Huge Spider of the Ropponghi Hills

This is a photo of the humongous spider that rules the Rappongi Hills area. Cool gigantic spider overlooks a garden with swimming fish, shopping areas, Starbucks. You can also see the Tokyo tower from the area. Lots of shopping, upscale stores and very good, inexpensive restaurants (you would not expect this from the area) a easy trip from the Tokyo subway lines.

Shopping in Yokohama

Picture of the Landmark Tower at night in Yokohama. The bookstore where I went shopping for English teaching books is here, it is a nice place to shop and you an find pretty much anythingyou need in this area.

Tatami Mats

What are they? They seem to be made out of straw type stuff. Our house has 2 rooms like this- the room was measured by the number of tatami mats that are in it- so for example are room is a 10 tatami mat room- to replace mats it is about $50 each. All of our heavy furniture has stuff under it to protect the mats from being dented. Cleaning is done with a swiffer and a lightly damp rag (water only).

Riding the Train

Found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XjldEzC6RU&feature=related while looking for directions for the train. Very interesting, this is exactly what it looks like- but we TRY HARD to not ride at this time of the day or if we do to take the local train instead - it is the train that stops at every stop and takes a while but you can usually get a seat!

Land of the Rising Sun

I guess it is called that for a reason- The sun comes up at 4:30 in the morning. If you don't believe me look at weather.com and you can see the rainy weather for today and the time of sunrise/sunset. We have typhoon shutters on our windows- so in addition to curtains we just shut those at night. Picture soon!

Flowers and Pineapples

Found these cute pineapples at the flower shop. O.K. I guess you can't see the pienapples to good, I'll ahve to get another picture later. Have slowly been bringing home flowers that I find while out. I think there must be a cute little florist/garden shop on every street. Next thing to bring home- a bucket of grass- the kind for cats, it looks nice, so I thought I would make a cute centeriece from it for the table.

Trash Sorting

Pictures from the festival in Yokohoma. I thought the trash sorting was interesting, even the Japanese sometimes goofed it up.... it is a little confusing and you really have to read the pictures! Our house trash is done the same way but not in as many trash cans. We have 6 sorting system at our house. Burnable, Non-Burnable, Plastics and Packaging, Recyclables, Stuff for Thrift Store type re-use, recyclable paper (milk carton - wash, dry, cut open, paper- letters and such, magazines, paper boxes, newspapers) I have not figured out the paper recyclable yet- I think each type according to our booklet has to be separated and tied with a string) It is amazing- almost everything here is recycled- the picture shows how.