  Usually I land in the afternoon, stay up for a couple of hours, and then go to bed.

The last couple of days in Tokyo were really fun though getting back to the airport was an adventure.  We were going to take a taxi since we wanted to be there two hours before our flight left at 6:55 AM, but we weren’t sure how much a taxi would cost and kept getting such varying information that we decided to take the train instead and arrive at the airport later.

So, we woke up at 3:30, checked out of the hotel at 4:15 and walked down to Aomonoyokochou Station, which took about fifteen minutes with our luggage since we actually knew where we were going this time.  The station was closed and didn’t open until 4:45, so we sat outside for a bit.  We then caught the 5:06 train to Keikyu Kamata and transferred to another train leaving three minutes after we arrived.  Luckily the train was simply across the platform and took us all the way to the international terminal at Haneda Airport.

By the time we had checked in and gotten through security, they were already boarding our flight, so we simply walked right on to the plane.  Then the plane left half an hour late, which was a bit concerning since we had a connecting flight to catch in Detroit.  However, with the tailwinds, sometimes over 100 mph, we were able to make it in a reasonable time.  We went through customs and security once we landed in Detroit and had about five mintues to spare before boarding our next flight.

So, it was a rather close call on all accounts, but we made it home without any mishaps thanks to some very sincere praying. 

There was also a third earthquake before I left.  I think it was only a 4.7 or something around there, but it still baffles me.  Before this year,  I had collectively spent more than a month in Japan with no earthquakes at all.  Yet, in the space of about five days there are three noticeable ones, not to mention all the unnoticeable ones.  There was one day in particular that I looked up while we were there, and there had been about thirteen earthquakes in Japan that day.  Almost all of them were too small or too far away to bother anyone, but it was still a bit unsettling.

I’ll post the pictures as soon as I get them on my computer, which should be later today.

Until then…

The Sound of Music and Shake, Rattle, and Roll Part 2

So happy right now!   It has been a fabulous 24 hours.  I found my magazine and made a couple of more purchases, which was great.  However, the highlight of the trip thus far was the concert yesterday.  It was by far the best show I’ve seen live, and I was in row 16!  It was simply fabulous!

The only way it could have been better was if it had actually started on time.  It began fifteen minutes late, and since my sister and I were on a tight schedule, we actually had to leave before the encores, which was sad.  However, I didn’t really feel bad because there was no way to help it.  Had we stayed we would have been stranded somewhere on the way home since Japanese trains stop running at midnight, and it was a three hour trip back to the hotel.  So, we would have been forced to either taken a taxi or gotten a hotel room for the night, neither of which was really affordable.  So, we left a bit early, which was actually five minutes after the show should have been over and practically ran to the station.

So, I’m sore.  My ears are ringing.  My eyes are bleary, but I saw my favorite group in absolutely perfect, top-notch form. 

We got back to the hotel around a quarter to midnight, and just as we were getting settled, the room began shaking…AGAIN!  I was so exhausted, I thought I must be hallucinating, but I wasn’t.  There was another earthqake.  Below is part of the article from Yahoo! News.

TOKYO (AFP) – A moderate 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the south coast of the main Japanese island of Honshu late Monday, US geologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued.

The tremor, which hit just before midnight, hit at a depth of around 10 kilometres (six miles), around 39 kilometres south of Shizuoka and 165 kilometres south of Tokyo, the US Geological Survey said.

This is my fourth trip to Japan, and I had never been in an earthquake.  Now I’ve been in two. *sigh*  I really hope there are no more.

More to come…and pictures!

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

So, we went back to Ikebukuro yesterday to continue my search to no avail.  Then we headed off to Shinokubo again and made a couple of purchases, mainly just so we could break some of our larger bills.  My sister pointed out that I may not find what I’m looking for since it was printed in March.  However, I’m way too stubborn to give up, so I’ll check a couple of more places. 

We then had curry for dinner, and I passed out after that.  I was really sore, really tired, and really happy.

However, I woke up this morning at 4 AM to an earthquake.  This is the first time I’ve ever experienced one, and it was way creepy.  The entire room shook though nothing fell over.  It felt like an unbalanced washing machine was in the room with us.  So, I called to my sister.  “I think there’s an earthquake!”  Her response was, “Yeah, uh-huh…I don’t hear any sirens, so I’m not worried about it.”  She promptly went back to sleep.  Needless to say it took me quite a while before I could do the same.  I found the following article on CNN this morning about it.

Tokyo (CNN) — A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Sunday morning off the east coast of Honshu, Japan, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The earthquake was centered 27 miles (43.5 kilometers) beneath the surface about 114 miles (184 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, the agency said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Japan has been struck by hundreds of aftershocks off the coast of Honshu since the March 11 earthquake that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The fact that it was so far away and we still felt it is really weird.  I noticed a couple of the aftershocks, but nothing else really happened.  I’m hoping there are no more while we’re here.

Today’s plan is to take it easy since both my sister and I are having some back issues, but given the fact that the beds here are similar to slabs of flint, I can’t really say I’m surprised.  We’re heading to Mr. Donut this morning, the Japanese cousin of Dunkin Donuts for a well deserved sweet treat.  Then we may go exploring.  There are still several parts of Tokyo we’ve never been to given the fact that it’s rather massive, but we don’t plan on straying too far from the hotel.

The End of the Ice Age and the Hunt for the Red Magazine

So, first of all I am not freezing anymore. Turns out that the first night I was here I somehow managed to wad up my blanket within its duvet cover, so it was all balled up in the corner of my bed.  Basically I was only sleeping under a sheet and the duvet cover.  It’s no wonder I was waking up freezing.  However, it’s all better now.

