Meiji Dori and the Zoo

Day 15 and 16

There are a couple of main roads around Shibuya. I walked down one last week to Daikanyama. On Monday I took the bus down one to Roppongi Hills. On Tuesday I walked up one called Meiji Dori. There are alot of shops along that street, but none that really suit me. When I was here in March, Tim and I went to a shrine and then walked down Harajuku, which is just a walking street with shops. Meiji Dori intersects that street, so I walked up there for a bit. It was a pretty warm day, and like all good Japanese people, I had my hankerchief to wipe the sweat off my face. There is a Godiva chocolate shop, and they had a new product, ice cream truffles. So I bought some to try. But then I forgot about them and let them melt. Lucky for me they refreeze easily, and they tasted pretty good. There is a Burberry shop. I much prefer the fashions inside the Burberry store to the other stores. Most of the other stores were casual t-shirt places. But Burberry has pretty sweaters and skirts and things. There was also a shrine randomly tucked away between the tall buildings of the street.


On Wednesday a friend and I went to the zoo with her two kids. It was supposed to be a bigger group, but everyone else was worried it would rain. Lucky for us it sprinkled for just a few minutes, and stayed overcast so it wasn't too hot to walk around. The zoo is up in Ueno, but it is just one subway line to get there, so that was pretty easy. There is a big park that apparently is a good cherry blossom viewing area. When you walk into the zoo they have a big sign explaining how they don't have any panda bears. I can't tell if this is because they used to have them, or because they have never had any and everyone expects to see them in a zoo. We saw many animals.... and all I could think of were movie quotes.

Is this water sanitary? Seems questionable to me.... Especially after we saw the elephant use it like a latrine. Gross. We got lunch at one of the cafe's in the zoo, and on the menu was pancakes, in addition to curry, rice, and fried chicken. This amused me, but I wasn't sure pancakes at a zoo cafe would taste good, so Tim and I went to a breakfast place for dinner instead.

A little slice of Americana

Days 10 - 14 (June 28, 2010)

Apparently 9 days is enough of the blog every day trick. So now you just get a bunch of days running into each other.

Dish Shopping

There is a warehouse in Japan that sells dishes that look like china, but are made in Japan. The ladies in the ward call it the "Dirty Dish" shop, because the dishes are dusty from sitting in a warehouse. They have 50% of sales every so often, and all the ladies go and stock up.
I rode a different subway line, which meant I had to enter our station from a completely different place, and then I switched subway lines to meet up with one of the ladies in the ward. Thus I accomplished my goal of switching subways.
The friend I met up with lives in a very nice part of town, with low-rise apartments and homes. Alot of ward members live in that area, three in her building!
This is the third time I have ridden in someone else's car here in Tokyo. They all have GPS systems in their cars, but they call them "navi's". They don't have touch screens like the ones in the U.S., they have a remote control that you can click through destinations and options. I think this would be an easy thing to loose in a car :)
Don't ask me where the dirty dish shop is, the navi is all in Japanese, and I am just barely recognizing the main roads right around my house.
So we got to the dirty dish shop, and basically, you just wander through the tables, and sort through the piles of dishes, and pick out what you want. There were some really neat patterns, mostly blue and white, but some pinks and reds. We had gotten a set of bowls and small plates as a wedding present, so I found the same style for dinner plates, and then got a different pattern for salad plates and serving dishes.

