All right! It's been way too long, I know. We've been busy and some of us have been sick recently, but we're posting now!
We have officially had the first snow of the season! It dumped on us! It started snowing in the late morning and continued all that day and all night. Our section of town got 4-8 inches by the end of the night! That's more snow than we've seen in a long time -- last time we had that much snow, we were still living in Utah.
Jordan didn't get to see much of the snow last winter or the winter before that (there was next to none anyway), so this was kind of like his first encounter with snow. He was hesitant at first, but he really liked it... until it started to get high enough to where he had trouble walking in it. Then he decided he'd rather be picked up.
Christian got together with the neighbors and made a giant snowman.
We also recently went to a Japanese farmer's market near us and purposely picked out foods that we had no idea what they were. Then we went home, researched them, and then prepared and ate them. Here's the video!
Welcome to another week of the Mealeys' Adventures in Japan!
This week we went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, otherwise known as a sushi-go-round. There are lots of different types of sushi (and a few other dishes like veggies and desserts) that go around all the tables on a conveyor belt, and you just pick up the sushi you want as it comes by your table. The dishes are color coded -- certain colors of plate correspond to different prices, and you just pay at the end based on how many plates of different colors you have on your table.
Here's a list of all the stuff we tried! Before today, we hadn't tried much in the way of sushi (the occasional California roll in the US, and some accidental raw fish once here in Japan, is about all), so we tried to get some of the most adventurous options available! We were lucky they had an English menu, or else it would have been SUPER adventurous because we'd have had no idea what we were eating! Here's a list of what we chose:
We liked some things better than others! Watch the video to see the adventure we had, and what we all (including Jordan) thought of the sushi!
We are having a great time with these adventures and we love to share them with you! We have some great plans for our weekly excursions for this year, so stay tuned!
This week we wanted to celebrate the new year in Japanese style! So we researched Japanese New Year traditions and tried out as many of them as we could!
Traditionally, Japanese New Year's Eve dinner consists of "osechi ryori", basically large bento boxes full of an assortment of fancy dishes that are supposed to each symbolize a different aspect of good fortune during the new year.
However, we also discovered that these "osechi ryori" boxes apparently cost around $80... for the really cheap, lower quality ones, and can go up to prices around $2000. The one in the picture above costs 21,000 yen.... which is equivalent to about $186. Soooo we decided to research other options.
We settled on this dish called "toshikoshi soba" which is also a traditional Japanese food to eat at New Year's Eve dinner, and we decided to buy all the ingredients ourselves and make it at home! See the video below to see how it went, and what Jordan thought of it! Here's the recipe we used!
After Jordan went to bed, we watched "Kōhaku Uta Gassen", more commonly known simply as "Kōhaku", a Japanese show that airs on New Year's Eve. It translates to "The Year-End Song Festival." It's a "battle of the bands" type show where lots of Japanese music performers come and compete. It's supposed to be about as popular as Americans watching the Rose Bowl on Thanksgiving, so we decided we couldn't celebrate Japanese New Year without it! It turned out to be pretty entertaining! Watch the video below to see what we thought were the best little snippets of the show!
The Japanese aren't big on fireworks, so we had a peaceful and quiet night. The next day (New Year's Day) we participated in one last New Year's Japanese tradition: playing Fukuwarai! Fukuwarai is a children's game (but played by adults as well) similar to Pin the Tail on the Donkey, except you pin the facial features on the face. We had lots of silly fun! See the video below.
That's about it! We had a fun New Year, and we hope you did too!
