2023 Starting out strong

Jim and I decided to start our last year in Japan the way we started our first New Years in Japan, by getting up to watch the first sunrise!!  I will say the view of the Ocean in Okinawa was much nicer than the Yokota air strip, but we also got a pretty clear view of Fuji-san all dressed up in his winter coat!  We even talked Wesley into coming with us.  He wasn't as excited.

    

Lilly is starting the year off by traveling to Seoul to attend the Harvard Model Congress in person!  First time since Covid shut down the world.  She and the other students spent several days learning about global political issues while enjoying some fun in Seoul.  

            

While she was living it up in Korea, the rest of us decided to hit up a famous daruma shrine near Tokyo.  The Daruma (as mentioned previously) is a hollow doll modeled after Bodhidharma who is the founder of the Zen tradition in Buddhism.  The Japanese regard them as a talisman of good luck and perseverance, and they are associated with the New Year.  When you purchase a daruma at a temple, it comes with blank eyes.  Then you decide on a wish or goal, and paint the left eye.  Once the goal is achieved you fill in the right eye and return the doll to the temple where you purchased it for a burning ceremony.  We aren't following that tradition, however, because we want to keep these cool darumas ... hopefully that won't bring us a lifetime of bad luck!  

The shrine we visited is called the Shorinzan Darumaji Temple, located in nearby Takasaki which is the "birthplace" of the Daruma.  We were fortunate enough to hit it on one of the Festival days as well.  Our friend Julie and her son Cooper came with us because it is always more fun with friends along right?  Our first FFFT of the year!

    

       

We wandered around the grounds for about an hour and finally decided on which Darumas (that's right plural) we could't leave without.  Jim decided we also needed to get the big one blessed by the monk.  

    

On our way home we passed by a Daruma factory and on a spur of the moment decision, decided to pull in and see what it was all about.  There were thousands of Darumas in various stages of completeness.  We walked out of there with yet another daruma .. a personalized blue one!  

    

The following week, the kids had 1st semester finals - ugh.  All in all we were happy, they all got good scores and finished up the semester with all A's!  Yay! On to more fun things!

Last year Yokota Air Base was in a mini lock down and our MLK weekend ski trip got cancelled.  No such restrictions this year, so a group of us headed up to Hakuba for the weekend to check out the slopes.  The weather wasn't the greatest and neither were the snow conditions, but we made the best of it and there weren't too many complaints!    

        

   

        

       

Just to give you guys a visual of how poor the snow conditions were - two years ago you could barely see the Olympic rings on this building in the photo on the left.  Also the ground under the wooden building on the photo on the right was completely covered with snow 😳.  Despite the lack of snow the we all had a wonderful time in Hakuba.  

 

    

        

    

There are a number of "secret bars" or speak easies in Japan and we happened to find one while we were in Hakuba called Holy Smokes!  The entrance to the place is this cigarette machine false door.  We got there before the nightly rush.  The place was super cool and the drinks were tasty ...

   

The next week I went to the Tokyo Dome with friends to check out a food expo.  Essentially all the different prefectures (states) in Japan were represented in one giant location.  We tried out lots of food from each area and saw crafts from these areas without having to actually visit.  It is an interesting concept.  Every prefecture also has a mascot of sorts and they were all in attendance as well.  While we were there, we saw them engaging in lots of "battles".  It reminded me of the mascot games in the states at baseball games.  It was a lot of fun, we ate until we were stuffed and came home with lots of tasty treasures!

      

    

        

I really want to go to this lantern festival later this spring.  There were 1000's of them in this display! I have a feeling I am not going to get to the festival, so maybe if I buy one I will feel like I went 🤔!

The following weekend, Yokota Air Base held it's first "Frostbite" 1/2 Marathon in three years due to COVID-19.  The race began in 1984 and as grown over the years to become one of the top 100 road races in Japan!  I believe they had over 5,000 US and Japanese runners participated in the 1/2 marathon, more than 1,000 runners for the 2K kids run and about 1,600 for the 5K. 

They also had more than 400 US and Japanese Airmen volunteers to ensure the event went off without a hitch.  That is where we come in.  The girls and I were stationed in the gym for the bag drop off area, while Jim and Ben manned a water station with the boy scouts.  It was a pretty chilly day (mid 40's for the high) so we were happy to be inside - until all the bags starting showing up that is.  Of course the Japanese had a well-organized system, but it was up to us to make sure we didn't mess it up.  Believe it or not, all of these bags were quickly sorted in numerical order (based on racing bib number), and by the time the 1/2 marathoners starting rolling in, this seemingly very cluttered space was running like a finely oiled machine!  It was so efficient that in most cases before runner made it up to the table to request their bag, it was available and ready to hand over!
    

        

The last weekend of the month, we had three couples fly up from Okinawa to join us in Tokyo.  We had a GREAT time showing them around to some of our favorite spots and checking out a few places we hadn't visited.  So many laughs, karaoke songs (complete with tambourine - cause you know how much fun tambourines are!), food and of course drinks.  This trip was MONTHS in the making.  Here's hoping we can get another one in the books before we pull out of here in June.  Yes, that is correct.  We are movers in June.  Pentagon here we come!