teamEggers

Sake Brewery

Wow, did I have the wrong impression of this trip. I was actually looking at a different event’s brochure, reading about the haps, getting excited… so I was really surprised when the actual sake tour was nothing like I expected.

Here’s what was going to happen, in my head. I love when I make things up. So we get there, the brewery is run by a guy from Europe who happens to know a ton about sake, but speaks English. He explains the hows-and-whats of what we’re drinking, he teaches us how to read sake labels in japanese. We sip. We sample. We are merry.

Which is, you know, kind of like what happened. Except first we took off all our shoes. Because why would you consider going into a brewery with shoes on? Come on, people.

And then the sake master, who didn’t speak any English, explained a few things to our tour guide… who must not have thought it was worth while to translate for us.

But that’s okay. Because despite my snarky tone, we really did have a good time.

At this point we were like, “okay. so there’s… no tour. That’s okay. Because there will still be a sake tasting! And I love sake! The tour guide said we’d get to try five different kinds!!!” And perhaps my excitement level should have tipped me off that something was amiss. Because the tasting was…. not very exciting.

Two sakes, one plum wine. Plum wine? BUT WHY!!! Good lord. Why. They didn’t tell us anything about what we were tasting. Oh, enough focusing on the negatives here michelle. This was a new experience! You never get to spend 8 hours in a bus with tour groups!

On the bright side, we did get this picture…

Which is exciting. Because now that I have a pic of us on a blue screen, I can put the background of any other MWR trip in there and save myself the bus ride.

“it loves you”

Jon reminded me today that I shouldn’t abandon the blog to work on other things. He says “it loves you. It just wants some love back.”
This is another reason I would not be a good Mommy. I forget about things.

Today I saw a child screaming… screaming, running after a woman and a stroller. The “mom”-woman was gaining distance and the little girls screams started sounding less and less like “fun game” and more like “mommy come back”. I wondered… was that woman running away from her child? Literally? Was she trying to abandon the girl in the middle of the park? And more importantly, did I fault her?

Anyways. I love you, teamEggers. I love that you’re dependable and don’t ask too much from me. My mom called me yesterday, as I was in the middle of what must have sounded like a quarter-life-crisis. Despite our glorious surroundings, which I keep forgetting to enjoy, I seem to be having a small mental breakdown over the past few weeks. I think things are on the upswing, and I resolve that March will be better.

So for you today, I bring a very happy tale of one girl who gets to stay in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on a train into the unexplored Burroughs of Yokohama.

• Final destination: The Japanese Immigration office.
• The task: An attempt to extend my 90-day tourist visa, so that I don’t have to leave the country in April.

After standing in various lines in a room that was set up similar to the DMV, lots of back and forth with a man named Ki-no-shi-ta, and the most charmingest smile I could muster, I was awarded a visa extension!

(I just had to buy a 40$ revenue stamp before they let me have it. Good thing I had some cash in my pocket!) Really though, $40 is a gift, considering that leaving the country to go to Hong Kong would have probably cost us close to $1500.

Happy, happy.

life, in boxes.

Hi Team! Michelle here, livin the hobo’s life – sleeping on a mattress in the middle of the floor, living out of boxes. Eating expired food.

What?

It turns out that a lot of our food is expired. Nearly everything that jon brought to the relationship, actually.
See, when we moved in to the house in Seattle together, he had a pantry full of things. Things, I am finding out this week, that expired two (sometimes three) years ago.

oh-seven? really jon? does that box really say “best before oh seven?!”. Jon, as nonchalant as ever just shrugs it off. “It’s a guideline, you see. I’m sure it’s still fine.“.

And THAT friends, is why we have stomachs of steel and can eat whatever we want in Japan. I’ve been in training since jon started going to the supermarket in college.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 7 short days left until I join jon in j-town. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to plan social-fun-things on 4 of those night. There are still people I want to see once more before we head out! There’s not enough time in the day! (Enter in Michelle’s addiction to Coffee and her opinion that we would certainly have saved the world by now if more people were as caffeinated as she is.)

Well kids, the Windex calls.

vehicle accidents.

A funny thing happened on the way home yesterday.

I was hit by a semi. In the car. The car…. was hit by a semi.
Everyone’s okay. It was just a fender-bender, but what the heck?

AND I found out jon’s plane was hit by lightening on his flight home from Japan. Why didn’t that come up before, jon?! He says it was no big deal and stuff like that happens frequently. *I’ve* never been on a plane that’s been hit by lightening. And furthermore, how did it take nearly a week to tell me? Wouldn’t you mention something like that when we have the standard “hi honey, how was your flight?” conversation. Sigh. Boys.

I suppose I am uncommunicative in other ways.

So back to the semi. We’re both sitting at a red light in south-downtown (1st and spokane), waiting to turn right, when the semi starts backing up. Now, I’ve never known cars to randomly back up at a stop light. I’ve never seen this. I didn’t know it was a possibility. On a hill, with a standard transmission, sure – there may be some rollback. But at flat red light, to physically put your car in reverse? No, I just didn’t know that was a possibility.

So the car doesn’t have any majour damage, though it will definitely need a new grill and perhaps a new front bumper. It’s unfortunate that a few deep scratches could cause an entire bumper to be replaced, but i suppose that’s the drawback to driving around in plastic cars.

In other news, we’ve been home for exactly one week now and life is officially back to normal. We’ve (just about) finished unpacking, jon’s going out to see Star Trek tonight with Kyle and Will, and I’m cooking dinner for some friends.

Actually, I’m looking forward to cooking dinner. It’s great to look through my recipes, find something with ingredients that I KNOW i can just go to the store and buy (you’d be surprised how hard it was to find things like cilantro in japan. it was there… sometimes. but let me tell you – it wasn’t called cilantro.) and cook in a kitchen with nice pans and sharp knives.

Working in the Future

Glad you asked. teamEggers is… working.

Mrs. teamEggers is rather grumpy about said arrangements, but I think she’s handling it rather gracefully. After all, actually working 6pm-7am, 7 days a week, sucks significantly more for Mr. teamEggers.
But you don’t see him complaining about it.

You may be wondering what *I’m* doing in my now jon-less time. I haven’t been terribly inspired to conquer new territories alone, so I spend my nights quietly. Having exhausted my supply of Murakami books, I’ve taken to reading trashy novels and drinking wine at the Spanish bar we recently found.

I’m also working on a coffee table book with the photos from our trip. I expect it to be around 100 pages long – 11×13.

Rereading all of our blog posts from the past four months has been really interesting. I look back at the posts from January and can honestly say I’ve learned some things about this crazy country. I no longer leave the house in well-disguised-terror and I can accurately tell the difference between a shrine and a temple.

My goal is to finish the book before May and send it off to print a week before we leave. I would really love it if we had it right away to show everyone when we got back.

In 1999 we were still developing film and showing off our photo albums. In 2009 we’re actually publishing books with the help of software like iPhoto, WordbPress, and Blurb. I love the future.

(the picture up top are of the snail-statues outside our apartment)