Time At The Park

Today was a gorgeous day. It was around 70 degrees. I love those days, not to hot and not to cold. Just perfect to go to the park and have fun. This is one of Vann's favorite parks to go to because it has a big slide. He loves to slide it is his favorite thing to do when we go play. As soon as Vann realized we were at the park he took off. Of course straight to the slide. I could have called that! He was up and down before Tony and I could get over to him. I don't know who has more fun Tony or Vann. Tony always has to try out the toys. I am sure his excuse is that he is making sure it is safe for Vann. Oh well. Vann enjoys when either Tony or I play with him on the toys. It amazes me how well Vann can climb the ladder up to the slide. For some reason almost every Japanese kid that tried to climbed up there had trouble. I don't know why. Also all of the kids where much older then Vann. I guess I just have a very good climber on my hands. I don't know if that is good or bad. Most of the time I think it is scary. He is not afraid of anything. He is my little dare devil, I hate to see what he is going to be like when he gets older. After playing at the park we headed back to the hotel so that we could cook lunch before Tony had to go to work.

Yokosuka's Spring Festival

Sunday there was a festival on base. It was open to the public. It started at 9:00am but we didn't make it there until 11:00. We were still exhausted from the day before. As we were walking towards base we noticed a huge crowd of people walking right along with us. I was kind of scared that it was going to take us a long time to get on to base considering there were so many people. As we reached the base gate we realized that the public did not go in the same entrance that we used. We walked to the other side of base so that we could tour on of the Japanese ships. It was pretty cool to get to go on a Japanese ship and see how different it is from ours. When we finished touring the ships we headed back to where the festival was being held so that we could get something to eat. There were a ton of food vendors but the lines were really long. See Japanese people don't get American food very often and if they do it is really expensive. The Japanese people love when they open up the base. We saw a ton of people walking around with entire pizza's. There were a few people with multiple pizza's. I thought it was kind of funny. So I decided to get a hot dog for lunch considering you cant just get a regular hot dog here so it was kind of nice to have one. Vann also had a hot dog, this time with no bun. Out in town because of the language barrier I can never order Vann a hot dog with no bun. Tony had a beef kabob. Tony wishes he would have gotten a hot dog because the beef on the kabob was really tough. When we finished lunch we took Vann over to the fire truck so that he could sit inside. He didn't want to get out. He through a fit as usual and kept saying, truck, truck as he cried. Vann then was able to dress up like a fireman, He was so cute! After our fun time impersonating a fireman we went and bought tickets for the bounce house. Vann had a lot of fun but didn't want to spend the whole time jumping. When he got out he had his first taste of cotton candy. He didn't know what to think at first but he quickly realized he liked it very much. By this time Tony and I were ready for a nap and it wasn't even 2:00. We walked over to the Commissary so that we could get some groceries before we went back but on the was over there we saw the drummers packing up there drums. We were kind of bummed that we missed the drummer show because Vann has had an interest in drums lately. We walked over to them because we saw that they were letting people take pictures with them and I thought that it would be cute to get Vann's picture taken with them. As we got over there we got more then a picture one of the drummers brought one of the drums out and let Vann play it. Vann loved it and I thought it was nice that the drummer did that for us. We finally made it to the Commissary for Tony to tell me he forgot his orders and we couldn't get in. We then jumped in a cab and called it a day.

This is how the Japanese keep their rope on their ship.

Check out this face. Cotton Candy for the first time!

