Yokosuka Weekend

SMS and I had a pretty mellow weekend.  Since last weekend was busy and we have lots of plans for next weekend, a quiet weekend at home was great.

Interior of Snug Stay Door.  Very comfortable!

Hawaiian Magazines and the bar.

On Friday, we went to Snug Stay Door, a restaurant fairly close to our house.  It is a really cute place decked out in lots of Hawaiian kitsch.  It's a really comfortable environment, more coffee-shop than restaurant, but the food is incredible.  SMS had been once before and raved about the food.  I ordered the avocado cheeseburger.  Despite being on the diet menu, it was absolutely delicious.  Ok, just kidding about the diet menu, but it is true that it was delectable!  The toppings included mayonnaise, lettuce (oh thank goodness!), tomato, cheese, perfectly ripe avocado.  The bun was perfectly toasted and the burger was great.  On the side, there were perfect little potato wedges.  It was awesome!

SMS had the poke loco moco.  It was a rice bowl with tuna sashimi, a soft-boiled egg and seaweed sprinkles.  It was also tasty.  We split a Hilo Hawaii ice cream that had a little freezer burn and was just ok (but come on, it was still ice cream!).  Overall, the meal was amazing and we will definitely be back!

Wide-angle view of Kannonzaki Beach with the Rest House in the background (right)

Lighthouse and Rest House more visible.  If we were driving, we would have made a right
at the light by the rest house and then parked in the lot on the left.

Concrete Swimming Island.  No diving!  The water is only waist-deep.

 On Saturday, we had a mellow morning and an almost-as-mellow afternoon.  We biked down towards Kannonzaki Park.  We walked around the little pier, the beach and back up into the forest for a bit, aka until the uphill started and laziness kicked in!  I figured out that the Kannonzaki Rest House was where we should have made the right and parked when we went to the giant slide.  I took a picture for reference.

It's hydrangea season!

After that, we headed out to Ikego because SMS had his first family photo shoot.  I wasn't there but the photos look amazing and SMS was really happy with how it went!  Sagoy!  While SMS was busy, I hung out at Melinda's house with Amanda and Melinda. It was a lot of fun to hang out with friends with Orange is the New Black on in the background.  SMS came over and we stayed for dinner, including a delicious berry pie, before heading home.

On Sunday, I cleaned around the house, studied Japanese, cooked up a storm and went into the hospital a few times.  Yes that's right, a call day that I actually had to work!  SMS and I also went grocery shopping and went to Pepper Lunch for…lunch.  It's like bibimbap except that the order comes out on a hot, flat, cast-iron plate with raw meat and rice that quickly cooks.  It's delicious!

Hakone: Owakudani and Venetian Glass Museum

Framing flowers…brilliant!

After our wonderful breakfast, it was time to check-o out-o.  No, the "o's" are not meant to be annoyingly cutesy.  Japanese has a lot of foreign words that they Nihongo-ize the pronunciation.  This can sometimes be a dangerous thing since it occasionally makes me feel like I know more Japanese than I do.  For example, picture me swimming.  Then the conversation uses actual Japanese words.  Help! Help!  I'm drowning!

Such an amazing place!  Hakone Venetian Glass Museum

We drove to the Hakone Venetian Glass Museum.  I was a woman obsessed.  The grounds were so beautiful.  I couldn't get over it.  I took a lot of pictures that didn't do it justice and just marveled at how gorgeous it was.  We also toured through the museum, which wasn't bad but it wasn't the highlight for me.  It is pretty amazing, though, how these super delicate glass pieces have last a few centuries and transport from Europe to Japan.

After tearing myself away from the museum, we were off to find Owakudani (大涌谷 lit. "Great Boiling Valley), a volcanic fissure with sulfur vents and hot springs where they boil hard-boiled eggs with amazing powers of adding longevity to a person's life (statement not FDA approved).  SMS had seen the building from our ryokan and thought it looked really cool.  Since this was his first time to Hakone, he got to pick the itinerary.  Not that I minded, I just didn't have super-strong feelings about what to do.

If I were 10, I'd make a fart joke.  Oh well, I'm older.  Sulfur springs, PEE YEW, HAHAHA!!!

We parked near Gora station and took the Hakone Tazon Cable Car up to the Ropeway station at Sounzan.  We bought round-trip tickets for the entire ropeway and headed off.

Excuse me Sir, where are the chickens?

