Sue is the Best Wife in the World

Yes, There may be some other votes out there but as if I wouldn't have voted her in before she went above and beyond for our 15th (almost) anniversary night out. We started on Monday afternoon saying good bye to the Girls and leaving them in the loving hands of Grandma (Marge) who is slaving away here in Japan for a couple of weeks and seeing 4 of her dozens of grandchildren. That alone would put the night away in high regard but wait, there's more.

Sue and I made it out to the Shinkansen (Bullet train) station just in time to make our train to Hiroshima and then, wait for it,.....KOBE, yes home of Kobe beef, not the Laker. Sue made reservations for a night of Kobe beef and "us time" so we decided to go big and not go home.

The trip to Kobe took about 100 minutes compared to 7+ hours on the road, plus no concerns about DWA, Driving While American, and parking etc that is a nightmare in Japan. We then took the subway to near the hotel and walked our happy selves the rest of the way. We hung out for a bit in our much larger than normal Japanese hotel room until the magic time to find the elusive, World renowned thing we call what's for dinner, BEEF. Well who would guess that there are Kobe beef restaurants everywhere in Kobe, but we found this place that was also on the short list of recommendations Sue had received from previous carnivores who visited Kobe.

Steakland is the place and it was just as advertised, a land of steak. In a scary sense you can also see McDonald's from the front door for the beef that just doesn't quite make the cut.

In a good sense, they cook the dinner Teppenyaki style just like in the US

sans the corny "holy Cow" jokes, egg cutting in air and fiery onion volcano. They present the beef and I clapped but when you eat it, it is well...

The softest steak I have ever eaten.

A spoon could cut it, heck chopsticks cut it. I love all things steak but this was one for the ages. Imagine beef flavored soft served ice cream, you still have to bite, but not much. It was a great experience and while a bit pricey, it was worth it.

This being our first real night away from all 4 girls at one time, we couldn't pack it in after an early meal, nope, Kobe nightlife was calling. Now you might guess that a Monday night wouldn't be big time, and it likely wasn't for a big city but it looked happenin’ to us country mice from Iwakuni. Our first visit was Bee, a dart bar.

We played a best of 5 and Mick barely won the series,

clearly showing he needs to play more darts in bars. It did really make us remember our buddy Tim Brich who we loved playing darts with back at Barry O's while we were dating. I even threw in a couple of his favorite made up cuss words to remember him by.

Following the Bee, we found this fancy "world" beer pub that seemed to be hawking Belgian beer most but many others on their list. Mick likes wine but when in Kobe in a beer bar, drink beer thank you.

From there it was to a Jazz bar, we thought but they were closed and as the elevator stopped at a restaurant we asked "beer-oo or food?" (bar or restaurant to us) in bad pantomimes, they said "food" we continued down the elevator where employee out of breath from running down the stairs said "Drinks only, ok" so we went back and had one and are pretty convinced we are two of very few Americans who have had drinks there or several other places we went.

Next as we headed towards the hotel Sue saw a golf sign that said Bar, I thought cool and we looked in the alley but nothing was clear, then this young girl comes out of the alley and takes us around the corner and up the stairs to a small bar that has a wide area to hit golf balls into a huge screen and play a round of golf. Now on one's anniversary night, a round of golf might be asking a bit much, but Sue, TBWEITWWW, The Best Wife Ever in the Whole Wide World, said sure and let me play an 18 hole round while cheering me on with my putting.

I shot a 100 but the machine had some hiccups too so I think it was clearly a 94. The good news for wives reading the blog is it took less than a half hour to play.

From there it was getting late....for us....so we headed back down the streets and alleys of Kobe

to the main drag where we were getting close to home

when we came upon the Academy Bar, open since 1922.

They had listed a drink that Sue really wanted

so we went in. You can see in this picture of the painting the owner created of his bar, the size of the AB, maybe on a good night could hold 14 folks.

We were it this night, shock. So we are getting ready to order he says 1000 yen for drink. Apparently we didn't look as rich as we felt but we assured him that price was acceptable and Sue got a wine/spritzer thingee and I got a Guinness. We talked a little about US things like Paul Simon playing on the music and where we were from in America. It seems all Japanese know that Idaho grows potatoes, but Iowa is also in the US so we went with Field of Dreams since the Japanese love baseball and that is easy to talk about.

That did it for Mick and Sue's evening

and on Tuesday we got up really late and took our time to get back to the train.

Sue, again being TBWEITWWW

said we could get Kobe steak AGAIN for lunch

and we found this wonderful restaurant on our walk around.

MORIA, as it is pronounced to us, was a little fancier but similar in food choices.
Again we had two different cuts and they both rocked Mick's Meat World.

Then we went to the shin station, got on a train and came home.
The End.

So you can now hopefully see why I'm so high on Sue

TBWEITWWW

 and I'm giving her a huge shout out to you all,
"SUE ROCKS"

and her mom Marge, who watched our animals, is pretty great too,

(BMILITEWWW)!

Claire's Happiokai Performance

This last Sunday was Claire's yochien's "Happiokai" performance. It is an amazing production that requires tremendous work by the senseis and lots of practicing by the kids!

All of the classes, from the 2 1/2 year olds to the 5 - 6 year olds, sang songs, did dances and performed plays. They had different costumes for the dances and plays and wore their uniforms for the songs.

It was held in the, colder than the outside, gymnasium of the local, also called Kawashimo, elementary school. And it was cold. Wow. It was really cold. But I came better prepared this year!

