Outside

Yesterday I needed to get out so despite the cloudy weather the kids and i went out for a walk.  The land here is really hilly and it is kind of like they build the houses and the buildings in between the hills and then instead of having the roads go up the hill they just drill tunnels through them.  We were trying to get to this park and it was really like we hiked there instead of went for a walk.  it took us an hour and a half to get there and most of that was uphill.

I put an X over our apartment.  When we got to this point I thought we were pretty far.

When we got here I thought we must be there for sure.  I think we were almost half way when I took this picture.

This is the final view.  I think I put the X about where our apartment is but i'm not positive because you can't actually see it in this picture.  The view was amazing.  This is a beautiful place to live. I am excited to see what the view is like when it is nice outside.

I was worried about how I was going to exercise while in Japan but that was not at all something I needed to worry about.  Everyone does so much walking here it is not like in Washington at all.  All of the people are in much better shape too.  All of the people I saw at the top of the mountain were older.  I also see older people riding their bikes all the time.  I think people are so active here that they need to stay in shape.  It would be very hard to live in japan if you can't walk around very well or very far.

At the park there was even an English sign.  It says that the park is some kind of memorial.  Since it took us so long to get there I really had to go to the bathroom and was very happy to see the sign that said 'western toilet.'  It was funny when we tried to get a drink out of the faucet.  it just squirted the water straight up.  They way back down was steep, but it only took us about 40 minutes.