Two Ducks and a Barbiea

I see the irony in the fact that I ended the last post with "maybe it won't be three months until I blog again"... But surely you had to know it would be. You've seen the pattern.

The primary reason I haven't blogged since before December is because we have done nothing worth blogging about. We went to America for ten days, but this blog isn't called Ducks in America so... And after that, we did nothing in January and February. I mean, not literally nothing, but nothing worth taking pictures of or posting about. We hardly even hung out with friends until the last few weeks - January is super busy for everyone! The only thing I really took any pictures of was our karaoke date with some friends.

But anyway, last week we did have something worth blogging about: a visitor! Donnie is one of those rare people who is good friends with both parts of the couple (both Joe and me). Friends who are married/in a serious relationship, you know what I mean. Sometimes it's hard for someone to not feel like a third wheel or to be able to do things with each individual in a couple without feeling weird. Joe and Donnie have been friends for a longer time, but Donnie and I have been friends for 7 years. We hit it off instantly. I basically lived with Joe and Donnie when they were roomies my freshman year of college - I did everything but sleep and do homework there. Anyway, the point of all of us this, since we both had to work this week, it was nice that we could each take separate days off to spend time with Donnie so he wasn't left alone for half the week.

We both took off on Friday to meet him in Osaka after his plane got in. We put our bags in lockers and jumped right into exploring Osaka. Joe and I hadn't spent any real time in Osaka since we arrived in June, jetlagged and emotional, so we were excited to be able to really enjoy that awesome city.

We headed straight to Dontonbouri, which is a big shopping and food area. It's very popular with tourists, but has a lot of really legitimately awesome things. We had fun just looking shops and eating takoyaki and drinking our Sakura lattes.

After that, we headed back to our (awesome) AirBnb to drop off our stuff and refresh before the evening. Then we headed to Tennoji where shopped a little, ate some delicious ramen and played at an arcade. We were all pretty tired that day, so we turned in pretty early.

On Saturday, we headed out pretty early and went to the aquarium. Well, we tried to head out early. It took us two hours from the time we left to get breakfast and find the apparently super secretive combo aquarium and transportation tickets. After a wild goose chase with no one seeming to know what we were talking about, we ended up at the station master's office (lol), and he handed them to us immediately. It was a little bit of a frustrating morning, but pretty typical Brittany/Joe/Donnie shenanigans.

The aquarium is pretty famous in Japan, and with good reason! It was a really good aquarium - they even have two whale sharks. I'm pretty serious about animal rights, but they really do have a huge tank and I read about their process with the whale sharks and it seems pretty responsible.... Not like keeping a whale in captivity. But I digress. We really enjoyed the aquarium, and then we watched a crazy foreigner street performer and went up in the huge Ferris wheel. I wanted the car with the glass bottom but Donnie and Joe are both wimps about heights. I have to admit that even I got a little nervous at the top of this thing though... It is HUGE! After that, we found some random cats, then headed off to Den Den Town.

The whale shark with a giant ray

Aquarium from (halfway!!!) up the ferris wheel

It was a tad scary.

Since we ended up actually got started much later than planned, we reached Den Den Town once things were starting to close. We went in a couple shops where we didn't find much, then decided to just go to karaoke instead. We ended up spending three hours at karaoke. It was a blast! Donnie and I sang too many Disney songs and Joe and I butchered some Japanese songs together. We all had lost our voices after three hours.

On Sunday, we really did get started early and headed straight to Den Den Town. We spent the whole day there, nerding out over lots of anime goods. It was super fun and Donnie came out with quite the haul.

That evening, we headed back to Fukuyama.

On Monday, Joe and I both had work. Joe ended up getting to go home before noon because a student called in a bomb threat, which is scary but worked out well for Donnie and Joe! They spent a day chilling at home together and then we all went to yakiniku together for dinner.

Tuesday, Joe and Donnie went to Hiroshima. I don't know much about that day since I wasn't there, but I think they had fun. For dinner, we got massive amounts of gyoza for carryout and played a video game together while we ate.

On Wednesday, Donnie and I went to Kurashiki together. I've posted about Kurashiki before, so I won't say much except that we had a great time exploring some more traditional things in Japan. It was a beautiful day for it, too: sunny and warm. :) Joe met us at the station for dinner and then we went back to the canal area to see the traditional lantern lighting.

On Thursday, Joe and I really did have to work. We went to ramen again for dinner. It was delicious as always.

