Snowcone for Gir

When we first moved here last January, we thought it was crazy cold! Taking Gir outside was quite an ordeal. Every "Gir-ing" meant piling on layers of clothes and trying to keep your teeth from chattering -Daniel and I would always bargain with eachother to see who would have to take him out. The most it ever snowed last year was just a trickle -enough to see the very tops of the mountains turn speckly white. The locals here say that the winters here get cold enough to snow -but rarely ever does!

With that said, this past weekend made Sasebo history. It snowed 4 inches :) On Saturday we took a snowboarding trip to Tenzan. On a normal day, it takes about an hour and a half drive to get there. Even with the soft, steady fall of snow all morning, we got there right on schedule. Tenzan was pretty awesome...since it constantly snowed, the slope was pure powder. Every spill was just lovely! Imagine, if you will: Speeding... and then wobbling out of control... and then crashing ...into pure fluff! yay! Coming back, however really sucked. The snow had forced the main highway to close so we ended up in a gridlock on backroads. The drive back took 4 and a half hours! On the way, an unlikely beacon of hope lit us up...it was a 7-11 (yep, we have those here!)

Aaaanywho, when we finally got back, we saw that our car was covered in snow. While our parking neighbor grumbled, sweeping the snow off his car, we were laughing and taking pictures!
The drive home was a bit worrisome (We didn't have snow tires or chains and we lived up a steep, windy hill) but we were really excited to get home and take gir out to see the snow. We took him the park across the street. The park was all white. At first gir was a little nervous about all the white stuff. But then all of a sudden, something in him clicked and he started prancing about and bouncing around like Tigger!

It snowed all night so park was whiter and fluffier the next morning. Lucky for Gir, his good friend Chiro (a Shiba) and his owner, Takeharasan came out to play. They chased eachother around like crazy in the snowy field. We also discovered that Gir has a thing for demolishing heaps of snow and eating it.

Well that's it for our Snow-venture! The rain came and washed away most of the snow. All that's left is just a few slushy piles of snow here and there. I made sure to stomp on as many as possible before I got home -so fun das why!
And with that I shall leave you with a couple of fishing trip pictures of gir. It was really cold out and Gir was shivering so I let him wear one of my jackets -looks good yah?

Oh, and not to be outdone, here's a random picture of miu under a folded towel -Cheers!

New Year's Eve in Fuk's!

Hey hey my fellow friends and familia!

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!
(That's: Happy New Year!... of course, I'm sure you would have guessed it even if you didn't speakith japanese)

So while it's still "fresh-ish" in my head...or at least most recent, I will start with our first New Year's Eve celebration in Japan :)

Before our AWESOME plan came to fruition, we were likely going to celebrate ringing in the new year at Huis Ten Bosch (a dutch theme park -In Sasebo? yes. weird, I know.) On new year's eve, pretty much EVERYONE in Sasebo goes there. I hear they have an amazing fireworks show. And from what I heard from Mizu (Her first name is Sarah but we have 2 Sarahs in our department so she told us we could call her Mizu...ANYWHO...) co from Hawaii just today "Oh man, it's like a hundred times better that Ala Moana's!" woah. I no can believe.

I GOTTA see that! So that's prolly what we'll be doing next year. But let's talk about what we did for THIS year!

Daniel , me and 4 new friends (The OTHER Sarah, 2 Johns and a Matt) rented a van and embarked on a journey of partying in the urbanest, hippest city in Kyushu...Fukuoka!

Me and Sawah (nickname!) had to to work that day, so everything was back-to-back! Took Gir to the kennel in the morning -we didn't know how many hours we'd be away in Fuk (That's "fook" for those of u who think otherwise!) and Gir's bladder can only hold it so long! Then Sawah and I spent the work day cranking out a bunch of jobs that needed to be completed before New Year's Day.

Then at 3 (cool boss let us off early) I bolted out the door, picked up Daniel and sped home to feed Miu. (We figured Miu would be better off at home) Got dressed, grabbed everything I thought I might need (which is ALWAYS far too many things) and sped back to base to meet our friends. By 4, we were all in the van, with Wu Tang Clan blasting on the CD player and heading for Fuk!

