8/52 {pink}

I'm not a huge pink person, but I LOVE the way my sunglasses turn sunsets a gorgeous shade of pink

Enoshima

We spent part of our Presidents Day weekend in Enoshima, a cute little resort town about an hour train ride from where we live.  I was surprised at the number of people in the water surfing since it was a pretty chilly day. I am sure I will be spending many days on that beach watching what is sure to be even more surfers when the weather warms up.

I saw Mt Fuji for the 1st time, yep, I've been here almost 6 months and this was my 1st glimpse of Mt Fuji

Since it was such a crummy day, we decided to check out the Aquarium

If I ever own a fish tank, I want it to look like this!  I love all the color

We watched a dolphin/seal show that made me want to come home and watch Free Willy

my husband INSISTED on sitting in the "splash zone" all by himself

then he made me touch a shark and I HATED IT!!!!!   YUCK!

so I left the petting to Jason and our friends

by the time we finished at the aquarium, the sky had started to clear and we were treated to a gorgeous sunset

I cannot wait to spend more time here this summer!

Chinese New Year

Chinese Lunar New Year is considered one of the most important of the Chinese holidays.  It marks the end of winter and is often called Spring Festival.  This year the holiday fell on February 3rd and began the year of the Rabbit.  We decided to celebrate, so we headed to Chinatown in Yokohama for a parade.  That's right, the Americans celebrated a Chinese holiday in Japan!

There were lots of performers, big and small

a man with a pet rabbit (he wasn't actually part of the parade)

and DRAGONS, lots and lots of DRAGONS

you can see here that there is a ball on a pole that the dragon followed all through the parade

as I'm standing there taking photos, the guy with the ball comes over and hands my husband the pole and shoves him out into the street (not in an aggressive way, but a "go try it" kind of way)

then hands our friend (in the pink) the tail and off they go

they got to be IN the parade

I can't lie, it was pretty awesome!

unfortunately, we were all so stunned and it happened so quickly that no one thought to take a video =(  We tried to search you tube for "American participates in Chinese parade in Japan" but came up with nothing!

Then on our walk back to the train station, we saw this

a guy was walking his pet warthog/pig looking thing!

Another fun day in Japan!

7/52 {time}

I sat down to finally start editing the 1,000s of photos I have currently waiting to be edited, starting with this weeks 52 in 52, and this AWESOME song came on my shuffled iTunes:

a song called "Time and Time Again" by Tony Lucca that starts with the line "I saw your picture just the other day"?!?!?!  Doesn't get any more fitting than that huh?

ANYWAYS, I was pretty excited when I realized this weeks theme was "time" just a day after I bought a much needed new watch

I'm a planner, so along with the watch, my fun Lilly Pulitzer planner is a must for me when I think of "time"!

As you can see, March is already looking like it's going to be a busy (but super fun) month and I haven't even scheduled my ESL (English as a Second Language) students yet!  This month has also been super busy. Tomorrow is the only day this month that doesn't have at lease one thing written in the little box.  It makes for a crazy life and leaves very little time for blogging, but I love it and wouldn't have it any other way!

loving life

Yesterday, a friend did this for me

Yep, that's Ree, aka, THE PIONEER WOMAN, holding a card she signed for me!  ME!!!!!  Yay!

(oh, and my husband came home after being gone almost a month)

Today, I got to do this

I AM LOVING LIFE!!!!

6/52 {red}

I like this photo for this weeks theme straight off the camera and since I'm not at all in the mood to do any editing, I'm going with it!

for now

I actually have a lot to blog about but I recently discovered that I can "rent" my favorite TV shows on iTunes (we can't stream here in Japan, so I can't just go to abc.com or fox.com and watch full episodes or even watch movies live through our xbox via netflix like you can in the States.  IT SUCKS!).  So I'm spending the next however many hours I feel like catching up on this season's Grey's Anatomy, House, etc.  For now, all blogging is on hiatus until I get my fill of CURRENT American television!

PS, yesterday, I got to meet an AWESOME fellow milspouse blogger

Setsubun Festival

I'm convinced that I packed all of my motivation and energy into my husbands TDY suitcase and he took it with him when he left!  I think it's is pretty evident by my lack of blogging lately.  I did manage to drag my butt off the couch long enough to attend a Setsubun festival at the Kawasaki Daishi temple last week.  This "bean throwing" ceremony is held on the day before the beginning of spring and the beans are thrown to cleanse the evil spirits of the former year and keep away any evil spirits for the upcoming year.  I was told that the people who throw the beans have traditionally been born in the year of the animal that is represented by the current year.  So since this year is the year of the Rabbit, anyone born in the year of the Rabbit is welcome to throw beans.  However, if you are not born in the year of the current animal, you are able to pay 70,000 Yen which is equivalent to about $800 USD to stand up there and throw beans with them!  I think I'll just wait until the next year of the Dog, I have better things to spend $800 on!  The people that catch the beans are supposed to eat as many beans as their age while standing facing a certain direction (I think this year was S/SW, but I could be wrong).  It all seemed a bit superstitious but it was fun to participate in anyways!

at the enterance

 the children wore masks, I'm not sure if they were supposed to symbolize the demons/evil spirits or be scaring them away 

the monks walking up to the stage to start the bean tossing

the bean throwers

bean throwing

it was a bit crazy with all the people...some people with small children were told by police that it would be safer if they stood in the back

I tried to take a video while I was taking photos, but apparently I'm not that coordinated and stopped the video after only a second or two and didn't realize it until it was over, but here it is

after the bean throwing, I was hungry for lunch and who doesn't love festival food?!?!  I had one of my favorite Japanese dishes, okonomoyaki, which I was told translates to "everything you like grilled".  This one had cabbage, shrimp, ginger, bean sprouts and a few other things all cooked on the crepe/pancake....SO GOOD!

on the walk back to the bus, we walked down a street that was lined with shops selling all kinds of stuff but the one that caught everyones attention was the shop selling taffy.  The guys that cut it into pieces were constantly banging their knives on the cutting board which created a neat drumming sound.  Everyone was stopping to see what the noise was then staying for the taffy

see the flying piece of taffy!?!?! he was cutting so fast, it was cool to watch!

so cool, in fact, that I took a video so you could see for yourself

you know I had to try a piece...now I wish I'd bought a bag, I can't stop thinking about how yummy it was!

I'm going back to this same temple to attend a fire walking festival next month, so I'll definitely be buying some taffy then!

Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, I did get some beans =)