Little America

We (the U.S.) has alot of military bases around Tokyo and in Japan in general. The prime minister of Japan just resigned because he had campaigned on the promise to get the U.S. military presence out of part of Japan, and failed to do so. The nice thing is, we can have ward activities and use the facilities at the base.
Going to a military base requires you to have id, and to be checked in and escorted. Imagine going to the DMV, but have a smaller room for the crowds to wait in, and no number on a piece of paper, and you have the first hour of the ward activity. We all crowded into a small room, handed our passports to one person, waited and waited and waited for our pictures to be taken and the passes to be printed. Then there was the car search.
Once we were in, the kids were all hungry for lunch (yea, so was I :) ) so we went to the food court. Part of the food court was a rack of candy and chips, and all of the kids were asking their moms if they could have american candy because you cannot find it in Japanese "conbeenies". I laughed when the one mom said, yes, you can pick out one bag, but you must brush your teeth really good tonight because all that is is sugar. Then there was the store that looked exactly like Target. When I talked about shopping last week, and going to a place similar to Target, it was similiar in that it had many different types of items, but it was set up like a Japanese store. On the base, it was set up like an American store. Honestly, you have to come and see this to understand the difference, because I didn't really think there was, until I got such a stark contrast. We stocked up on some drinks and snacks.

An aside. Have I mentioned the drink situation here yet? First of all, there are vending machines EVERYWHERE. So you would think that you could get any beverage you wanted at any time. WRONG! The only beverages you can get are coke, coke zero (a different kind of diet coke), and tea. Sometimes water, but sometimes the water is sparkling. Once in a while grape soda, but be careful because you might end up with grape juice that has aloe chunks in it. So if you don't like coke, you basically have water as your only beverage option. In restaurants, the ginger ale is very dry, which means it is the more bitter version of ginger ale. Rarely is lemonade an option. On the base, I drank two different things of lemonade. Joy!
Many of the ward members commented on things... like the fact that you could see grass growing next to the buildings on the base... and there were trees.... not every inch of usable ground was taken up by a store or shop or apartment building. Also, the concrete had grass growing between it. You could get unlimited refills on your drinks, you saw alot of non-asian people, you heard english all day.... Basically, it was a mini-vacation to the U.S. without the 14 hour plane ride. Fantastic!
The men played softball, while the women visited and watched the kids play at the park.

The best part was seeing Toy Story 3 for $4.50. Have I mentioned movie tickets in Tokyo cost $20-$30? Yea...... makes you think twice before deciding to go see a movie.

Church

We spoke in church. Everyone said our talks were good. The topic was "talk about your spiritual experiences". If you know me, you know I don't like to share personal stories about myself to strangers. I know, then why do I blog? It is different. Trust me. So I was stressing out about this topic, but I finally picked a couple of conference talks, and wove in a few stories, and it was good. Tim talked about his mission, which was great. Another plug for anyone who wants to go on a mission, it provides good stories for talks for the rest of your life :) Plus, endless ice cream on Wednesday and Sunday. The fun part of church was watching one of the little kids crawl around, and try to get on the stand, and his older sister (a toddler), grab him by the ears to pull him down. I guess she thought they were handles!
We had some friends over for dinner. Tim cooked some good shrimp. The marinade I did for the salmon was too salty, but everyone said it was fine. We cooked the salmon in the toaster oven because we don't have a real oven. Theoretically there is a fish cooking drawer under the range, but it didn't stay warm, so I am not sure what the point of it is. Unless you just put the fish in there and call it "sushi".

Medical Adventures
Tim hurt his foot a while ago, but figured it would get better on it's own. Since it hadn't, he talked to his friends in the ward, and they explained how to go to a Tokyo clinic. It was just like a clinic in the U.S., but way cooler. First, we took the bus up to midtown. This is exciting because there isn't a direct subway to midtown, but the bus was really easy. Midtown is a collection of sky scrapers, so it is very new and modern. The clinic is very modern looking, and the doctors sit in the exam rooms, and you get a number, and get called to a specific exam room. So you move around, not the doctor. Tim says the x-ray machine room was really cool. I just sat in the waiting room, so I don't know exactly what it looked like. But basically it was really easy, and affordable. Then we went and got lunch, and Tim went to work, and I walked around Roppongi Hills. This is another huge sky scraper surrounded by shops that is fairly close to midtown. The stores are all very expensive, there is a Giorgio Armani, for example, and a Tiffany's. This is also where the Banana Republic is, but unfortunately, I didn't find anything great there to buy.
I went into a book store at Roppongi Hills. Bookstores all smell and feel the same. It is that comfort of being surrounded by books, even if they are mostly in a language you don't understand. I bought a picture book because it had really beautiful pictures.
Then I took the bus home, from a different stop than the one we got off on at midtown, so I felt pretty good about my ability to get around.