At Owakudani, we hiked about 1 km to the site where the eggs are boiled.   SMS spotted the mini-ropeway used to shuttle the eggs back and forth from the site to the main building at the ropeway terminal.  I was hoping to see the wild chickens of the sulfur vents but they apparently do not exist.  Or do they?

After looking at the springs and smelling the fresh sulfur-tinged air, we walked back to the main building and had ramen for lunch.  It was tasty although not in the top three I've ever had.  Then we went back on the ropeway and took it to Togendai on the shores of Lake Ashi.  We saw the tourist line cruises ships that look like pirate ships but we headed back via the ropeway since we had our car.

This is the first time I took a car to Hakone and although it was great for getting to the ryokan (iPhone map app, not so much), I prefer using public transportation in the area.  I've done a day trip several times in the past and part of the fun is the different modes of transport- train, bus, cable car, rope way and pirate ship!  Also, the traffic was really heavy along the shore from Zushi to Enoshima.  Since the focus of this trip was an out-of-the-way ryokan, the car was perfect but for most trips, I'd recommend the Hakone Freepass, which really pays for itself.

We drove back to Yokosuka, which was much smoother since we didn't have anywhere to be.  When we arrived, we decided that although we had had a wonderful anniversary weekend already, we would go out to a fancy dinner to top it all off.  I was in the mood for a French restaurant and our research turned up Hananoya, an amazing French Restaurant.  We didn't take any pictures of the food because sometimes it's just not the time or place, but we had the most awesome dinner.  It was essentially a private chef experience since no one else was there.  We both ordered the course set and it was phenomenal.

It started with a vegetable tartine which seemed to be a Japanese-French fusion since the veggies were mushrooms, carrots and baby corn.  It was held together with a gelatin-like binder and wrapped in a border of cabbage leaves.  It sat on a spread of flavored mayonnaise (I love Japan).  Next was a delicious radish soup which had a French onion taste to it.  It was very smooth and rich.  I'm not sure if it was daikon or not but if so, I need to figure out the recipe since I'm currently at a loss as to what to do with daikon.

 Our main course was the red snapper, which came with the best calamari I think I've had in my life.  The dish was so good.  SMS and I usually get something different to try more things but last night, we both wanted the snapper and it was the perfect choice.  Finally, there was a trio of small desserts
that were awesome.  My favorite was the thickened crepe base with one strawberry and soybean ice cream.

 At the end, we complimented the chef and said we'd be back, both in Japanese.  That was pretty awesome b/c the look on the waiter's face was pretty priceless.  His look was basically, "Where the **$&%* did that come from?" because when we were ordering, we really bumbled through with our
Japanese b/c he was sort of mumbling Japanese and English so we had no idea how to respond.  So when we sounded good at the end, he was very surprised.

Giant Slides and Japanese Grills!

This weekend was filled with local mini-adventures, really good food and fun times with friends.  The weekend started a little early since SMS and I went out to lunch on Friday.  We went out to the 16 and I decided I wanted to try the famous Katsu place.  I had heard about it when I was on the Kitty Hawk but I had never been able to find it.  This always annoyed me since I knew it was on the base side of the street between the two gates and there aren't that many buildings located there.  Anyway, it's a very small storefront with a wooden sign over the door and if it's open, you'll see a three-paneled green door hanging and a small spider plant out front.  Well, Friday we were in luck!

It was worth the wait, although katsu isn't going to become a frequent eats!

When we sat down, we waited.  And waited some more.  Finally, we put our order in once he asked.  I had heard that the shop moves at the chef's pace and it's all true.  When we initially sat down, we thought we'd split a plate but by the time the food was ready about 50 minutes later, we were so hungry and each wolfed down our own separate place.  SMS and I both had the tonkatsu (breaded and fried pork cutlet) and it was delicious!

I went back to work way later than I meant to so I ended up staying late to make up the work.  I would have stayed later but then the network went down completely.  Well, I guess that was that.  I texted SMS to tell him I was on my way.  He was out at the yakitori place near our local train station and he asked me to join him.  When I went in, I saw that he had made friends with four Japanese construction workers who were very into arm-wrestling.  They were really nice and we had fun talking to them and a really nice lady next to our group.  SMS and I really intrigued them because I don't think many white people go in there.  Although everyone was super-nice, it's definitely a Nihongo-only place so you need at least survival Japanese+ to navigate.  Sometimes it's funny to me when I'm in a place near Yokosuka and people are surprised to see an American.  My life is so base-focused that I think, "Well, there's sort of a base nearby" but really, the base isn't all that big relative to the overall population density so sometimes, we're a novelty even if the base "Little America" atmosphere feels so close.

