How'd ya like to spend the holiday away across the sea?

Christmas 2016 was the first Christmas that Blake and I spent just the two of us. For our four previous Christmases, we'd hopscotched from one family to the other and we enjoyed it, but long before we knew we'd spend it in Japan, we decided it was time to spend Christmas in our own home. We knew we'd be moving in the fall, so no matter where we ended up, we would have just moved and didn't want to have a big trek planned anywhere only a few weeks later.

So spend it at home we did!

Fortunately, our household goods arrived just after Thanksgiving, which gave us time to set up our new home and even decorate for the holiday! It also helped with the getting settled in as we made this new place truly ours.

That biggest box is actually one of our moving boxes that has been upgraded to tree stand! The 3 foot tree that was perfect in my hobbit hole as a singleton was a little small for our giant apartment, but this actually worked out perfectly!

Our new front door! Completely decorated with things purchased or crafted here in Japan!

Without familial expectations and days lost to travel, we really got to start focusing on what traditions we want to have for just us. We've had a pretty good negotiation so far, though I think we will have to alternate whose breakfast tradition we use each year. I do love his family's breakfast casserole, but I also love my family's big huge all the breakfast foods breakfast. So, we still need to figure that one out.


One tradition we accidentally picked up and have now made official is seeing Christmas lights on Christmas Eve. As we looked back, we realized that we have now done just that most every Christmas, whether in Utah or Arizona, and now we have added Japan! Incidentally, they have also been Christmas lights at temples, and 2016 was no exception, just at the temple of a different faith! Oh, and they are called Winter Illuminations here and some can even be seen into March.

So, on Christmas Eve, we headed out to Enoshima Island, which is on Sagami Bay just west of us and connected to the mainland via a footbridge.

The train station we got off at! Not all train stations are this picturesque, but this one was!

Approaching Enoshima

Fuji-san!

This Hello Kitty cafe had just opened the day before. We're planning on taking Blake's sister here.

There are actually five main shrines and temples on Enoshima and they are all beautiful.

Dr. Fish pedicure - Blake did it too! I loved it. Blake didn't hate it, but he did think it was weird.

Washing station before entering a shrine - come visit and I'll show you how to do it!

Black vanilla for Blake, chestnut for me (seemed like a good Christmas flavor)

There is one main stretch of road off the island. It took us at least 20 minutes to work our way down. This was approximately half way.

We topped off the evening with the traditional Christmas Eve pizza, a tradition from Blake's family that I've happily accepted and even introduced to mine. Instead of the pizza place on base, we tried the Domino's off-base. The best deals are found by doing online ordering and carry out, so even though we got it home on the train, it was still warm and pretty tasty. We didn't try anything too crazy, this time.

Christmas Day was a Sunday, so we enjoyed an hour of church in between present opening and video chats. I think we talked to each of our families at least twice. I also did most of my Santa tracking on this day, since we were visited a lot earlier than the rest of the world.

Christmas morning Pepsi is traditional for Blake, but we made sure it was a Japanese Pepsi for him and I opted for a Japanese Coca-Cola with the bow!

We live here now! I recognize this view!

I recognize this view too!

We may be with our families for future Christmas holidays, but for now it was nice to really be home for Christmas.

Do you see what I see?

Even though we used to live in northern Virginia, it was and remains easiest to say we lived in DC or the DC area. Northern Virginia is culturally more like DC than the rest of Virginia anyway, plus it's more likely people have heard of DC than the specific town(s) we lived in, unless they had also lived or traveled there. I still give directions to my hometowns of Orem as being about an hour south of Salt Lake City or Beaumont as being about 80 miles east of Houston. Generalize and then specify.

So, we share that we live in Yokosuka, but when people don't know where that is, we explain it's on the mouth of Tokyo Bay, about an hour south of Tokyo. More technically, we don't even live in Yokosuka itself. We're just stationed there and live in a housing detachment within the city limits of Zushi.