Haircut

Day 9

It seems to be a fairly typical thing to grow your hair out so you can wear an updo for your wedding. Of course, this means you end up with hair longer than you normally like. After being in Japan for a week, I am ready to concede that it is more humid here than in North Carolina. My hair was not happy being long and big and pouffy, so I asked my friends for a salon recommendation. The key here is to get someone who can cut gaijin hair, which is different than Japanese hair. Also, it helps if they speak English. Lucky for me there is a fantastic salon that excels in both, A Cut Above. The service was much more relaxed than a typical American salon. The shampoo chair was automatic, meaning, they pushed a button and it slid back, similar to a dentist chair. This was really nice. They give you a head massage as part of the shampoo. So if you are in Japan, and are looking for a relaxing place to get your hair cut, call this salon.



Another adventure in shopping. My friend was going to Costco to stock up, and invited me along. Costco is about half an hour away, in another part of Tokyo, so it was nice to get a ride in a car. Some things are exactly the same. For example, Costco in Japan has the same huge 7 day cooler that my mom takes to girls camp. I have no idea how this cooler would fit in a Japanese trunk. It takes up the entire back seat of my Corolla, and cars here are half the size of my Corolla.

Also the same is the food court. I sort of expected at least one Japanese thing on the menu.... some rice or a beef bowl or something. But there isn't anything Japanese on the menu. You can buy a slice of pizza and a fountain soda for $2, or a hot dog and a fountain soda, exactly the same as in the U.S.
Some things are different. For example, the deli case has octopus legs... or are they arms? Maybe it is squid... I have no idea.

A cool feature of the store is the escalator. You drive in above the store, and then you ride down a ramp escalator which your cart hooks into so it doesn't slide. Pretty awesome.


But I am still baffled by the fact that the store was really busy. I have gone shopping in similar stores with my mom, when she was feeding six kids, and had an outdoor freezer. Her cart would be really full leaving the store. I saw many carts wheeled out of the Costco today that were just as full. It makes me wonder where they put all that food. I think our fridge/freezer is probably an average size, and there is no way we could fit that much stuff inside of it.

It rained today. On rainy days everyone carries an umbrella, usually of this style:

I noticed that several women wear rain boots that have heels on them. I think this is comical because I would imagine you are more prone to slip if you are wearing heels on wet pavement.

For dinner we met a friend at a restaurant called Osho. They have something called a gyoza, which is a chinese fried meat pocket. They are really tasty.

Shopping

Day 8

A while ago a friend recommended a self.com fitness challenge. I looked the website this week to see if they had some good exercises you can do for strength training without the gym. Turns out they do.

I decided instead of running today, I would go for a walk... and shop while walking. I tried to find this clip from Thirty Rock, where Liz Lemon says a dress is a vietnamese size 2. It isn't on youtube, so hopefully you know what I am talking about. But that is what shopping in Japan is like.... I am a large in Japan. It is not the ego boost I thought it would be. But on the comical side, I found a store that came straight out of the 60's. Seriously gorgeous fabrics and beautiful dresses.


The boutique shop is different from my staple, Banana Republic. The boutique has maybe 3 - 5 racks inside of it, and it can cater to a specific style, like the 60s. I think you would have to figure out which boutique is your style, and then shop there.

During my walk, I saw a cheesecake store. It reminded me of my sister's goal to own a cheesecake shop. Tim and I plan to go back there and try it out. I also walked by the Egyptian Embassy, complete with a miniature statue of the Sphinx.

Exercise

Day 7 - Week 2

I decided to try to do something I would do at home. So I went for a run. Yea... I am that crazy foreign lady, also known as a gaijin, running through the streets of Tokyo. Can I point out that I have never seen anyone running for recreation? It isn't like Central Park in NYC, which is full of runners. Also, I mapped out a two mile run on mapmyrun.com, and I thought I followed that, but I ended up in a completely different part of town. Tim helped me figure out on the map where I really ran. This route ended up being 1.75 miles.


