Meat on a Stick

Saturday there was parent's day at Marley's school to show all of the art work the kids have created.  Marley was finally feeling a little better so Seth decided to take Marley while Kelly and I did some stuff around the house.  We got a text message from him 45 minutes later saying "bring money and bikes to gym, meet in 10".  It turns out there was some sort of Farmers Market going on with little booths and stands set up all around the square.  We bought some fried chicken and jo-jos and ate near the fountain.  That was good but after Marley said he was still hungry.  So we decided to try meat on a stick.  Seth bought two different kinds.  I thought one was chicken and the other was seafood.  The chicken turned out to look like beef when it was cooked.  I had the first bite, definitely not beef!  Seth tried it next and ended up spitting it out, he doesn't have much of a tolerance for new/different things.  What we thought was chicken turned out to be some animals tongue!  We threw that away and went on to the seafood.  It was in little pieces and was white.  It was a little chewy and slimy but wasn't as bad as the tongue.  That was until we realized it wasn't seafood but rather intestines.  The after taste was worse than actually eating the intestines! As soon as we got back to the house we all quickly drank some coke to get rid of that taste!!

You mad bro?

Why would anyone want there face to have a constant look of anger and frustration?  Beats me, but that exactly what this women looked like on the train.  She had removed both eyebrows and instead drew on new ones but in downward lines so her expression never changed haha

Day 3 of House Arrest

That is how Kelly is feeling right about now.  She went outside Wednesday only to meet us at the gates of the college, and then was inside all of yesterday and the majority of today.  You could tell she was beginning to get restless.  Thankfully Marley was feeling much better today than how he was yesterday.  He was tired and sluggish with a slight fever but was in higher spirits and even made it to dinner where we went out for udon at his request.  Of course when we got to the restaurant he looked like he was about to fall asleep and had to be fed the whole meal.  

We had planned to take him to the doctors today but the English speaking office didn't have any openings and the other English speaking offices were over an hour away via train and he wasn't bad enough that they thought it was important.  We will be heading to one of them next week to get Marley a flu shot.  That'll be interesting...

We, Seth, Marley, and I, went out yesterday morning for an hour to try and get Marley some fresh air.  Seth just said that we would go get a pastry but didn't mention where.  Turns out we took 2 trains just to get the the Krispy Kreme he saw earlier in the week haha  At first I thought he was silly to go so far for a doughnut when there were bakeries and a Mr. Doughnut much closer but after the first bite of my doughnut all made sense! haha It is 100 times better than rotten old Mr. Doughnut and best of all there was no bean paste in the whole place! haha

Hard to see in the picture but here is Marley with his swollen lip looking so out of it at Krispy Kreme.  When we finally got there he picked out a chocolate doughnut.  When we sat down he looked like this and felt awful, he looked at the doughnut and said he just wanted water.  That's when we knew it was time to take him back home!

Sick Boy

Last night Marley started to feel a little down in the gutter. He said his belly hurt and his face looked pale and he felt like he had a slight fever.  He went to bed before dinner and slept through the night.  In the morning he felt better but still not great.  We decided to try going to school and see if he could make it through.  I could Marley on the bus to school by myself this morning.  Poor guy, he fell on the sidewalk right outside of the school.  And with his new backpack (which doesnt fit well, it retricts his arms).  So when he fell he couldnt put his hands out to brace himself and landed on his face! He got a nasty bloody/swollen lip.  It was awful! He was fine overall but just added to him already not feeling good.  He didn't want to do anything at school except sit with me and read/rest so we ended up leaving and going home early.  He fell asleep within minutes of being home and resting with Kelly.  He ended up napping all day, woke up once for maybe half an hour and then right back to bed for the night.  He looks so sad with his swollen lip and pale face.
Hopefully he feels better tomorrow morning!

Ready for school

Marley has a hat and a backpack he is supposed to wear on his walk to and from school.  Its adorable! He's still trying to get used to the idea of the hat and backpack but its so cute when he puts them on.  Although whenever he puts the backpack on he instantly leans forward and walks around with his head at his knees haha

November 17th

It's officially past the middle of November.  While at home it is in the mid 40s and has been raining for weeks now, it is a comfortable 60 degrees here and sunny here.  We went to the park today and I enjoyed wearing simply a long sleeve shirt and feeling the sun warming my face.  It is so amazing to have a forecast that says 60 and sunny all week! I am not going to be ready to go home to the cold and rain in a few weeks!!  It feels like early September outside haha

At the park today we finally figured out what these metal bars were for! There are two rows of bars about 20 feet long and about 3 feet wide.  Unicycles! We saw little kids practicing all day!  

Dinosaurs, City Lights, and Saké

Yesterday we made our way our way back to Ueno where we went to the zoo a few weeks ago.  They have a dinosaur exhibit going on at the Natural Science Museum.  We decided before we went to the museum it would be a good idea to go to a park 2 train stations away so Marley could run out his wiggles from the long train ride.  Seth was the one who had found the park online the night before so Kelly assumed he knew how to get there.  Wrong!  We get off the park and she asks Seth where to go from here.  He just looks and says "I don't know, should be around here somewhere." We ended walking for almost 45 minutes, asking two people for help, and looking at Kelly's GPS on her phone before we found the park.  We were always a little cranky, tired, and hungry by the time we got to the park.

Saw a blimp while at the park!  It was of course a Japanese Snoopy for MetLife haha

After the park we found a place to eat.  From the outside it looked like the International House of Gyoza

It was then two train stations to get to the Dinosaur exhibit.  The exhibit was of dinosaurs found in Mongolia.  By this time Marley was exhausted and had no interest in seeing old dinosaur bones.  It took some convincing to get him to look around but by the end he enjoyed at least a little.

Since it was a nice night and we were already downtown we decided to stop at Shinjuku.  It is the busiest train station in the world.  Outside of the station is streets and streets of shops, restaurants, and giant lights.  We all wanted to get a sense of the night life before I left.  It actually took us almost 15 minutes from the time we got off the train to actually step foot outside the station.  Thats how big the station is and how far we had to walk.  Once we were outside it was fun to see the different stores and people.  It was late for us, 6pm, but you could tell things were just getting started in Shinjuku.  We finally found a restaurant that didnt have smoking and ordered.  I really wanted to try saké before I left so this was the night.  The food was delicious, we had chicken and some kind of spicy pork with a salad, rice, and soup.  Everything tasted excellent! Except for something brown in the soup.  I said it looked like a soaked shredded wheat cereal piece, Kelly thought it was beef tongue (that was popular on their menu), while Seth said it looked like a beaver's ear.  After each trying it we decided it was most likely tongue.

The saké was good, it was a chilled kind.  Surprisingly it reminded me of vodka but beer at the same time.  But that was a huge bottle! Seth ordered a drink for himself and wine for Kelly so this was all for me!  I could only do a few of those small glasses before I was starting to warm up and as Kelly said I was getting the "permi-smile" haha  The remainder is now in the fridge here at the house...