Good Day Sunshine

Sunset at Torii Station

This is the beach at Torii Station, an army base about 20 minutes from our house.

Eyeing My Prey

Coin Operated

These are a representative sample of the drink machines that are on every corner, in front of nearly every business, and even on random residential streets. Its hot here, and you never know when you might need a cold drink. In all seriousness these things are everywhere and they are always fully stocked. I have yet to see any one of them out of any drink. I have heard that the guys who stock these machines have one of the best and most secure jobs on the island.

They contain coffee drinks, Gatorade type drinks, sodas, water and all sorts of other things you would think twice about consuming.

Baby Be Us

Today we went to the one and only Babies R Us on the island. We have at least two Toys R Us stores, of which this is connected to one. Not the one that five minutes from our house though. Although the one that is near our house does have a small section of baby items. The one we went to today, in Naha, is really just a section of the Toys R Us. They share the same store, but you walk through a little doorway and your out of the Babies side into the Toys side. But they do have a lot more stuff than the Toys R Us by our house.More dino stuff. We didn't buy these but thought they were pretty funny. They say "How about the seed of power?" And how about that seed of power? The one below says, "He is hard to get along with." Well I bet anything that could eat you whole in one bite would be hard to get along with.

Above is a shawl for suckling. That pretty much describes a baby, she's already sucking a bunch of money out of our accounts. I'm just kidding its worth every sucking penny.
They really want you to start training your kids early on chopsticks. As you can see above and below there are a ton of teaching tools and starter chopsticks. This is extremely important, as I still fail at using chopsticks. I blame my parents really, for not starting me as soon as possible with them. Of course if you ask them, they will say in their day you had to chop down your own tree and whittle your own chopsticks, and we weren't rich enough to own an axe or whittling tool. Fancy training sticks didn't exist back then you see.

This one below even comes with easily choke-able pieces to practice your stick skills on. Because here, using chopsticks is life or death. You either learn or starve, or choke on little blue and yellow ducks trying to learn. Obviously training a small child how to eat (which for those in the back is the act of picking up something with sticks and putting them in your mouth) using small inedible objects perfect for blocking young windpipes is the only way learn. Apparently chicken nuggets don't exist here.

Our journey to this and many other fine baby proprietors was in search of strollers. We kept hearing that all the strollers here were much better than the ones available to us in the states. We also heard the Japanese were very into European brands. The caveat we were told, was that everything was very expensive. Well they were half right. The strollers were Ok, but nothing really blew us away. As you can see above they look like every other stroller you have ever seen. But they are anywhere from 300 to 700 dollars. Yup, those wheels aren't made of gold, and there are no down feathers in those seats. Not to mention none of these are travel systems, meaning none come with a car seat. Oh car seats, they sell those too, just a la cart.

Here is one those fancy car seats. Now in all honesty, these are better than the US ones we have seen. We took the above and below picture from the same place, the car seat actually swivels around. This way you don't have to yank the kid out from over the side of the seat, you can just turn the car seat so it faces out of the door. Pretty neat. Although not 500 dollars (or in this case fifty thousand yen) worth of neat.

This is another one of those fancy car seats. This one folds flat so the kid can fall asleep (because they don't do that every hour anyway). It must be for all those long road trips, you know, the ones you take when you live on an island that you can drive, tip to tip, in two hours......

Well after all that non spending we decided to come home and just put together all the stuff we already have. Above is the totally awesome crib I whittled out of one piece of solid oak. Below is the most fear inducing, seizure causing baby item I have seen to date. Christine said all the shapes and colors stimulate a babies brain. I said I am going to save this picture, and when our daughter grows up and starts shooting from a clock tower and people ask why, I will show them this picture and they sigh in understanding.
These are just a few of what I am sure will be many stuffed animals. The two poohs are different, one plays music the other sits in envy of the music playing one.

Below is our high tech high chair. Notice the orange button on the base (which houses about six wheels so it can slide wherever you want it or push in a parking brake and it stays put), that orange button is the hydraulic lift. Its somewhat like a barber chair, you can raise and lower it to suit the table you place the kid at. Due to the design there are no cracks, crevices or joints that food can get stuck in. If your so inclined you can wheel the thing outside and just hose it off. Its up to you if you want to take the kid out first.

Halloween Decorations

Christine has started putting up our halloween decorations. They aren't all up but we are getting there.


Yes the spider above is HUGE. The Jack Skellington head in front of the TV lights up.
This is my moms famous spider web. It even has two afro haired spiders. Available at Country Punchin'
Yes the shrine to the dino egg is growing almost as fast as my baby girl. She better like Dino's.
This is our faux (french for not real, or imaginary) fireplace. To the left and right we have our Gnome Be Gones, the anti lawn gnomes, they are up all year round.

This is the table that sits right behind our sofa. Christine put out the jars of candy for easy access while "resting" on the sofa. Making a baby is hard work and requires copious amounts of chocolate and sugar to do so. Those jack o' lanterns also light up.
This is a close up of the fabric, another gift from my mother. I really like how Christine used it, as it hides all the stuff I put on that table and get yelled at for putting on the table.