I brought a Japanese chair and wore my coat with a snuggie over that. Tights under my jeans and two pairs of socks. And hand warmers. And blankets. I brought extra snuggies, blankets and hand warmers for fellow cold people. And a quilt to sit on. I was probably the warmest American there, but that had to do with the cuddly bug who sat on my lap when she wasn't performing!

I have a freakish amount of videos and pictures and I couldn't keep it under my standard 30 seconds for videos. It was just TOO.CUTE.

Here's the song for the Japanese kids to learn English and for the American kids to pick up easily. This is from the rehearsal, a few days before the performance.

When I was playing Sudoku today on the shinkansen, I was singing this song to myself, adding an 8 and a 9 at the end. :)

And here's the easy one for the Japanese kids and the learning one for the American kids. Claire tells me it's the Japanese color song! :) This is from the actual performance. There were tons of different backdrops that the senseis created.

Claire posed between performances by her artwork that they brought from the yochien.

This is her costume from the girls' dancing performance.

And this is Claire as a crab for the "Monkey and the Crab" performance.

Here's the entire cast of the "Monkey and the Crab"...also some bees and hmmm...loaves of bread?

The oldest boys did a samurai dance.

Claire shone in her all girls' dance!

This is my favorite picture!

I'm going to take pity on you, dear reader, and just post the link to all of the pictures here and then perhaps, (I'm not savvy), you could search for "wagspartyof6" which is my channel on YouTube. This link might work.  So if you really, really want to watch all of the videos...you could do so...but don't worry...it's not expected!

We got there at 9:00, it started at 9:30 and ended around 2:00 with a break for lunch. It's a MAJOR event and I feel fortunate to be able to have my child a part of something as spectacular as this! If it were just heated...I would love it! :-0

Thanks Kawashimo for the memories!!!!!!!

Beautiful pictures and fabulous frames!

I received the tutu pictures and frames that I ordered from the fabulous Danielle Caceres today! I'm so in love with them and stood there and looked at them in awe like I was viewing the Grand Canyon.

But since these girls are an amazing gift from God...they are my Grand Canyon!

Audrey's favorite color is purple and Olivia's is green! Claire is our pretty pink princess so it is very fitting that her whole ensemble is pink, pink and more pink. Finally, our sweet Gigi is the sunshine who lights up everyone's day, so yellow is perfect for her!

When you come to my house anytime over the next 50 plus years...expect to see these!!!

Flat Gavin Comes to Japan

Flat Gavin came to Japan this weekend all the way from Chicago! The real Gavin is the son of my friend Tiffany. Tiffany and I went to Iowa State and pledged Chi Omega together so I thought she would enjoy this first picture of Flat Gavin and the mascot of Chi Omega.

Hoot!Hoot!

We took Flat Gavin (and all my girls...Gigi was crying in her high chair for this picture....and my Mom (HOORAY!) and the two "big" girls best friends, Ariele and Julia) to a "sushi go-around" restaurant.

Sushi "goes around" (get it?) the restaurant on a conveyor belt and you pick off what you would like.
The waitress counts up your plates at the end and you get charged 105 yen per plate. Flat Gavin was relieved that they also had french fries as well as a hot dog on rice, sushi style.

They have a few arcade games at the entrance where you can try and grab a toy or piece of candy.

They are just as big of a rip off in Japan as they are in America. :)

We live on a Marine Corps base in Iwakuni, Japan.

Come visit us!

Poor Flat Gavin, Mr Mick was in the States, so he was stick with ALL GIRLS and we went SHOPPING! (How boring!) 

We first went to a 100 yen (Japanese equivalent of the dollar store) store called "Daiso"

and bought lots of stuff that is already in the mail to the real Gavin! (And his sister Addison too!) :)

We then stopped at a sports store because we felt sorry for Flat Gavin!

But then we had to go to the BORING stores! :) 

"YouMe Town" is kind of like a JCPenney, but not really. No real equivalent to America, but it's a fun place (for girls!) to shop at sometimes!

There is an English school within YouMe Town.

And to the right of Ariele is a fellow flat friend advertising the "StickyPics" booth.

We took pictures with Flat Gavin so that we could be flat too! One half of them are in the mail to the real Gavin!

And we kept the other half for ourselves! The American photo booths are NO comparison to the Japanese sticky prints! We just wish we knew how to read Japanese because there is so much drawing and embellishments you can do. I thought I was putting sunglasses on Audrey's eyes (where I scribbled them out) and then when we tried to "undo" it, we must have clicked "finish" instead. Oh well! They're still fun! We have said that we would like to bring the sticky pic technology to America as a business franchise opportunity!

Flat Gavin wanted to play some arcade games, but he didn't have any yen!

Sorry Flat Gavin! Miss Sue can be kind of cheap!

We stopped at the end for some ice cream and Flat Gavin thought it was fun to see Baskin Robbins!

Some flavors are the same and some are distinctly Japanese.

Flat Gavin thought the plastic food that is in the windows of most restaurants in Japan was pretty funny!

But he was still happy to have his ice cream!

On our way home we stopped along side the road and took a picture with this sign and ON MY HONOR I had never known that it was for the Democratic Party of Japan (but on my honor....I thought that made it funnier!).

Because Tiffany is almost like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in MOST ways...but she's a Republican! ;-D

But our final stop is what Flat Gavin liked the most. And he told me that the real Gavin (and his family) should come to visit the Wagoners in Iwakuni because we have lots of jets on our base.

And jets are cool and loud! (Flat boys with boogers on their face like loud things!)

Thanks for coming

to visit us

Flat Gavin!!!!!!!!

(If the real Gavin comes and visits...we promise to not take you shopping!)