One Year Ago.

I cannot believe it's been a year already, but one year ago today Tim, Camden and I boarded a plane to Yokosuka, JAPAN. Actually, the plane took us to Tokyo, then we had to take a train into Yokosuka. Tim had to go to the US Navy Base there for work, and since he had to stay over the weekend, his company paid for me to go with him and Camden was still able to fly for free. My parents and Tim's mom took care of the other three kids while we were gone (and I don't think they want to do that again!) The flight was 10 hours over and 8 1/2 back, Camden did better than I thought he would and slept a lot of the way. The people were really nice and they absolutely LOVED Camden, they went crazy over his blond curls. We heard the word "Kawaii," which means "cute," more than anything else. Most of the Japanese people spoke some English, so we were able to communicate okay.

The train system was crazy! They'd switch tracks and switch directions all the time, we got turned around a couple of times and Tim got left behind on our way home, but luckily he caught up with us at the next station. The guy on the right is Justin. Tim worked with him on the base and he was nice enough to play tour guide while we were there.

We went into Yokohama one night and Tokyo and Kamakura over the weekend. The weather was perfect over the weekend, most of the rest of the time it was overcast and windy and rainy, and we had to walk everywhere we went.

The people don't actually dress like this. These girls had photographers following them around so they must have been doing a photo shoot of some kind.

Justin told us that more people walk through this intersection each day than any other intersection in the world!

Kamakura is a more traditional city, with temples and shrines and a huge statue of the great Budha.

The food was pretty good, as long as we stayed away from the fish -- which was EVERYWHERE (even in their baby food). I think my favorite was this little shack in one of the alleys that had little meat sticks. They had pork and chicken and "chicken balls," which were like some kind of chicken sausage, that was all I tried but they also had pork tongue and heart and liver. They clipped them on this cool little conveyor toaster oven type thing that went around on a track, then dipped them in the sauce, then went around some more. Then they put them out on the trays and people just stood there and ate them and put their sticks in these cups, and when they were done they'd take their sticks to the guy and he'd count them and tell them how much they owed. We also went to a couple of places where they bring you the meat raw and you cook it at your table. The service was great pretty much everywhere we went and there's no tipping, which I think is great :). It's considered impolite to eat while walking down the street so it was hard to find a lot of fast food.

I did a lot of shopping too, or window shopping anyway. There were at least five malls within walking distance from our hotel. The mall we went to the most near the navy base gate and one of the train stations had this cool toddler play place. Everything was padded and motorized and it was sectioned off into two layers. Our favorite part was this little room on the top where they had all of these balloons and fans hooked up outside the mesh walls so the balloons were flying everywhere.

Camden was lucky enough to celebrate his first birthday in Japan (which means he's going to be two soon!). It was tricky finding a cake since I couldn't read the labels to tell what they were made out of.

This is the hotel we stayed in, "Hello Lodge," which was actually kind of funny because the Japanese have a hard time pronouncing the "l's" so most of them called it "Herro Rodge." We stayed in their super-suite room, but it was still tiny by American standards.

This park was a block or so behind our hotel;

The Cherry Blossoms only bloom for about two weeks and we were lucky enough to catch the end of them. I took this picture from our hotel room the day after we got there: And this one before we left:

WHEW! This is officially my longest post ever. I wish I could just upload my whole photo album. It really was a great trip. I had never been out of the U.S. before. I would love to go back with all of my kids someday.