Zushi Beach

On Saturday, we met up with a bunch of friends in Ikego (Japanese side) for brunch, BBQ and beach.  We had delicious crepes (savory and sweet), yummy turkey burgers and condensed milk-filled strawberries.  Yum!  After lots of food, we got in our bathing suits (great timing!) and headed to the beach.  The water was so warm!  It was several degrees warmer already than San Diego at the height of Summer.  I am definitely ok with that!

The Start!

Today, we hung out in the morning and cleaned up the apartment.  We aim for cleaning it every week and, apart from travel, we've been pretty consistent.  This afternoon, we went out to Kannonzaki Park with Rose and her two kids and played on the various playgrounds sprinkled through the park.  The highlight was the huge roller slide where we really gained some speed. We used our new favorite Japanese purchase, the plastic slide sheets to help us go faster.  After sliding, we went to Rose's where we had delicious carnitas for dinner.  Yum, yum, yum!

Kannonzaki Park.  We parked at the parking on the bottom left, I would recommend
the Yokosuka Art Museum, center and slightly right.

Oh yeah!  We almost had a near disaster at Kannonzaki.  We parked in the lot and came back around 6:15 and the gates were closed and a note in Japanese on the windshield.  OH NO!  Fortunately, one of the gates was unlocked so we opened it and shut it behind us but we were nervous.  Note for next time- the parking lots close at 5!  Also, we went all the way around the point to where the rest station with the Italian restaurant was but it would be much, much closer to park at the Yokosuka Art museum.  The walk was lovely but the distance added up by the end of the day.  It's a huge park!

So, that was the weekend!  Not too much out-of-the-ordinary is planned for this week at work.  Paperwork, clinic, OR and a host nation emergency medicine conference on Friday.  Should be fun!

Host Nation Conference

Last night was pretty cool!  I took over as the host nation conference coordinator for the hospital recently.  Let me be clear, the real organizer is Yumiko-san, a powerful force of a woman whom I think secretly runs the entire hospital.  She is a lot of fun to work with and I really enjoy working with her.  My role is to do the "American required" stuff, i.e. sign the guest pass request for our Japanese guests and pay for the party/get reimbursed.  A bonus is that I also emcee the event, so I decided to break out my best (aka, not very good) Japanese.  Overall, it was a success although I became nervous so there were one or two silly mispronunciations that I quickly corrected (I think).

It was super warm in the room since the AC is not on in the base buildings.  There were two presentations that went pretty smoothly and then we gave our guests a token gift in appreciation for all they do.  Yokosuka Kosai hospital is our biggest referral center and we also rely heavily on their lab for hundreds more patients.  We are lucky to have such a good relationship with them.  The gift was an embellished paddle with intricate rope work, a Japanese/American flags pin and a nice engraving in both English and Japanese.  The woman at the wood shop scanned the Kanji when I ordered it and said, "This is very…formal."  I asked if it was old-fashioned and she said yes.  But I kept it as is since Yumiko-san had translated and formal was fine in this particular situation.

After the presentations, the food was served.  The menu was heavy hors d'oeuvres and I kept an eye out to see what changes I want to make to the menu in the future.  I plan on ordering an extra quesadilla platter, 1-2 more fruit platters and more shrimp.  As Mom says, you can divide parties into shrimp and no-shrimp parties and I definitely want to be known for shrimp parties!

New Friends and Yokosuka Festivals

Beautiful beach near Uragwa

My sad sack bike.  It's a Miyata.  No glory with that name.

I feel like I have moved to Japan recently instead of SMS.  I am getting up insanely early.  Trust me, I wish I wasn't but I'll wake up between 5:15-6:15.  I will sort of know it's too early but then my brain says, "It's light outside!  Wake up!" and then my thoughts are off to the races.  Le sigh.  My life, so hard.

At the half-way point, smiling!