Along the way I saw a gas station. They are a little different than gas stations here.... Mostly because they still have service people, and they are missing the pumps.



I also got far enough on my knitting to pull in another ball of yarn. Thank goodness for youtube videos that teach you how to do things like that.

Tim and I went up to Shinjuku and walked around. There is a really fancy grocery store up there, much bigger aisles. We walked through a big department store. Then we met a friend for burgers. I liked the burger we got last week better than this one, but it was still a really good burger.

District Conference

Day 6

Tokyo used to have an English Stake with 4 English speaking wards. However, due to the economy and less foreigners coming to Tokyo to work, they recently downsized to a District with 3 English speaking branches. Today was District Conference. It was the broadcast style, so it was given to all of the stakes and districts in Japan. What was interesting was the person conducting the broadcast spoke Japanese, so we had an english translation over top of him. But when the general authorities spoke, they spoke in english, so the Japanese wards had a Japanese translation over top. During part of the conference they explained why the Japan MTC was shut down, and showed a video of Japanese missionaries at the Provo MTC and how much fun they were having. The best part was the missionary saying he loved the food because he got unlimited ice cream on Wednesdays and Sundays at the cafeteria. I thought of my sister, and how this would be an incentive for her to serve a mission.

I met several more people, and I got invited to go dish shopping this week. This is a big deal. There is one store in Tokyo that has beautiful dishes (I would call them china, except we are in japan :) ), and this week they are having their big sale, so all the ladies in the branch are going to stock up. The one lady told me to bring cash. So I asked how much, since I haven't gotten used to yen and pricing, and she was like, oh as much as you want. In general the exchange rate is 100 yen to 1 dollar. But Tim was like, give us a ballpark, 10 dollars, 100 dollars, 1000 dollars? Another lady chimed in, and she said, oh no! these are cheap dishes, like 300 yen (so 3 dollars). The other funny thing was Tim said he had never heard of this place, and one of the husbands was like, yea, my wife keeps going there. I don't think we need more dishes, but she says we do.



Since it was district conference, it was up at the stake center. We got a ride with another church member so that we didn't have to deal with the trains. We had him over for lunch after the conference. Tim made shrimp pasta, which was excellent.

Grocery Shopping

Day 5

The first time I went grocery shopping was to a place under the subway station. Tim says there are bigger and better grocery stores, so we decided to go to them on Saturday. Since we don't have a car in Tokyo, we grabbed our backpacks to carry the food back in.

Our first stop was National. This is a grocery store that caters to foreigners. It has many more english labels than the other store I went to. Compared to an American grocery store, it is still tiny. It doesn't have all the prepared food stations that the grocery store under the subway had. It had about 5 aisles of food, one for produce, one for alcohol, one for cereals and dried foods, one for refrigerated items, and one for snacks like crackers and chips. The carts are small. After we had put about half the list in the cart, we decided going to another grocery store was not going to work out. So we just finished shopping at national. All the food didn't fit into our two backpacks. Moral of this story: It is impossible to grocery shop in Japan like you do in America. You cannot have a full refrigerator. You cannot meal plan for an entire week. Basically, the Japanese go shopping every day or every other day. You just buy the food you want for that immediate meal, and don't ever have alot of food hanging around. I guess the benefit of this model is that if you want a snack, you have to walk to the store to buy it, which might make you reconsider. In this case, we survived the trip by taking a taxi.

By the way, when I say "all of the food", I meant some yogurt and cereal for breakfast, some cheese and crackers and fruit for snacks, and three dinners.... a shrimp pasta for sunday where we only needed some tomatoes, a chicken sandwich we will make on tuesday, and a greek pasta salad for thursday.

