Our Friend "Flat Stanley"

My good friend Paul and his son asked us to help them out with a school project.  Flat Stanley is making his way around the world and he visited us here in Japan.  We took him the a kaitenzushi restaurant.  The kaitenzushi is a revolving sushi restaurant.  It is the Japanese version of fast food.  BUT so much more healthy than McDonalds, Burger King etc.  :)  

Flat Stanley was able to work along side the "oniichan" making sushi.  He was able to go behind the scenes.  Stanley ate his fill of sushi and then wanted more.  

Stanley then help out teaching some classes here at Fundy English School.  He had a blast!!

Thanks to Michael and Paul for sending him to visit us.  

Shark Boy Hos!

I seem to forget how old my children are really getting! Or perhaps it is a conscious ignorance! Hos came home from school one day in January and Auntie Goober informed me that Hos was getting a permanent tooth. I didn't quite understand what she was saying because I was sure I didn't have a son old enough to loose a baby tooth let alone have a permanent tooth. Confused, I went to investigate and this is what I found....Shark Tooth!

I think we missed the part where the baby tooth gets loose and you wiggle it until it falls out! Hos just went straight to "the permanent tooth starts to come in". So the wiggling began! Unfortunately for Hos', the front portion of root was not letting go! This made for a sharp pain every time he tried to wiggle it. Well, after 3 weeks of only a few wiggles Auntie Goober took matters into her own hands and gave the tooth some real pressure. It was pretty uncomfortable for Hos, so he promised to work on it alone. Well, after about 15 min. and a few tears he said it was too sore to wiggle and too sore to eat anything, so now it was Mom's turn. The first twist almost made him refuse, but I was quick with the second and he was busy fighting back the tears!

My little Trooper didn't pull away or bite my fingers off as I finally got that root to let go! As I pulled the tooth out I asked him if it still hurt and he mumbled a yes. That's when I told him it shouldn't because I had just pulled it out. Here he is, still shocked the tooth was in my hand and trying not to cry!


He showed his dad the baby tooth was gone and the Shark Tooth is now just a permanent tooth. He didn't realize his mouth was bleeding until I was uploading the pictures this evening and he saw this one! He was surprised there was blood after losing his tooth and then he wanted to know WHY our teeth have blood. I guess he needs to spend some more time with Grandpa Chei watching surgery!


Here's the tooth! It's hard to see the sharp pointed part of the root that wouldn't let go, but after seeing it my mouth was sore!


Look mom! No more Shark Tooth!

Marugame Castle with Grandma

Here it is the 1st of Feb. and I still haven't had a chance to post some photos of the Shima's trip to visit us over Christmas & New Year's. So, I'll start with photos from Marugame. We wanted to give the Shima a real japanese experience so we decided to ride the Mama Chari's around town and to the Castle. It's one of our favorite places to ride. This is one of the bridges by the castle and a favorite of Hos & Holden's to ride over!


The Castle sits on top of a hill and the climb up is pretty steep. This is Julie, Hos, and me on our way back down. I love the old walls!


This is the main Don Jon and it still has the original wooden truces. Julie, Hos, and the Shima stopped for a quick photo before we went inside.


Here is a view looking to the North (I think) from the castle hill. The day was REALLY COLD & WINDY, but it made for excellent views. Julie, Hos and I could see right to the main island! Off to the right you can see the Seto-Ohashi, the bridge connecting our island with the main island of Honshu. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world! (Just a random tid bit of info. for those of you who like random tid bits of info)


Here Julie, Hos, and the Shima stopped in front of the main gate to smile! Julie and I love to ride our bikes and Hos loves to just enjoy the ride! I think we convinced the Shima that it is one of the best ways to get around in Japan!

Christmas

WE had a wonderful Christmas.  We did not think that Santa would find us since we packed and ran off to Japan so quickly.  Hos was worried.  But find us he did.  Hos received a beanbag.  Something that he had been asking for since we got here.  When you don't have couch the next best thing is a beanbag.  

Grandma Shima came with a suitcase full of things from America.  Toothpaste....yes toothpaste Colgate with flouride.  WE love it!!!!  Glide dental floss.  The simple things that we take for granted.  :)  

We have enjoyed having Grandma here with us.  She has enjoyed everything but the lack of central heating.  Shhhhh don't tell her we miss that too. She is now addicted to the Japanese bathhouses.    She wants to go every night.  

We hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season.  We miss you all and pray for your safety and success this coming year.

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!