Lake Towada & Oirase Gorge (first visit)

Well, we hadn't planned on doing anything today, but the weather outside was looking great (warm, no fog, no rain!) so I convinced Keenan that we should go check out Lake Towada and on the way we would drive through Oirase Gorge. And the weather ended up being amazing, around 80 and mostly sunny and clear! The weather guys are no more accurate here...

Here's a map to see where we went. We drove to the lake then around it counterclockwise. Oirase Gorge is right before the lake.

Driving there through the Oirase Gorge was pretty crazy. There were cars/people everywhere! The gorge is the only river that empties Lake Towada and the road runs right along side it. The road was very narrow and curvy and people were just pulling over (but there was no shoulder, so really just stopping in the road) wherever they wanted and putting on their hazard lights. Keenan definitely had to keep his eyes on the road. There are several waterfalls and a hiking trail along the gorge.

Shipwreck Beach (first visit)

It's Saturday! Let's explore! I'll start out by saying that I've had an obsession with glass fishing floats since January 2011 when we visited Jekyll Island in Georgia and saw these beauties in their monthly visitor's guide...

Jekyll Island hides the floats on the island during the months of January and February each year. We searched while we were there, but never found one (We did buy one at the visitor's center, but obviously would have been way better to find on the beach). Authentic floats used by fisherman are not quite as artistically designed in terms of color, these were made by artists for the event, and they were gorgeous!
So...since then I have known what these "glass balls" are and have always hoped to have the chance to find one. When doing my reading before moving here I found that Japan, even more specifically Northern Japan, happens to be a great place to find glass fishing floats! The chance to find a float was one of those little things that started to make me excited to move here. And that is what lead me to choose Shipwreck Beach as the first place to explore when we got here. I'd read that it was a good place to find the floats and if not a float then a chance to collect some sea glass...either way, not something I could do in the Midwest!
Here's a link for a little info on the glass floats and why Japan is a good place to find them for anyone that's interested...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_float

Sorry for the tangent there, but I felt like if I didn't explain the floats a lot of upcoming posts about me hunting for them wouldn't make much sense!

Shipwreck Beach! It was a little over one hour away and really when we got there we weren't sure if we were in the right place or not. We parked in a dirt lot then had to go around a gate to get to a path toward the beach. Right away I was thrown off by all the trash on the beach. I'm not talking a few plastic bottles here and there. There was stuff everywhere! Not what I expected. We walked the beach for a couple of hours and collected lots of sea glass. No floats though. :( We did find what was left of the ships on the beach. There had been several ships on the beach but only a couple of months ago they were torn down. At least the weather was decent, after having chilly, rainy days since we'd been here it was finally warmer (70's) but was still cloudy.

Fish Market and First Shrine Visit

We went on a Newcomer's tour of Misawa and Hachinohe (a city just to the south) on our first Friday here. In Misawa we stopped at a shopping center and had lunch. We ate yakisoba with fried chicken. Not as good as the yakisoba at Cheese Roll House.

Not a very flattering picture, but it was more about the food than me!

A portion of the menu.

These orchids were for sale, the big one is 17,000 yen ($170),
medium was $60 and small $25.

In Hachinohe we stopped at the Kushihiki Hachiman Shrine. We had Japanese tour guides show us how to purify ourselves before entering through the torii gate to the shrine. They also showed us how they pray after making an offering. We got our fortunes too. If the fortune is bad you are supposed to tie it around things at the shrine (don't know what they're called) and that will turn it to good fortune.

First days in Japan...re-learning to drive, moving in and food of course!

As I said in my last post, I fell asleep around 6:00pm that first day here. Unfortunately that meant I was wide awake by 4:30am on Tuesday...

We went to a briefing about driving and took a written test to get our drivers' licenses. Wow, it was going to be different driving here! They drive on the left hand side of the road, driver is on the right side of the car, and all the street signs are different!

We had sushi for lunch at Kappa Sushi. There is a "train" that goes around past the tables and you just grab whatever you want as it goes by. When you're done eating they charge you based on the colors/numbers of the plates. I didn't get a picture of the train that time but here's a pic of some of the sushi we tried.

I think the roll on the left was shrimp with avocado
(and tons of onion..eww) and the right one was 
tempura shrimp roll.

Sign at Kappa Sushi...hilarious translations!