Japan is expensive. This glares at you when you see 5 apples cost $9. When you think about buying some cherries, but a fistful is $24. The best rule of thumb in Japan is if it costs twice as much as America, then it is normal.

Once we got home, we were hot and tired, so Tim made delicious smoothies. Luckily he had been to costco and had some frozen strawberries.



For dinner we ate McDonalds. I did not want to admit this on my blog. The reason is because I don't eat McDonalds in the US. I am a Wendy's or Chick Filet person if I am doing fast food. But McDonalds (or Maku-do-na-ru-do) in Japan is different. The Japanese are very quality oriented, so the big mac looks exactly like the picture and it tasted pretty good.

Country Club

Day 4

Tim has lived in Tokyo for over a year now, which means he knows how to get around, the location of many great places to eat, and has friends in the ward. I benefit greatly from all of this knowledge, especially in the friends department.

I got to go to lunch with a friend from the ward and her three kids. We went to a Mexican restaurant, El Torito. It is an American chain that also exists in Tokyo. The funny thing is, in Tokyo, you get soup instead of chips and salsa. Like the egg soup you sometimes get with asian food in America. And they have three dishes with eggs on them... an egg burrito, and then two things with eggs just on top. This is one thing I am not sure I will get used to... the love of eggs. On everything. Literally. I am not exaggerating. My friend says she always says no eggs just to be sure an egg won't be thrown into what she orders.

Then we went to the Tokyo American Club to go swimming. We met another lady from the ward and her kids. Unfortunately it was raining, so we didn't really get to swim. The kids played pool, and we sat in the cafe and chatted. The Tokyo American Club is basically a club house, with a pool, and game rooms, and a cafe. This is the second time for both of these families in Japan. Everyone tells me once you have living in Japan, you spend the rest of your time trying to come back. For a moment, talking to these ladies, I believed them. I could see how it would be fun to live in this place for longer than a few months.

The adventure part of the day was the train. I got on at my station, Shinjuku, and took the Yamanote line up to the restaurant. Then to come home, I got on at a new station, I can't remember what it is called, but I figured out how to get on the right line, and made it home just fine. Next thing to master: Switching train lines.

Because it was raining all of the umbrella vendors were out selling plastic umbrellas. I saw a lady riding a bike holding an umbrella. I think in that scenario you would probably stay more dry with a rain coat or poncho.

Tim and I went to dinner at a restaurant, Xen, that has california rolls. It is located in Roppongi Hills, which is a really really really really huge mall. I cannot stress how massive this place is. Oh, and it has a Banana Republic, so I will be fine here :) Back to the california rolls. When I came to visit in March, Tim told me that rolls were American sushi, and that real japanese sushi was just raw fish over rice. However, the restaurant is an asian/western place, so they had rolls that were very tasty. Then we got coldstone ice cream. You have to order in engrish. I got a key-ara-me-ru ta-to-ru temu-ta-tion, and Tim got boso-ton ku-re-mu pie. In case you have no idea what those are, it was a caramel turtle temptation and a boston creme pie :) The funny thing is, Tim says they don't think of it as speaking english, these words really are now Japanese words.

I should also admit that part of my days this first week has been spent watching tv shows. I am claiming this is to get over the jet lag, by just laying on the couch. Let's be honest though, I am trying to get the full "country club wife" experience, so I imagine lounging on the couch watching tv is part of that :) Now.... where is my tennis racket?

Kindle

As a wedding present, Tim bought me a kindle. This was fantastic.... a couple of minutes before we had to leave the house I had my sister (an english professor) download me a bunch of books to read. Here are my reviews:

Percy Jackson Series
I read all five books, and really enjoyed them. I then saw the movie on the flight to Tokyo, and it wasn't as detailed as the first book. I am kind of sad there are no more books in this series. If I had realized that, I might not have read them so fast :)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
This was an interesting book because of the writing style and the subject. The writing style was told from several different voices, and one of those voices had Alzheimer's. It was interesting to see how the Alzheimer's changed the narration. The subject is a women who is locked up in a mental institution by her family, and is released because the institution is shut down into the care of a great niece.