Even more technically, Tokyo isn't even the biggest city near us. It's actually not even a city! As of 1943, it's a metropolis made of 23 municipalities. The biggest city we live near is actually Yokohama, the most populous city in Japan, and even I hadn't really heard of it before this particular adventure came into our lives.

Now, we've already been there a few times, like our trip to the CupNoodles Museum, and I love walking by the laughing god in Hinodecho, especially on my way to my favorite Daiso (a 100 yen shop).

Because of its proximity to us, we can easily get there for date nights and other adventures, including one pre-Christmas date that Blake planned for us!

Our first stop was Marine Tower, which offers wonderful views of the entire city. The glass elevator makes for a little vertigo on the way up, but the views were worth it.

We strolled along the bay, on our way to a German Christmas Market at the Red Brick Warehouse.

Japanese ocean liner from the 1920s

Guardian of Water

The Drinking Fountain presented to Yokohama by the Indian Community in memory of those lost in the Great Kanto Earthquake

Downtown Yokohama

The only Nativity we saw not at a church the entire season

This ocean liner embarked on their voyage as we passed by

For dinner, we went to Eggs N' Things, a Hawaiian chain that has made its way to Japan.

And then we capped off our evening with another walk-by of the Marine Tower to see their winter illumination.

So much to explore here! So glad we've got some time!

Why don't we do it in the road?

When we last left our intrepid explorers, they were celebrating a free dog with walks to beaches and caves and things. The next thing to conquer was first joint sightseeing trip to Tokyo and explore the neighborhood of Shibuya!

We had been to Tokyo to attend the temple and I had gone to Harajuku with girlfriends, but that was it until December 17th. This was also our celebration of four years of marriage!

Our first stop was the Old Asakura Family House, built in 1919 by a local businessman, which survived both the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and World War II, and is now designated an Important Cultural Property. I love house museums and visiting a traditional Japanese home from almost 100 years ago was no exception.

Would I mind if this were a room in my house? I would not.

The most well known attraction in Shibuya is the crazy scramble crossing, rumored to be one of the busiest in the world, which, of course, we visited. We watched it a couple of times and then did it ourselves! So many people! So fun!  You can watch a live webcam here.

We paid our respects to Hachiko.

And then we did some wandering. I had heard of a farmers market nearby that also had a Christmas market adjacent. We arrived just before most of the shops closed up for the evening, but we did manage to snag some delicious blackberry jam. We saved it until the next time we made homemade bread and it is definitely quite tasty.

Around this time, we were getting a bit peckish, plus I needed to find a toilet. Luckily, where there is a Golden Arches, there is also likely a restroom. Once we took care of business and looked at the local McDonald's options that you can't get anywhere else, we decided that Blake would be able to get away with taking me to McD's for our anniversary dinner just this once. My fried mac-n-cheese sandwich and his cheeseburger with a fried egg amused us (sorry the photo of these has vanished!) and fed us for the night.

That is, until we found Pie Face and each got a hand pie for dessert.

We did a bit more wandering, something I fully intend to do more of this neighborhood. We checked out the Disney store and a Winter Illumination that also happened to be Disney themed.

Tangled

Sleeping Beauty and a random stranger

They don't really call them Christmas lights, but Winter Illuminations are popular thing here. Some of them can even be visited into February and March.

After one more crossing at Shibuya, we called it a night and headed home.

It was definitely an anniversary date to remember!

I go out walkin' after midnight

Now that Malcolm is free from quarantine and allowed to go off base, we've been able to change it up on our walks! And change it up we have!

Saturday morning, we went on our first family grocery walk to a Japanese grocery store. We did that most weeks in DC after getting Malcolm, so it was great to get back out there! This, however, was probably our best grocery walk to date, because we first stopped at Zushi Beach and got an amazing view of Mount Fuji!

Fuji-san

Walking buddies

It was a spectacular site and I am looking forward to many more walks to Zushi Beach, especially in warmer weather. The sky won't always be this clear, but it will be amazing when it is! We actually had to walk a little down the beach to get Fuji-san to appear from behind the cliffs and it was worth it.

