Merii Kurisumasu

Merry Christmas from Japan! 

 Last year, our little family was apart on the 25th, so this year we were happy to all be together in Sasebo. We celebrated by getting the largest tree the base had to offer - it is about 8 feet tall! Nathan promised it would fit on our raised tatami area and after a little trimming to fit the angel on top, he was right.

The Japanese celebrate Christmas for fun here. Wilson's school had a pool party with Santa and they sent home gifts with the boys. Here is Wilson singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Japanese.

We spent the month chasing Santa around town. The boys were really into Santa this year, so it was sweet watching them react to all of our sightings. Only Archie was a little underwhelmed. 

I got a few pictures of the more exotic places we saw him.

Christmas Eve was our most exciting Santa day as we saw Skinny Santa scuba diving at the aquarium and then on the way home we passed some Biker Santas out for a ride.

It was Archie's first Christmas this year. In typical Archie fashion, he smiled his way through the day.

We had a big ham dinner all ready to cook and enjoy but at the last minute decided to go to our favorite sushi place down the street. Who likes doing dishes on Christmas anyway??

We had a wonderful, low-key Christmas here in Japan. Of course we also spent time thinking about loved ones across the globe. We put in a lot of time on Skype trying to celebrate with family in the States.

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

Origami

I've taken up the Japanese art and have been having some fun with it! After dabbling with a few cranes last Christmas, I've now moved on to dinosaurs. We handed some kits out in the party favor bags for Leo's birthday, so I thought I'd give them a try.

Here's my stegosaurus. I'm pretty proud of him.

I've been working on T-Rex all morning, but he's turning out to be a real beast.. 

Yay for origami - it's a lot of fun!

Leo's 3!

 This little party animal turned three on the 18th and had a great time celebrating.

Although he and Wilson have been obsessed with pirates for almost a year, someone wanted to make lion cupcakes so a circus theme prevailed. Not sure how much longer I can push the lion birthdays! He does still claim them as his favorite animal, so that's a win...

Anyway, here's Leo and his buds Quentin and Parker hanging out in the circus tent. This tent made it around the room a few times and was seldom upright - so I think it was a hit!

The kids loved the animals Nathan spent an hour blowing up before the party. Well worth the effort, honey!

We played a few games.

This game was like hot potato where if you end up with the lion it eats you and you're out.

A Corley favorite, drop straws, is featured above. I did not get a picture of musical chairs because it got a little intense. Still fun, but referees were definitely needed!

Mom steals a hug from the birthday guy!

Archie was a big hit and got some love from all the ladies at the party. Here was his youngest fan, cutie Tessa. 

Leo sure loved ripping into his presents. Here are some hand painted pirates from one of our artistic friends. They are so cute! ( she has her own etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/brushquibblies )

We had a big turn out! Most of the kids made it into this picture.

Leo was still partying at bedtime with his new Jake doll. 

Happy Birthday, big guy! Thanks for making us laugh every day by being your silly self. We love you, Leo!

Hiroshima

 We made our first trip to Hiroshima in October. It is about five hours north of us on the southern part of Honshu. Hiroshima is a beautiful and modern city that has rebuilt its downtown and made a wonderful peace park where the atomic bomb hit in 1945.

Here we are with Genbaku Dome in the background. It is the only building that remained after the bomb. 

We visited the very large and well done museum. One of the things I found most touching were some of Sadako's cranes. Sadako was a girl who was injured at the age of two by the atomic bomb and died when she was twelve from the effects. Before she died, she tried to make 1,000 cranes which the Japanese believe will give you a wish. Her wish was going to be to live. She didn't make it and her classmates finished the 1,000 cranes for her. Now, the crane is the symbol of peace for the park and many paper cranes are sent and brought to both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace parks by school children. Below are some cranes in the museum at Hiroshima that were folded by Sadako herself.

A popular children's book here is called Shin's Tricycle. It's a true story written about 3 year old Shin who died in the bombing while riding his tricycle. Here is Wilson with his book and Shin's tricycle behind him. The book is beautifully written and helped us explain to Wilson in as much of a kid-friendly way as possible what happened at the place we were visiting.

After the atomic bomb site, we explored a little more of Hiroshima. Here is Aunt Judy explaining the traditional steps to praying at a shrine.

We walked to Hiroshima Castle, which was a nice little castle with beautiful grounds.

The inside of the castles always have a small museum to view while you are climbing to the top. Hiroshima Castle had some cool samurai outfits for the boys to try on.

We had a great time discovering Hiroshima and will certainly be back!

Miyajima

Itsukushima is an island off the coast of southern Honshu and more popularly known as Miyajima meaning sacred island. It is famous for its many shrines and one of the top three most beautiful views of Japan, the floating torii arch. The arch is said to date back to around the year 600 and the current arch is from the mid-16th century. The island is so sacred that they do not allow births or deaths there. It's also a UNESCO World Heritage site. We've been wanting to visit since we moved here. It's about a five hour drive north of Sasebo and with the tolls involved we knew we'd need to make a long weekend trip up there. We found the perfect chance when we decided it would be a great place to meet my parents and aunt who were coming south on the Shinkansen, or bullet train, from Kyoto. We spent a whole day on the island and it was fabulous!

There is a short 15 minute ferry ride to the island.

We were excited pulling up on the ferry that it was low tide and we could walk out to the arch. The "floating torii" only "floats" during high tide.

