An Ode to Arizona

Arizona is home to some of the finest folks over 65

They excel in many things like walking their dogs, playing card games and bingo, sitting outside and gossiping, complaining, golfing, going to lunch, swimming, more complaining, giving you their left over food, making weekly newsletters, and complaining again.  There is nothing they cannot do...except kill spiders, work their air conditioner, work their TV remote, find their keys, work their car alarms, swim in a slightly cool swimming pool, sit in a slighty too hot hot tub, work their sink and bathtub drains, work their toilets, change a light bulb, open their mailbox, keep their freezer freezing, and pick up their dog poop.

Thank you Arizona for getting too hot every summer so we may be graced with their presence from May until August!

And Thank you Logan for staying at the perfect temperature for these sun birds

I have one month to prepare myself for another eventfull summer here at Cambridge Court, home to some of the funniest and most annoying old people I've ever met!

Japan Day 8

On Friday we went to a cafe type restaurant where you can cook your own meat at the table.  These types of restaurants are pretty common in Japan.  They had some types of sushi that were a block of rice and just a piece of raw fish laid over top ( I know it has a different name then sushi, but I can't remember it... I think it sashimi...sp?).  Anyway I chickened out and didn't try any, but Clark tried a salmon and a shrimp one.  YUCK is all I have to say!  I'm okay with never ever trying raw fish.  The ginger noodles were my favorite.  Raw ginger however was not my favorite, it basically tasted like I was eating some sort of chemical!

Here we are at the Cafe showing how tiny their cups are!  Japan does not have a size Large in anything, and that is why none of the people are a size Large!  Plus they ride bikes everywhere, it is awesome.

After lunch Clark & I along with the whole family went to Showa Park!  It was a really cool park similar to a Central Park in NY.  It was close to their house and you could rent bikes and ride all over the park!  This was one of my favorite days, it was so pretty and we got some good exercise.

Okay so they had these funny "marshmallow" jumping things.  Or at least that is what we called them.  They are crazy, you would never see these in America.  Basically kids everywhere jumping on giant white bouncy hills.  It was like they had air underneath them but not like a trampoline if that makes sense.  If you jumped on the very top, you could get really high!

Here is Clark getting some serious air on the "marshmallow"  These Japanese girls were loving it!  They would scream and get all excited when he would go really high.  

They had these giant dragons made out of stone that you could climb all over.

After the marshmallows and the dragons we went to this crazy slide.  It was a "roller slide" which is what we called it.  As you would go down the tubes would roll and push you along.  It kinda hurt and if I tried to bend my legs it hurt my bum even worse!  That is why I'm making that face, it hurt (You can see Jaydon had a hurt bum too!)

The cute Pierson Family!  We are so glad they let us come for a visit, we had so much fun with them! I wish we could go back again.

This is the sweet bike we rode around on!  It was my first time on a tandem bike, and it was so much fun.  We want to get one for ourselves and ride it around Logan!  I think I liked it because Clark did most of the work, it was an easy ride for me.  His little niece Kamryn took a turn on the tandem because she was tired, so I rode a regular bike for awhile and I almost died!  I was out of shape, and I'm realizing I'm not the best bike rider... I'm a little shaky and wobbly!  This is why I need a bicycle built for two.

*None of the pictures will go bigger when you click on them, so sorry if they are hard to see.  I don't know why some do it, and others don't. I didn't want to have to re-upload the pictures in a larger size, I just always do medium.  If anyone knows how to make them get bigger when you click on the picture, let me know!

Japan Day 7

I'm still not done documenting the trip.  I will eventually get to day 10 I promise! I just finished writing a 12 page paper so I decided to take a blogging break.

This was a Thursday and we had a full day of fun.  We first drove to see Mt. Fuji.  I wish it wasn't covered in snow, because that would be a fun mountain to climb.  I guess we will just have to go back in the summer!

The view from the visitors center

Leaving Mt. Fuji

After Mt. Fuji they took us to some really neat waterfalls!  I'm not sure if they have a name, but they were sweet.

Next we went to an Onsen (hot spring).  The name of the Onsen was Yunessun (Are you confused yet). It was up in the mountains in a really cool town.