On Friday, it was Donnie's last day. :( I always have mornings off on Fridays, so I took Donnie to buy his Shinkansen ticket. I was terrified because I knew I'd have to speak/understand only Japanese and I usually have Joe do this kind of thing. But I nailed it, guys! I was so proud of myself. Then Donnie and I went to Fukuyama castle to eat our lunch from the bakery, then went and bought Donnie a few last souvenirs.

We ended the trip with a dinner at conveyer belt sushi. A necessity for any trip to Japan!

We had such a great time with Donnie and we're sad he's gone. :( Can't wait to see you again in July, Donnie!

**Some of these pictures are Donnie's. :)

Sophomore slump or comeback of the year?

"Are we growing up or just going down...." If you recognized the title, you were probably singing it. Anyway, this post has nothing to do with Fall Out Boy, it just seemed like the perfect title and titling blog posts with "emo" song lyrics is a tribute to our youth.

LONG TIME NO BLOG, よね?

So much has happened since we last blogged in... oh, August. Almost exactly three months ago. Yikes. Sorry.

Part of the dread of blogging comes from having to upload and try to caption all of the pictures. NO MORE. I have found a solution. I will post a few highlight pictures from here on out. The rest will be in a shared Google Drive folder which I will link in each post. This drive will have every picture we have taken (on our camera, our phone photos will have to be dumped into a different one) since we came to Japan, sorted by month. It will even have the boring, unflattering and poor quality ones, but you can sift through those. :) Those who want to see all of the pictures can go there. This saves you from having to scroll endlessly on a blog page and saves me from the frustrating of uploading them into a blog post. Win, win situation. It also allows you to download them if you want to save them (I'm looking at you parents and grandparents).

September's highlight was silver week, when we got to go to Tokyo. It was an amazing trip. We had so much fun. Here are the highlights:

We started our trip in Ginza, where we are too poor to shop. It's beautiful and impressive and filled with tons of designer stores that I had never even seen in person until this trip, such as a huge Vera Bradley bridal shop. It was fun to look around for a while, but the only things we bought were at our usual inexpensive clothes stores that happened to be nearby.

That night we went to Shibuya, where the famous "scramble crossing" is. It sees more foot traffic than any other crossing in the world apparently. It's chaos. Shibuya is super fun - lots of trendy shopping, restaurants, bars, etc. We went to a super fancy cocktail bar and had the most amazing craft cocktails made from fresh, seasonal ingredients.

Day 2 we went to Asukusa and rented kimonos. We walked around the area in the them, shopping and sightseeing. It was so fun and a dream come true for me! I love kimonos. A nice gentlement took this great picture of us together, but so many people sneaked pictures of us, we felt like celebrities. We walked all the way to the Tokyo sky tree, which was also really fun. Joe was terrified, especially of the glass floor. That night we went back to Shibuya for shopping. :)

Day 3 we went to Ueno park and zoo to see the pandas (and pygmy hippos!!). After that, we spent the day in Akihabara shopping all of the anime goods. It was really fun, but we have no pictures really, because we were shopping and because you can't take pictures of most of the merchandise.

Day 4 we went on a street food tour. We ate so many delicious things, and we learned how to make green tea. It was awesome. If you want to see everything we ate, go to the photo folder. :)

Tokyo was a wonderful trip, but more importantly, our trip to Tokyo marked the end of what we now refer to as "the freshman year of Japan." You all remember the freshman first semester of college, right? You're don't know anyone, everything is new, you can't figure out how to do anything/get anywhere, you're learning how to exist in a completely unfamiliar situation... basically, you're just trying to keep your head above water and anything better than feeling completely miserable is doing pretty well. We look back now on our first two and a half months and just sigh in relief that we don't feel that way anymore. I had blogged that we were feeling settled in August, but it wasn't quite true. Joe hadn't started his job. He was more miserable than me (since he had been spending so much time just sitting at home alone before he started his job), but I was still homesick and having frequent rough days (although it is true that at that point, we were having more good days than bad).

Tokyo reminded us why we decided to travel and live abroad. It showed us another side of Japan that we hadn't seen yet. It gave us confidence that we could find ways to enjoy our time here. It was a huge relief, overall. We also had opportunities to spend more time with our new friends, especially people from our church, which helped us feel more settled and comfortable, as well.