And ladies, don't try this in van: Putting on makeup in a van on the highway is at a Difficulty Rating of I'd say 9. Perhaps I'm not well enough practiced in the art, but dayum! I swear, everytime it SEEMED like the van was moving smoothly, I'd cautiuosy start applying a little eye liner and *gatunk* ...yeah. liner everywhere =not lovely. Lesson learned.

So after an hour and 20, we made it to Fuks...at this point we were pretty excited! We even found a overnight parking for 1000 yen -not bad for the city! The first thing we ALL had to do was go to the bathroom! Right there, just a few feet from our stall, the parking complex had a set of really nice bathrooms -I love this town! And then we were off to find La Boheme! We had no trouble finding the place. All we had to do was ask where the apple store was -it was in the same building! Oh yes indeed, the Apple Store... this place is going to be awesome. Here's their website in case ur curious: http://www.qualita.boheme.jp/en/Tenjin/home/location

I gotta say, this night could not have been set up better. The people we were with were all good fun, super cool folks and this place we were headed for was charging only 4000yen for All-you-can-eat-AND-drink for a ridiculous EIGHT hours! (6pm to 2 am) Gee willackers! We were the first ones there so we picked out the perfect upper corner spot in the lounge. And oh yes, as soon as our home base was set up, we got started! Poor La Boheme, we really took advantage of the buffet and free drinkies. The buffet refills would not come quick enough -we were cleaning it out faster than they could replenish! But hey, what can you expect with 6 hungry americans? ;D After the place started filling up, we were still the only table with pitchers of cocktails and beer! At one point, the waiter brought the food to us first before bringing it to the buffet table! But then they got all freaky exotic with the food and brought out stuff like spaghetti with spicy fish egg sauce :\ I think that was our downfall. We stopped eating but kept drinking.

By 11:30, we were all pretty toasted. Conversations got sillier and the music seemed to get louder. Speaking of music, they played some pretty decent stuff... a lot of hip hop, some dancehall, some old skool stuff,.. and Christmas songs? hoo boy. There was one hour where the DJ kept playing a marathon of dorky Christmas songs -not the fun, classic stuff, but the Backstreet Boys/98 degrees kine :\ errr...me no likey. The group sent me the "native speaker" to ask the DJ to play something,..ANYTHING other than this stuff. There were 3 DJs behind a tiny table that just barely fit 2 turntables and a mixer (I think that's what u call it). They happily accepted my request and played some T.I (which Matt totally dug)

By the end of the night, our party increase by 2. We attracted a mellow, big guy named David who is currently teaching english in Korea. And a girl named Bessi (who I think is one of the Johns' friends.) I don't think any of us knew much about her, but it didn't stop her from getting silly with the rest of us!

They even had prize drawings too! Daniel won a bottle of champagne... we gave it to Sawah since she loves the stuff more than anyone. But everybody got served free champagne and sake at midnight anyway! And there we all stood with our fancy glasses, watching a giant screen suspended above the bar, blipping bright pink bubble numbers...counting down from 10...9...8....

Where's Daniel? ...3..2...1!!! YAY!!! Akemashite Omedetou! We hugged a lot of strangers that night :) But where did Daniel go? There he was, stumbling down the short flight of steps in front of me, after spending the final seconds of '08 in the bathroom! *sigh* oh well!

After that we decided to try and head over to the next place -maybe a dance club... but as we walked aroud, we stumbled across a crowded shinto temple right smack in the middle of the city! It was all lit up and lined with vendors selling food, fortunes and good luck charms. We all knew we just HAD TO shake that lound clankety bell and make that wish! I even bought a keychain with a tiny horse carved out of wood. Sawah and John bought white protection arrows.

After that, we were hungry!... Crazy yeah? considering we had all-you-can-eat pretty much all night! So we stumbled into a popular japanese restaurant called Joyfull. Personally I'm not a fan of the place, but it's main appeal is it's open 24hrs..oh and it's cheap! I had myself a katsu curry dish...pretty spicy, but much to my surprise, tastier than I had expected :) Maybe I was desperate? who knows. But it made me burp a bunch of times within the next hour... that wasn't so pleasant. We all crashed out in the van...then Sawah (the superwoman) said she was okay to drive and drove us all back to Sasebo. It was about 5:30 and snowing when we got back. It was so pretty, but crazy insane cold! We quickly drove to the kennel, retrieved our Gir, and went home to thaw and knock out till 2 in the afternoon :)

Happy New Year!