The boys had fun walking up and touching the torii. Tourists stick 100 yen pieces on the base. You can see some near the boys.

It was pretty crowded as everyone comes to the torii during low tide to get a closer look.

The streets of Miyajima are quaint and very crowded! They sold many special treats such as pastries shaped like maple leaves. We liked them.

The island has tons of sacred deer that just roam free. They are cute and tame.

We liked the sacred deer a lot until we got lunch on the go and the deer wanted in on it. Here grandma Shirley uses her umbrella to gently encourage the sacred deer to scram.

There were many shrines on the island. Behind Leo here is the main floating shrine. There's a couple mile loop that takes you through different streets on the island for shopping and eating. There was also a beautiful five story pagoda that I'm not quite sure how I left the island without photographing. 

We had a great day at Miyajima. It is definitely one of our favorite spots we have visited in our whole time here. We'll be back!

Corley family visits!

My family visited for the month of October and we had a ball. My dad, mom and aunt flew into Tokyo on the first of the month a spent 10 days exploring Tokyo, Kyoto and many other places around those cities. For Columbus Day weekend, the boys and I headed to Hiroshima to meet up with them for some more sightseeing there and to take them back to our house. By the time we met up, they had seen and done so much already. Mid-month my brother, Clifford, who is newly out of the Marines came to join the fun for three weeks. We did a lot of stuff around Sasebo and with the kids. We also took off on a road trip to see the lovely city of Kagoshima and some sumos :) More to come - my post would take days to read if I included all the details here!!

We had a great time with our house full of Corleys!

Yochien

Our beloved Kurinomi Yochien got a new student...

...and boy is he happy about it!

Leo started at Kurinomi this week. We've been talking it up for quite a while and he's just had the best first week of school. Every day he wakes up excited to go. He comes home talking about his friends, new toys, swimming class and his sensei. So far, Leo's loving everything.

Wilson loves to walk Leo to his classroom to drop him off. When I picked Leo up the other day, his sensei told me she saw Wilson peeking in the classroom window during Leo's nap time. I might have peeked in on him the first day, too...

Leo already knows a few Japanese words and phrases and we're still waiting to hear more. So far, we're just happy that he's enjoying it so much. 

Good job going to yochien, Leo.

We're so excited about this new adventure for you!

Hawaii (again!)

 

Leo, Archie and I headed back to Hawaii for two weeks in early September. Leo had a few routine appointments with the specialists at Tripler Hospital and Archie and I got to tag along. I was nervous to do the nine hour flights with two kids, but minus a pretty rough trek from the plane to the rental car to the hotel when we first landed, the boys proved to be wonderful travelers.

Here's Archie celebrating his first trip to the United States. Hawaii - not a bad choice, Archie! I told him the entire U.S. is this fabulous :)

It was nice being in Oahu again because it is so small that it was so easy to get around this time. I didn't pull out a map while driving once! We did a few of our favorite things from last winter when we were here and also did some new stuff. One of the most fun things this time around was that we stayed at the Hale Koa Hotel.  The Hale Koa is a five star military hotel on Waikiki beach. It had restaurants, a NEX for shopping, the beach, kiddie pool...everything. Here's Leo and his jazz hands with the Hale Koa in the background.

Leo loved this large banyon tree in the courtyard.

The Hale Koa is right next to the Hilton Hawaiin Village hotel which offered some fun things to do. Every night before sunset, this guy with the torch would run around lighting all the tikis at the hotel. Leo loved watching him run with the fire. 

We drove around the island a few times just to make sure we covered it all. Here we are where the road ends in the Northwest corner. It isn't the most beautiful part of the island, but it was neat to see the leeward side of the island where the locals stay.

Best picnic location in the world? We thought so. We stopped on the north shore for a picnic on one of our road trips. The north shore is beyond beautiful with the big waves that we like to watch and we stayed for a few hours enjoying our picnic.

We had a great walk through Waimea Valley to get to this waterfall.

We were at the beach almost every day and discovered the best time for us to go was sunset. The sunsets were of course beautiful, but I also didn't have to hide Archie from the hot sun or lather us all with sunscreen like if we went in the middle of the day. There was also a fireworks show a few nights a week that Leo liked to stay up for.

One of our favorite days was spent at the Honolulu Art Museum. My sister's friend, Amber, works there and gave us her special toddler art tour. It was fabulous and so was she! Thanks for not kicking us out after Leo touched the fine art, Amber :) Here they are discussing the toddler she saw taking an accidental swim in this pond - no joke!

We played in the hotel room. I think this is the first time I've seen Archie upright.

Here's Leo in front of his beloved P.F. Chang's. I am also a huge fan since they have a half page menu devoted to gluten free meals! In Japan, Leo never goes out to eat anymore since we've gone gluten free. It's just too tough. So, P.F. Chang's was a great treat for him. We may have eaten there more than once (okay, it was 6 times - yes, 6!).

Hawaii was great. I was happy Leo was getting checked out by his doctors. I was also really ready to come home after two weeks. I've never had a meal paid for by a stranger before, but after a particularly rough doctors appointment, a shopping trip to whole foods in search of gluten free snacks for the plane ride home and yet another meal out at a restaurant a stranger did just that. I was at the same time so touched by their kindness and also a little mortified at how tired I must have looked. It was definitely time to go home. 

Thanks Hawaii for once again making a trip to the doctor something a little special for me, Leo, and Archie.