Malcolm made himself comfortable on the beach. Just wait until the sand is warmer, buddy!

On our way home, we learned that the sign for "Can I pet your dog?" is indeed international, even if we don't understand the words. Malcolm was distracted by the fragrant fish market we were stopped near, but I'm sure he still enjoyed the attention.

Tuesday morning, our family walk took us up in the Ikego campground. It's just outside the base gate, so we've been looking forward to this for awhile. There are beautiful bluffs and bamboo forests and we are excited to explore it more. This time we discovered some yagura or hill tombs carved throughout the area 500-900 years ago.

Round trip for both of these walks is only about 4 miles, so we can definitely do them more!

There goes the baker with his tray like always

Two weeks ago, on the first Saturday in December, I was sitting on the edge of a planter, eating some noodles and chicken with disposable chopsticks and watching several other people (mostly families) sitting wherever they could to eat their dinner when I had the thought "This is my reality now. I live in Japan and do things like this." Blake was on a quick trip to Arizona for his grandfather's funeral (Grandpa was almost 93 and had a rich, long life, but had been struggling with his mental and physical health for a little while), so I was on the only American I could see. I had gone to this street to check out a Christmas bazaar. It turned out to only be a few booths on either side of a street corner across from a train station, but I still enjoyed it. I found a homemade ornament and had a chocolate dipped banana in addition to the noodles.

Oppama station Christmas tree

I spent the rest of the evening at a party of Blake's coworkers, without Blake. This is definitely outside of my comfort zone, but they're good people and I actually had a lot of fun. Instead of gingerbread houses while watching Christmas movies, we made an aircraft carrier while watching Top Gun.

USS Snowflake

Because this is my reality now. I live in Japan and do things like this.

Santa, as seen from the dog park, on his way to our community tree lighting

I made a little bit of a mess, but I found a Japanese Slurpee machine!

Shinto shrine next to a train station

Getting better at kawaii bento!

This place - our apartment, the base, Japan - is feeling more and more like home everyday. What strikes me as most interesting lately is how much my morning walk with Malcolm feels like The Truman Show, where every thing on his morning commute to work can be timed to the second. On the days Blake doesn't take Malcolm running before work, we all leave the apartment together for Blake to catch the shuttle to main base. We say hi to some of the others who get on at the same stop and within a few minutes we're all off. I tend to take the same route most mornings and we frequently see the same few middle schoolers on their way to their bus, then the guy who drives a big black van, then some school buses, and eventually one of my friends from church on her way to work. Obviously, there is some variation, but on the rare occasion I'm a few minutes late, it feels off when the buses or other people pass me earlier than usual.

From the train on the way to church

It was especially amusing to me this morning when a middle schooler actually called me out on our routine! As he was walking out of his house, he said "You always take this route!" Sure do! We chuckled and I explained that we walk my husband to the bus and then start our walk, so yeah, see you next week!

Malcolm did get out of quarantine last week though, so starting this weekend (when we finally have time together) we can take him on walks off base! We're looking forward to resurrecting our grocery walks tomorrow, and we hope the sky is clear enough for a view of Fuji-san before we return home.

We are also enjoying the Christmas decorations we have put up. It's our first Christmas just us, so we're having fun deciding how to spend it. For example, our tree this year is only decorated with ornaments that mean something to both of us (and a few snowflakes I received from my visiting teacher this week - a sister from church assigned to visit me each month, since our leadership has day jobs and can't be expected to reach out to everyone all the time). Per tradition, we had the First Presidency Christmas Devotional on whilst we decorated, just a week later than usual since it was live at 10am on a Monday whilst Blake was at work. We've also helped throw the church Christmas party again this year, luckily at the party room in our own apartment tower, and I sang at a fundraiser concert put on by the Japanese and American legal community.

As Blake put it - Our tree! We found it! It's small, and broken, but still good.

We tried an Italian restaurant near base - pretty good!

We finally have a balcony with an outlet so we can have outside lights! It's not much, but we have to start somewhere!

Our goal is to have our home fully decorated and set up by the new year, and we're well on our way!