Life in Japan

Kristina, Jack and I are crossing America this week.  Kristina is moving to Boston to get her Master’s degree in Education at Boston University.  I am really glad that I get to help her drive her car to Boston.  It’s not very often that I get to spend so much one on one time with one of my children and I really cherish it.  We are laughing a lot and really enjoying this time together. 

We started Monday evening by driving to Park City to spend the night.  We had a great dinner and called it a night.  It had been a long day moving her furniture to storage in Bountiful and then loading the rest of her stuff into the car.  While I did help move the furniture, and boy it’s not easy getting a queen size mattress out of a basement, she did virtually all the loading of the car.  Tuesday, we drove to Grand Island Nebraska.  Wednesday we decided that we could get much farther than our planned stop near Chicago and Kristina set the goal to make it to Ohio.  At 10pm we stopped at a Holiday Inn Express just 13 miles across the Ohio border.  Today we covered Ohio (stopping at Kirtland) and Pennsylvannia.  We are now in Palmyra, New York.  We stopped at the Hill Cumorah on our way in and will see the rest of the church history sites tomorrow before heading east again, this time to Boston!

Fish on a Stick

One of the fun things to do in Tokyo during the summer is to attend a Matsuri (festival).  There is something going on somewhere every week.  Andrew and Leigh were here visiting the past two weeks and one day we went to the Chinese Lantern Festival at Asakusa.  One of my favorite things about about any matsuri is the sreet food.  Rick loves this kind or food because it is what he ate as a missionary, it is his comfort food.  However, fish on a stick is not one of the things I plan to try, ever.  Fish on a stick is at every festival and is very popular.  I could not get Andrew or Leigh to try it.  Leigh did find the Japanese version of french fries.  It is an entire potato, peeled, a stick poked through the center, cut in a spiral and  deep fried.  It is finally sprinkled with cheese powder and then drizzled with Japanese mayonaisse.  Yum!!