The Secret of Lost Things
It wasn't until the end of this book that I realized it didn't really have a point. I kept waiting for the point of the story, and never really felt like I got one. It is about a girl whose mother dies, and she moves to New York City and works in a book store. I am not really sure I would recommend this. It kind of leaves you just wondering where the story really is. There are alot of references to Melville, so maybe that would be interesting.

House Rules
This is a Jodi Picoult novel. I had gotten tired of her books, but this one was really entertaining. It is about a boy with asperger's, and is told through several different character voices. It gives an interesting perspective on what living with asperger's is like. Of course, the ending is not complete, as Jodi Picoult leaves you to ponder the ethics of the situation.

Assassination Vacation
This was interesting because it is a novel, but it read like research. Since I enjoy Presidential Libraries, I found it interesting how the author travels to different sites researching Presidential Assassinations.

Home Sweet Home

Day 3

Let me take you on a tour of our apartment.
In a previous post I showed you the street and outside of our building. Come inside, and ride the elevator up to the 10th floor.
Welcome inside:



Please take off your shoes and store them in the foyer.
Let's walk through the foyer and down the hallway



On your right, you will find the kitchen, a hallway to the living room and dining room, and the laundry and shower room.






I forgot to take a picture of the shower, but it isn't attached to the wall like in America. It is attached to the middle of the wall, but the tub is on the edge of the wall, so it works better if you hold it over your head to wash out the shampoo.

On your left we have the guest room and the toilet room




The toilet has a washlet attached to it, and the sink is on the top of the tank, so when you flush the toilet, clean water comes out of the sink and back into the toilet.

At the back of the hallway is our room


Go back to the hallway that takes you to the living room and dining room.... you will find the kitchen on your right, and behind that, the dining room. On your left is the living room, and behind that, the office. So basically the office, living room and dining room are all in a row.










The interesting thing about the kitchen is that it has a stove top with two burners, and no oven. Just so you know, this is a large apartment for Tokyo standards. It is rare to have enough space to have a stand up table, and to have two bedrooms plus an office is a real luxury.

We ordered hamburgers. Really great avocado on top.

Also, Elena, the maid came. The interesting thing about the laundry is that your clothes come out wrinkled, so ironing is a necessity. Elena does this, and many other things, for us.

Laundry

Day 2

I got to talk to my sister over skype, and I tried to catch up on my blog.

I asked Tim to show me how to work the washing machine. In Japan, they don't have driers, they just have washers that can also dry your clothes. It is tiny, and of course, all the buttons are labeled in Japanese. I like to follow the instructions on the labels of my shirts to wash them, so Tim took a picture of the buttons and emailed it to a friend to translate so that we could figure out how to wash cold on a delicate cycle. The nice thing about the bathroom is that it comes equipped with a bar to hang clothes on to dry. So instead of having a rack in my bedroom like at home, I can let the clothes dry in the bathroom.

We went out to a store to pick up an adapter for my laptop plug (Tokyo has two prong electric outlets, not three prong). The interesting thing is the elevator. Everyone crams into the elevator when it opens. They also hold the buttons to keep the doors open or to close the doors. In America, we would just stick our hand out to stop the door from closing, and usually, you wait for the next elevator if it is too crowded. There isn't the same consideration for personal space here.

Bakeries exist in every grocery store, at the train stations, and on street corners not occupied by con-bean-ies (convenience stores, aka 7-Eleven). You can buy just a slice of cake, which is perfect. However, it is not pronounced cake, but cak-e, where you say the e. Cheesecake is pronounced cheese-u-cak-e. Chocolate is choco-reto. Strawberry is suto-raw-berry. This is the fun world of Engrish. I haven't figured out if key lime exists in Japan.

We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant called Emilia. It was good, I had tortellini with a spinach white sauce.

Are You My Mother?

Usually flying to Japan involves loosing a day. You leave say, Sunday morning, and you arrive in Japan Monday night. You are so tired, that your first day in Japan is really Tuesday.

