Kokura Gion Drum Festival

Last Saturday, we went on an awesome tour to a drum festival! ITT plans these really great trips that you can sign up for. For a very fair price, they do all of the planning and arrange transportation. We left base at 11am, arrived at 2pm, and left the festival at 8pm. It was a really long day but SO much fun! 

We were told that the festival was in celebration of the end of the school year. Hundreds of children from different schools were dressed in kimonos, and performed the drums in what most closely resembled a parade. They were shouting and singing, playing drums and cymbals, and pushing/carrying these large ornate displays. We aren't exactly sure what everything was and meant, but it was very neat. 

We had a lot of free time, so we walked around a large mall, where we ate a Japanese BLT. I wish I had taken a picture of it! It was pretty good but we had to hunt pretty hard for the 'bacon'. It also had a fried egg on it and more mayonnaise than Jesse preferred (which is saying a LOT). 

The town we were in was on a large river, and all along the river were street vendors. I think we tried just about every type of stick food they were offering! We had teriyaki chicken, potato crepe(?), fried chicken, squid, and snow cone. They were also selling cotton candy and cute kids toys. 

Pretty much anywhere we go, Japanese women want to stare at Fletcher. It's pretty cute. We ran into one little girl who was so fascinated with him!  She kept looking at him and pointing, and talking to her mom about him. It kind of makes me look forward to when he can talk back to them!

It was a really long day, but so much fun! We will definitely take advantage of more of these trips! 

First Day In Japan!

On our first full day in Japan, Heather took us out and gave us a tour of the town. She picked us up in her sweet lime green station wagon and we went to a cool sushi go 'round. I've eaten a lot of sushi and been to a couple sushi go 'rounds, but I had never seen a place this cool! The sushi conveyer belt  takes up the entire center of the restaurant, and there are booths all along the outside. Every single kind of sushi is $1, so you can pick any kind you want without having to study a colored plate chart (like at the other ones we've been to). 

The sushi was SO good! They also had plates going around with pictures of desserts, toys, and cell phones on them. But we haven't quite figured those out yet. The coolest part were their prizes.  On each table was a slot that you slid your empty plates into. Above each booth was an iPad. And every time you dumped an empty plate into the slot in the table, the iPad kept track. When you got to 10 plates, a machine above the iPad released a plastic bubble that dropped down to your table, with a toy inside! 

You could also order food other than sushi, on the iPad. They had udon, tempura, and various other things. We decided to order some shrimp tempura just to see how it worked. There was a second conveyer belt above the sushi, and when you ordered from the iPad, your food sped down the top belt super fast, and stopped right in front of your booth. It was so cool! 

After lunch, we checked out two friends' off-base houses. We were pretty sure living off base would be the right choice for us, but we wanted to check out all of the options, just to be sure. The Japanese houses are so cool (pictures to come). I can't remember what else we did that day. We probably napped and tried to adjust to the new time zone :)

Iwakuni Here We Come!

We left Philadelphia on July 9th. We had to fly back to San Diego to catch our flights to Japan. Since we were PCSing from Miramar, our flights were booked out of San Diego. We tried to have them switched but the cost wasn't worth it. Fletcher got his first experience in a USO! And he's started to really reach for things and grasp things on purpose. He thinks he's big stuff trying to hold his own bottle :)

 We landed in San Diego around 10pm, which was really 1am eastern time. Our Japan flights didn't leave until the next morning, but The USO offered us a shuttle to the BOQ we were staying at for the night.  They weren't the most ideal accommodations, but we were only there long enough to shower and nap. 

The next morning, our adventure official began! We flew San Diego to LA, to Tokyo, to Hiroshima. Fletcher was Super Baby. He didn't make a single peep the entire trip. I was worried about being the parents with the screaming kid, but fortunately my kid likes his beauty sleep!

When we arrived in Hiroshima (I think it was around 9pm, two days later) our sponsor was waiting for us. If we had flown on the Patriot (military flight), we would have gone right into Iwakuni, but the Patriot must have been full because we were booked on commercial flights. Hiroshima is only an hour from Iwakuni though, so it wasn't a bad drive. The tolls in Japan are ridiculous. It's about $40 in tolls just to go the hour from Hiroshima to Iwakuni. Fortunately, if you rent a car from base, toll vouchers are included. When we finally arrived at our TLF, Jesse was swooped away to the O Club for his first round of initiation with the bats.  I wish I had taken more pictures on our first night, but I think I was too tired to think about it! 

Fletcher Vacations in Pennsylvania

After Annapolis, we headed up to Pennsylvania for our last vacation days in the USA.  We decided to stop in Lititz, which is only a few miles from our hometown. It's a nice shopping/walking town, so we stopped to get a drink and do some shopping. We have military friends, who we met in San Diego, who are from Lititz. When we texted them a picture of us hanging out in their hometown, they responded back that they were on their way home for pre-deployment leave!  

We made plans to meet up with them in Hershey. We had lunch at Troegg's brewery and had an awesome time hanging out with their daughter, Ava. 

We also took the kiddos to chocolate world. It was so cool taking Fletcher somewhere that we've also been as kids. I don't think he quite understood how awesome all the chocolate is though. 

We also got to spend one day with my grandparents (I love my grandparents!). We went to Yuengling Brewery and hung out at the pool. I think Yuengling is the coolest brewery we've been to. And we've been to a LOT of breweries.

We also had a great time relaxing at Phranma's, eating yummy food and hanging out.