Reo/Leo, the jumping cat

Another video starring the funniest, cutest cat in the world, Reo.

(Video is offline.)

Japanese Cowboy English

I was watching TV a few days ago (which is actually fairly rare) and I happened to see this show on public television. I don't know if the cowboy is a regular character from the show, but the kids in the video really liked him. If you are curious about creative English lessons for kids on Japanese TV, take a look...
(The audio is bad, sorry; I just took a video of the TV, and the sound was turned down too low.)

(Video is offline.)

Leo / Reo

Some of you have already heard: there is a new feline family member at the Kusaka family house. This video was taken right before we went to Hawaii, and he's actually much bigger now. Reo is a usual name in Japanese (pronounced something like "Ray-Oh" in English), but in English you could also transliterate it as "Leo" (as in "Leo the Lion").
He's a pretty typical kitten, and loves to play in baskets, boxes, bags, clothes, papers, . . . well, he just loves to play.
(I muted the original sound, which had no interesting cat noises or dialog, and inserted part of Haydn's "Surprise Symphony", just so it wouldn't be silent.)

(Video is offline.)

Hawaii Trip Day Two

The second day of our trip was mostly eating, relaxing, walking on the beach, and more eating! After a leisurely morning, we made plans to meet Nozomi's mother and sister for lunch. They rode the shuttle bus to our condominium and then we walked together to a nearby restaurant. The food was delicious (with huge, American-sized servings; most of us couldn't finish ours) and we had casual conversation and made jokes in English, Japanese, and Japanglish. On the walk back to the condominium we found what might have been the favorite 7-11 store of Hawaiian pigeons. We also enjoyed seeing beautiful flowers lining the streets everywhere we went, and stopped to take a picture that was supposed to be scenic, but turned out to be a little bit comic ("Rob, why is your head magically floating in those flowers?").
Back at our place, we shared the family history pictures that we had prepared. My mother showed photos of me, my siblings, parents, cousins, nephews, grandparents, aunts and uncles! Nozomi, her mother and her sister shared family pictures that we brought from Japan, and then we surprised everyone with a DVD that Nozomi and I had transferred from old Super 8 movies. The "stars" were Nozomi and the rest of her family when she was about 5 years old. There were scenes from the house where they grew up, a school sports day from kindergarten, and the Sapporo Snow Festival. Later that afternoon, we enjoyed a walk on the beach before and during sunset.
In the evening, we all met up again for dinner. Our meals were delicious, even though the coconut shrimp was so sweet that it tasted more like coconut-shrimp donuts... Nozomi's sister, Kaoru, and my mother have birthdays only one day apart in March, so we surprised them both with waiters singing "Happy Birthday" and mini birthday sundaes.
Back at our place one more time after dinner, we watched fireworks from our lanai (veranda). From our ninth-floor room, we could just get a view of the Hilton Hotel's show across the street. The following two days we had wonderful tours provided by Nozomi's Honolulu cousin and her husband, so that's up next...

Hawaii Trip Day One

The first day of our trip started much more calmly than previous trips to America, mostly because the flight left much later in the day. We had a rather relaxing morning making final preparations and then after lunch we took the airport bus from Utsunomiya station to Narita. Nozomi's mother rode with us, and she and Nozomi had a long talk together. Even at the airport we had a stress-free time; since we were on China Airlines, we left from Terminal One instead of Terminal Two (which seems to be much busier usually-most of the international flights leave from Terminal Two). Going through security was even easy; no line and friendly staff that said not to bother taking off my shoes and belt-WOW! (My experience waiting in ridiculously long security lines in the airports in Hawaii later is another story...) The flight was uneventful (I watched the new Muppet Movie on the plane-pretty fun!) and it was interesting hearing the flight attendants use Chinese, Japanese or English depending on who they were talking to. The only negative was just before landing I started to get a headache and plugged ears. After getting off the plane I had either a hay fever attack or a cold, I'm still not sure which, and the Honolulu airport has NO amenities other than a Starbucks outside the security gate. It's laughably bad. But, we were in Hawaii, so I couldn't complain TOO much.
After meeting up with my family, we found the car rental office and drove to our condominium. (Nozomi's mother and sister were on a different flight, part of a package deal, so the shuttle bus took them to their hotel separately.) After a bit of relaxing, we drove to their hotel for the first meeting of Nozomi's and my parents. In the first pictures, you can see us exchanging gifts after greeting each other, and then a couple of posed pictures outside their hotel. Everyone was happy to finally meet each other and carefully selected gifts were exchanged. My mother commissioned my sister-in-law to custom make some beautiful tote bags for the members of Nozomi's family; you can see one in the picture if you look carefully. Nozomi's mother brought some hand-made dragonfly brooches that my mother loved. Later in the evening, we met again for a short time at the beach between where we were staying and watched the sunset together. We returned to the condo and hotel to recover from jet lag and get ready for the next day's adventures.

Another Beautiful Waikiki Sunset

Today we hiked to the top of Diamond Head near Waikiki Beach and got a wonderful view from the top; I'll post pictures of that later, but for now here is a video I took last night just after sunset. We were taking a walk along the beach and paused to watch the sun go down.

(Video is offline.)

THE ANSWER: We are in . . .

Of course, the answer is: Cleveland, Ohio, USA! Just kidding; we are in Honolulu!
Yesterday was an all-day trip to the big island for a volcano tour, but that post will be later.
This morning we went to New Hope Church for a wonderful service and also met some friends there. Later we had a delicious lunch (and you can see a picture of Nozomi enjoying a delicious beverage). After that we went to Hilo Hattie's for some shopping, took a mini tour of Waikiki, stopped at an amazing, historical hotel (the first one in Waikiki) and watched the sunset from the beach. Another great day!

