Melissa's Dad Visits Japan!

Being away from home for 7 months now, we were definitely ready to have our first visitor! Melissa's dad, Steve, arrived on March 25 and was here for a week. This was especially an exciting trip because this was his first time traveling outside of America. We were really impressed with how easily he adapted to a completely different culture... using chopsticks, bowing, sitting and sleeping on the floor, and most of all, not being able to speak the language!

The first day was beautiful outside, so we took a bike ride to Gifu Park, which is a really pretty park about 10 minutes away from our apartment. We walked around the park for a while, then traveled up Kinka Mountain on a cable car to see Gifu Castle and a view of the city.

On the top of the mountain, we also went to a squirrel park. The squirrels were adorable and apparently very hungry. We each wore a glove and each time we put food in our hand, it was only seconds before a squirrel would hop on to have a snack! Below is a video of Daddy feeding the squirrels.

The next day we rented a car and drove to a large mall about 30 minutes away from our apartment. Melissa's dad was very surprised how similar it looked to the malls in America. All the signs were in English and there was a McDonald's, Starbucks, and Baskin Robins. We also found a great music store that had some high-tech pianos he was interested in. The pianos had computer screens that allowed you to download sheet music from your computer.

The next three days we spent in Tokyo! See the next blog about our trip.

After returning from Tokyo, we spent the next couple days exploring more of Gifu. We rode our bikes around some neighborhoods. Below is a picture of what a Japanese house looks like. It is usually 3 stories and quite large, but usually 3 generations live together in the same house.

Melissa's dad was very surprised how close most of the houses are together! Sometimes there is literally a 4-5 inch space between homes.

On the last day of his visit, Melissa's dad got to meet some of our Japanese friends and students! Every Sunday, Melissa has a private English lesson with four children at our apartment. The children and their mothers were all very excited to meet him and came bearing gifts...homemade banana cake and 2 bottles of Japanese Sake! After the lesson, we took pictures and played with the kids! Everyone enjoyed this very much!

Our week came to an end on April 2. It was very hard to say goodbye, but we're thankful we got to have such a great time together! We love and miss you Daddy!

Calligraphy Lesson

Last weekend we were invited to a couple's house for lunch and a calligraphy lesson. The husband is a calligraphy teacher and offered to give us a lesson using traditional Japanese ink and brushes. It turned out to be very fun and interesting.

First we had to choose what characters we wanted to learn....we decided on love, beautiful, laugh, and travel.

Frank decided to master "love." The teacher kept making us write the same character over and over until he felt we mastered it to the best of our ability.

Melissa chose to learn to write "beautiful." During the beginning of the lesson, she kept doing touch ups after each stroke...which are apparently a big no-no! The amount of brush strokes are very important when writing Japanese calligraphy and there is an order of which lines you write first. Luckily the teacher had a sense of humor and thought it was cute!

Here are our finished pieces which our teacher later matted in a book for us to keep!

Japanese Cooking Lesson

Yesterday, our Japanese teacher Mami took us to a local community center for a Japanese cooking lesson. There were many other foreigners there, mostly Middle Easterners. Even though we were the only Americans, it was still really fun talking to other foreigners. We met a really funny woman from Romania that has lived in Japan for 4 years. She's the one on the left in the picture below. The picture on the right is of some women preparing the rice for the sushi rolls we made. It was very interesting listening to women from all different countries speaking Japanese.

We learned how to make sushi rolls and tempura. Here are some pictures of us making the sushi. First, we put a dried seaweed sheet on a bamboo mat. Then we added white rice over 2/3's of it. We then put cucumber, cooked mushrooms, egg, and crab on top of the rice. After it was all on top, we used the bamboo mat to roll it and it was ready to eat. It tasted delicious!

To make the tempura, we first washed and cut all the vegetables. Next we made a batter with egg, salt, and soy sauce. After dipping the veggies in the batter, we put them in a pan full of grease and fried them until they were nice and crispy. Before eating them, we had to shred a Japanese radish in order to make a dip for the tempura. They said that the tempura is really fattening, but the radish is very healthy, so eating the two together kind of evens things out! No wonder they're all so tiny!

Here we are about to enjoy our feast!

Our Trip to Nagano!

In February, we went on a 3 day trip with Matt and Chelsea to Nagano, where the 1998 Winter Olympics were held. We rented a Mazda here in Gifu City and drove 3 1/2 hours north to Nagano. The car was great because it had a navigation system that was really helpful! Although it only spoke in Japanese, we were still able to follow the arrows on the screen.

Zenkoji Temple

Nagano is such a nice quaint city! We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express that was really close to the main area of the city that had streets filled with small stores selling Japanese pottery, paper umbrellas, snacks, etc. We bought a lot of great souvenirs here, including Frank's favorite, a traditional Japanese sword! After shopping, we went to the Zenkoji Temple. It was very crowded because it was the first night of the Lantern Festival, which honors the Nagano Olympics by lighting-up the temple with the five Olympic colors.

Snowboarding

On our second day we went snowboarding! We drove about 30 minutes into the mountains while it was snowing.

Snowboarding was really fun, but a little more challenging than we thought. We spent more time on our butts than standing up! The weather was great. It snowed some of the time but was always sunny.

Snow Monkeys
The main reason we visited Nagano was to see the snow monkeys. So on our third day, we drove an hour from Nagano to Yudinaka. We began by taking a 30 minute walk into the woods to a monkey park where the monkeys run wild and bathe in the hot springs. There were monkeys everywhere!

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