October was a busy month. We both had our school's sports festivals (basically a giant field day, except it's a spectator event) and we went on a teacher's trip with one of my schools to Naruto whirlpools. I also went on a girls day with some friends to go to lunch, apple picking and for ice cream. At the end of the month, we made a trip to Hiroshima to visit Miyajima, where we hiked Mt. Misen and got to see the famous red tori in the sea. We also went shopping in Hiroshima for fall/winter clothes and went to CostCo to stock up on some missed American groceries (i.e. cheese, tortilla chips and peanut butter). It was a very fun, very busy month and it proved that we really were settled (FINALLY) into our new life here.

Highlight pictures:

Naruto

Joe drooled over these

November has been pretty uneventful, overall. October was so busy (we had plans every weekend) that we took a few weekends to just relax, anticipating a few very busy weeks before we go home for America. Those busy weeks kicked off with our trip to Kyoto this past weekend.

Kyoto is amazing. It is a beautiful mix of modern and historical and the city has so much character. It's a really beautiful city, with lots to see and do. We took a bus from Fukuyama to Kyoto, which is the most inexpensive way to get there. It's pretty comfortable and it's only about 3 1/2-4hrs on the bus. The bus stops every hour at a nice rest area with snacks and bathrooms, so that's no issue. When we arrived, we headed for an outdoor market at a nearby temple, where we shopped and ate some delicious food. After that, we headed to the place we were staying, which we were able to book through a connection. A friend of mine who rides the train with me knows the owner of an Italian restaurant in Kyoto who has furnished the apartment directly above his restaurant and is wanting to rent it out as a place for travelers to stay. It is a super cute little apartment in a great location - way better than a hotel. The owner is so nice, too! We ate dinner at his restaurant on Saturday night and got to talk to him quite a bit over the weekend.

That evening we went to two temples for an autumn special night opening. They light the beautiful trees from underneath and you walk around the grounds and see all the beautiful temple lights and autumn tree lights. It's gorgeous and so fun. It reminded me of going to see Christmas lights, except the temperature and the autumn foliage made it feel more like mid-October in America.

Day 2 we went to two more temples. The Golden temple was so crowded, and was my least favorite of the four we went to this weekend. Ryoan-ji was the second temple, and it is what my boss describes as a "zen" temple. It's very simple and nature-focused. The crowds are so lush and so beautiful. We got to eat in a famous restaurant on the temple grounds, tucked away in the beautiful garden. We ate yudofu, which is the only thing they serve. It is a tofu hot pot and it is insanely delicious, you guys. Like, it blew our minds and is quite possibly our favorite thing we have eaten to date in Japan (except maybe okonomiyaki, at least for me). You probably don't believe me how delicious it is, but just try. That restaurant experience was amazing, not only for the food, but for the traditional atmosphere and the insanely beautiful, serene garden view. It was probably our favorite thing we did all weekend. After that, we went to the monkey mountain. There are lots of wild Japanese monkeys on this mountain, and you can climb to the top where they are all congregating and see a beautiful view of the city, plus lots of cute monkeys. They are wild, but tame and they just walk around near you. You can't feed them unless you go into a cage and put food through a gate to feed them (they are outside the cage, in the wild), and you can't pet them. I was happy about both of these things, because I was able to enjoy seeing them while knowing they weren't being kept in cages or forced to do things they didn't want to do. That night, we ate at the Italian restaurant, which was so, so delicious. That man can cook some amazing Italian food: he is the owner, waiter and cook. His mom, who helps him out at the restaurant, was really sweet and took lots of pictures of us eating her son's food. It was really fun to talk to them and hang out in the restaurant.

Day 3, we Christmas shopped all morning in all of the awesome shops in the Gion area. It was so much fun and a nice, low-key end to the weekend. :) There aren't really pictures of our shopping day, but here is a picture of the area:

What's coming up?

This weekend I have what is called "open school" where I teach English lessons and all of the parents come to watch. After, I give a presentation in English to the parents. I am a little nervous, but it will be fun.

We have lots of holiday parties the next few weekends (with my teachers, with our church) and a few fun things scheduled with friends (sushi and karaoke night). It's a busy next few weekends, but then we get to go home to America for 10 days! We are excited to come home and can't wait to stuff our faces with pizza, real burgers (hello, American stereotypes) and our moms' home cooking. We are both ready for a break from our jobs and just to have some time to see family and friends and relax in our home country, enjoying all of the things we have missed.

I will try to blog again before three months have passed but no promises. ;)

Here is the link to all of our photos: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8CYLgZAOUTqUDMyb0thNTlGQWM&usp=sharing

またね！