This morning, I was going to get up anyway because I decided to go road biking with a friend I had met at October's Run for the Cure.  [Where, for all my readers that don't know, I was the grand prize winner!]  Never mind that I don't really bike for exercise, I figured that I could hang well enough and fortunately, that proved to be the case.  The route had only a few challenging hills and even those were puny compared to some of the hills around here so I feel like the route was just about my speed (ha, ha, see what I did there?).  We went to Nobi and back for a trip of about 20 miles.  I came home to a message from SMS saying he was out shopping, an empty house and the saddest sight I've seen in a good long while…

Nothing sadder than an "Egg in a Hole" without an Egg :(

SMS came back with eggs and made his breakfast.  Then we picked up around the house until it was time to meet his friends for lunch.  We went to the Kalbi House, where they had really good-value lunch sets.  It was so nice to meet some of SMS' friends from his recent AOB class.  We had a great lunch and walked over to Umikaze Park.  There, the kids had an awesome time on the plastic sled slide-hill and the rock climbing wall.  SMS practiced his "kids setting" on his SLR and he was pretty happy with the results.  We headed over to Homes to scout out ideas for our balcony garden.  After Homes, I was pretty tired but SMS wanted to check out the Yokosuka Blue Street Festival.  We walked to Blue Street and it was a really nice, mellow walk.

 Blue Street was closed and while we had missed most of the performances, we had an early dinner grazing feast at various food stands, also known as food-on-a-stick. We had a chicken stick, pineapple stick, chocolate banana slices stick, cucumber with miso stick and, my favorite, a spiral cut potato stick battered and fried that was the most perfect balance of fresh potato chip and french fry.  I've never seen anything like it and it was so delicious!

Delicious swirl potato on a stick!

We finished up at Cafe Mercado, a pour-over coffee place in More's City.  The caffeine didn't completely help me so I took a quick 10-minute power nap before heading to the commissary.  We didn't have the best plan so our take-home groceries were a pretty random assortment, but it should all come together once we buy our produce out in town.

Park Golf Sunday

Who loves park golf?  GODZILLA LOVES PARK GOLF!!!

On Sunday, SMS and I had a great time in Kurihama with several friends.  On the agenda was lunch, park golf, the Godzilla slide and a walk through the Kurihama flower garden.  By the end of the day, we added a bowl of ramen to the itinerary.  It was an awesome day.

We met at Keikyu Kurihama and went to the basement supermarket to buy bentos and drinks.  Then we walked over to the park.  The poppies were out and some of the carp flags were still out from early May so everything was really beautiful and scenic.

While we have grand ambitions to have a themed golf game, we all wore normal clothes for this game. Actually, there was an unintended theme that two of the women got to take part in.  The theme was "Frumpy Japanese Grandma slip-on shoes for those who wore forbidden sandals."  Yes, for future reference, no sandals allowed.  The starter was a stickler for the rules.  Somehow, my almost-sandals made the cut but I could feel the judge-y stare!  

Paparazzi shot of SMS teeing off

 The game was a lot of fun.  We couldn't all go together so we had teams of three and we switched it up after the front 9.  I love Park Golf.  I want to be like Dick "The Destroyer" Bayer and open my own course in the United States.  I've talked about it before on the blog but picture a par-3 course played with one club that is a hybrid of a croquet mallet and field hockey stick.

After Park Golf, we headed up the hill to see our friend, GODZILLA!  We were so afraid of him, we decided to slide down his tail and then pose for pictures.  I'm not sure how we lived to see another day, but I lived to tell the tale.

I know I don't look very scared but it's a bravery facade!

After walking past Godzilla, we went down the roller slide.  Well, first, we bought little plastic sheets sort of shaped like a bucket in order to make the slide experience the best it could be.  It was so much fun and we went down several times.  Unfortunately, some of the pictures made it look like we were obsessed with grabbing our crotches so maybe I will work on making a more genteel slide sled shape.

SMS makes it look easy AND refined!  Plus, bonus Japanese child photo bomb.

After sledding, we walked down the hill to the flower garden.  It was SO pretty!  The poppies were out and it was so gorgeous and mellow.  Very idyllic.

Beautiful poppies

Artsy filter on a carp flag photo

At that point, we said good-bye to Brooke and Aaron who live in Kurihama.  The remaining four were about to part ways when we decided to grab some ramen.  After a brief detour, we went to the ramen shop that Aaron proclaimed "the best."  It was pretty delicious!  It was a very rich broth and I got the special ramen that came with two thick slices of pork belly.  There was also a mountain of bonito flakes that was a little too much, but I would go back again.  I would have to be hungry, but not too hungry because I think if I ate the whole bowl, I would have regrets.

Sunday Funday!

A little beach visible from the boardwalk across the street from the Yokosuka Art Museum.  The hills with
the trails are in the background, but the beach and rest stop look good too!