Harajuku was a bit of a bust.  We didn’t really find anything we were looking for there.  Shibuya was much better, and both my sister and I came away with a few things. 

Yesterday, we went back to Shinokubo to further look at our favorite stores there.  We made sure to get there early to avoid the crowds, and it worked for the most part.  We could actually get through the building without being too smushed, and our efforts were rewarded with several new finds.  Then it was off to Shinjuku, the busiest station in the world.  This place is similiar to a small but extremely active airport, and it’s probably just as big.  We didn’t find what we were looking for there though, which is a very particular issue of one of my favorite Japanese magazines.

So today, I shall continue my hunt.  First stop will be breakfast, most likely a rice ball with curry filling in the middle or a pastry of some kind.  Then, we’ll make a quick stop at a bookstore near our hotel that my sister conveniently found this morning before heading back to Ikebukuro to look at some other stores there.  If that fails, then we’ll stop by Shinjuku on our way back to Harajuku for crepes. 

The crepes in Japan are a bit different from what most people are used to, but they are one of my favorite things to eat here. You start with the same kind of batter and make it the same way, but they roll them the way you would roll a waffle cone, and they put lots of different things in them like tuna or chicken with curry sauce and lettuce, etc.  You can also get dessert crepes which have cheesecake or ice cream in them.

No pictures yet.  Gomenasai!!!  I will try to do better.

So my hunt shall continue…

P.S. It’s really weird to type on a Japanese keyboard.  So many of the keys are in a different spot.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I’m in Tokyo!!!! My sister and I left our house at noon on the 25th.  After more than twenty hours of traveling we finally landed at Haneda Airport at 10:30 PM on the 26th, half an hour early, which was great.  Because the flight was early, there was no gate available for us, so the plane was parked in the middle of a bunch of other airport vehicles, and we had to take a shuttle bus to the terminal.  Getting through customs and immigration was a breeze since it was all old hat to me.  Then we caught our train to Aomono-Yokocho station. 

The hotel was listed as being a seven minute walk away.  After fifty minutes of wandering around with our luggage in the middle of the night, we finally gave up trying to find the hotel and took a taxi.  We were only a block and a half away.  Finally, at 12:35 AM we were in our hotel room.  We staying at the Sunroute Shinagawa Seaside Hotel.  It’s fairly nice and part of a giant complex that includes another train station.  The hotel itself doesn’t start until the sixteenth floor, which I found rather odd.  So, we’re staying in room 2048 with a great view.  There are only two other floors above us, so I think we got a decent room.  We can see the city and Tokyo Bay from our window.  My only complaint is waking up half frozen, but my sister gets hot easily, so I’ll just have to layer up better.

It’s now the 28th in Japan, so I’ll just cover rather quickly what we did yesterday.  It was a rather bad travel day for us.

We walked back to Aomono-Yokocho station and took the train up to Ikebukuro.  I was happy to know that my Suica card worked on the Keikyu lines as well, since I’ve never travelled on them.  We changed our money at the expected rate, which right now is rather horrid.  We only got 74.92 yen to the dollar, but given the fact that the airport was 64, I was rather pleased.  Then we hiked over to Sunshine City, which is a large shopping mall area and looked around.  We then went back to the station and caught the train down to Shinokubo, which has all of the Korean imports that we like.  We searched through our three favorite shops, which were actually crawling with people.  If you can imagine an elevator with about twenty people in it, you’ll understand the same kind of feeling as going through those shops.  Then we decided to call it a day.  I was feeling a bit low after tripping into a poor blind man and getting us lost in Ikebukuro on our way back to the station.  It was also extremely hot out.  So, we decided to go back to the hotel.  On our way back, I got us on the wrong train, which took us all the way back to the airport, a nice 25 minute ride one way.  We then had to explain to the train staff that we’d taken the wrong train and get on the right one for our stop.  On our way back to the hotel, once we’d actually reached our stop, we stopped at McDonald’s for drinks.  The rest of the evening was spent in the hotel room as both of us were rather tired.  We probably walked two and a half miles or so.

Today, it’s off to Shibuya and Harajuku for more shopping…I’ll try to remember to take pictures, especially if we get cake!

More to come…

Patience and Preparation

Things are pretty slow here.  My parents had a minor financial crisis that I bailed them out of, and I have now created a budget and monthly plan for them, which my sister and I keep up with ourselves.  I’ve also created a filing system for their bills and medical receipts to help them when filing taxes next year.  However, I have not looked at their taxes yet.  I think that is going to have to wait until after I’m back from Japan.

My mother and sister are like oil and water.  They simply don’t mix.  There’s already been a rather nasty showdown between them since I got home, but on the plus side they both cool off kind of quickly, too.

My print of “The Master Servant” now hangs above my bed in my room.  Everything is unpacked, or rather as unpacked as it’s going to get.  It still feels like I’m here for a visit though.  Even my sister agrees.  I’ll finish decorating after I get back.  That might make a difference.

Speaking of Japan, I leave in four days!  I’m really excited though our plans haven’t gone as smoothly as they could have.  The exchange rate is absolutely killer.  But, I am determined that we’re going to have as much frugal fun as possible!  We’ll be making the last few preparations this week such as heading to the bank to change a bit of our money before we leave the country.  We won’t be landing until 11 PM, so almost all of the exchange counters will be closed.  On top of that, trains in Japan stop running at midnight, so we don’t want to waste time changing money and wind up stranded halfway to our hotel.  There’s also the financial and medical preparations for our parents to take care of.  It’s a little sad, since we’ll be on vacation, but we’ll still be paying bills and monitoring the finances even in Japan.  The other preparation I really need to make is actually learning how to use my camera!   Luckily, my sister is pretty tech savvy, so I’ll just have her look at it.

Ja mata ne…