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Finally, Pictures from Hirosaki

Well here are the last pics from our Golden Week Vacation! This was actually May 7th! Sooo sorry that it took sooooooo long to get these on the blog! This first pic was the first day we got to Hirosaki. It took us about 4 hours to drive there and about 1 hour to find our Inn! It was really crowded and confusing! Gabe and I got a chance to use our Japanese though so that was an adventure! Above is a picture of our first Hanami picnic.
This was outside a cute little store near the Inn that we stayed at.


After we had our Hanami picnic we checked into our Inn and had a beautiful dinner served to us in our room! It was really delicious and relaxing.

After dinner Dad and Siri went to bed (unfortunately they caught a cold while they were here). It was raining but Gabe and I had to go out for night time Hanami. In Hirosaki Park they light up all the cherry trees and people sit under them and enjoy food and drinks. Though we were not as prepared as this group, who set up a nice tarp tent and BBQ pit, (we just had Gabe's raincoat!) we still had a wonderful time!




Then the next day we finally had some sunshine!
The cherry blossoms were amazing and although the park was extremely crowded it was still peaceful and surprisingly quiet. This pic below is of Mt. Iwaki. It was kind of overcast so it is hard to appreciate the size of this mountain.

We toured the castle and then stopped to rest a bit and soak it all in. Hirosaki is famous for apples and they make a delicious local apple juice, so I had to try it! Yummy!

And here is Gabe finally getting to relax after all the driving he did all week.

After that we decided to try some food from the festival vendors!
These are miniature octopi! They were being used in Takoyaki! Which is a kind of breaded and fried octopus ball. Usually you just get pieces of octopus in them but here you got one whole octopus in each ball! Although it seems strange it was delicious!

Here's Dad Craft enjoying an octopus.

And these pics were taken just before we left. The blossoms had just started to fall into the moat around the castle. We went at the perfect time. We saw the flowers in full bloom and also got to see them falling on the last day! It really was a wonderful vacation and we had so much fun with Dad and Siri! Sometimes it takes having guests to really enjoy your own home!

KFC

Hey Ya'll,
It's me , Gabe...
Just thought that many of you might like to know that The Colonel is here in the Land of the Rising Sun... Last week, on Tuesday, steph and I had to go to our capital city (Morioka) to do some paperwork for our visas. We had an extra special greasy treat of fried chicken at KFC. Believe it or not, it was the first time for me to eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken! When I was a kid my family usually went to BoJangle's for fried chicken and Steph said that they usually went to Popeye's.

Concert Pics

Here's pics of me Steph on stage during the "We Are the World" International Fellowship Concert. Many thanks to Matsuo for giving us these pictures. I like to think we ended up looking like a modern day Johnny and June Cash. I'm, of course, not as cool and Steph is much prettier in my opinion (see below).
And below is a pic from the finale of the concert when many local foreigners living here in Japan along with several Japanese got up onstage to sing "We are the World". It was a real success! Everyone, including the audience was singing and doing the "two-hands-above-the-head-waving-and-swaying-thing". We were just so happy that everyone enjoyed the concert.
Thank you to all of you who worked so hard to make this concert a wonderful success and one of our greatest memories here in Japan!
We love you all!!!


--------------------------------other posts-------------------------------------
the poster:
http://gscraft.blogspot.com/2006/04/pretendin-to-be-famous.html

Steph on Iwate TV:
http://gscraft.blogspot.com/2006/06/steph-on-japanese-tv.html

pics from and thank you to all the people who made the concert:
http://gscraft.blogspot.com/2006/06/concert-pics.html

Watermelon

Well, today we were given a beautiful watermelon by Reverand Tajima from our church in Ofunato. This thing is worth approximately $20.00! I bet many of you have heard about the expensive fruit in Japan. Fruit is more expensive here and is therfore a popular gift item but its readily available and recently more and more less expensive imported fruit has made its way in to the supermarkets. But, this watermelon is a bit more special than the average melon: very round and more perfectly shaped.

The Legend of the Cubed Watermelon (click me)

Steph on Japanese TV

On Friday June 9th I got the wonderful opportunity to appear on Japanese TV. We went to promote the concert that we did on June 10th. It was such a fun day! We started out at 11am and drove to our capital city, Morioka, and first had a live radio interview then went on to the TV station. It was me, a group called "Cafe" and our friends Mutsuko, Kame-chan and Kazuyoshi.
When we first planned the trip it didn't look like Mutsuko was going to be able to go and nor was anyone else who spoke English. So I was having these fears that I would end up looking like Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation" when he appears on a Japanese TV show. If you've seen the movie you will understand my worry!! Luckily I had someone to help me understand everything although I may have still ended up looking a little silly! hehe! So without further adeu...here is the show in 3 different sections! Enjoy!
P.S. I messed up a little in my singing...oops (I don't quite have the scream/singing abilities of Cyndi Lauper hahaha!)
P.S. again I will post pictures later from the day!

Just a note for playing the videos: Make sure and only click the video play button once! Otherwise, it'll take you to another site.


Part One


Part Two


Part Three









the poster:
http://gscraft.blogspot.com/2006/04/pretendin-to-be-famous.html

Steph on Iwate TV:
http://gscraft.blogspot.com/2006/06/steph-on-japanese-tv.html

pics from and thank you to all the people who made the concert:
http://gscraft.blogspot.com/2006/06/concert-pics.html

Conan & Purikura

These pics are from last Saturday, June 3rd.
This handsome little man on the right of me (above) is Conan Mino. He's the son of Mark and Junko Mino who are our good friends here in Sumita. Mark dropped by last Saturday and said, "Hey, you guys wanna go for an onsen?" So, knowing that it was one of our last days of freedom before an onslaught of practicing for the upcoming concert....

...we went for a soak at the nearby Hirota onsen which has an amazing view of the ocean.
Then we went to a great Chinese restaurant.

What kinda' car do you think that is?










It's a "that's", that's what it is!






After that Steph and I took some "Purikura (click me)" (short for "print club").

Ave Maria

Hey Everyone,
It's me, Gabe... Since Steph is singing Ave Maria for the "We Are the World" concert on Saturday, I remembered that you can listen to her sing it on the net if you like.

Click the below link to go to the website of our church in South Carolina. Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page and double click "Ave Maria"

Steph sings Ave Maria August 18th, 2003

Golden Week Day 6

Here are some pics from Day 6 of Golden week. I can't believe this was a month ago already! Time sure does fly! We went to Tono this day to see Mark and his Samurai group at a festival. Unfortunately we were too late and missed his show but we did get to see him in in armor! It was really cool.






Next we watched some traditional dancing. This one in particular was a deer dance. They were playing drums and flutes I believe. There are some amazing similarities between the old Japanese music and dance and Native American music and dance. We really enjoyed sitting and taking it all in.

Then we walked up the mountainside and found this lookout point. It was beautiful. We could see a perfect view of Tono city. The sky was clear and blue and the cherry blossoms were just starting to bloom there. It is a little colder in Tono (which is about 45 minutes from our town) so their blossoms bloom later.

After our day in Tono we went to have dinner with our friend Mutsuko and her family at their house. She prepared Sukiyaki for us. It was so delicious!
Everyday was like a dream!