Wannpaku Park - December 2008

We visited Wannpaku park this past weekend. It's a beautiful park that I look forward to exploring in the spring. However, Wannpaku has a wonderful indoor play area that girls really enjoyed. I'm sure will be returning many times this winter.

After playing at the park Chris and I took a guess at picking a restaurant. I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to be illiterate, not to mention also being incapable of understanding anything that is said to you. We walked into this restaurant and immidiatly realized it was a sushi train restaurant. We think "great, no problem" until we are confronted by a computerized self check in system. I'm standing there staring at this computer with buttons to choose your table and the number of guests, but I can't read it to know which buttons to press. After standing there for a few seconds completely lost a very nice Japanese lady who was waiting to be seated obviously noticed my confusion and amazingly she spoke English. She checked us in and Chris and I prayed we would be able to guess our way through ordering and figuring out how you pay out. We managed and ended up having a great time. The girls loved the sushi train. I have been here for a little over a month and the nice women that helped us check in is only the second person I've run into that can speak English.

Merry Christmas!

The girls love to talk on the phone! Good thing we have two phones that are the exact same. It seems these days we have to have two of everything. Sharing is just not a concept Avery can grasp and she has to do everything big sis does.

Week 2 and Visit to Nikko

We took the back roads through the woods home, it was breathtaking.

It was a great day of sight seeing. The weather was good and the scenery was amazing.

Cleansing with incense before entering the shrine.

We visited the "World Heritage" shrines.

We took about a 45 min. drive north to the Nikko mountains.

It was beautiful!

Rylee and Hana, the two princesses.

The kids had fun playing together. The Cabral's have a 3 year old daughter, Hana, who goes to the the same Yochien Rylee will be attending in January. They also have a son, Gabriel, who is 2 and a new born Miya.

The Cabral family invited us over for Thanksgiving.

We had a wonderful time.

Building with the blocks at the Mall.

Feeding the fish, again.

Week One in Japan

Beautiful park in Utsunomiya.

This is our sensei Mioko-san and her husband welcoming us on our first day in Japan.

Giyoza Man Resturant

Our first dining out experince went great. The girls love giyoza and good thing because Utsunomiya is the giyoza capital.




Rylee loves to practice eating with chopsticks.


And Avery can't get enough giyoza.










This week we found three great parks and 2 are within walking distance. Our favorite is the park with the fish pond. We go there nearly everyday to feed the fish. That is of course if Avery will share some of the fish food for the fish (left over pancakes).





We also found the Mall, Bell Mall, it is only a few blocks away and has many great things like, Starbucks, McDonald's, great shopping and a fun play area for the kids.
This is Rylee at Bell Mall in front of a Christmas Display. Yes, the Japanese love Christmas, but not in the same way that we do. Very few Japanese are actually Christians, but they are a very celebratory culture and love to be festive.


This first week was filled with much exploration of our new surroundings and unpacking and getting settled into our new house. We have met many great families and have already formed a wonderful relationship with our sensei Mioko-san. Mioko-san is our life line and has been a tremendous help.

We shared Thanksgiving our first weekend here. It was fun to meet many of the other OAP (overseas assignment project) families.

Our Japan adventure has begun!

We arrived in Tokyo around 4:30pm Japan time on Saturday, Nov. 15th, 12:30am California time. The flight went amazingly smooth, thanks to many prayers and great help from Brian and the other OAP wives. Once off the plane we proceeded through customs and baggage claim with no issues. It was so great to see Chris waiting for us, the girls were beyond ecstatic! We then proceeded to take two 45 minute train rides before arriving in Utsunomiya. It was nearly 3:30am California time before we settled in for the night. Through it all the girls were such great troopers.