Before I tell you about my first day in Japan, let me just say that the trip started out a bit more eventful than I care for. Mechanical difficulties held up the plane that was taking us to Seattle, so the lovely people at the airport were clicking away trying to find alternate routes. I can't remember that movie scene where the attendant is clicking clicking clicking.... but that is what it was like. One suggestion was to fly back to Atlanta, then to NYC, then to Japan. Yuck. Or we could hang out in Seattle for two days. We decided to do that option, but also to just hope that the flight to Tokyo would be delayed. So we flew to Seattle, and ran through the terminal hoping to catch the next flight. We got to the desk, and the lady checked us in and said good things happen to nice people. Our bags and ourselves arrived in Tokyo on Monday night as planned. Tim's boss was also flying to Japan this week, and his flight was also delayed, but that meant he had to fly to NYC, then to London, spend the night, then around to Japan that way, and his luggage did not arrive with him. I consider us very fortunate.

Onto the first day in Japan.
We live in this building, in Shibuya, which is a part of Tokyo.

View Larger Map


I slept in, and then I unpacked, and realized that there are a few things I would like to have. Such as a container for my makeup and other toiletries. At home, I have little baskets, but I didn't pack those. So I decided to head out to the store to pick up a few things, and then to get some food.
I haven't found a Target or a Walmart in Tokyo. The Japanese version of Target is called Loft, but you don't pronounce it that way... you pronounce it Roft-o. It is a multi-level store in downtown Shibuya where you can get stationary, furniture, bedding, household items, etc etc. What I like about this store is there is one sign in english that explains what is on each floor. I needed to find some hand soap. Imagine walking down an aisle that has bottles, and you have no idea what they say. You are wondering if it is hand soap, or lotion, or shave gel, or shampoo, with no real way of knowing. Finally I located a Berts Bees section of the store. English labels! I can read! It's a miracle! So I got some hand soap. Buying a little plastic bin to put my makeup into was no big deal, no need for literacy.
Then I went onto the grocery store. The one I went to happens to be under the train station, and is called Tokyu. The amazing thing about the grocery store is that it is more about prepared foods, and things that look kind of like our deli counters, only way fancier, than it is about buying stuff you cook yourself. The food that you can cook is about 3 very very short aisles. The rest of the store is counters full of food they have made, like delicious cakes, and hand made breads, and meats and other things. I wanted to buy something to make myself lunch with, so I wanted some lettuce, and a cucumber and some bread and some lunch meat. I cannot read any labels in this store, none are in english. So I am wandering the produce section and I see lettuces. However, I don't know what kinds they are, because I can't read any labels. So I decide to just buy the cheapest head of lettuce. It was still about $10. Then I am wandering trying to find something that looks like a cucumber.

What does a cucumber look like?

Are you a cucumber?

No.... you're an eggplant!

Are you a cucumber?

No.... you're a squash!

Are you a cucumber?

No.... you're a zucchini (aka a green squash)!

But I must admit, I am really torn over this, because it looks the most like a cucumber.....

Are you a cucumber?

Sort of....

My sister informed me this was an English cucumber, which is why it was so skinny and not quite convincing.

So I finally decide to risk it with this sort of vaguely familiar cucumber. At this point, I can't remember how much money this stuff costs, and Tim said that grocery stores only take cash, so I go up to the register, and see people paying with plastic. I decide I will just pay with plastic, and then I can get the rest of the stuff I wanted. I had to ask someone where to find the drinks, and instead of a whole aisle devoted to beverages, there was only two shelves. I picked one of the three salad dressings that had a label with an English word on it. I hope I bought yogurt and not cottage cheese, but it is hard to tell.

I went to check out, and the cashier bows and says something, probably like, did you find everything ok, do you have any coupons or rewards points, would you like paper or plastic.... I have no idea. I am trying to remember the word for thank you. Arrigato. I know that isn't how you spell it, but that is how it sounds.

