Photos by DJ

Happy New Year!

Yes, today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and begins the Year of the Ox.  We went on a field trip to Yokohama's Chinatown which was a lot of fun.  This is the largest Chinatown in Japan. It was our first time there and I was so excited by the photographic opportunities that would be there.  Although I was really hoping to see the lion dancers, they weren't appearing until after we left.  Like most of the Chinatown's we've visted the thing that stands out the most is the food!  There were dumpling stands and restuarnts everywhere.  It makes you wonder how they can all stay in business, or what it would be like if they were all full.  After walking past many, many dumpling stands, I had to try one and got one with shrimp that was very tasty.  There were a couple temples, lots of lanterns and more panda stores than anything else.  Whole stores devoted to Panda product, from slippers and ties to forks, chopsticks and even matches--I really missed an opportunity in not taking a picture of that.  But I had plenty of other opportunities and here are my pictures of the day!

 

   

 

Mmmmmm, these were everywhere and had all kinds of different fillings.

   

For lunch, we went to Yamashita Park along the water which was very nice.

 

That is Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan.  We haven't been there yet, but I really want to go on a clear day, to get a good view of Mt. Fuji.

Nutella

Mmmmm, this stuff is the best!  We discovered it while living in Europe years ago and usually try to keep a jar around.  The boys love it and have recently discovered it as a dip for pretzels.  Just before break, the scouts did wreaths out of pretzels and melted chocolate--very cute, easy and fun food craft by the way.  You basically dip the heart end of the pretzel into melted chocolate and create a circle with the pretzels, chocolate touching.  Do two to three alternating layers then sprinkle with sprinkles!  We even crushed up candy cane for a few.  My oldest the other day decided that the nutella would make a good substitute and boy was it yummy!  Today, my youngest decided he wanted Nutella and pretzels for snack, only he decided to wear his nutella.  He was so happy though and so enjoyed the snack.  Next time we'll have to make sure he has bigger pretzels rather than the crumbs.

 

 Here is the wreath we made for Christmas.

2 January

Hmmm, I'm not sure the page I have set up for POTD is going to work very well.  I hadn't thought of how the comments would work.  So, I'm going to make a daily post here, but then post all my photos on the page too.  So, here we are with day 2.  We are in the middle of the New Year holidays here.  It lasts about three days, but with the weekend, I'm sure they'll go longer this year.  I REALLY wanted to go to one of the temples, but I don't see that happening.  Everything is closed for the New Year and there is no traffic, which is really nice.  You also see these decorations all over too.  We saw them making them in town and some are more elaborate than others.  Many that were on houses also had oranges--oranges are a big thing in Asia at New Years, they had them in Korea too.  These were on the main road on just about every pole.  Sorry for the background, but once again, it was shot from the car.

 

Here is what the ones that are on the doors look like.  I took this picture on our way back from Tokyo on Monday.

Happy Holidays!

Besides the snow, which I've never had at Christmas, my favorite part of the season is all the lights.  Here in Japan, they decorate early too, like right after Halloween!  We went crazier  than usual, and actually put lights up outside.  I think this is a first for us.

 

 

On the ornament photo, I used our star filter.  In looking around on some of the boards, this seems to be rather popular lately and I've seen some creative uses with it that I wouldn't have considered before.  We must actually be ahead of the times, as the filter was the first one we bought when we got our first Rebel almost four years ago!  It's just been hiding in the camera bag though, but I think it might be seeing some more use.