Weeks 14-15: Family photos, Budokan, and Shichi-go-san

Hello friends!

It's been crazy lately! Here's what you've missed!

First off, we found an awesome photographer (Carlee Cobb) who we hired to take our family photos at our local Sagamihara Prefectural Park! The grounds were beautiful, and she was amazing! Here are some of our favorite photos from the session!

The following week, Christian left on TDY (temporary duty) for 6 days to participate in the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF) Marching Festival, held at Budokan Hall in downtown Tokyo. They call the festival Budokan for short. It is a yearly celebration of the US-Japanese military alliance. JSDF bands from all across Japan come and put on indoor marching shows.  In addition, the bands also do joint performances interspersed throughout the show.

The US Army Japan Band has participated in this festival for 37 years. Other US forces bands often participate as well, in addition to other countries' military bands. This year the international guest band was the Royal Thai Air Force Band.

It is extremely well attended every year. There are 7 shows over the course of three days, and the hall holds 6700 people. Every single show is sold out every year. Tickets are so popular, they are sold by a lottery system (for LDS folks, similar to General Conference tickets). It was a very fun experience, although Christian doesn't want to eat a bento (Japanese style lunch box kit) again for a long time.

Below is a YouTube link to an audience member's personal recording of the show. We will keep searching for an official video, as the videography from the live show was very good. Christian's band (the US Army Japan Band) begins their performance at 1:01:47 of the YouTube video below. The joint performance (all bands in the competition playing in one giant performance) immediately follows.


While Christian was gone at the festival, Jordan and I went to an event put on by the local Kids' Culture Club, called Thanksgiving/Shichi-Go-San, where the Japanese families learn about Thanksgiving, and the American families learn about the Japanese festival Shichi-Go-San -- and all the kids got to dress up in Japanese kimonos! Below is a short 4-minute video so you can see all the fun things we got to do at the event!


We'll try to be better about posting blogs more often!

 Love,
Brittany and Christian

Week 13: Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Japan! This year was Jordan's first time being able to watch and participate in the pumpkin carving process!  

On actual Halloween, we dressed up as Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Yoda!

We went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood for a little while! Jordan had fun trick-or-treating! He even met his friend Cody on our route!


Then we came back and passed out candy. In just 45 minutes, our stash of treats designed to feed more than 100 trick-or-treaters was exhausted and we had to turn out our lights! Trick-or-treating was set in our neighborhood to go on for two hours, so we probably would have had more than 200 kids come by if we'd had enough treats!

We had a super fun Halloween though!

Love,
Brittany and Christian