Yucky Sickness

Hos has been sick off and on for the past few months.  A green booger nose is not fun.  His cough never seems to fully go away.  We have taken him to the Doc and the Doc says it is a common cold.  Japan sometimes over medicates and sometimes under medicates.  ARGH!  He is hanging in there and trying to get better.  We try to teach him good hand washing as well.

Dre has been sick for the last week and a half.  Not fun.  Last Tuesday she began to feel like 

"garbage" and then stopped eating.  I insisted that we take her to the Doc and she went.  She received an IV and then some medication.  Well she ended up going in each day there after for an IV.  I was still a little worried about her so on Saturday we took her in and they took an x ray and found out that she has pneumonia.  YIKES!!! no wonder her cough is so terrible.  Well she missed church again and I was worried so we went into a larger hospital.  Thank goodness for BIG HOSPITALS!!!  Dre was happy as they actually had soap in the bathrooms.  Yes, you read right, soap in the bathrooms.  Hahaha.  Anyway we had a  GREAT doc by the name of Tada 先生  It turns out that he lived in New York 35 years ago and was there for 3 years.  YIPEE.  His English was really quite good and so he had x ray and blood work done.  He determined that she has a type of pneumonia called Micro Plasma.  what the crap....???  So she is on two types of antibiotics and a cough suppressant as well as a Rx for her stomach.  Finally a cough suppressant with codine.  YEAH!  So on Wednesday she will go back in and get another x ray and blood work done again.  So hopefully things will be getting better.  HUGE side effect is that HOLDEN no longer gets to nurse.  HMMMMM.  sad as he now signs "please" and asks mom to nurse.  Poor little bug.  He is going to have a hard time.  So will mom and dad since they are sleeping in the same room.  We will see how it goes.  Good thing Auntie is here to help out or we would be really hating it right now.  

Also We recently found out that my nephew has cancer.  Please check out his blog.  We are all sending our positive energy that way and pray for success for him and his family.  We love them all very much.  We know that the Lord is mindful of us all.

No pictures this time since they would just be of sick people.  hehehe.

Love you all.

Zack and the Gang

Osaka Aquarium with the Oni!

Our first day in Osaka we were so excited to start off at the Aquarium! The Aquarium is structured so you wind your way down around 14 elongated tanks. Each tank represents different environments from the Antarctic to the Aleutian Islands. The cool thing is you can see the animals at the top, say seals, basking on the rocks, then the deeper you go down you get to see the seals swimming, and even deeper to the bottom of the tank. There is a huge central tank which has a couple whale sharks and manta rays among other things. Unfortunately, Holden the Oni was NOT as excited!


Here is our screaming demon as I try to hold him and calm him down. Notice Hos trying to ignore him by watching the tank, and Julie just turned up her tunes to block out the distraction!


Here is Hos standing in front of the central tank with the HUGE whale shark lurking in the background. You should be able to blow up the photo by clicking on it so you can see it better.


Hos and Julie termed these fish "the boring fish" because all they did was swim around a huge central rock in their tank. I thought they were pretty cool because they would all change direction at the same time. Julie still claims it would be pretty boring going in circles all day, but I say the scenery changes as the people walk by so maybe they don't realize they are going in circles!


Finally, our little demon passed out! I still thought it would be the right time to offer him up to the Aquarium, I didn't want to drag a miserable little Holden around Osaka for the weekend.

Zack didn't think it was too amusing, so I changed the photo a little to redeem myself! Holden slept soundly unaware of any plan!

Osaka Castle

One of our favorite sites we visited while we were in Osaka was Osaka-jo, the Osaka Castle. The weather was quite a bit colder than back in Marugame and the sun stayed hidden all day but the scenery was beautiful! This is a photo at the Sakura-mon gate and you can see the main donjon.

We couldn't seem to get all the people out of the way, but that is us on the right side of the entrance. Zack & I are in the back with Holden in the stroller and Hos in front of me.
Once at the donjon, we headed up to the 8th floor for a great view of the city.

Here is a photo looking across the grounds. These were some of the best views we saw! The leaves were beautiful!

This is Hos and I sitting on one of the walls surrounding the castle grounds. To the left of us the wall went straight down. Hos wanted a photo of us on the top of the wall. If you look to left and behind me you can see part of the wall and how tall it is.

This is Hos and I in front of the 130 ton Tako-ishi or Octopus Stone. This is the largest rock used in the original construction of the castle walls. They still aren't sure how they moved this rock or any of the other ones. The surface area of this rock is 60 sq. meters!

One our way out Hos saw this and just had to get a picture! So here is Samuri Hos with Geisha Zackarina!

So How Was Your Weekend?

So, How was your Weekend? Well, this is how ours was! We were so excited to have Julie back in Japan with us and we had a few days off from teaching so we decided to go to Osaka! I will be posting some of our favorite photos from our trip, but I had to put these on tonight! I figured you all would get a kick out of them, and now that Julie is back I actually have 20 minutes to post them! So this is a photo of Zack, Spencer Hos, Andrea & Julie falling to our deaths! One of our days in Osaka was spent at Universal Studios Japan. We were in line for the Jurassic Park ride and we noticed that some of the Japanese in line were "getting ready" to load by putting on plastic rain coats. Some were flimsy disposable ones, but some were obviously brought from home. With Julie & Hos posing, we "discretely" got a photo of these guys preparing!

