Golden Week!

As promised, here is a link to a video tour of our apartment. Enjoy…

Apartment Tour

These last three days have been very fun as we celebrated Golden Week (with 3 days off work).

Monday, we rode our bicycles with some fellow AETs out to Lake Senba. There we enjoyed a picnic, various sports and had fun with some total strangers.

Later that day we indulged in the Japanese art of Karaoke. We laughed and effectively desecrated a number of great songs. Here we are showcasing our charisma…

Tuesday, we went to Starbucks on the way to the bus station. Our bus ran late and thereby changed our plans of spending the day with friends. We made it to the church and decided to call our families instead. We ate lunch from a bakery in Mito Station and took this opportunity to explore downtown Mito. Personally, I was fascinated by the fascination with “vintage” clothes (the late 80’s – early 90’s). I could sell my old boy scout uniform for at least 5000 yen.

That night we were picked up by Joel and Sasha and given a grocery store tutorial. Sasha then made a delicious dinner and we spent the night swapping stories and getting to know each other better.

Wednesday, the Kajiyamas picked us up around 9 and we were off…to somewhere. We did not ask and just let it be a wonderful surprise. About an hour later we arrived somewhere around Hitachi for the Boys Festival. Families, that have boys, display carp flags of various colors and sizes (red = mom, black = dad, etc.) We crossed a bridge and took the opportunity to snap a photo over the Valley of the Dragon god…

We stopped for lunch at a place that had amazing tempura and polished it off with an ice cream cone. We then drove by the coast and went to a huge shopping mall called “Fashion Cruise”. Our Japanese mama bought Staci some shoes, but we could not find any in my size. They just laugh when you ask if they have 30 cm shoes.

Great Golden Week!