Trains, Cable Cars, Gondolas, Ships, and Buses

Saturday we went up to Hokone, which is at the base of Mt. Fuji. It took us about two hours to get there and we rode 6 trains. I was so sick of trains by the time we got there it wasn't funny. We stopped in Odawara on the way there so that we could go check out a castle. It was not the type of castle I was expecting. They had monkeys there a long with an elephant. Vann was asleep for the entire adventure. Tony and I got to dress up while we were there. Tony dressed up like a Samurai and I dressed up in a kimono. There were a ton of people that took our picture while we were all dressed up. I felt kind of weird but whatever. After we finished we headed back down to the train so that we could ride for another hour. Once we got to the next destination we jumped off the main train and had to take a smaller train that was designed to do switch backs up the mountain. We rode that train as far as it would go then we got on to a cable car to get up the rest of the mountain. I was already exhausted and knew that we hadn't really reached our main destination. When we got to the top of the mountain, we still weren't done. We then took a huge gondola across the mountain so that we could get to the hot spring guicers. It was kind of weird riding the gondola because you first are surrounded by trees and forest and then you pop over the other side of the mountain and you feel like you are in the Grand Canyon. When we got off the gondola we were all starving so we had lunch as soon as we got there. The place that we were at was known for there black eggs. Yes eggs that you eat. The boil the eggs in the sulfur water which causes them to turn black. By eating a black egg it is said to add seven years to your life. Everyone ate there egg except me. It was a soft boiled egg, I tried to eat it but it was a little under cooked for my liking. Oh well I really don't need to live seven years longer. We got on another gondola when we finished at that stop and rode to the other side of the mountain. We we reached that destination we jumped on a pirate ship that was turned into a ferry. We rode across the lake and got on a bus to take us back to the train station. We ended up catching the wrong bus. We were suppose to get an express bus to the train station instead we got the bus that stopped at all of the stops along the way. The bus ride was not fun at all. It was a really windy rode and I was starting to get sick. We ended up getting off before we were going to and decided to jump on the train. We had to take another four trains before we made it back to our original station. I have never been so happy to be back in Yokosuka. In fact I am exhausted just writing about what we did. Vann was a trooper and loved everything.

Here is the castle that we saw. Definitely not what I was expecting.Here is Tony and I all dressed up.

Here is the Gondola, and us inside the gondola.Here is the hot spring guicers.

Here is the black egg!It was so windy I thought that we were going to blow away.

Here is the group of people that went with us.

Skyland?

So yesterday we went to a mall off of Blue Street. We actually went to go get something from the bakery in the basement. When we got in the elevator we started reading everything there was on the other floors. Tony wanted to go check out all of the kitchen items. We began heading up to the fifth floor where the kitchen section was when we read skyland on the top floor. We decided to head up there to see what it was. As the elevator doors opened I could tell we were going to be in trouble. It was a huge game and rides area outside on top of this mall. It was pretty cool but I knew that Vann was gonna go crazy. Sure enough I don't think that he could have gotten out of the stroller fast enough. He was off, from one ride to the other. Tony decided to ride the train ride with him. Of course he loved it and wanted more. We tried to get him to ride one of the bumper cars but for some reason it wasn't working right. I thought Tony was to big and weighing it down. We were both kind of disappointed considering the ride was two dollars. As we started to head off to a different ride an attendant rushed over to the car opened it up and gave us our money back. I was very great full. That is one bad thing about the language barrier, you cant always tell anyone what is wrong. We ended up riding a couple more rides and then decided it was time to leave before we spent to much money. Vann through a huge fit. The elevator could have come any faster, we needed to get out of there.

Tokyo's Black Market and The Ueno Zoo

Saturday night none of us slept good because Vann ended up catching a cold or something. I think that I managed to get 3 hours of sleep if that. Tony said that we weren't going to worry about going anywhere on Sunday since we all didn't sleep good and Vann didn't feel good. We ended up waking up at regular time and Vann was doing okay, not great but okay. I told Tony that we shouldn't waste the day since we only get two days to go sight seeing. We headed out towards Tokyo to go to the Black Market. It was suppose to be all the knock off brands. I was really excited but when we got there both Tony and I were not very impressed. Everything was still really expensive. As we walked down the street we stopped by a coffee shop to take a break and go over the map of the area. We knew that the Ueno Zoo was close so we headed off to find it. All of the cherry blossoms are just starting to come into bloom so the park was packed with people taking in the great view of all the trees. We made it down to the zoo and I could not believe how big the zoo really was. Very different then the other zoo we went to. This zoo was so big it was broken up into two parts. You could take a small monorail from one side of the park to the other. The line was pretty long so we ended up walking to the other side. It wasn't that far plus there was a lot to see on the walk down. Vann was really excited to see all of the different kinds of animals. This zoo had hippos and Vann went crazy. He tried to say hippo but he kept calling them pippos. In fact after we got down seeing the hippos he thought every animal that he say was a hippo. We had a great time despite our disappointment with the black market.

Tony and I thought that this sign was funny.