Balcony Fuji

Okay, finally took a picture of Fuji from our balcony. I might take Ninjutsu so that I can sneak up there and remove that antennae :). It's amazing that just a few weeks ago there was absolutely no snow on it.

Erik and I plan to climb Fuji next year with Russell (my Maryland taekwondo buddy). According to a Japanese proverb, "You are wise to climb Mt. Fuji, but a fool to do it twice." So, two wise men will be climbing with one foolish girl.

Tokio's family

After the Tokyo Game Show, we got a ride back to Tokio's parent's house, where he and Marie live. His mom and dad are really nice. We went out for dinner at a surprisingly good Indian restaurant.

We brought over pumpkins to carve with his parents, but didn't end up carving them. Tokio and Crystal were still entertained by the pumpkins, nonetheless.

After a while the whole pumpkin idea got a little old. See the bored faces. Hahah.

Despite what Marie says "Jimmy" (That's what I call him. His really name is Andy) is not too bad of a dog. Just don't get near his bone. He'll snap!

2008 Tokyo Game Show

We went to the annual Tokyo Game Show yesterday. We met up with Tokio and Marie and walked through the huge Makuhari Messa convention center looking at the newest and yet-to-be-released video games. Games on display are seen here sometimes a year before they hit the US market, so for gamers this is a really cool event. G4 TV was even there covering the event for American broadcast (check out their coverage).

We bought tickets ahead of time, but didn't realize we would still have to wait in line.

There was a big blowup Power Ranger guy outside the convention center. Tokio couldn't resist posing for the camera.

Once we got in, we were amazed by the sheer number of people. We knew it was a big deal, but it was practically wall to wall people.

Metal Gear Solid Online was one of the popular attractions, as was Little Big Planet. The little guy riding on top of planet Earth is nicknamed Sackboy. Erik wants to play both.

These are some of the real video game and anime fans. There were people like this all over the place. Some people like the lady in pink are actually working for individual game companies. The last picture is Marie posing with a few of the characters from Street Fighter.

Our car!

Well we finally bought a car. Bikes were fine, but with winter coming, they weren't gonna cut it for long. So we found a dealer and bought a 1999 Nissan Cube. It only has less than 30k miles equivalent on it and it runs fine, so for $2000, we thought we got a decent deal. Here are a few pictures. Believe it or not, it didn't take a lot of time to get used to driving on the left side of the road and the right side of the car. Pretty fun so far.

Tama river bike trail

Last weekend we went down to the Tama river bike trail. It runs from our area all the way into Tokyo, something like 55 kilometers. We decided it was too nice a day to stay indoors, so we took our bikes down to the river, about a kilometer from our home, and started off.

Along the way, we pulled over, ate some lunch, and watch a competitive game of croquet. It's really cool that so many old people in Japan continue to remain active.

Farmland along the path. That's a rice field to the left.

Flowers galore!

Here's some nice mountain and river scenery along the way. We got off our bikes at a few points along the path and marched down to the river. At one of the points we saw warning signs telling people to be careful of Mamushi, Japanese pit vipers. Didn't even know they had such animals on the Japan mainland. We never saw any though.

Okinawa

As I mentioned in the last post, Erik got a chance to go to Okinawa for business. Okinawa is the main island in the Ryukyu island chain to the far south of the main Japanese islands. It's a big domestic vacation spot for Japanese because of it's tropical setting.

While he was there he met up with our good friends from our Hawaii days, Dan and Debe Pallmann. Check out their blog. They have a few good pictures from their day together. You have to go there since Erik didn't take his camera with him.

Here are a few other pictures of his trip to Okinawa.

The approach as the plane is about to land in Naha, Okinawa. There are tons of islands like this. Probably more than tons!

This is the beach at American Village. You can see a fence separating the little bay from the bigger ocean behind. This was to keep people from straying too far into jellyfish territory. The really tan guy coming out of the water is not Erik. Neither is the really pale bald guy. Just to let you know.

This picture was taken from a good high vantage point in order to get the city and ocean in one shot. Pardon the power lines.