Kawagoe

We spent Saturday in Kawagoe. I was pretty miserable with a cold but the trip was great. It is about 2 hours from here by train and called Little Edo. There are many shrines, a castle and lots of historical buildings. Kawagoe really works for the tourism dollars. Right now it the YOKOSO! Japan campaign and as a part of that the 500Y bus pass is 300Y for the day. There is a tourism desk at the exit to the Kawagoe train station where an English speaking agent gave us an English guidebook, map and directed us to the bus stand. We hopped on the bus and got off on the first stop. It was Kitain Temple. Kitain Temple was built in 830 but burned in 1638, only the gate survived. When it was rebuilt parts of the original Edo castle were brought in and are the only remaining pieces.


At the temple we saw the Gohyaku-Raken which are 538 stone statues of Buddhas disciples and each one is different. They say if you walk through at night and touch each one you will find one warm one, if you come back during the day, that will be the one that most resembles you. I thought that on a day like that, your hand would go numb and they would all start feeling warm.





The temple was interesting, the views of the garden were gorgeous, sorry no pictures were allowed. There were many neat things in there but living in a world where we can barely speak the language and cannot read it makes museums interesting and dull at the same time.

After that we wandered on. We found Kawagoe castle it was built in 1457 and did allow pictures so here are some of the ones we took. Actually it is Honmru Goten which is the home of the Lord of the castle and all that remains of the castle and was built in 1848.




Then it was on to Kurazukuri, which is a street lined with fireproof storehouses that are now shops. They are beautiful and black, lining both sides of the street.


In an alley just past this store we found a little Udon restaurant. It was very good and they gave us a bottle of Soy Sauce, or it may be soup base I have not tasted it yet. This was one of the places we saw that was not geared toward Western tourists, there were pictures on the menu but even the numbers for the prices were in Kanji. I had to ask the waitress how much something was and she got this confused look, I think she was thinking that if I could not read it how could I know it if she said it. But she said it slowly so I counted it out and made sure we weren't ordering a $20 bowl of Udon. It was very good.



We also saw a museum of their major festival and I want to go back for that it looks like fun. Besides who wouldn't want to go to a Festival where 2 story tall floats pulled by huge ropes have dance off competitions



See all the photos at my Picasa album

Kawagoe

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SNACKIES!!!

First things first how the hell did I get moved to a place where it rarely snows yet I had a snow all weekend, a snow day monday, snow while walking the dogs and a prediction of snow ALL WEEKEND!!! WTF?!!!

Ok now for my own lil Konbini Life. Konbini is Japanese for Convienence Store. And I live right by one of the millions of 7-11s.
We find interesting things there so I took the lead from one of my favorite blogs, Konbini Life, and took a huge variety of food, fixins for Udon, bento boxes of tempura or sushi, sweets, whatever you desire the Konbini has it.
This is my first Konbini goody. I bought it 'cos I wanted Chocolate AND I LOVE the name. There are also Crunky ice cream bars. It is a lot like a Crunch bar but different.
Kit Kat is something special here. Lots of flavors. Too bad I can't seem to find the pic of the one from Super Bowl Monday. This one was Green Tea flavored and it was yummy. It is a normal Kit Kat with Green Tea in the filling.
This is a Choco bun as I call them. The Choco is right and I do not know the name for it. They sell all sorts of these but in the evening you can get Choco in all its gooey yumminess. It is a steamed bun, served hot and damn good. I think the outside is more of a rice than a bread but I really do not know. I also had one the morning we moved in because we had no heat and I was waiting for the rental agent. It was hot and steamy and I think had pork in it, like a giant dumpling. Choco is much better though :D

When there are no Konbini or you just want something to drink, there is always a vending machine about. This is a mecca for vending machines. We saw this group of them in an alley, the glow was angelic and I swear I heard angels.
Here's to a hopefully snow-less weekend

Super Bowl Monday

Since I had a snow day, I was home to watch the game. I was bummed the Giants won not because I am a Patriots fan but because I am a Chargers fan and wanted Junior Seau to get a ring and I wanted to see Eli "I'm a whiny bitch and too good to play for the Chargers" get stomped. But hey it was a fun game to watch.

I woke up early to get the trash out and then cozied up to watch the game. It started at 8:30am here. It was on Japanese TV and it took until halfway through the first quarter for me to remember to hit the button on the remote that makes it English if available. Since it was Japanese TV and I think a public station there were no commercials. Instead we just saw replays, the crowd, the players milling about, great plays in history and heard the announcer talk about halftime. It was different, that is for sure. There was also no halftime talking heads so I got to watch the whole halftime show which was neat. I bet my neighbors thought I was crazy because the houses are close together and I yelled at the TV more than once in the 4th quarter. At halftime I headed down to the konbini (7-11) to get some snackies. I had a digiorno in the microwave but I needed caffeine so off I went. I got a Coke zero, a funky kit kat (don't ask me the flavor) and some potato chips (I am amazed I managed to grab normal flavor because they all looked flavored).

Today there is still snow on the ground. You can barely tell it snowed on base but the closer you get to our house the more you get. There are still snowmen around and kids having snow fights. I did take the pups on their walk, we did not go far before Elsa started shivering pretty bad and they had road sludge on them, I am not looking forward to the mud from the thaw. It is slowly melting though because it is not very warm. I was told that was the most snow the area had gotten in about 7 years.

Yesterday I did get some cabin fever yesterday and headed out. I went to AVE, which is in many ways like walmart. I found some cheap expandable shelves for the linen closet. They don't bolt in you just adjust them to the right size and wedge them in. So far so good and it made a huge difference in the closet. I will definitely be getting more. We are lucky because our closets are considered Western, which means the ones in the bedrooms have a clothes bar. Otherwise they are deeper than American closets and have a shelf in them up high or in the middle. This makes them very versatile but also means we need to add shelving to keep them organized. We came with some small bookshelves which I have put in closets but I am looking for what works best for each closet and utilizing the space to make it the most efficient. The real fun will be this weekend. I am getting my first full check and a girlfriend and I are going shopping. I have not really done any real just for fun shopping since we got here. I have lots of normal things to get, like a radio and a clock because ours don't work here, but I am looking forward to just a fun day out.

Since yesterday the game has been on at least 2 more times, once late yesterday and once in late afternoon today. I guess it was on at a good time no matter who you are or when you work. :)

Snow Day

Tomorrow is Super Bowl Monday and my first ever Snow Day. We got quite a bit and there are pictures to follow. We had to go out to base and my feet got soaked and frozen because I did not have proper shoes. Thankfully we were not out long. It was also hubbs first experience with snow, beyond going and visiting snow. The pupps enjoyed it. I figure this one is best told in pics and video so here it goes...

One of the hills on base today

Below is our neighborhood and hubbs lookin like a dork, always throwing up the horns