Fuji Safari Park

Fuji Safari Park is a pretty fun place.  Totally worth being stuck in traffic for three hours to get there.  It was supposed to be two hours, so whats one more right?  Ok, the drive was long, but we did have fun.

Well hello Mr. Porcupine.

 You could feed most of the animals which was different from the zoo.

The monkeys were cute and would reach right up and into the tubes to get the pellets.

 Calista even found a new best friend.  The ROUS.  She really loved to pet them and we were all ready to move on before she was.

 That's ok though, because I think the Kangaroos quickly became new new favorite.

We didn't let her feed Symba though.  Believe it or not you could actually pay 600 yen to hold a lion cub!  I think we would have done it but they were out of tickets.  Maybe next time.

After the zoo type portion, we got in the car and drove through the park.  It seriously was like Jurassic park.  There were two big gates that would open before we could enter.  And then the bears were roaming free.

The lion section was even cooler.   There were tons of them.  One even brushed up against our car while it waled right in front of us.

Tigers are so beautiful!  It is crazy that we were just driving around in the same exact area as them.  No fences or glass cages between us.

Bob was going to come, but ended up having to work.  We were disappointed about that, but its ok because now we for sure have to go again.

2nd Japanniversary and More

September 4th was our 2nd Japanniversary!  We have been now living in Japan for over two years.  The whole thing has gone by quickly and times and very slow at others.  It has been a huge adventure and I have grown a ton as a person.  Our family has even grown by one over the last year.

The actual day was a perfect representation of our life here.  I did the usual school routine in the morning, full of fun and craziness and lots of messes by Calista (food coloring dumped on our floor).  Then Bob came home for about a minute to grab Tucker and head to young men.  Then I attempted to make a cake.  I put it in the fridge to cool so I could frost it and before I knew it Calista had dug the whole thing apart.  It was super difficult to frost after that and I just ended up dumping powdered sugar over the whole thing to get it to look white.

Bot got home after the kids normally go to bed.  I was frustrated and tired and so we quickly took a picture and ate some cake before going to sleep.

I tried to quickly run into the grocery store with Calista while Bob stayed in the car with the other kids.  The store ended up being so crowded!  It is usually crowded, but this time we were waiting in line partway down the isle.

 Those yellow things in our basket are sooo good!  I don't know what they are called, but if you are ever in Japan you should get them.

 Just had to throw in a Calista picture here.

Here is another little snippet of our lives.  Kids playing and fighting and being crazy all at once.  I love it...except the fighting part.

Bon Odori

We were tired after our park adventure, but Saturday night was our neighborhoods Bon Odori festival.  It only a couple blocks from out house so we wanted to check it out.

Bon Odori is a Buddhist festival the where Japanese can honor their ancestors.  To me it seems like people get dressed up and eat from food vendors with lanterns hanging and bands and often drum performances.  Sometimes there is a dance.

Arasaki Park and Le Soleil

Although it was cloudy we had a break from the rain and decided to go exploring.  We drove to Arasaki park to check it out.

 The rock formations were pretty cool!

 The only bad thing was that they were covered in these little bugs.  We could see them scurrying away from us everywhere we went.  After a few minutes everyone got over it.  We had to step on the rocks even though they were covered.  But with each step they ran away.  No one ever had any bugs crawling on them, so it was a win.

See the distand ferris wheel in the next picture.  Well we saw it to.  In fact we drove past the park Le Soleil so I knew it was there and that we were close.  We've been before and loved it.  After a little debate we decided to see if we could make our way to the park.  We ended up needing to go way to the right past the ferris wheel and past the end of the photo, but we made it.

 Beatrix was really enjoying all the beauty of the world around her.

 They have a pretty cool playground so the kids were happy we decided to see if we could find it.

On the way back the tide had came in and things got a bit dicy.  It also started to rain so we were kind of in a hurry.  I didn't want to get soaked making our way back to the car.  But Bob put Calista in the carrier and so we were able to move across the rocks pretty quickly.  I have no idea the distance but we made it back in about 40 minutes. 

We had to hold onto chains and stick close to the rock wall going back were as we didn't have to do anything like that on our way to the park.  It added a bit of fun intensity.  The kids kept pretending that we needed to hurry and race to the car because a tsunami was coming.

Hello Kittyland

Hello Kitty is huge here in Japan!  It is super popular among girls of all ages.  So we took a girls day and headed up to Tokyo to Sanrio Puroland also known as Hello Kittyland.  We hit traffic and Calista cried for about an hour of the over two hour drive but when we got there the interior was pretty impressive.

It was almost like a theme park, but they only had a couple rides, none of which we did.  After looking around for a minute we noticed a show was starting so we headed into the theater.  It looked pretty elaborate, unfortunately for us it was 40 minutes of 100% in Japanese.  We couldn't follow the story at all, but Calista did get excited when Hello Kitty came out.  I figure the language didn't make much difference at all to her.  I guess it gave me a little insight as to what any play would seem like to her.

 I was most impressed by the amazing decor of the place.

 We all took a turn ringing the Bell of Happiness.

 Then it was our turn to see Hello Kitty up close.

Calista got pretty scared.  She loved her from a distance, but wanted no part in getting within arms reach of her.  Oh and notice how Calista isn't wearing shoes?  She took them off after about a minute and I gave up putting them back on her.  The shoes sat in the stroller and she ran around the whole time barefoot.

We ended up going to one more show.  This one was slightly easier to follow, but still in Japanese.  It had more characters and songs.  Altogether more interesting for the kids. 

One surprising thing about the place was that it was mainly adults.  Like couples and older teenage or girls in their young 20's.  I'd say less then half the groups had children with them.  It is typical of Japan.

The parade show was the coolest!  They did have these glowing wands for sale for $15 that Calista cried for.  I felt bad because she kept pointing at them and then pointing at herself while crying and saying me.  I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on it.  We later bought a very similar wand from the 100 yen store.  I wish I knew beforehand or we would have came prepared with glowing heart wands.

 We took a break for lunch.

I had no idea my burger was going to be purple, or that it was going to have Hello Kitty stamped into the bun.

 The portions were small, but the girls were really happy about the bento boxes they got to keep.

 After lunch we toured Hello Kitty's home.

 Very frilly.  Everything a little girl dreams of.

 She even had a place to try on virtual dresses.

We spent a lot of time wrangling Calista.  She pretty much ran wild the whole day and we took turns grabbing her and redirecting her attention while someone else fixed whatever display she destroyed.

We attempted to go the same way back to the car that we came.  That was a mistake because they closed and locked the door, but it was too late to get back inside through the entrance.  So we ended up walking outside all the way around the building then I had to convince the parking attendant to let us walk back into the parking lot.  I'm sure we were not supposed to exit the building at all but I missed the inside path to the parking garage.

It was so fun to hang out with just the girls.  We probably won't ever go back, and we are ok with that.  It was a great one time experience.