Birthday Time!

Coryn got to celebrate all day long on his birthday... starting with donuts for breakfast at the cabins. Followed by a party at school where he had pizza and cupcakes, and he got to sit at the end of the table with his best friends sitting next to him.

Here are his teachers.

Presents from school were opened afterward, he's hamming it up Japanese style.

Then he got to play in the bouncy while we waited for people to show up to the non-school party. It was a perfect day for it too... rain in the morning, brief sun, rain in the afternoon, cleared up just in time for the water to mostly dry and stay partly cloudy the rest of the evening.

This was the immediate favorite for all, playschool medical helicoptor.

Halloween!

There was a slew of parties lined up... first my ACGO meeting which I didn't know was supposed to be costumed, so Coryn got to choose from a box of stuff, as you can see he went with the ever popular giant pink sequined hat. Yes, he's busting a move.

Here we all are in our costumes (Jackson is an Afghan) at a Japanese Halloween party we were invited to, which was quite different. They had games, costumes, and a haunted house of course, but different none-the-less. They handed out candy bags to everyone on the way in, including adults. They had a card to fill out signature squares for each game. We didn't know what to expect so I brought some candy to hand out, and after I gave it to the lady that invited me she ran off and brought the guy in charge over to personally thank me for our donation. :)

Japanese costumes are quite haphazard, although possibly more creative... in general they don't quite know what to do with Halloween, its not in their culture. This is one of the games they had set up, fishing for candy, and these guys dressed appropriately in octopus and turtle getup. Another game they had was really fun, they filled a small room with crumpled newspaper and had strewn candy about for people to jump in and find.

Here's Halloween night... Boba Fett and Chicago Firefighter are ready to go! (complete with popcorn buckets from Tokyo Disney for candy)

We carved a pumpkin the day before and this is Coryn's first look at it lit up. He chose the design and watched me carve it. We even baked the seeds. Needless to say, there is way too much candy in the house. Still.

Discovery Channel

Last year the discovery channel had a fun commercial with a really catchy song attached to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ

Well, their new version was just released and we've been listen to it all weekend. I just thought I'd share them with you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0jZzBEKIMc (let this one load in it's entirety before you play it so it won't freeze part way through)... boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada!

P.S.
Make sure you watch both of them in full screen mode (HQ for #1 and HD for #2)

September still... ice skating

Thats right, subtropical Okinawa, the Hawaii of Japan, has an indoor ice skating rink. One.

So we went, and the kids had a blast. Coryn was kind of scared, who likes that slippy feeling when you're used to walking normal?

Carter had a blast, he swung between us, and purposely slid his feet every which way for the heck of it. Check out those gloves!

But they had the most fun getting pushed around in the skating rental cars!

Of course we had to warm up with some ramen and cocoa, Carter refused to have his gloves on at this point.

Coryn's getting really good at chopsticks. I think he'll miss those at the restaurants.

Carter likes getting fed like a bird.

It was a very tiring day...

September... yeah, I know

Lots of things happened in September, and now I'm getting around to telling you all about it... Carter discovered puddles

It was the last night of Obon in Okinawa which meant the last night to experience late night Eisa performances... which for the Okinawans is basically a party to wish the visiting spirits of their ancestors a safe journey back to the land of the dead.

We went to the aquarium, we'll miss it when we leave...

everyone always enjoys the touching pool...

There's always something new there too... like volunteer scuba divers cleaning the tank and posing for pictures :)

Bansai Tokyo Part 2

Our final few days in Tokyo were spent seeing a few final site before we had to go back to Okinawa. We visited the Buddhist Sensoji Temple. Built over 1000 years ago, it is the oldest oldest and one of the most significant shrines in Tokyo. The main building itself was under renovation so it had scaffoldings all over it but this one of the toriis leading up to the shrine.

Near the shrine there was a little park that the boys got to run around at. There was a Japanese preschool there at the same time and Coryn wasted no time making new friends. This girl ran up to him as soon as we arrived so She & Him had a great time exploring, all the while with Coryn trying to talk to her in English and her just looking at him like, "I have no idea what you're saying, but who cares, I'm having fun."

We also made sure to visit the Imperial Gardens on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Coryn really wanted to met the emperor and was a little sad that he wasn't able to. We did get to hear some of the Imperial Guards making a lot of noise while they were practising Kendo with their bamboo swords. I would kind of liken this area to Tokyo's version of Central Park and it is an expanse of green surrounded by extensive urban expansion.

No trip to Tokyo would be complete without a visit to the Tokyo Tower, and while we didn't take the time to go up to the top we did stop by since we were in the neighborhood. Modeled after the Eiffel Tower in Paris, this is the main broadcast tower for television and radio in the city. It is over 1,000 feet tall and visible from several points around town.

In the same neighborhood as the tower we came across the Zojoji Temple, another Buddhist shrine. I liked the juxtaposition of the traditional shrine with the modern broadcast tower in the background. In a place as old as Tokyo you find several examples of an ancient something or other that has survived into modern times and surrounded by the present.

We had a great time in Tokyo and when the time came to return back to Okinawa we made it on to the return leg of the free flight without any trouble and were back home in time for lunch just a few hours shy of a week since we first took off. This meant that I had a whole weekend to recover from our vacation before I had to head back to work.

Disney Sea

Disneyland has California Adventures, Disney World has Epcot Center, Tokyo Disney has Disney Sea, a mostly water themed park which is where we spent day two of our three days of Disney while in Tokyo. the decor of Disney Sea was very unique and very nice. While Disneyland was decorated mostly for Halloween, Disney Sea was had more of an Autumn masquerade theme to it. The entrance was done up like a Venetian waterfront. Somewhere in there, there is a hotel. It's actually inside the park itself. If Lisa and I ever make it back, and we don't have little kids we're totally going to stay there.

Just inside the entrance to the park for some reason I got the feeling like I might have been at Universal Studios instead of Disney.

Venice, a Mediterranean Port and a Volcano (Mt Vesuvius?) are all part of the water front theme here.

They also gave their take on American culture with a colonial New England town... Cape Cod maybe. It was funny, while we were in this section of the park Lisa and I both said that while we really enjoy living overseas we were looking forward to being back in the states for more than a few weeks like it has been the last few years. Don't get too excited Grandie, we're still looking at going to Europe after Virginia. Of course, Coryn had to check out the old fire department.

He was also pretty keen on going aboard the ocean liner Columbia in a turn of the century New York City like port, but was a little upset that we couldn't go up to the bridge. He really wanted to pretend the drive the boat. We settled for a snack in the Theodore Roosevelt lounge on board instead. The map said they offered "light fare" but it really should have said, "light fare with five star prices." I felt a little ripped off, oh well. You don't go to Disney to save money! :)

It wasn't all oceans, and rivers and ports and harbors though. Japan's Indiana Jones ride, based of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie is in this park too.

It seemed like a lot of the rides and Sea were geared more of older kids. Most of them required that you me "this tall" to ride but there was one section that was inside a place that looked like King Triton's castle from the Little Mermaid that had an area specifically designed for little kids to play under the sea. The boys really enjoyed that area and we thought of Aunt Sarah while we were there because we saw the world's biggest nudibranch!