Stream of Consciousness

Wow I guess I really haven't blogged in a while. I just spent an hour trying to log on to my blog dashboard. But I'm now up and running so here goes. First of all, I just found a partial blog that I never finished from June.

It began:

Last month, my neighbor (David Hodge) and I were very lucky to celebrate Memorial Day in a very traditional American way.......We went to a baseball game and drank lots of beer. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Yokohama, warm and sunny.

Not a bad lead in. So, first things first, I'll finish my baseball blog.

It really was a perfect day for watching baseball.

It was also a perfect day for drinking beer.

David had recently purchased a new camera so most of the pictures for this post are from him. (More about this later.)

After settling in with our first beer, our hometown Baystars were quickly behind 0 to 4 by the end of the first inning.

After another visit from the beer girl, David's photographic interests began to shift. (see below)

We weren't seeing double the beer girls were starting to multiply! I guess they knew who the good customers were.

Good weather. Good baseball. Beer girls everywhere. It doesn't get much better than this!

I should mention that the Baystars were making a comeback and were actually leading the game at this point.

We focus on the game for a minute.

Celebrating the Baystars making a comeback!
One of the few pictures that I took with my camera. A self portrait. I'm holding the the camera at arm's length. The green thing in David's mouth is not a caterpillar. It's called an edamame. They are green soybeans in the pod. Cooked and dipped in salt, they go great with beer.

Maybe we should have switched to coffee at this point? Nah!

coffee girl

Anyhow, we had a great time and the Baystars won the game 9 to 5. A perfect ending to a perfect day.

Okay.... Now I'm only 2 months behind in my blog.

I don't know what happened to the month of June. It just sort of disappeared. I'm sure we did stuff, but it seems to be a blur. Oh well........

Most of July was spent on a home visit to the USA. Marcia and I spent a lot of our time going to doctors, dentists, and optometrists. In other words, giving our bodies their 6 month tune-ups. In addition, Marcia had to spend some of her time working at Moog and I worked on the house and did maintenance on the snowblower, our car (including 4 new tires! Ouch!!) and the weed wacker. I also built stairs on a deck that Steve and I built last summer.

I did finish these stairs, but must have been too tired to take any more pictures.

We did manage to visit a few friends, enjoy our son's company, and have a music session with my band buddies. I also had a great golf afternoon and evening with Stephen and his roommate Jeff. One thing that we did plenty of, was eat. We are definitely caught up on American food for a while.

Our return trip to Japan was less than perfect. Our flight from Buffalo to Chicago was uneventful, but then our luck changed. We left Chicago and flew for more than an hour and then it was announced that we were returning to Chicago because we had no running water. This included water that was necessary for flushing the toilets! We returned to Chicago and waited 4 hours until we were able to leave again.

Once again in the air, I thought to myself, "What else could go wrong?" Bad thing to think! Within five minutes I had broken off a sizable piece of one of my teeth. The good news was that it didn't hurt.

Since we've been back in Japan, we had visitors from the US (Frank and Cecily) and had a wonderful time showing them some of the local sights.

Although, we bought a new camera in the States, Marcia and I seem to have gotten somewhat lax about taking pictures. I will definitely do better in the future.

More blogs to come. Hopefully in a more timely fashion.

Ja Mata,

Gary