The Longest Day...Seattle to Japan

June 23rd-24th
I call this the longest day because it was. We had to be checked in at the airport terminal by 5:30am so we were up around 4:00am to take the hotel shuttle to the airport. Our flight wasn't scheduled til around 8:30am so we had lots of time to eat breakfast and sit around and make final phone calls before it was time to get on the plane. Once we did take off, the flight was somewhere between 9 and 10 hours. When we were waiting to take off I thought for sure it was going to be terrible. There were kids all around us and most of them were crying. It smelled like all the guys on the flight hadn't showered in days...but it ended up not so terrible. The kids quieted down and once they got the air circulating the smell got better (or I got used to it). I was able to catch a couple of naps, Keenan did not. The food we were served (a second breakfast for us, and a lunch) was decent, tasted ok, not sure about the nutritional value though. It was a military chartered flight so we didn't have the option of choosing what movies to watch or to purchase in flight wifi access. They played a few movies but I didn't really pay attention.

Breakfast of French toast, ham, bagel, fruit and yogurt.

Lunch of chicken breast, mashed potatoes, mixed veggies, 
bean salad, roll, cheese and crackers and a granola brownie.

Pit Stop in Seattle...Day 2

Day 2...
We started this day off the same as the day before, hopped on the train and headed downtown. We were a little later getting there, 10am or so, and the time change was starting to affect us most when it came to eating schedules. We were starving. After some excessive wandering and Keenan being very annoyed we finally decided to get gyros from the Falafel King. They were just ok. From there we walked through part of the market we hadn't seen the day before and then caught the monorail (would have been nice to know about yesterday when my blisters were making it so painful to walk) to the Space Needle.

Space Needle

View from the elevator on the way up

Looking south toward downtown and Mt Ranier

Northwest toward the sound

 After the Needle we took the monorail back downtown and bought tickets for the ferry to take us to Bainbridge Island. We didn't really find much to do on the island, only a few places were within walking distance. If we'd had a car I'm sure we would have enjoyed it much more. We had ice cream and stopped at a couple wineries before riding back to Seattle.

Pit Stop in Seattle...Day 1

Our flight to Japan was scheduled for June 23 out of Seattle. We decided to go to Seattle a couple days early for a mini vacation. Well needed after the whirlwind month we had just had. We'd been living out of suitcases since May 28 and had been homeless (staying somewhere new almost every night) since June 7. We left Omaha on Thursday June 20 on an 8:30pm flight. We arrived in Seattle around 11:30pm local time after a flight next to an extremely annoying lady...to quote Keenan's facebook status on the matter, "To the Lady on the plane we sat by last night...no we don't want to talk to you, that's why my headphones are in and I'm reading a magazine and Sarah is sleeping. No we don't want to be Facebook friends. No we don't want to meet up while in Seattle. No we don't care you sell organic pet food on the internet for $600/month. And no, we don't want to meet in Japan when you spend all the sweet cheddar you're making in less than 6 months." Unfortunately, even the drinks we had didn't make it more tolerable. We were staying at the Hilton that was basically across the street from SeaTac Airport, so at least the shuttle ride there was quick.

Crazy clouds on the way to Denver

The moon

Keeping busy making a boat...

Looks just like the picture!

Day 1...

Of course I couldn't sleep in, I never can when I've got an adventure planned out. Even if I didn't know exactly where we were going I knew that the first step was getting Keenan out of the hotel and onto the train. The train was pretty simple and so was buying tickets after I realized that the slot for dollar bills would not take my credit card...sigh...the slots were right next to each other. After a 45 minute ride from the farthest south station to the farthest north station we made it from SeaTac to downtown Seattle. First stop on my list was Pike Place Market. First stop on Keenan's list was finding food...shocking, right? We wandered around a bit and decided to get a bowl of clam chowder as a snack/breakfast. Bought it at Sound View Café.



Clam chowder #1

We're moving to Japan?!?!

February 1, 2013 we found out that we were going to get orders from the Air Force to move to Misawa Air Base in Japan. Yes, I cried a lot that night and the next day and then a little bit off and on for the next couple days. I cried because that meant being soooo far away from family and friends and limited trips to visit due to the expense. And we definitely did not have Japan on our "dream list" of places we'd like to be stationed. I had never said "I'd love to visit Japan" or any other Asian country. I'm not sure why, I just always dreamed of tropical islands, Central America, Europe, Alaska, Pacific Northwest, etc, etc, etc. So, being a "knowledge is power" and "plan every detail" type of person I began to read and read and read and read as much as I could find about Misawa AB, Japan and the Japanese culture. The more I read and the more people I ran into that had been stationed somewhere in Japan the more "ok with it" I became. I finally got to the point where I was excited! I quickly had a long list of "Things to do/see in Japan."