Just 2 American Kids: October 2012

Wow. What can I say but wow. Where does the time go, friends? I have a letter here that I started for a friend on the first of January and it is now nearly the end of March!!! Needless to say, I COMPLETELY lost track of this blog. So sorry! Recently though, I have been reading other people's blogs and they have re-inspired me to keep up with mine. It is just such a better medium for telling the whole story, no?

So all apologies aside: here is what you missed back in October.

In early October I went to a Sake Festival in Saijo (a little north of Hiroshima) with some friends.. It was PACKED with people.

So Japanese here- they made their programs into little origami trash cans!

Trying to capture the crowds.

She enjoyed her sake a little too much and fell alseep on the job! Mind you, this is at about 2pm and it opened at 8am!

There was a Taiko drum performance just outside the festival

Stumbled upon a sake brewery that was serving up their brew.

Before being served, it was poured through this bamboo pole and then served in bamboo cups!

There was some sort of delicious tofu spice mush that went well with the sake and was served on- yep, more bamboo!

Here are my friends in the front of the brewery.

Stood in line for Sake Ice Cream, which was delicious, and instead of serving it on a cone, they served it on corn flakes! So silly.

Some collage photos of the event my friend captured.

On the way home from the festival, we stopped in Hiro for dinner. On the way to the restaurant we stopped in at Anderson's bakery. Here's one of their items- "Heidi's White Bun." lol!

Dinner was at Mario's- an Italian restaurant right by Peace Memorial Park. Oishii!

Later on in the month, there was the Navy Ball which was followed by Karaoke at the Shidax (Please)!

Later, Goose (the cat) caught a cockrach for us.

I chaperoned the high school's cross country team a few times in October. This was the bus stop at the park in Sasebo where they raced. AMAZING. (If you don't get it, watch Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro immediately.)

Back on base there was the Fall Bazarre. I didn't buy anything really but I had to snap a photo of this:

the calligraphy (or maybe Kanji, I can't tell the difference) for 'Nurse' and 'Engineer' (or does that say Naval Officer? i can't remember now...) right next to each other- how perfect!