I walked home with my four bags. Here is the route I took to get to the two stores and back.... I forgot to label the boxes. The one at the bottom of the map is the apartment building, the one at the top is Loft, and the one in the middle is the grocery store and the train station.

Honeymoon

You may recall, Tim wanted the honeymoon location to be a secret. So we played 20 questions for me to guess where we were going. I will be honest, knowing the name of the place did not convey the beauty of the island of Tobago in the Caribbean.




We enjoyed swimming in the pool and at the beach. I managed to not get sunburned, unfortunately, Tim was not as lucky. He got sunburned the first day, but then we did better at applying sunscreen. We rented a car and drove around the island. I was surprised at how small it was... it took 10 minutes to get from one end to the other. We drove through the rain forest, and up mountains and through villages and around to different coves. It was a beautiful island. The house we stayed in was gorgeous, the only downside was the mosquito's. We got to enjoy some local food cooked by the house's manager. We also went to a couple of restaurants. We flew back to LA in time to catch a Dodgers game. They lost, which was too bad, but the Dodger Dog was tasty and we got to see Ozzie Osbourne lead the stadium in a scream contest for charity. Then we went to the open house in Tim's home town. It was nice to hang out with his family, and meet so many friends.

Wedding

The week of the wedding everyone came into town. Tim arrived on Memorial Day, my sister and her boyfriend, my brother, and my grandparents came in on Tuesday, and the other grandparents came in on Thursday. We all hung out and played games, and visited at my mom's house. It was alot of fun.

One day for lunch we went to Tim and I's favorite restaurant. I am not sure it made a good impression because it was so dark inside, we were trying to read the menu by the light of our cell phones :)
Then Tim and I went to run errands, and we met up with my sister and her boyfriend and my brother at the mall. It was fun to see them try on three piece suits.

We also had the opportunity to go to the temple with my sister. It was a great experience to be there with her and the rest of my family.

One night at dinner, we were talking about the fact that there might be rain on Friday, and how we were praying that it would be sunny so we could do the pictures outside. My sister's boyfriend leaned over and said, if you asked me, I would put in a good word so the weather cooperates. So I said, yes, please. Friday was gorgeous, blue sky and sunny.

Tim and I went to meet his parents at the airport, which was the first time I had met them live in person. Technology is amazing, with email and skype, that you can get to know someone before you ever meet them.

Thursday night my friends came into town so we sat and visited at my house. My sister spent the night, and then she drove me around to get our hair and makeup done. I had done a trial run of the makeup, but when we got to the store, they had someone else do my makeup. This concerned me slightly, as the lady told me she had only worked there one day and she didn't know where anything was! But I had wanted to alter the makeup plan anyway, since the trial run was a bit too dark, so it worked out great. She listened to what I said, and I ended up with a look that was still me. Then I got my hair done. The fascinating part was that she curled my hair with a flat iron. You have to pull pretty hard to get something straight to curl. The part I didn't like was that the pinned up part wasn't smooth, it looked like a rats nest. But in the photos you can't tell. Then we got dressed and headed to the temple for pictures. This is where I met Tim's siblings for the first time :) It was great that so many family members were able to come, especially from such far away places. Tim had family in from California, Texas and Norway, and I had family in from Idaho, New Mexico, Utah and Missouri. We are really blessed.

The flowers arrived, and they looked beautiful. Our photographer was great. It was so hot though, we were all dripping. There was a spot of shade that everyone was huddled under, and then the sprinklers went off and got everyone wet. Then my mom got out her portable fan. She is always prepared. It was really nice to feel the breeze from the fan.

Then we went into the temple. It was a wonderful sealing. The best part is that Raleigh is a small temple, so we knew the people who were helping us and the sealer. They are all in my parents ward. For me, the tender moments were having my mom help me get ready and her words of advice, and then having my sisters there.

Then we went to the reception. It was so nice, the flowers were gorgeous, the food was good, and we just got to visit with everyone and enjoy ourselves. It was such a great day, and everything went so smoothly.