Forrest has been making lots of sounds and most have been nonsense gibberish. He has also been saying “dada,” but it never felt intentional until yesterday. He kept asking for Dada at the store, and was so happy when I joined Leanne and him, and he saw me! Then later we said, “where’s dada?” and he looked right at me, every time we tried!
So it’s official. Forrest’s first word is “Dada”!
Living near the snowiest region on Earth has its perks! The last couple of weekdays we had Forrest in daycare and went skiing at Okunakayama, about an hour and a half away. The first ski day was with my guy friends in Misawa and the second was with Leanne’s coworkers from the hospital.
Leanne was shredding the black diamonds and I did a jump over a ski ramp! Can’t wait to go skiing some more, especially while it’s so close and so cheap!
Japanese New Year is a lot like how my family celebrates New; it’s a very Family Central holiday. Leanne and I went to the grocery store early to get osechi, which are Bento boxes with lots of little different items Each of which is supposed to bring a separate fortune or luck for the year. Leanne also got everything needed to make peanut butter noodles, so we were fully ready to bring in the new year. On New Year’s Eve in japan, the main television channel of Japan nhkg plays a New Year’s Eve show called “Kohaku Uta Gassen,” or “Red White Song Battle.” A lot of the top bands in Japan, both modern and traditional music, will play in the red white battle. The red team is led by female singers, whereas the white team is led by male singers. However, it’s a very long show, so it is broken up by different random events. One of them was a huge room filled with dominos that we saw fall down into cool designs with, oddly enough, traditional Japanese music playing in the background. Another is a world record for most balls on the cup in a row. Either way, it was a very interesting and fun way to ring in the new year!
Living in Japan, so far away from home, could be an isolating experience. We are so, so fortunate to have such an amazing neighborhood filled with friends and love. We all got together to celebrate Christmas together.
A white Christmas in beautiful snowy northern Japan. Forrest has been trying to open gifts all month since they’ve been under the tree. He can finally open them up! Thankfully, Leanne got the holiday off!
Thank you everyone for such wonderful gifts! We are so blessed to have such a wonderful loving family and that Forrest had an amazing first Christmas!
When in Rome.. For the Japanese, Christmas is a completely secular holiday. They basically made Christmas what they thought Americans did for Christmas. One major American corporation that was able to take advantage of this was Kentucky Fried Chicken, who somehow gaslit the entire nation of Japan into thinking that all Americans ate fried chicken for Christmas. Now, it is a completely Japanese tradition to get Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets for Christmas. The crazy thing is, Japanese people still think Americans do this and are shocked when they find out that we don’t actually eat fried chicken for Christmas. Another Japanese holiday tradition is to have a white cake with strawberries. Interestingly, Christmas is not a family holiday in Japan, but rather a romantic couples holiday. This is probably because so many Christmas songs are about romance? Either way, they completely got Christmas wrong, but it’s hilarious, and we decided to celebrate it their way a little bit too. We invited our friends, the Passey’s, over for fried chicken and white Christmas cake.
Can you believe 8 months has already gone by?
No longer a babe
Cuter every single day
Please, stop growing now.
Leanne had 4 days off between shifts, so we decided to make the most of it and go down to Sendai, the closest big city to us at about a 4 hr drive.
Every year during Christmas time, the city lights up all the trees on one of their main roads. This event is known as the Sendai Illumination.
Enough about trees with lights! A trip in Japan wouldn’t be complete without a lot of delicious Regional foods! Sendai is known for their beef tongue, edamame “zunda” shakes, and fresh oysters.
Though Sendai is not known for this, Japan is one of the few places on Earth where you can eat puffer fish. If you eat the wrong part, or it is incorrectly prepared, there is toxin in the puffer fish that can be actually deadly. We happened upon a Japanese restaurant where they served puffer fish as well as turtle soup, so we ordered both.
While we were eating, the Japanese older woman who ran the restaurant was happy to take and hold for us, show him the fish in the tanks, and give him love and attention.
One of the most scenic sites in Japan is Matsushima, a collection of about 260 islands off of Matsushima Bay. We drove up to the bay and took a sightseeing cruise all around the islands.
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On the way back home, we got Costco memberships and shopped til we dropped. Costco has a lot of the same stuff ($5 rotisserie chicken anyone?), but also a lot of cool Japanese items including my favorite drink “Chill Out”. No need to keep going to konbinis to get that now! With the car full of essentials, but mostly non-essential Costco impulse buys (like a Ripstik!), we headed home back to the snowy North, Misawa.
Today was our first proper snow day for the hear. Forrest seemed somewhat indifferent, but that didn’t stop us from having fun playing with him and Miles in the snow.
The base has a tree lighting event where the huge Christmas tree on base was lit, and there was food, music, hot cocoa, mulled wine, and Santa! Forrest met Santa for the first time. I hope he asked for something good!
