Go Baystars!

Sunday we went to watch some more Japanese baseball. I am not that big of a baseball fan, but for some reason I really like watching Japanese baseball. We wanted to go and cheer for the Yokohama Baystars since Hans had gone to a game last year and had a hat and had caught a pink Baystar shirt from the cannon for me to wear. The girls really liked it the first time too so we wanted to go again on an afternoon when it was nice out. We got there a little late since we gave Claire a short nap before we left so she wouldn't be too grouchy and consequently there was standing room only in the outfield so we had to fork out the extra money for reserved seats. The weather was gorgeous, super warm and we had lots of fun relaxing and watching the Yokohama Baystars.

Outside the stadium...the tulips were beautiful.

The view from our seats.




We went to get some bats to hit together but I decided that would be a bit dangerous with a 2 year old and people in front of us so we came back with two girl Baystar figures.

posing with her Baystar
Watching the cheerleaders
Claire getting in the spirit
Olivia upset that she didn't have her baystar
Fortunately they came out again and she was able to get into the spirit too.
My blond Japanese girl

Claire's first attempt at doing peace sign.
Here is the way she finally settled on doing the peace sign. Or her your number one sign for the Baystars.

Olivia imitating since we thought Claire was so cute.


Baystars Won!!

This is my first video clips with my new camera. Sorry that a lot of it is blurry and not in focus and not that great of video either. I couldn't see the screen at all to see how it was turning out because of the sun. But you can hear the chanting and singing that they do. It also shows that we need to get a new zoom lens soon because I can not zoom far at all.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Exploring in Miura-kaigan

Saturday was a pretty nice day here in Japan and we were invited to go with the Anthony family to explore Miura-kaigan. Miura being the name of the place, kaigan is the word for beach. So why is the first picture on this post of a cabbage patch? Well we were definitely exploring and we got a bit lost (but not really) and just went with it. We first boarded the train and got off at Miura-kaigan. We then got on a bus and we were going to take it to the end of the beach (since it is a really long beach) and then try to find a light house. Well buses around here a bit hard to figure out. If you watch the reader board on the bus the entire time then you can sometimes see the name of the next stop scroll by in English, but it scrolls across rarely and who actually wants to stare at the reader board the entire time. So needless to say we missed the stop we were intending to get off at and ended up a few stops past at the end of the line on top of a hill. No where near the beach. But we went with it and decided we were pretty close to the light house and could actually find it from there. We headed down a narrow road that had no sidewalk and being with kids when we saw what we thought looked like a path we decided to take it as it would be easier to walk with 4 kids on a path rather than on a road.

Here is the path we headed down with all the cabbage gardens next to it.

A kid sized shrine on the way.
Pretty flowers and laundry.
This is what we came down to. A marina with no safe access to the beach. So we headed up another path and finally found the road we were originally on and found the lighthouse. On the second path up we found lots of dumped garbage which is we have rarely seen here in Japan but it does exist suprisingly.
Another cabbage field with lighthouse peaking out from between the rocks.
Here is the seahawk that was intent on getting some of our food for lunch, but we were able to protect it well enough that he didn't get any.



Checking out the view.


Heading back.

Along the roadside trying to get some cute pictures.



Soft moss.
bloomers hangin'
This is the path we took that took us on our extra long adventure (because we found if we would have stayed on the road just a tad bit further we would have seen the lighthouse and known we were heading the right way). This path turned out to actually be a road. Yes just before I took this picture a small truck came driving off of this road and along the path are lots of houses with driveways. The roads here crack me up at how small they are.
One of those random shrines you find anywhere and everywhere.

Claire got her own seat on the bus and was pretty excited about it. Since we hadn't gotten to see the beach that we were wanting to at all we decided to stop on the bus stop home and play a bit as the sun was starting to peak out and warm things up.




So that was our day. We got back had some Coco Curry and then relaxed. The girls went to bed super early since Claire didn't get a nap and Hans and I got some time to spend together. It was another really great day.