Adventures !

We had a BEAUTIFUL day in the park

This is Shibuya, the busiest cross walk in the world. Ever 3 minutes or so mass amounts of people come through. It was pretty cool to watch.

Vendors sell all sorts of things..

lol

Asakusa.. A really huge temple about 40 min away. There were tons of vendors with all sorts of weird things... As you can see a tasty little morsel below. With squid legs hanging out.

I LOVE THESE FAT GUYS!! They were almost the size of Dallin

Our cutie pie is almost 3 months old!

They have amazing Bakery's!

Imperial Palace

Hey guys :)

Life here with the Jensen family is great and exciting! We had two earth quakes this week, and I got to go to Costco!!!!!!!!!!

The Earth quakes were nothing to worry about, but man was it weird having such a big building moving. Didn't feel right at all!

Costco almost made me cry, it was just like a Costco at home, with a few weird additions. They didn't have all the normal stuff but they had enough to help us really get some good basics in the house. We even have peanut butter now! To get to the store from the parking garage you have to ride these huge escalator that was magnetic. The cart just sticks to the ramp. It was so cool! They had a food bar thingy like in America and the pizza taste normal!

IMPERIAL PALACE

We went to the Imperial Palace last Saturday, where the Emperor lives. It was freezing cold, but it was our only day to get out together so we went anyway. The whole thing is surrounded by a Moat. So cool!

Dallin turned 2 months this week! He changes so much every day its unbelievable. We cant stop watching him and his cute smiles. I just loved this picture of him and John... so cute! His neck is getting so strong!

I had to show you guys this. (Doug and Carla warned me about this)
Fruit here is OUTRAGEOUSLY priced. Not only that, its treated like royalty. Each fruit has its own little protection. As you can see the cantaloupe gets a golden case. (ok its not real gold... but still) A really good exchange rate right now is 80 cents for 100 yen. One apple is 398 yen.... We saw a cantaloupe tonight that was around $35........ It wasnt even as nicely packaged as these.

We went to this restaurant for Okonomen Yaki that was really fun, although didnt taste so good... and everyone smokes. So I was pretty worried about Dallin the whole time.
We also made something called Don budi ( once again dont count on my spelling) anyway it was onions, chicken, eggs, and a sauce we made. Don budi means mother and child. So... The chicken is the mother, and the egg is the child. Lol I thinks its pretty messed up.
I also made something called YakiNiku. SOOOO GOOD!!! Its thinly sliced beef, cooked in a really really yummy sauce, eaten with rice. I'll make it for you when we get home. After that we went to this tiny whole in the wall, where this really old man was cramped into a little area making these yummy somethings... They look cool right? You could get one with cheese in it or some kind of custard thing.
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Miss you guys!!!!!!

Fun things from Japan

We've almost made it a week!!

This post might be a little long.... I have so much to show you!!

Saturday we walked all over town. The weather was actually nice, no rain! We went to lunch with the only people I know here in Japan, Yoshi and Misa. They spoil us rotten! We decided they're going to be Dallin's Japanese Grandparents... We ate all sorts of yummy things. Fresh Ramen, Chahan, and all sorts of other things I couldn't name.

We also did some food shopping. Food is a bit more expensive here than in America, but it's not too bad. Fruit, however, is outrageous! We found the temple. It's only a 15 minute walk from our house. It's in an amazing part of town surronded by a huge park and a whole bunch of embassy's. Our church building is right next to it. The ward has about 60 people or so and was so welcoming. I have never met such friendly people!

Interesting things in Japan

At almost every block, even in the middle on neighbor hoods are these soda machines. They have warm and cold drinks. Like a warm corn drink.. yuck.. there's lots of yummy ones too though.

Every third person is wearing a mask like below. Apparently they do it more so to protect the people around them from their own sickness than anything else. So nice! 50% of the women are in a short skirt with dark tights.. lol got to love it.

I made my first Japanese meal, Yaki Soba (dont count on my spelling). It's noodles, cabbage, bean sprouts, corn, egg, chicken and the Yaki Soba sauce. I loved it! Really yummy!

I think we are really settling in and the weather is supposed to improve next month so I'm thrilled!

Dallin

And finally, last but not least, our sweet boy!!!!! He smiles constantly and has all sorts of cute baby coo's!! I love it.

Our Apartment

Time for you to get to see the humble abode we live in!

It was quite a shock when we got in. They really made it look bigger in the pictures we saw :).
At first we thought we would be living out of suit cases the whole time.. Since there are no closets. Here is what it looked like at first..


However when John went to Work on Thursday I set out to make this work some how. Here are the after pictures :) It takes about 5 steps to make it across the apartment. I used the window space above to hide the luggage in the window
Using the orange suit case as my dresser.

Here is our bathroom, they have the toilet and shower separate. The shower below is like a whole room of a shower.. does that even make sense lol. The whole room is made to get wet, there is no curtain. The toilet has two flushes, one for a little flush, one for a big flush. John says that the one at his work is pretty fancy! It automatically lifts the lid when you come in. Has a seat warmer, massage and options for flushing.




Here is our kitchen, we are also using the space under the stove to store clothes.


Here is the finished room :)



And last, the view from the balcony. We are surrounded by other apartments, although I haven't seen many people.


TILL NEXT TIME!! :)

WE MADE IT!

We made it! Things went as good as we could have hoped! Dallin was a perfect angel, barely ever peeped. Somehow we got lucky enough that the seat next to us to Japan ended up not showing up. We had three seats!

After 2 plane rides, three trains, and a taxi we made it to the apartment! We arrived here at 9 pm Wednesday , which would have been Tuesday, 5 am your time. So we hit the sack after being up since we left.