American Size Shopping in Inzai

A growing trend in Japan is bigger shopping areas further away from the big cities. This is nowhere more apparent than in Inzai City. Recently they just finished a huge K's Denki (Electronics Store) right across the highway and Hokuso Railway tracks from Joyful Honda (Home Improvement, Gardening, Hobby, Crafts, and Grocery Shop).
Now, just when we thought that the biggest thing they could ever make in Japan was Joyful Honda, they are just about to build the biggest outlet mall I have ever seen, Big Hop Inzai. This is massive. There is even a 30 meter high Ferris Wheel sitting near the entrance.

My wife has quit her part time job at a restaurant in Chiba New Town (Shi-Rokuji-chu) and she will begin her new job at the Eddie Bauer outlet shop (At Big Hop Inzai) in mid September.

Big Hop Inzai is located on the south side of the Hokuso Line Tracks right next to the exit for the Inzai Makinohara Station. The traffic in front of Joyful Honda on the weekends is already bumper to bumper. I cannot imagine how it is going to be when they finish this Gigantor of a mall at the end of September.
Also, this past Saturday my wife worked at restaurant until 2pm. During that time Anna and I headed back to the Shiroi City Pool. Again, as usual there was many people there. We had a good time though. Afterwards Anna had a long nap in the car and we ended up all eating together after I picked up my wife from her job. We had Ramen at my favorite place, Kuruma-Ya. After lunch we all had soft serve ice cream. My wife had green tea, Anna had strawberry, and I had chocolate. Yum!

Nothing Like an Earthquake to wake you in the morning!

This morning at 4:15am we were awakened by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Chiba Prefecture. I have found that, during an earthquake, I am so freaked out that I cannot move to do anything. When you are in bed when it happens you just freeze and hope that the house does not come caving in. Later at work at 8:20am there was another 5.0 in the same place. It is good to know that my co-workers are just as frozen and petrified as I am during the shaking.

Last night my wife and daughter were sleeping downstairs because they like it a little warmer than I do. My wife's reaction is to cover our little girl in case anything comes falling down.

This October 1st Japan will begin the new P-Wave warning system. NHK will be transmitting the warning with a nicely sounding bell warning on the TV. I am totally against this. If you are going to provide a warning it needs to be a 40 decibel Star Trek Enterprise Red Alert to get your attention. This system measures the "P-Wave" that comes just before a big earthquake. Since they move faster then the quake itself you get around a 20 second warning before the world comes towering down on you. I keep wondering what I will do with that 20 seconds. Will I sit there dumbfounded for a few seconds and wonder what to do or will I take command and do the right thing? I'm just not sure right now. Check back with me after the next quake.

We were spared today. Apparently, Lima, Peru was not. They had a 7.9 today. I don't even want to think about that.

Inzai Bon Odori

This past Sunday we walked over to the nearby park to participate in the local festival. Our neighbor was one of the organizers of the event. I got to finnally wear my "Jinbei" and Anna wore her Yukata again for the dancing.

It has been very hot as of late here but that just made the beer all the more better. Many of my neighbors who I've drank together with were there too. As a result of the liquid courage, I decided to try my hand at the dancing with my daughter. All I did was keep an eye on the older women doing the dancing and follow what they were doing. It went fairly well.

On Tuesday our friends came down from Ibaraki to take my daughter and I to the beach at Kashima. Unfortunately, this was my daughters first visit to the ocean with waves this big. When I carried her out into the water she wanted to get back to the shore as soon as possible. The waves that looked taller than me really freaked her out.

As a result, she did not want to go into the water. Since it was extremely hot (90F or 35C) this put her in a bad mood pretty quickly. We had to get her into the water or out of the heat as soon as possible. We decided to get back into the car and start back home. She then slept for most of the day.

The Power Of Eel

After our date on Saturday, I took my wife out to the Inba Marsh to see Ishibashi (The Eel place I went looking for last week). Just as last week, there were cars lined up to go into this place. With all of the other Eel places around, and with empty parking lots, I knew this place had to be good.

In late July and early August it is said that eel will give you the stamina to survive the shitty hot Japanese summer.
As can be seen in the picture here, the place is no bigger than a shack. The Unagi is prepared in the house next door by grandma steaming the sea snakes on skewers and then big brother brings the steamed them next door to be barbecued over open flames.

The process to make BBQ Eel is this:

Take an ice pick and stab the squirming head of the eel into a cutting board. Then take a very sharp knife and cut down the middle of said eel from the head. Remove icky bits of guts and save that for the soup. Open the flesh and stab with skewers. Steam the meat then bring them to the shack next door. Take the steamed eel and dip in secret barbecue sauce. Cook over open flame, then dip in BBQ sauce again, then repeat process until you feel the eel is ready. Finally put over rice and serve.

We waited for about 45 minutes to get into the eel shack. You can see in the picture the poor souls that had to keep waiting after us. Please notice the woman in the short sleeve black sweater and rose colored shirt to the left of the window. She is pregnant and waiting in 90 degree, 90% humidity to eat.................. eel. Wow! If you ever, ever, ever see a pregnant woman waiting in heat like this to eat something, it has to be damn good.

This place is so busy that they even though they have published hours from 11am to 430pm, they usually sell out and have to close around 230pm. Don't worry, if you have a number and are in line at 230pm, they will have an eel with your name on it.

Date Night In Ginza

This past weekend the wife and I finally were able to have a night of our own. Anna has been able to be on her own at school and actually enjoys being away from us (weather that is good or bad, I don't know).

My wife's relatives live in Funabashi. Rie (Hiroko's dad's cousin) has helped us out from day one of arriving in Japan. Her and her husband love playing and being with Anna. So, we decided to ask if they would be willing to take care of her on Saturday night while my wife and I went into Tokyo for a date. They accepted and Anna was looking forward to it.

When I dropped Anna off with Rie I fake cried and said I would miss her. Anna just rubbed my head and said, "It's OK Daddy, you still have Mommy."

I have been planning this for a while but my wife's style is that she wants to be the one to decide where she wants to go. At first, I bought a magazine with all of the top ranked southeast asian restaurants in Tokyo. She ended up picking one from the Internet after all.

We first arrived at the Shinmaru Building right in front of Tokyo Station. This was very new and modern. Although everyone had talked about the cool restaurants in there we ended up just looking around at the huge Maruzen bookstore inside the building.

We ate at a Vietnamese Restaurant, Le Squall in the Ginza 5 building underneath the railroad tracks. The food was great. We then went out to see if we could find anyplace that served desert after 9pm. Unfortunately, we were too late to get to any of them so we headed to an area that I know, Akihabara. There we had a couple of beers at an Italian bar and then headed home.

All and all we had a really great time.

Next time I have to prepare some more. I think the next date will take up to a year and a half to plan for.

I knew it! Ever since the quake our teleportation grid interface has been down and my positronic brain has been on the fritz.

Earthquake Sets Japan Back To 2147

TOKYO —"Our society [is] temporarily reverting to a pre-cyberunification era," said prime minister Shinzo Abe, speaking non-telekinetically for the first time.