You can tell right off that it is a slow month for the Wellons crowd if the first picture features a plant. Right after we got back to Japan, Lucy and I decided to plant some seeds to see if we could entice anything to grow. So far we are 0-for-4 on growing cilantro from seeds. You may remember me posting about an $18.00 watermelon earlier this summer. Well cilantro is also crazy expensive. We currently have two small plants that we bought at a local nursery attempting to survive in our herb garden. This pumpkin vine looks promising but I sincerely doubt anything we grow this late in the season will actually produce anything. It is more of a trial run.
I have mentioned before the "challenges" of trying to use google translate to read packaging and signage written in Japanese here. Usually you can get the gist of what it says, but sometimes you have to get creative. The translations also change while you are reading them, so if you see one that kind of makes sense it is best you take a screen shot of it because you are likely to not see it again!
Labor Day weekend our original plans were to go to the beach! However Mother Nature had other ideas and the weather looked to be rainy the entire weekend. So we decided to do a short day trip instead. The Air Force has recreation area called Tama Hills which is a 250 acre government run of mainly forrest terrain that offers hiking, biking, paintball, horseback riding, golf, lodging and camping. We opted for some biking and to meet the horses. We explored pretty much every nook and cranny then decided to hit up a local Nepalese Restaurant for lunch. Nepalese-Indian has become our new favorite comfort food! The rest of the long weekend was spent dodging rain.
The next weekend we decided to hit up another close-by attraction - Hossawa Falls. Jim billed it as a "hike" but I would classify it more of a short walk in the woods. It was beautiful to be sure and it definitely was short, so short even the kids weren't complaining and that is saying something. Again we weren't sure if we were parked in the right place - thanks google translate.
Jim has been doing lots of bike riding with some guys from base and he had ridden by this area of number of times so he at least had an inkling of where we were going. One of the must-do's was to have some tofu doughnuts. It was fun to watch them being made and trust me when I say they were delicious. I would have never said it was tofu!
Pictures above are pretty rough but it's the best we could do. At the base of the trail there was a coffee shop that has an adorable face on it. There were a few other people exploring the area on the day we went. Several Japanese families with small children were splashing around in the water pools but there was technically no swimming allowed since this is a water source for the community. The kids were looking for more of an "Okinawa water hike experience" but the doughnuts helped to make up for the fact that we would not be getting wet. I am sure it is lovely once the leaves start to change and several people have told us we need to come back when the water freezes. It is super close to base, so hopefully we can make that happen.
We are up to the middle of September and that means it is Yoshi's birthday! Or at least the anniversary of when we he won the kitty lottery and we saved his life! He may have a slightly different take on the day but we are sticking to our version.
Ben has taken up the game of golf again much to the delight of Jim! They have played several times at the par 3 course on base and recently they went back down to Tama Hills to play a round. Any time Ben gets to spend behind the wheel (any wheel) he is happy.
We were invited out with some friends to get a lesson on how the trains work and spend the evening at a neighboring town. Tachikawa is only about 15 minutes by car and about that by train but it has a different feel to it. More urban than Fussa. We enjoyed delicious wood-fired pizza and it was so cool to visit a real Japanese city, kind of like a mini-Tokyo.
One unexpected perk happened this month! Air Force friends of ours from Eglin/Niceville have moved to Japan and they had to quarantine at Yokota for two weeks first! We got to briefly see them a few times when I delivered supplies but got to share a meal with them after they came out of quarantine on the night before they moved on to their new home at Misawa which is in Northern Japan. It was AWESOME!! Hard to believe it has been eight years! We can't wait to meet up with them again.
The next weekend we took Ben and Lucy on the train back down to Tachikawa to recreate our evening the weekend before. Mainly we wanted to give the kids a short lesson in how to navigate the trains so they could start exploring the local area with their friends. We had a blast ... and I think they grudgingly admitted they want to do it again (by themselves). Kids travel alone everywhere here ... one of the many perks of living in Japan.
The week after Yoshi celebrated his birthday he went on vacation. I can say this now kind of jokingly but at the time I was very upset. We have a fenced-in yard that I have spent quite a bit of time cat proofing. Well he found a weak spot and exploited it. We had recently put a bluetooth tag on him but apparently the battery was too weak to put out a signal because we couldn't find him. He was gone for 9 days! I had just about given up hope when he suddenly just reappeared! He didn't look any the worse for wear and we have no idea where he had gone! First thing I did was change the battery on his tag! Next up, no more outside for Yoshi. He is currently expressing his displeasure at the change in his status as an full time inside cat.
I will close out the month with a shot of Fuji which is usually not visible due to cloud cover. At some point during the month it snowed up there! I can't wait to do that hike next year. Fingers crossed it will happen!
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