Holidays

Well, it's been proven. Brian and I are very poor bloggers indeed. So my first new year's resolution is to write at least once a week on all of our "adventures" in Japan, or whatever else we want. The major problem with writing about our daily lives is that we lead a pretty boring life. I know you're thinking "You live in Japan, that's not boring!" It's true that we live in an exciting place, but really we are such stingy homebodies so there aren't very many adventures to talk about.

Brian and I just got back from a two week journey back to Minnesota. We had a great time, and enjoyed seeing our family and friends, and most of all, Evi. Now we are both very tired of traveling since each way took about a day and a half of travel. Our itinerary went as follows:

December 22: Get off of work early, finish packing, leave for the train station at 8:30pm. Train departed at 9:19pm and we were on our way. We got into Niigata around 10:10 and waited for our night bus which left at 11:20pm.

December 23: We arrived at Shinagawa station (Tokyo) around 5:50am (a bit early) and took the train to our friend's house where we hung out for a few hours. We then went to Ikea before leaving for the airport. We enjoyed our trip to Ikea so much that we left a bit late for the airport. I didn't even think we were late because of a silly mathematical error I made earlier, so we arrived at the airport at 4:00pm for our 5:10 flight. OOPS! The line was really long and when I realized what I did I started freaking out. Brian tried to calm me, but I believed we were going to miss the flight and it would be all my fault. Thankfully the ticket counter people called the Houston flight passengers to the front of the line, we went through security, and made it onto the plane with a few minutes to spare.

The flight was pretty nice overall. The dinner was edible, the entertainment had over 330 movies to chose from, many TV shows, music, and games, and I was able to sleep for about half the flight. We arrived in Houston around 3:30pm central time and got through immigration and customs easily. We got on the tiny plane to Minneapolis and finally landed at 6:45 pm. My mom picked us up from the airport and we immediately went to Olive Garden to eat with my brother and grandparents, then mom drove us down to Mankato (a 1.5 hour drive). We finished our very long travel day around 11pm.

Evi noticed me right away and wagged her tail. We weren't able to get pictures of her reaction because we didn't get the camera out fast enough since she was already waiting at the door. We went in to see her and she was so happy, she wiggled her little butt and cried with delight. We didn't even have to bribe her to sleep in our room that night. She also started a new thing of sitting on our laps and showing her mean face to Kuma when he tried to get affection from us. It was pretty cute, although very bad manners and we had to kick her off of our laps for it a couple of times.

December 24: We woke up at a decent US time and I started preparing the Christmas Day turkey. I made the butter and we went to the grocery store to buy a few last minute items and to Lowes to buy a tub so we could brine the turkey. We spent most of the day being lazy and enjoying spending time with Brian's family and Evi. Brian helped me make the turkey brine in the afternoon by freshly grinding 1/3 cup of pepper. (Brian edit - it took absolutely forever). We left the turkey to soak in the brine and had Christmas eve dinner with Brian's family and the Dauk's. Our original plans of spending Christmas eve at the Wilson's was unfortunately cancelled due to the overexcited meteorologists at the Weather Channel, but we had a good time anyway. After everyone left I took the turkey out of the brine and applied the butter under the skin and let it sit through the night. I know you probably don't care about all the turkey preparation steps, but I thought I'd enlighten you for fun.

December 25: Christmas Day! My mom and grandparents came to Mankato at 12:30 and we opened presents. Then we ate Christmas dinner (with the very prep intensive Turkey), and it was delicious. I was so happy we were able to include part of my family in the celebrations. It made it really feel like Christmas! Brian and I did some of the dishes (I hate anything to do with dishes so this is quite an accomplishment), worked out, and went to bed to prepare for a fun filled fantastic day of shopping!  I still can't believe Nomi had fun despite and maybe even partly because of the dogs.  Maybe she and Deb need some dogs of their own.

December 26: Brian and I left for My grandparents house at 6:45am. We went to the Mall of America where I spent about 2 hours in Express trying on many, many clothes. I had ordered a couple things in advance from Express.com so I'd have some pants that fit me, but once we got to express and grabbed a bunch of clothes in a size 6, I realized that many of them were too big and Mom had to go out and grab size 4s! The size craziness definitely contributed to the length of the Express shopping trip, but after a while, and a nice mixture of 4s and 6s, we went to buy the clothes with a bunch of transactions and coupons. Thankfully now I have a nice wardrobe I'm excited about wearing that also fits! After the shopping at the Mall, we drove to the downtown Macy's and had dinner with my mom and grandma. I had a fantastic day, but I think Brian was a bit annoyed by a whole day of shopping.  The only truly annoying bit (besides being left outside Express) was at the end of the day when she and her Mom spent about 20 minutes trying to do multiple purchases with different coupons at Macy's to get the best bargain.  I figure if it it's that much of an inconvenience to spend money at their store, I don't have to spend that much and too bad for them for making it so difficult.

December 27: Brian and I got up early to drive to LaCrosse, WI to have lunch with My dad and Holly. It took about 3 hours and we went to a cute little restaurant called Maggie's (named after the owner's lovable yellow lab).  I didn't know it was named after a yellow lab when I chose it.  I'm glad I did though.  Maria and I discussed having a restaurant called "George's" in honor of my parent's yellow lab, George.  I'm afraid George would just want to serve garbage though. It was really nice to see them and enjoy a nice burger! After lunch we drove back to Mankato, excited about the prospect of not having to travel anywhere far the next day. (We also went to Scheels for exercise clothes and bands).

