America Family
Getting there
Wed, 2009-04-15 23:59 | by Erin
Tokyo to Tampa
While it was a long trip the whole event went pretty smooth. Eric and I hopped on the bus, that took us straight to Tokyo Narita Airport. The ride was pretty long but Eric was very good. We arrived at the airport and had plenty of time to board our flight. We did the normal deal of going through customs and getting to our flight and were on our way. Thought the flight Eric was good and the continental in flight entertainment system kept him occupied for most of the flight. The food as always was really bad. Eric slept the rest of the flight and only woke for some ice cream. I as always did not sleep at all. When we finally arrived in Houston I was exhausted and Eric was full of ENERGY.
The next flight to Tampa reminded me what the difference is between America and Japan. People are friendly plain and simple.
Chris the guy who sat next to us on the plane talked to me for a almost 2/3 of the flight. HE had been to Japan to see the last F1 race that was held at Fuji Motor Speedway close to Eric's grandparents house in Japan. We talked about racing, jobs and a few other things.
Friendliness it's American.
While it was a long trip the whole event went pretty smooth. Eric and I hopped on the bus, that took us straight to Tokyo Narita Airport. The ride was pretty long but Eric was very good. We arrived at the airport and had plenty of time to board our flight. We did the normal deal of going through customs and getting to our flight and were on our way. Thought the flight Eric was good and the continental in flight entertainment system kept him occupied for most of the flight. The food as always was really bad. Eric slept the rest of the flight and only woke for some ice cream. I as always did not sleep at all. When we finally arrived in Houston I was exhausted and Eric was full of ENERGY.
The next flight to Tampa reminded me what the difference is between America and Japan. People are friendly plain and simple.
Chris the guy who sat next to us on the plane talked to me for a almost 2/3 of the flight. HE had been to Japan to see the last F1 race that was held at Fuji Motor Speedway close to Eric's grandparents house in Japan. We talked about racing, jobs and a few other things.
Friendliness it's American.
Marys Visit
Wed, 2009-01-14 10:05 | by Erin
Marys Visit
After a long delay, my sister Mary made it to Japan to visit the family. I wanted Mary to come and help out with Eric and see how things are here in Japan.
We have a (very) high standard of living here and it was good for her to see that except the lack of central heating and chairs in Gotemba I think everything went well.
We went to Gotemba on Christmas, and all opened presents together. After that we went out to Numazu to have a few drinks with my friend Brent at his bar.
The next day we went sledding at Yeti Snowboard Park in Susano. It was supper expensive. Inside it was a little disappointing because there was only one tiny run for the kids to sled on. We made the best of it and took some illegal sled runs down a longer hill.
Eric brought his friend Drevon and they had a great time.
The following day we all went to Fuji Safari Park. With the coupons we got while doing some site seeing in Gotemba, we were able to get into the park extremely cheap. The wait to ride the the animal feeding bus was about 2 1/2 hours which was almost perfect amount of time to see the rest of the park.
The tour bus allowed you to feed the animals and let animals like this big fella get right up close and personal. Even with all the steel and wire between us, I was a little nervous.
We went to Gotemba Kogen Beer to see the lights and eat the food!
Finally before we left Gotemba Mary watched as we made mochi and soba.
After getting back to Tokyo Mary and I met up with my friend from Rugby Matt, we had a few drinks together at the local HUB.
It was the start of the New Years Holiday and many things were closed like public buildings, but we managed to get some site seeing and shopping done. We visited, Shinjuku sky-scraper district, Akihabaras Electic Town, Harajuku, Shibuya, and Shibuya 109. It was a long day that we capped off with some beers at The Club House at their closing party.
Finally the next day we got everything together and went to Narita Airport and Mary, just like that was gone. I was pretty sad to see her go but had a lot of things that needed to get done so I rushed off and tried to make it back to Gotemba stopping along the way at Akihabara and other place to look for some geek stuff like a new TV and laptops, or netbooks as the type I like are called. I almost did not make it back to Gotemba but thanks to Satomi picking me up at the bus stop, I made it and slept the night away.
The next day New Years Prep started and everyone was in full swing cleaning and getting ready for New Years. More on that later.
Some spicy pics!
Fri, 2008-01-25 16:00 | by Erin
So I have been slowly but surely working on a new website for my Aunt and Uncle. They have sold herbs in New York for some 30 years. They have a large variety of products but for starters we paired it down to their best selling 12.
After a little address fiasco this summer I received 3 sample sets of herbs. I began working on their site and got about this far.
http://frogpark.hugedesigns.net
Which is a vast improvement over http://frogparkherbs.com but then I found that the new version of zen-cart has a built in API for accepting credit cards through Pay-Pal. So now I am setting up a virtual server to handle this site and another e-commerce site.
I haven't added any of the original content to it yet but it will live at frogparkherbs.hugedesigns.net until we can transfer the domain.
None of this is very exciting. One of my goals of getting the 3 sample sets was to photograph the spices so the site would show exactly what your getting. That's done.
After a little address fiasco this summer I received 3 sample sets of herbs. I began working on their site and got about this far.
http://frogpark.hugedesigns.net
Which is a vast improvement over http://frogparkherbs.com but then I found that the new version of zen-cart has a built in API for accepting credit cards through Pay-Pal. So now I am setting up a virtual server to handle this site and another e-commerce site.
I haven't added any of the original content to it yet but it will live at frogparkherbs.hugedesigns.net until we can transfer the domain.
None of this is very exciting. One of my goals of getting the 3 sample sets was to photograph the spices so the site would show exactly what your getting. That's done.
retest
testing again
