happy thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Unlike many of you back at home, we spent the day walking around in shorts and t-shirts and flip flops. The weather here has been great, aside from that whole typhoon thing that ran through here the other day - and that was just wind wind and more wind (no snow, hail etc), and a bit of rain. It does cool off at night, and I'm sure that this summer-wear won't last much longer - soon I may have to wear a sweatshirt (or sweater?) out of the house, during the day.

at the bagging station at a newfound grocery store

Anyways - so, Thanksgiving weekend it is, and we are going to try our best to make some sort of festive meal for dinner. We found a new (to us) grocery store by the station, with better prices and a great selection of nearly everything but bread and cereal; I'm pretty sure this will be my go-to grocer. Bread usually comes in loaves of three to six slices, and is as white as a ghost (and probably as nutritious as a marshmallow), and as for cereal - it's either corn flakes, sugar flakes or frosted flakes, that is, unless you want to pay close to $10 for granola or oatmeal or Special K. I'm wondering if I can buy oats - haven't seen anything other than the instant Quaker stuff, which runs for around $6 a box, eep. I'm excited about doing some grocery store exploring in this city, and find some brown bread and healthy breakfast foods.

We did do a little bit of Tokyo exploring today - we metro-ed to Shibuya and walked around the crazy crazy so-much-going-on area. From the famous crossing to the exclusive ladies-stores mall to Starbucks and beyond we went. We had a hard time finding our way around in the Tokyu mall, which seems puzzle-pieced together with the many lines and stations coming in and going out of Shibuya's station. Finally, after going from the east wing to the west wing to the south wing, we found the teensy toys section on floor seven where we bought a deck of cards. After a couple hours of walking around, we made our way back to Nakameguro station and the grocery store where we got foodstuffs for dinner. On the menu - stuffed chicken breasts, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad and ... jackpot! wine. We found affordable wine - yum. We do have to figure out how to work our small oven - about a third of the manual was computer-translated by the coach's wife, but it might be a bit of a crapshoot, with all of the flashing icons and strange translations (eg: "by power of the steam I am delicious"). We'll see...

ShiBUya!
sticking out, in a big crowd of people...

And some big news for us - we have Canadian TV! Eeeeek! At first I wasn't so psyched about it, thinking I'd just turn into some TV couch-blob, but so far it's great! Steve (and his parents) hooked up a Slingbox before we left, and on Friday got everything going. We were watching HGTV this morning, and hockey, and Jeapordy was on last night - it's crazy! The picture is pretty clear, and it's good to feel a little more connected with home. We can watch the news too, and get radio stations... I just hope I don't become a couch-blobbo. Okay, dinner - I hope everyone has/had a great Thanksgiving weekend!

on our way to Ikea the other day - a fish pond! with big white and orange and black fish...

Japanese beer and Japanese cell - I'm set...

en route to the station from our place - the streets are super narrow, with front doors opening right onto the street

I went with Steve to practice yesterday, and walked around a beautiful big park... and got some blisters, thanks to my new (but very cute) boots ")