Is it just me, or is that a little weird? Well, then we saw a vending machine that sold just the rain coats and we really laughed! Sometimes things in Japan seem really foreign and really funny!

We finally made it through the line and our boat floated up and as we were loading we noticed that the benches and rails were still wet. There was much more water than we had expected, but it still didn't seem too bad. Lucky us, we got the front seat! No problem, we can handle a little spray! The first part of the ride is a steep climb and I thought we would get wet right off. But there wasn't any drop we just floated along from dinosaur to dinosaur and I started wondering when the spray would come. Then you enter the main building and it is dark and there are velociraptors and others popping out of the darkness to scare you. But still no drop! Then the sounds of T-Rex overpower everything else and out of the mist a huge dinosaur comes towards you with it's mouth gapping wide! About this time we realized the drop was coming and braced ourselves for the fall, but as the mist clears the front of the boat tips and we got a real glimpse of the free fall. This was when the camera flashed! As you can see from the photo, it is much farther than we all anticipated!

I must say I think we were completely shocked by the drop, but even more shocked by the huge wave of water that washed up over the boat and drenched us all. We were soaked! I am sure if there would have been another camera after the fall, the shock of how wet we were would have been just as amusing!

Hos, Julie, Andrea, and Zack after the Jurassic Park Ride! Now those "silly rain coats" didn't seem so silly! Our legs and bottoms were even more wet! Maybe next time I'll pack my own rain coat!

New Mandatory Reading for Fundy English School!

We feel strongly that one must be educated on political correctness when learning a language so as to prevent any uncomfortable or offensive situations. Fortunately, this book was included with the purchase of the school!

This excerpt from the first page is a great example of a Personal Intro! You can rest easy knowing that our students are educated on the proper usage of the word "retarded".

OUCH!! OR いたい！

Our HUSKY Holden is so strong. He is loving crawling around and shortly after crawling he wanted to walk and stand up. He has been working on standing for about 4 weeks and is doing really well. He is always pleased with himself when he stands on his own. He loves to go around our table while holding on to the edges. He is getting really good at it too. He can go so fast that if Mom, Dad or お兄ちゃん　are not watching his hands are in the food on the table.

He loves to sit in his japanese "highchair" which is not high and eat yogurt. He is such an opinionated child. He knows what he wants and will complain until someone pays attention to him. About a week ago Mom put him in his chair and went to get the yogurt out of the fridge. He is a STRONG little boy. Sometimes he scares us! He decided to rock back and forth in his chair. Not smart! He ended up tipping his chair over with him in it and hitting his face and upper lip on the edge of the table. He tore the inside of his upper lip and was bleeding like crazy. It immediately began to swell up and お兄ちゃん(Hos) was worried. Hos began to cry telling Mom and Dad that he did not want Holden to die. We explained to him that Holden was not going to die. But he continued to cry. Holden saw Hos crying and cried even harder. This made Hos cry even harder. This was an escalating situation which we finally were able to dissipate. We took Holden to the Doctor and he gave us some medication to put in his mouth. He cautioned us to be careful and that from this point on Holden will be even more curious and crazy. His mouth is completely healed now and he is doing much better. We have to laugh because we both think he will be the tougher of the two boys.

Dre says he is going to be our football player. I would have to agree. He has enjoyed throwing a ball for the last 2 months. Who ever heard of a 7 month old throwing a ball.

Here is the "damage" picture of our HUSKY Holden

Japanese Transportation

We've been in Japan for 3 months now and we feel like we are starting to get comfortable on our "Mama Chari's". Not only is it our main mode of local transportation, it is also one of Spencer & Holden's favorite ways to get around! This photo was taken when we first moved to Japan. Holden is in the front basket and Spencer is enjoying the view from his seat on the back!


This next photo was taken about 2 weeks ago on our way back from dropping Spencer off at one of his lessons. Zack is riding solo and Holden & Andrea are on the "mama chari". ( And yes, those are rice fields in both photos, notice how long the rice is in the 2nd photo :) )


When Holden is at home he likes to cruise around in his own car! He doesn't sit down hardly at all and I am afraid it is only accelerating his ability to walk. We're in for trouble once he does walk, he's already into everything!



While we feel like we are getting good at getting around on our "Mama Chari's" we realized that we have not taken a train anywhere! So Julie & I decided we would take the boys and ride the train to Takamatsu for the day. The trick was getting all four of us with our bags for the day and the stroller to the train station on our "Mama Chari's". Determined to ride the train, Julie managed to balance the stroller in her front basket and we loaded the back basket with our bags while Holden, Hos, & I loaded down my bike.


These photos don't do any justice to Julie's skill of balancing everything on her bike! She said the hardest part was starting off, so we tried to avoid as many stops as we could!


Luckily, we all made it to the train station with all our cargo! With a little help from the ticket taker at the train station we managed to get on the right train for Takamatsu!


Here we are in Takamatsu train station, Andrea, Spencer Hos, & Holden in his stroller!


Just outside the train station in Takamatsu there is an "Oni" statue. "Oni" is japanese for demon or ogre and is Holden's nickname, so we couldn't pass it by without getting a picture!