We're expecting!!

It's true; we're going to have our first baby in Japan. We are both so excited to be adding on to our family. So far I have been pretty sick, and the foreign food doesn't help, but the first trimester is almost over so there are better days ahead. The baby will probably make its entrance around the middle of April, so we'll have a Spring baby! So far, everything is going well with the baby, so we feel truly blessed. This is the baby's second picture and it's already growing so fast! We can't wait to put more pictures of him/her up and belly pictures too:)We're so happy to share the news with everyone!

Totoro

On Sunday we visited the "Totoro" tree. The village is famous for this tree that looks like one of their famous cartoon characters from the movie My Neighbor Totoro. It's one of our favorite Japanese movies, so we were excited to see this tree. On Saturday we went to another Undoki for the kindergarten students. They were so cute running their obstacle courses and doing dances. Our neighbor Akari who is four participated, so it was fun to watch her. Nothing much else is new, but we'll keep posting:)

Undokai

This is from what they would call a sports day. From my perspective it's somewhere between a track meet and American Gladiators without the pads. This is from the middle school where I spend most of my time. The kids did traditional japanese dance/chants, relay races and things like that. In the picture above, 6 kids were all tied to 2 ropes along each foot and had to race 200 meters. Most groups fell, which amused the parents watching more than the actual victory did. Another game involved 3 kids holding one on their shoulders and attacking another group. The object was to rip a head band of another team. To start though they charged each other from about 30 meters so it got pretty rough and I think at least one kid got hurt everytime, but again the parents enjoyed it. Overall it was very suprising to me and interesting to watch, most of it would be quickly banned in America, but that's why we came. The kids had been practicing for this sports day for a few weeks after school everday until 6:00.

Shinjo Matsuri

These 2 pics are from a festival we just went to this weekend in the city next to us. The city is roughly 50,000 people and about 400,000 come the festival each year. All of the floats were decked out similair to this one but each a little different. Of course the ones I liked most turned out worst in the photos, so here's a devil one. The diference with american floats is that these are all pulled by people power. Several dozen pulling long ropes and a few pushing it. Attached to the back of it are drums people play, also traiditional flutes and guitars are played, each float has its own music, though they all sound similair. The family to the right are our next door neighbors, the Yaguchis. Actually, the parents are in the middle, the girl in black and the boy in blue aren't our neighbors, they are the relatives of our neighbors who just came for the festival. They are way too nice to us. Daily they either invite us over for food or bring us some. We haven't gotten our American packages of food we sent by boat yet, so all we have to give them are Jelly Bellies. They like them but its not really a fair trade. Anyway, they are super nice and have made life here a lot easier already. I'm sure we'll talk about them a lot more in the future so I thought I'd put up a pic of them.

HOME

This is were we live, at least our village.
I know there's not much to see, but really that's the extent of it behind the rice fields. You can kind of make out our house, but really not enough to try and point it out. Our Village is actually closer to a US county; it takes about 20 min or so to drive across it either way and there's a total of 5,000 people here in various pockets. Our pocket is the biggest b/c we have a post office (which each county is required to have), 2 restaraunts (both ramen) a small cornerstore, a gas stand and a shave ice place. There's a city of 50,000 ten minutes away, another of 100,000 50 min away (that's where we got to church), and another of 600,000 1.25 hrs away. So its not like being in the American frontier where civilization is hours away. Our house is 2 stories, but the bottom is just a garage. The upstairs consists of 2 rooms, a kitchen and bathroom. Crystal has already come to love the Japanese bathroom. The toilet and shower are at opposite ends of the house. The toilet seat is heated and has the water spray thing on it and the shower has a deep bathtub next to it. The only complaint is the kitchen. It is very small with no oven so we are making do with this small microwave/oven that covers basic needs. We also have a small car, and I mean small. A VW beetle looks large next to it. I think they said 55hp and I'm in 4th gear by 20mph. But gas here is about $6.00/gallon so it's better that way. Well that's the basics of our living conditions I guess, feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Nihon Yokoso!

Well, we are actually in Japan and everything is going very well so far. We spent our first few days in Tokyo where Crystal played with some friends from Hawaii that live here while I was at training meetings, but I did get to go out and play a bit; here's a pic from the famous Tokyo Tower we visited.