Where in the world are we?

...so continuing from my last post: here are five pictures to help you guess where we are. Yeah, I know, most of you already know. But if you didn't already hear, send me your guesses if you want (and yes, it's pretty obvious from the pictures, I think....)

Tokyo Sky Tree

The Tokyo Sky Tree was finished last month on February 29th. It doesn't officially open for a few more weeks, but the tickets to go to both the lower and upper observatory decks are sold out through sometime later in the summer according to some reports. As you can see, it is incredibly tall.

I took this picture from the bus on the way to Narita airport. Hmm.... I wonder where Rob & Nozomi are going.......
More later...

A new family member

Welcome to a new member of the family. He arrived last week. His name is Reo (Leo) and he is a three-month-old Scottish Fold kitten. Nozomi´s sister bought him, but he's living at Nozomi´s parents´ house right now. He is mecha gucha kawaii (crazy cute).

Egg-zactly what I needed to make me laugh...

My funny, creative wife put some artistic creations in the refrigerator...

03.11 Memorial Service

Sunday afternoon singers and musicians from Minemachi Church had the opportunity to play at a concert to remember the victims of last year's earthquake and tsunami. It was a great time, and we were able to pray and share a message of hope with the people who attended.

P.S. About those sunglasses... the stage where we played is outdoors, and at my angle the sunlight was in my eyes. I'm really NOT trying to look cool. REALLY. (Well, OK, maybe a LITTLE...)

Beverly Hills Burger

I thought about making a video with "Axel F Theme" playing in the background, but you can add the music mentally if you want...
This was my favorite Big America Burger so far! It has avocado sauce, white cheesy sauce and fried onion pieces on a quarter pounder patty with cheese and a fried egg. I think McDs burgers are usually too dry; this one has LOTS of sauce so that's a plus for me. Like I asked about the other special edition burgers, "what connection does this have with Beverly Hills?". Again, I have no idea, but this is the only special edition burger that actually made me think I want to go back and have another.
As always, advertising pictures look better than the real thing, but here's what it REALLY looked like:

The Chickens Are Back...

...well, maybe they didn't really go anywhere.
The weather today was suddenly much warmer, so I took a short walk in the neighborhood this afternoon. The chickens looked happy (at least I imagine they were). The last time I saw them was many weeks ago.
I also saw some of the street cats at the dormitory next to the neighboring church. One of the sisters was outside the back door feeding the cats and talking to them. It would have been a great picture, but I felt a little rude taking a picture without asking since I was so close, so you'll have to imagine...

Cheese, Wonderful Cheese!

This was part of Nozomi's gift to me on Valentines Day. The apple pie cheese sounds strange, but it was actually delicious!

Snowy Day

It's been snowing all morning and doesn't look like it's going to stop soon. Right now, the snowflakes are huge!
I drove Nozomi to work this morning and took this video. The music is "Snowflakes Are Dancing" by Debussy. (No, I didn't hold the camera while I was driving!)

(Video is offline.)

Random pictures

The new Big America burger, The Broadway Burger, has been "released", so I'll go try it soon and give my review. First, here are a couple of random pictures...
I think I've commented on this before, but in case you missed it the first time... Mister Donut is REALLY popular here, and just had an anniversary celebration featuring Peanuts characters. Many people here call it "MisDo". I never knew Mister Donut in America; apparently most of the stores were in the Eastern U.S., and according to Wikipedia, there's only one left in all of the USA. I think it's odd that it started in America, but has all but disappeared there, but is now hugely popular throughout Asia.
The second picture: did you know that lemon steak flavored potato chips were American style? (Me neither.) The package says "California style steak flavor". What do you think, Californians?
It tasted like, uh, potato chips with a cold, greasy lemony beef aftertaste. Yeah, not so good...

McD's America-Themed Japanese All-American Hamburgers

McDonald's is having their annual promotion for the third year in a row (at least, maybe longer)--THE BIG AMERICA BURGERS! Last year featured cities and states (the one I thought was funniest was the Idaho burger; it had a hash brown stacked inside the sandwich). This year, the burgers are named after cities, landmarks and streets. First up was the Grand Canyon Burger. Any guesses what the Grand Canyon tastes like? Yeah, I couldn't really imagine that one either, and I'll guess we'll have to keep wondering because that one finished yesterday. Today I tried the Las Vegas Burger. It had a QuarterPounder patty plus shredded, spiced beef, lettuce, and a cream cheese based sauce. What does that have to do with Las Vegas? I have no idea. It was OK, but I liked last year's Miami Burger much better; it tasted like a taco burger, and if you've been reading my blog for a while, you know how much I miss Mexican food, even if it's a Japanese-American-Tex-Mex approximation.

Joyful Christmas 2011

As many friends have already said, the Joyful Christmas concert went very well and was a blessing! A professional video company will produce a DVD, and because of a better plan for recording the sound, the audio quality will be much higher than previous DVDs that have been made. I'm looking forward to seeing it soon!
I mentioned after the last Joyful Christmas that the view that the performers have from the stage is amazing when the audience lights the glowsticks. Here's a short video from my perspective during the song "Silent Night".

(Video is temporarily offline.)

Merry Christmas!

Nozomi & I wish you all a wonderful Christmas season filled with peace, blessings and God's love.
Merry Christmas!