A night in Tsuruga, Fukui - Day 1 - Factories, fish and a whole lotta snow

With a bunch of time on my hands and not much to do other than stay at home and take care of the boy, Yukino and I booked a night in Tsuruga, Fukui.  Never heard of it? Neither had I until I put my finger on it in Google Maps as our random destination.  With a nice mountain drive in between Osaka and it and some ocean thrown in it seemed like a nice place.  Plus, it has a nuclear power plant.  Perfect for those blackout situations.

 We tried to leave as early as possible and drove to Kyoto using the new highway that no one uses due to the crazy toll prices.  I hate traffic so it was worth the $15 to get there a little less stressed.  However, we still had to go THROUGH Kyoto which always kills me.  We got lost a little bit but thanks to Yukino and her new iphone, we made it through managing to bypass all the crap traffic that usually plagues the roads. 

My family's first Christmas tree

Here it is in all its glory.  Not too shabby eh?  This is the FIRST REAL Christmas Tree Yukino and I have ever seen in Japan.  I have been here for almost four years and Yukino thiry one.  Score one for the Johnstons.

Prepping for Christmas in Osaka.

Christmas is just a day away.  My third Christmas in Japan.  Unlike other years however I do have my own family now to share it with.  Not just myself, girlfriend, or family half way across the Earth.

Of course I naturally want to have a great Christmas with my wife and son.  That is the Johnston way.  Christmas in Japan for the most part sucks.  It's a more-so-than-America commerical holiday that is covered in LED Christmas lights and topped with Christmas cake.

I do have the LED Christmas lights but no cake for me.  My students gasped when I said there was no such thing in America for Christmas.  Also....ack....  I was going to say no Christmas chicken for me.  Well, at least not Christmas FRIED chicken for me.  Unfortunately, I went to Costco tonight to get supplies and after seeing the selection I thought I was going to punch someone.  Oh how I wanted to punch something.  Costco has frozen turkeys.  Too big for my oven.  They ran out of frozen chicken.  They have spiral ham for $70.  What I was really aiming for was a large turkey breast.  I bet you know why I wanted to hit something.  Yup, no turkey breast.  What...the....****.  Where did they all go?!  The Japanese customers were lining up by the dozen to buy roast chicken.  They don't want turkey.  Wheaedgjvbkh!

So, after taking some time to walk around to double check and calm down, I put the aforementioned $70 spiral ham in the shopping cart.  Next to Aki. So cute.  Except for seeing that price tag.  Then, Yukino mentioned the idea of getting a big raw chicken.  "Crap," I thought.  "Okay," I said.

I got a big bag of yams, some beautiful Coppa Parma and Le Pie d'Angeloys (both of which I have no idea the taste of), lots of rolls, muffins, bagels, and beeeerrr.

Craft beer is very difficult to find here and when you do, it is very expensive.  I was skeptical of this beer but it was worth it-

And the muffins we have no place to put (notice the squished one thanks to Yukino)-

So now we have way too many things for our refrigerator and freezer.  I can't imagine the situation we would be in with our former fridge.

Please appreciate your gigantic fridge.

Workin on the car and a nice Datsun

With out current cars suspension pretty well shot, I managed to pick up these off of Yahoo Auctions -

 Over $2k worth of suspension for about a fifth of that.  I love Yahoo Auctions.  They aren't the stiff and more adjustable "racing" type I would like but for a family I thought they were a nice compromise. 

Doin the car parts export game

While I can think of a million things from America to sell here for more, there only a few items from here that I can make money on by selling there.  One large market is car parts.  I have sold a few things in the past and made some money as a result and today was no exception. 

I bought these for $100......

...and sold them for $330.  Excellent!

I would love to do this more but I hate gambling with this stuff and don't have a lot of room to have (more) car parts sitting around.  Perhaps some small stuff though......

Gymkhana Final at Meihan Sports Land

Earlier last month I went out to Meihan Sports Land to catch the finals of the All Japan Gymkhana series.  I saw the application for the media pass but have always had full access at this track in the past so I thought nothing of it.  Big mistake.  After arriving and paying too much ($30) to get in I found out that I was only had access to the gallery.  Which sucks.  There were hundreds of cars there.  The whole cart track was used up for private pit use.  The whole parking area of the main track was used for pits.  And, I couldn't get close enough to see a damn thing.  Boo.  So I sat back, and relaxed and watched a bit while practicing different photo techniques with less than impressive results.

While there were A LOT of different cars there this day, the EVOs are the choice for winning at these races-

Dance contest and some cool cars

Running thin on pictures now.  It was bound to happen. 

When I went to the Show up Osaka show it was my first time in that area.  I still don't know the name of the area but it was held at a large shopping mall in the port area of Osaka.  Lots of cosplay people doing there thing which I wish I took pictures of. I am still timid about taking pictures of people so obviously.  Which is silly in this case because that is what they do.  They dress up like characters of their favorite anime or game and take pictures of each other. 

There was also a children's dance contest going on which always makes me feel a little uneasy.  I just don't like the idea of groups of preteens looking so .....slutty dancing in such a .....slutty way.