December 28: We went to Perkins for lunch with Brian's mom and then  went to the mall in Mankato for our hair appointments with Barb's hair stylist. I got my hair died brown and cut to above my shoulders. Brian got his hair cut very short so it won't be too long by the spring. Afterwards we went to the Wilson's for dessert and games. Evi was able to come and I think she had a great time with the Wilson's new dog and Amy and Fred's dog, although she was quite tired. She looked very cute, however, since she was able to wear the sweater Lisa and Tim got her for Christmas. Sweater was NOT my idea.  In fact, the sweater was forbidden by me, but when it comes to my wife and sister, they'll do exactly what I don't want.  We had a fun time playing Apples to Apples and eating many delicious types of desserts!

December 29 and 30: Lazy Days!

December 31: Brian had a doctor's appointment early. Switching insurances and countries at the same time is not recommended, especially when you can't speak the language to refill prescriptions. When he got home we went to the grocery store to get things for the new years party at the Sonneks.  I made homemade mac and cheese, two pans of brownies, and I baked 3 types of ready to bake cookies. We went to the party with all of our food and had a fun time seeing Brian's friends, playing games, chatting and eating. We left around 2am since I'm a party pooper and wanted to sleep in a bed.

January 1: Mom left the twin cities and came through Mankato for lunch at Dinos in North Mankato. It's a very tasty gourmet pizza place. It was nice seeing her and we also enjoyed our 3rd meal of pizza of the trip. I tried scrapbooking for the rest of the day, but my heart wasn't too into it this trip.

January 2: Nothing too exciting happened, I tried scrapbooking and a bit of packing for our return trip.

January 3: Finished packing and laundry. We had a hard time saying good-bye to Evi again, and we hope she'll forgive us for deserting her again. She got very worried by the suitcases and wouldn't leave Brian. It's so hard to leave her, but at the same time, we won't be away from her much longer, so that fact makes leaving her a bit more bearable. Barb drove us up to my grandparent's house by 3. My grandparents took Brian and me to a sports bar where we ate a delicious hamburger and drank dark beer. Last time for months.  It was delicious.  Surly Bender, apparently a somewhat local Minneapolis beer -- I had never had it before.  When we returned to my grandparent's house we had to repack our suitcases for weight and went to bed by 10pm.

January 4: We woke up at 2:15am to get ready to go to the airport. We left for the airport at three and when we arrived at 3:30 there was already a long line at the ticket counter, but the counter didn't open until 4. It was a very good thing we got there so early though because when it did open, the line moved so slowly I thought our flight might have to be delayed. We got into Houston with 2 hours before our Tokyo flight and ate scholtzky's. I accidentally forgot to say no mustard and didn't enjoy it as much as I would have without it, but it was still nice to have a delicious sandwich. We went to our terminal and realized that our flight had been delayed by an hour and a half due to servicing needs.. When we went to the counter to have them verify our passports, they apologized for the delay and gave us each $8.00 to spend on food, 10% off our next flight booked at continental.com, and a free alcoholic beverage on the plane. I thought that was pretty great considering it was a pretty minor delay (in my mind anyway) and I haven't gotten anything like that before. I was very impressed by them. The flight was alright, although the lunch left a lot to be desired. I didn't get any sleep really and watched far too many movies. I watched "The Cove," "The Devil Wears Prada," an episode of "The Tudors" and "Say Yes to the Dress," "Good Will Hunting," and "Harry Potter 6." I learned that Diamonds are Forever tends to be a good Bond film overall, but Never Say Never Again is abysmal.  Also, Arsenic and Old Lace Remains Funny and rewatchable, probably in great part because of Cary Grant.

January 5: We arrived in Tokyo at 4:45 and they immediately had a great system set up for helping the passengers with tight connections due to the delay. We went through immigration and customs easily and got on the train for Tokyo. Overall we had a pretty easy time on the subway even though it was rush hour until it came time to get off, and there were so many people, and we had so much baggage I thought we might not make it. Thankfully a couple other people in our way got off too and we spent the next 3 hours at the Starbucks at Shinagawa waiting for our night bus which left at 10:50.

January 6: We finally got to Niigata at about 6:00am, but had to wait until 6:47 for our train to Murakami. We finished our traveling by 8:00am and took a taxi home. Our apartment was 43 degrees when we got in and we immediately unpacked and went shopping for groceries and our new electronic dictionary which was a Christmas gift. We were lazy and ate lunch at the ramen restaurant in the mall here, then went home did a bit of organizing and took a "nap" at 2:00pm. We re-awoke at 7:45, watched NCIS with Meghan and went to bed again by 10:00.

January 7: Back to work today! I kept waking up starting at 2:00am, and decided by 5:30 I would just get up and do Lower body workout and ab jam for my morning exercise, watched the Daily Show, and got ready. Now I'm back at work getting ready for my first class of the new year. I have a meeting after school and I'm looking forward to getting back into my schedule.