Tanabata Festival

In early August we went to the Tanabata festival in Fussa. 

Loads and loads of people.

A lot of the decorations are made from tissue paper.  Here's a pretty good likeness of President Obama.

And on the back, a tribute to Michael Jackson.

Another Michael Jackson tribute.  Pretty cool.

Sore Ike! Anpanman.

Professional wrestling in front of city hall for some reason.

Ponyo is a really popular Miyazaki animated movie.  The song is very catchy and could be heard everywhere in Japan last year (much to Marie's dismay).

Ponyo ponyo, sakana no ko.

Engrish time

Okay, taking a break from the normal, look-what-we-did-today posting. I want to show you some of the Engrish we've found here.  Engrish is poorly or oddly used English found in advertisements, on clothing, or on signs.  Check it out.

They do?  Are they glued to it?

Mmmm, enlarged shrimp fries.

I guess Polar Bears are popular guys.  Sorry Mr. Walrus.

Yes, he is indeed.

This is 100 yen store (dollar store) called Donkey Magic.  Why?

"I Love My Puppy" cat food.

Fireworks

We went to a fireworks celebration in mid-July with the Arima family, Crystal's old homestay family from our Osaka/Kansai Gaidai days. There where 12000 separate fireworks and the show lasted one hour and 20 minutes.  Never seen anything like it before.

The Arima Family and Crystal.  Clockwise from the bottom are Toshio, Takuya, Crystal, Akemi, and Harumi.

The sheer number of people was amazing.

Aquariums

Okay, it's been a while since this blog's been updated so let me get to work.

First up, we went to two aquariums in June and July. The first is in a neighborhood of Tokyo called Shinagawa. It wasn't a huge aquarium, but fun nonetheless.

                           

                           

The outside of the aquarium had a nice little pond and park.  Nice scenery.

Nemo!  Actually there are a lot of little Nemos.  Seemed like every little kid who stopped by this tank yelled out, "Mama, Nemo!"

Not much to say here, just like the look he's given me.

A dolphin doing what dolphins do best, leaping through hoops.

Well, after a day at the aquarium, we both had quite an appetite.  It occurred to us that we were close to Roppongi, the area a lot of foreigners hang out.  This meant western food, more specifically, a TGI Friday.  Expense (1600 yen), but really, really tasty burgers.  Crystal was happy to have Fridays.

Since we were in Roppongi, we decided to take a walk over to Tokyo Tower and go up for some pictures of the city at night.  Along the way we peered down an alleyway and spotted the littlest restaurant ever.  That's it with the little yellow roof. Looks like it holds maybe four customers.

Tokyo Tower from below.  It's Tokyo's answer to the Eiffel Tower.

A tour bus with a Hello Kitty theme.

A few pictures of Tokyo from the first observation deck of Tokyo Tower.

From the first observation deck, you can step on these windows and look down to the ground below (about 150 meters down).  The Japanese guys walking by kept jumping on the window to show their girlfriends how brave they were.

Crystal found a restaurant with her name written all over it.  Hmm, I wonder what that expression means.

Erik found a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone with his name written all over it.  "Challenge the Triple!"

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We decided to do the aquarium thing again, so we went to Sea Paradise park in Yokohama.

A much bigger, better aquarium.  It's really impressive.

Whaddaya lookin at?  I'm tryin' to sleep here!  (sheesh)

 Baby cuttlefish.

Erik at Sea Paradise park.

New old car

Well, we finally found a Honda Fit. It took a while, because even the 2002 models like this one were expensive. So we shopped around for a few weeks and found one in our price range. It drives fine, has car navigation, and 2 years of JCI (Japanese Compulsory Insurance). Oh, and it doesn't squeal like the Nissan Cube.

Puzzle Crazy

While Marie was here we did 3.25 thousand piece puzzles.



Marie had the great idea of purchasing the tiny piece puzzle.

This is Marie's "flying applesaucer." Making pictures with the tiny puzzle pieces is far more fun than actually assembling it! She's been gone a couple weeks and it's still not even halfway complete. Please someone come help!

Tama Zoo

We went to the Tama Zoo for a good back rub. Just kidding, we went to enjoy Marie's last day with us before heading back to Florida.


As you can see, we had fun posing with all the statues around the park.

Judging purely by size, I think it's easy to predict the outcome of this confrontation.

Marie and Crystal loooooove giraffes.

Marie and Erik looking at the lions. No wait, looking at the camera.

The cherry blossoms at the zoo were very pretty. We had breads from a local bakery for lunch and then for dinner...

We had yummy Korean food! Bye Maweee!