Festival Food

Mmmm, treats! As far as festival food goes, Japan has many interesting typical choices. Most are fried, and most are served on sticks. Corey's favorite is always tentacle on a stick:

Other options include fresh pineapple quarters, corn on the cob, or fried plums and strawberries:

And of course the sweets... Hirosaki is famous for apples, and we had delicious "apple ice" while there this weekend:

It's not exactly healthy food obviously (and I haven't pictures the dripping-with-oil yakisoba we chose in lieu of the corn), but it's a step up from fried Snickers bars and funnel cakes, right? It's nice to enjoy festival food without going into a diabetic coma afterwards.

Hirosaki Cherry Blossom Festival

We picked a great day to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Hirosaki (about a 2 hour drive from Misawa to the east). The blooms weren't quite fully blossomed, but the weather couldn't possibly have been any more beautiful. Bright blue skies and sunshine were unstoppable forces- Spring at its finest.

We left our house around 6am thinking we'd get there nice and early before all the crowds showed up. But this is Japan during Golden Week (when basically the entire population is on vacation and traveling)- who were we kidding. It was already a stifling madhouse by 8am. Oh well.

We walked around, took pictures, ate treats (a lot of them), enjoyed the scenery, and had had our fill by 11am. Short and sweet, and out of there before it got truly insane with picnicking crowds.

If you'd like to see some more pictures, I have them posted HERE.

I love Spring in Japan!

Homogenous Housing

Mass-produced, cookie-cutter housing is no uncommon thing around Misawa. These little neighborhoods usually are home to Americans living off-base, but newer construction seems to produce the same type of housing tracts for native Misawans too. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but I'll take living in one of these standard structures over one of the undifferentiated (and uglier) houses on base any day.

I took these pics on a walk today in GORGEOUS weather. Spring is (FINALLY) here- yay! Everyone is out planting their gardens, and all kinds of pretty junk is popping out of the ground. The cherry blossoms are so close to blooming too. Hopefully this weekend we'll get our timing right at the Hirosaki Cherry Blossom Festival, and I'll have lots of pretty pictures to share soon. I love it here this time of year!

Goodbyes and Karaoke

As the last of the original group of friends we made when we first moved to Japan are packing up and leaving as I write, I can't help but think about how crazy it is that we've already been here for well over a year. As of now we've said goodbye to most of the people we have gotten to know during that time, and it definitely feels a little strange. Such is the nature of military life, I suppose. With every person that leaves, someone else comes, so hopefully we'll be meeting new friends in the coming months (as well as enjoying the couple of really good friends we're lucky to still have around). Plus, with everyone moving away, we now have friends all over the world and lots of couches to crash on when we travel! :)

We went out this past weekend for one last night of karaoke glory. Good times!

We'll miss you guys. :)

A Monterey Day

Did I mention I'm back "home" in CA at the moment? Well, I am. I'll be here another 2 weeks or so, and am looking forward to doing a bunch of fun stuff and catching up with everyone!

Yesterday my best bud Stanley and I took a little drive down to Monterey (where Corey is this week, although we timed it poorly and didn't get to see him- lame). We had a lot of fun; the weather was gorgeous! We walked along the ocean, took pictures, ate on Cannery Row, talked, laughed, and bought A LOT of Taffy Town's salt-water taffy (long story...). It was a great day!

A little different from the blizzard I was in this time last week...

White Out

When I woke up to a blizzard warning, I looked out on our deck and thought, "Wow, that's a lot of snow!"

A few hours later, I found out what "a lot" of snow actually looks like.

Then this morning, I saw the following when I looked out on our (former) deck:

It's just... snow. I'm pretty sure everything has turned to snow and snow is now all that exists outside the walls of our house.

So much for spring.

Pictures at the Park

Today while Corey was gone on a work-sponsored snowboarding trip, I decided to head out to Shimoda Swan Park to get some photography practice in. It was cold, but I had the whole park pretty much to myself and had a lot of fun just leisurely walking around and finding photo-opportunities. Here are my favorite shots from the day: