Construction.....and cute things

For the past month and a half we have had construction right outside our house. I'm not exactly sure what they are doing, but I have been told it will unfortunately last until the end of the year. Here's an example of the cute signs that the Japanese use in construction zones. Ducks with umbrellas, Puppies with balloons... these are just a few examples of 'cute' signs around Japan.

I plan to start taking more pictures of all the "cute" things I see here on a daily basis. Here's a pic of a pokeman plane! The second pic is of some sort of bus/transportation vehicle for kids. I see this "train" often because it picks up and drops off kids near our house. More cute pics to come.....

Tempura Party!

Last night was the Tempura party at Hisano-san's family's home in Yomitan. Hisano-san's mother made 6 different kinds of tempura....an onion/pepper/carrot mix, broccoli, mushroom, sweet potato, "mountain"potato, and shrimp!!!! She also made a delicious soup and melon rice. I really liked the ginger taste of the soup...although I wasn't able to eat much of it because I stuffed myself so quickly with all the tempura. What a feast!!! As expected, everything was delicious!!!

おいしかった!!!!

Dave and Hisano-san's father had a great time drinking all sorts of alcohol. At one point, Dave had three different drinks in front of him and somehow couldn't put a dent in any of them. It seemed as though as soon as he took a sip someone was filling his glass back up to the top. Hahahaha!!!

Hisano-san's nephew Ryoga was so adorable the entire night! Dave really enjoyed playing with him. Here he is with Dave's hat on.... what a ham!

かわいい　ですね

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Here's Ryoga!! What wonderful entertainment!

いつも　楽しい!

Hisano LIVE, Chika/Hisano's Birthday, Saki Returns!!!

Last night was Hisano-san's first solo LIVE performance!!! MOD'S LiveHouse was full of people who came to cheer her on. She was full of energy the entire night, not that that's different from any other night, but it was great to see her use her "genkiness" on stage. She only performed a few covers... all the rest were her original tunes, which was totally awesome!!! I was really impressed!!

This is Hisano's nephew, Ryoga! He is two and a half and tons of fun. Here's a picture of him and his mom (Hisano's sister-Yukino-san) after the show last night. As many Japanese do when having their picture taken, Ryoga is giving the "peace" sign. Well, he's working on it....lol

Here are Chika-san and Hisano-san as they get ready to blow out their Birthday candles at the afterparty. Chika-san's Birthday was Nov. 1st and Hisano's was Nov.2nd.

Saki-san returned to Okinawa (she now lives in Tokyo) on Wednesday, just in time for her best friend's show. They met a few years back when they were on the same Okinawan TV program. They are both in show-biz, can you tell??? hahaha

Here we are .... the four gals...

Trick or Treat....

Because last year we had about 10 or so kids from our neighborhood stop by on Halloween for some trick or treating... Dave and I stopped at the store earlier today to make sure we had some candy on-hand incase the trick-or-treaters decided to return this year.

This picture is of the full candy bowl.... the 2nd time around. I had to run to the store around 7pm to get a refill on candy.

I finally had to bring in the Jack-O-Lantern and turn off the lights because we ran out of candy again!!!!

I'm guessing around 30 or so kids came to the door tonight. The kids from last year must have told their friends. All of the kids were around 8-12 years old and most of them were very shy and didn't know what to do. They were incredibly polite .... saying "Thank you" several times as they walked away from the house... and a couple of times they even bowed. I am so glad they decided to come back this year! What fun!

Jack-O-Lantern

Tonight Dave carved his yearly Jack-O-Lantern.

Learning to type in Japanese

Last night I created my own little map of the hiragana characters on the keyboard. As of now we don't have a Japanese keyboad, but I can switch the language on the computer and then type in Japanese. As it turns out, just as our English letters are placed in no logical order across the keyboard, so are Japanese letters. This makes learning to type on the computer in Japanese much more difficult than I had originally thought.
When I return to the USA, I won't be able to type in Japanese using my cell-phone...waaaaa!!! Therefore, if I want to continue to communicate with my Okinawan friends, I must learn how to type all over again!!!! ahhhh!!!

Japanese Print Test

私は日本語で　かいて　います. とても　むずかしい 　です. でも,　楽しい　です.

I am writing in Japanese.　 It is difficult, but fun.

Naked Molly

Yesterday I took Molly for a haircut, and boy did she get buzzed! She was very happy to see me when I picked her up from the groomer, but after a little while she put on her "woe is me" face and moped around the house for a good 3 or 4 hours. The woman that cuts her hair usually puts a scarf around Molly's neck, but this time she put bows on her ears! hehe...