They had a lot of different pools, and some had certain themes.  They had a "wine" pool that was a purple/red color, they had a "green tea" one that was green.  The one below is the Sake pool.  That big thing was really dripping Sake into the water... it was a small amount but if you got right up to it you could smell it!

I don't have a good picture of it, but there was a pool that you could stick your feet in and all these little fish would come and eat the dry skin from your feet!  It tickled so bad and kinda freaked me out!  I really don't like fish, and even though they were tiny it felt weird to have them all over my feet.

Happy Birthday Clark

Today is Clark's 24th birthday and it just isn't a birthday without a birthday blog!

Here he is touching Mt. Fuji

"Truck Driver"-- I guess that is what the trick is called! This is why I get nervous every time he goes skiing, and he usually comes home with bruises and some "close call" stories.  We are heading up today to ski the beav one last time... or as my family would say our "second to last time"

This is what he does when he can't ski... Plays soccer for Utah State (He is #9)

This is what he does when soccer is over, and you can't go skiing yet... he hunts and grows an awesome mustache for the deer hunt!

This is what he does when I bug him about building me something, He turns into a "wood man"  I LOVE this talent the most, since I get beautiful furniture out of it!

But seriously Clark is the most talented person I know.  He can basically do anything, and I'm not kidding.  I'm not going to get all mushy cause thats not me, but I do love my cute little hubby and I'm so grateful for all of his many talents.  Because he is such a handy man, we have a place to live for free and a job!

Japan Day 6

On Wednesday we went skiing to Hakuba Goryu!  It was somewhere near Nagano, but I couldn't tell you for sure where we were!  It was a 4 hour bus ride from the Air Base.  We were so excited to go skiing, even if the snow was a little icy.  It was typical spring skiing with hard icy snow under some fresh snow. I had a rough start after waking up at 3 am to get on the bus at 3:30 and riding 4 hours to the mountain.  Plus I was sick and a little hungry, but once I found a Pepsi (they didn't have Dr. Pepper so I took what I could get) I felt a lot better.

Here we are so EXCITED to be skiing in Japan!

On the chair lift.  Notice our rented skis... we definitely missed our nice skis at home. It was a little hard getting used to different skis, but we made it work.

Clark & Brad on the Goryu Express!

Clark showing off his skills for the Japanese!  Everyone over there snowboards (they haven't quite learned that skiing is way better!).  Clark got a few cheers from a group of people at the bottom of the jump.

In front of a sign telling us where to go... we had no idea what it said!  We eventually found our way to the bottom.  The only bad part about skiing in Japan is they have all of this nice terrain & powder through the trees and all of it is OFF LIMITS!  You can only stay on the groomed runs.  I guess they don't want to have to rescue you when you crash or get lost!

And we're back

I have been slacking on my blogging lately because I've been busy with school, but I decided to put off my homework and do a post about Day Number 5 before I forget what we did.  I'm mostly doing these posts so I can remember what we did while we were over there, so you can skip them if you want.

Tuesday we just spent the day hanging out and touring the neighborhood off of base.  We picked up Brynly who goes to a Japanese school (she is the only American child and they all speak Japanese. I don't think she even knows the names of the kids in her class!). We went to the outlet stores where they have pretty cheap stuff.  It is all stuff you can find at American malls like a Nike store, Roxy, Billabong, Addidas, etc. Then we went to Joyful Honda!  I thought it was a car dealership at first but it is actually like a Wal Mart superstore mixed with Home Depot.  They had everything there, and it was fun to just walk around and look at stuff.  It was not as crowded as a real Wal Mart so that was nice!  I still don't understand why it is called Joyful Honda?  

Here we are on base, with Mt. Fuji in the background (it is the one covered in snow behind the other mountains).  This is there view of Mt. Fuji, however you can only see it on a clear day in the winter.  In the summer it gets too humid and smoggy to see it! 

(I'm a little embarrassed about the pictures of me on this trip... I was sick and I LOOK SICK in every picture, blah)

We actually didn't see these Buddhas on this particular day but I thought they were cool.  And very typical of Japanese scenery!  We even found this Baby Buddha, I thought he was cute!