Saturday, January 5, 2008

Cute Japanese kids with their decorated cart


Check out the Pooh cart. Why don't they make these for grown-ups?


Inside the cart

That's a dog in a stroller!

You say "tamago," I say "egg."

Happy New Year---a little late! I can't believe I've already been here in Japan almost four months. Craziness. The new year is off and running. Things are getting back to normal around here. All of our decorations have been taken down and put in boxes, ready and waiting for next December. I always hate the way my home looks after the Christmas decorations go away. It's amazing how a few lights and red and green can really brighten up a place. But, we can't have a Christmas tree hanging around in our living room in July, even if it is fake.

Garbage collection resumed today, thank goodness! It was quite the gathering down at the collection point this morning. They haven't been collecting garbage since December 30 because of the new-year holiday, and the whole neighborhood has been storing their garbage up for today. There was hardly any room to put my bag, and this elderly man was pretty annoyed because people hadn't been pushing their garbage back far enough to allow for other people to put theirs in. Or at least that's what I could figure out from his hand gestures and conversation he was having with two other women this morning!

Zach is working a 24-hour shift today, but I've been pretty spoiled these last few weeks because he's been home several days and it's been really nice. He'll go back to his regular schedule this week. We got out of the house yesterday and did some shopping at two local malls. One of them is called Oak City Mall and we've never been there before. I was tortured because there were at least three LARGE Sanrio stores (they make Hello Kitty stuff for those of you who don't know) and even though Zach was very sweet and patient, I didn't get to spend nearly enough time in them. I plan to go back on my own or with another Hello Kitty fanatic in the future. :-)

While we were at the malls, I took some photos of fun stuff we saw. At Oak City, they offer these carts with decorations on them for kids to sit in. They were everywhere! I know they have similar ones in the states, but these carts were decked out with all kinds of entertaining stuff. At Grandberry Mall, I was hoping to take a bunch of pictures of Dachsunds since the place was just loaded with them the last time I was there, but there were only a few dogs this time. I snapped a photo of a woman with her dog in a stroller. You see that a lot here. People really love their dogs.

We also walked by a McDonald's at Grandberry Mall, and their newest creations are these hamburgers with loads of meat, and one of them has egg ("tamago" means "egg" in Japanese) on it. I of course had to take a photo of this as well, and Zach couldn't resist being goofy. :-)

Well, that's it for today. Take care.