Today was a beautiful Spring day!  I did some Spring cleaning and the apartment looks awesome.  After cleaning up, I headed out for a 6 mile roundtrip run to the Yokosuka Art Museum.  I love the run because it's along the coast, seawall path and a cool dock near the Art Museum itself.  I wanted to run the trails by the art museum but I was out of time since I was meeting up with two friends for Park Golf!  Hooray!  I love Park Golf!

What's in your garage?  Oh, you know.  Just a shrine.  Kind of hard to get the car
out in the morning.

I went to Park Golf with two friends of mine who are also missing their significant others.  Aaron is marrying my good friend book in May and then they will both be here!  Sagoy!  I cannot wait to see Brooke again.  She's a good friend of mine from San Diego and I will be so happy to have her out here.  Carl's wife is deployed and she'll be out here in July.  I can't wait to meet her.  She deployed only a few weeks after I got here and the first month I was here, I was busy dealing with housing and getting ready for the boards.

So, the big news in Park Golf is that I got a hole in one!  Course A, hole 3!  This got a lot of cheers from fellow Park Golf enthusiasts!  However, I still did not win in our group.  Whah!  I had a lot of bad holes but it's sort of ok because it simply means that I will have to play more of my favorite game!

Hole in one! Hole in one!

The course was beautiful and the day was great.  Prior to park golf, we went to a delicious yakitori place where we were painfully ordering the yakitori one at a time.  Since I was very hungry post-run, this was slightly sad for my tummy but in the end, I was very happy.

For dinner, I went out to Hamakura with a group that included Sean who is here from Singapore for the week!  It was great to see him and hopefully, I will see him again before he heads back.  Overall, it was a great day with lots of sporty activities and hanging out with friends. 

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

This wasn't even the worst of it!

Nice. Humming Christmas songs in February.

But really, the weather is terrible!  It's been gusting and snowing all day.  Apparently, we've gotten 4-8 inches depending on one's location in the greater Yokosuka area.  I have not been outside because I am old, cranky and do not own a sled.  If I owned a sled, I may have headed out but the winds are going at 40 mph so probably not.

Also, this morning?  The temperature inside the house was 7 degrees Celsius.  I'll translate: 44 degrees Farenheit.  That's ridiculous.  I kept trying to see my breath fog up but I had no luck.  But I cranked my little kerosene heater up!

Ed and Meg are much braver than I and are out in Tokyo.  They went to Kyoto, Nara and Osaka over the last few days.  Very cool!  We were going to meet in Tokyo but I didn't want to get stuck up there so I stayed home and studied.  Nerd alert!  I think they'll make it back tonight but the trains are delayed and probably pretty crowded.

Today I studied, did a yoga video, ate lots of snacks and studied some more.  I also found the video below in someone's "Link List Friday."  It's really sweet and really sad.  I started crying and that takes a lot from a video.  Or maybe I am old, cranky AND a crybaby.  What a winning combination!

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Visitors!

Yay, my brother and his girlfriend are here!  I'm so excited to have visitors even though I was shocked when I came home for lunch and they were already gone!  Whah!  My house must stink!

JK, I knew they were leaving for Kyoto today but I'm very impressed they made it out the door before noon the day after a huge amount of travel.  We're going to hang out this weekend in Tokyo and we're going skiing next week.  Awesome!  I can't wait.

I picked them up in Yokohama last night and we went to a sushi go-round, which was one of the things they definitely wanted to do in Japan.  It's a Y100 sushi place but it's pretty good and we had a lot of delicious food and caught up.  Both of them are so funny and tell great stories so we have lots more to talk about when I see them again, especially since they'll have their Kyoto tales by that point.  They're also going to Osaka and Kanazawa.

He told me about the Ninjadera temple in Kanazawa that I really want to go to!  It has a lot of awesome defenses built into it and it sounds so cool.  I think SMS would really like it based on what Ed said.

Work is going well.  I operated two days in a row so I am really happy.  Clinic is a little boring today and I came home for a long lunch before two ear cleaning appointments.  Awesome.  Definitely the highlight of the week.

I have a Japanese lesson tomorrow and I'm going to study a lot of ENT so that I can basically take Monday and Tuesday off.  I'll bring my iPad so I can study from GoodReader but I don't think it'll be the most productive.  I want to hang out with my guests!

January, You Are Over

Oh my gosh, time does go by faster as an adult than as a kid.  While this thought is neither profound nor original, it is still pretty amazing to actually experience.  Fortunately, there's an element of "the days are long but the years are short" so I do feel that I've gotten a lot done and experienced new things.

