Wahoo! I turn 25 today! Well, technically tomorrow because I was born in the states and Japan is like, "in the future". I'm celebrating today anyways!
Last night Ian said that I should go on Fabric.com and pick out $50 worth of fabric and yarn. Sqweee! He's too good to me. I got some more sock yarn to take him some socks and a bunch of discounted fabric. I even got some fabric for another dress! I'm so excited. I'm also going to the spa this afternoon. I hope they have air conditioning because I can't think of a better way to beat the afternoon heat than a rub down. I'm also gonna go to the post office and see if I got any mail because I'm really looking forward to the Popsicle molds that mom is sending. Who doesn't love Popsicles?
We finally bought a car from a Japanese dealer. It was a little more expensive than buying it on base but we figured that two years of JCI (it's like their carbon emissions inspection), two sets of tires, and 30 days garanteed was worth the pennies. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the car before Ian took it to work this morning. I'm a maroon station wagon - a Honda Orthia. It drives a bit like a boat, but there is room to haul things in and it's 4 wheel drive. Which is gonna come in really handy here in the winter. Think Buffalo, NY like snowfall. In Japan they drive on the left side of the road, so the cars are all backwards to. Plus there are a bunch of new signs to learn and the streets are really narrow out here.
This is what the roads and signs look like - only on base are you ever gonna see any English on them. I've got some memorizing to do. You see the red triangle sign in the back, those characters mean stop in Japanese, and often times you'll see them written on the road. You also have to stop behind certain lines. If you don't and a wide turning truck hits you, it's your fault. I'm gonna be letting Ian drive out in Japan until I can build up the courage.
I also bought a new drop leaf table. It's an English antique that this SSGT got probably on his last stationing in England. They were using it as a craft table but it's in really good condition. The best thing is that it was only $20. My grandmother thinks it might be cherry so I'm gonna clean it up real nice and use it in the studio. It's about the size of a card table when the leaves are out.
We have another awesome addition to our house! I was bumming around the antique shop here on base and I came across an antique Go board! Since this month is out 9 month anniversary (I didn't want to wait that long for the one year anniversary) and we played Go on our honeymoon (I beat Ian spectacularly after about 4 free margaritas) we bought it! Now Ian and I are reading books and looking up sites online in order to better learn the game.
This is Ian's thinking face. So a little game history. Go is a Chinese game that came to Japan and flourished for a few hundred years. It's kinda like a combination of Chess and Risk. You have a grid on which you place your pieces with a special hand gesture. The idea of the game is to capture more area of the grid than your opponent. This leads to certain groupings and configurations of pieces that can either be alive (scoring you points) or death (scoring your opponent points). You can also capture pieces and remove them from the board, but that is less common in the Japanese style of playing. Your pieces are held in a little black pot and the pieces you capture are held in the lid. It's bad manners to touch your pieces unless you know exactly where you are going to place them. Each player puts out one piece at a time and you capture pieces or groups of pieces by completely surrounding them. Like all good games it sounds really easy until you start actually playing and trying to win. I'm decent at deffence but I still haven't quite learned offense. We are gonna become Go Champions!
Anyways, off to walk the dogs. Talk to you later.
No comments:
Post a Comment