Risa's Pieces

The Motobu Cherry Blossom Fest

Zoom, zoom, zoom in our little (by American standards), big (by Japanese standards) car to Mount Yaedake to do some Cherry Blossom tree viewing.

It was cold and not nearly as crowded as last year.  The girls barely even harassed us about playing carnival games and buying food. 

More shocking, after 6 minutes of playing at the park, they told us they wanted to go. 

We grabbed some mochi to try out and headed to the car to warm up.

I don't even know what to say about the taste of the mochi(es) we tried out.  Weird, chewy, good or gross doesn't seem to sum it up.

And, da, da, da... some cherry blossom pictures...

 

 

 

Then Marcus drove us very carefully back to our cozy home because, you know, we didn't want our car to blow over or anything.  Really?  Really?  Has a car really flipped over from wind on the expressway?

Way, Way Back in October...

you might remember me talking about our name being picked from a raffle box and winning a trip to the YYY resort on Ie Island.

 

The cottage they gave was nice and spacious, not too shabby.  Upstairs...

 

Downstairs area...

 

There was so much food served to us for dinner and breakfast. It was included in our package, otherwise it would have cost us a scary fortune.  Like it would have cost the same for their food as it would have for groceries for our family of four for two weeks.

We decided to take the car on the ferry which cost us about $70 round trip, but we wanted to be able to explore the island so we could see sights like this gorgeous water from the Wajee Observatory.

 

Or, Marcus wouldn't have been able to tell Chloe to freak me out by getting so close to the edge on top of Mount Gusuku.

Or, Caitlin wouldn't have been able to make this peeved look at me when I teased her about lifting up this rock that legend has it will help a woman conceive her first child.

 

Can't go to a beach resort without checking out the beach...

 

Got to have the car to run to Family Mart for munchies to eat under a big turtle shaped picnic area...

 

We enjoyed our little mini vacation to Ie Island, but like Marcus told me, "We're done with this island, we've seen it all,  we can check it off our list and move on to checking out other islands."  Yep-per!

 

Ikei Island

 

Pictures from our little day trip across the bridge to the hushed Ikei Island a few weekends ago.  We investigated each bit of pavement around the island and the tiny side streets between houses while getting the stare down from some of the elder locals.

A beach we explored near the Big Time Resort.  No. Really.  That's what it was called, Big Time Resort.

 

Some crazy, bright orange vines near the beach...

The steps before entering Ikei island...

 

Just in Case You Were Wondering...

how we celebrated our New Year's.  I will start with the most terrible, tragic news.  We didn't get our  black-eyed peas.  The commissary was sold out of our magical little beans.  Our 2009 will be cursed.  Although I did get a tiny bit lucky and won a game a family bingo this past weekend so maybe this year isn't totally doomed.

After spending some time with friends celebrating a birthday, we headed home for our usual family game time, an appetizer dinner and poppers.

 

 

New Year's day, as much as we would have loved to gone out and explore, we had planned for a cozy day at home knowing that most of the stores off base would be closed.  Not that we wanted to go shopping or anything, but it would have stunk if one of us needed an emergency bathroom break.

Reliving Christmas

Aaahh, reliving Christmas.  Such great memories from our two week break.  It was extremely hard waking up and getting out of my warm, cozy bed Monday morning for school.  It was a shock to my eyes to pop open to the alarm buzzing and not see little rays of light coming through the slants in the blinds.

We did do the Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas Eve dinner.  When we got to the KFC, the line was out the door.  We forked out our 3,880 yen (yikes, about $42 because of our sad yen rate) and were told to come back in half an hour.  We picked out a few books from the Tuttle book store then headed to Baskin Robins for an ice cream dinner.  After that, our chicken bucket was ready (comes with 8 pieces of chicken, a salad with dressing, a small white cake and a commemorative plate) and headed home for our KFC dessert.  Best fried chicken I ever had.

 

Before heading to bed, the girls scattered their second batch of reindeer food. 

Silly me.  I placed the reindeer food under the tree so we wouldn't forget where it was.Waffle decided he wanted to be a reindeer and ripped into the ziploc bag that secured the tasty reindeer morsels.

Santa and his reindeer found their way to our new house making two jubilant little girls. 

We were all spoiled rotten and even treated ourselves to dinner at the Four Seasons.  Delish!