A few January highlights...
* SMS and I spent 3/4 of the month together.  While we both can't wait to be together for reals, we had so much fun together.  We went to Singapore, explored Japan, took Japanese lessons, played a new "sport" (Park Golf), ate good food and just had the best time together.  Hooray!

* I read The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  The writing was incredibly lush and the way she put the emotion of grief into words was amazingly gifted.  I even learned a few words...my favorite?  Elide.  But that's only because I can't remember any others off the top of my head.  I also really, really want to see the painting now.  But in terms of an overall reading experience, I was moved but mostly in an unpleasant way.  The story is really sad and there's just so much wasted human life because of an endless loop of misperceptions, undealt-with emotions and fear.  There are a lot of really vivid descriptions of what it's like to be on drugs, which makes total sense once I realized that the author went to Bennington College.  (Cheap shot alert!)  So, overall, I would recommend it but only if you have a strong resolve to not be affected and filled with malaise while reading.  Hmmm, maybe reading on a bright Summer day would be helpful?  Her writing is so amazing though that I think I'll read The Secret History at some point.

* Currently, I'm reading This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett, one of my favorite authors.  It's good b/c it's a collection of essays so I don't get horribly sucked in and neglect sleep, studies and work.

* Hmmmm, no new bands really.  I would like to listen to more Band of Horses and I started listening to some new playlists on Songza to try and be cool.  I looked over the Coachella 2014 line-up and I am pretty out of it.

* I started watching Breaking Bad with SMS but then we went on hiatus b/c it was depressing.  Between that and The Goldfinch I wasn't doing too well for a couple of days, ha ha.  He's currently on a watching spree though.

* I got serious about studying for boards.  That's good because that sort of needed to happen.

*In other work-related news, I signed up for the San Francisco match, which is the application processing center used for neurotology applications.  There is, in fact, no neurotology program in San Francisco.  It's just the name of the match (which is used for lots of other residency and fellowship programs too).

* Future vacation with SMS?  Start budgeting for said vacation now since I also want to include the Shanghai, Terracota Warriors and Great Wall of China excursion.  Oh my tastes...so expensive.

Catch-up!

So, SMS left on Tuesday, 21 January.  We were both sad but at this point, we only have 0.3 decimal years to be apart so hopefully it'll fly by.  It won't, but at least I can attempt to be cheerful!

Before he left, we played Park Golf.  We were driving around to go to the park when what did I see??!?!?!  Old people playing Park Golf!  I thought it was only open in the Summer but apparently, there's a Winter League.  So, SMS and I paid our Y500 game fee and Y100 rental fee and headed out to the course.  It was so much fun and we were so bad.  So bad that a Japanese woman laughed at our score, "Yonju-yon!??!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"  She then walked over to her friends to tell them and they too thought it was so funny.  Trash-talked by old people, the shame!

We took the Base Shuttle to Narita which was fast and free.  Both good things.  We said our good-byes (for now!) and I took the Shuttle back to base.  Now, the apartment is cooler and SMS-free.  Oh well.  May will be here soon.

Not too much has gone on the last week and a half.  I've worked, worked out, studied and been on call.  I've also been making some nice progress in my Japanese classes so that's a plus.

I also got some great news in that Ed and Meg are coming!  Hooray!  It sounds like they'll be fairly independent and tour around on their own for the first half.  Then, we're going to hang out Sunday and then ski Monday-Tuesday.  I can't wait to go on our overnight ski trip.  We're going to Nazawa Onsen. There is a great resort and a town full of free hotsprings.  Awesome!

Yokosuka Museum of Art

I was feeling pretty lazy on Saturday but since weekend time is field trip time, SMS and I headed down the road to the Yokosuka Museum of Art.

It is a beautiful building.  It is very bright and white with high ceilings and cut out windows.  It reminded me of the La Jolla Contemporary Art Museum but with even cooler architecture.  There were several exhibition halls filled with kids' art and a special exhibit featuring Japanese artists from the 1900s.  It was a great find on SMS' part and we had a really nice time.  

The museum costs Y300 for adults and is free for children.  The parking is free for the first hour and then Y300/hr after that.  It's next to Kannonzaki Park and I'd really like to go back at some point to explore the trails around there.  

After we looked around the museum, we headed down to the waterfront right in front of Spasso.  It was a beautiful, cold day.  At some point, I'd like to go to Spasso but we had a date for the Thrash Zone!