Tour of Our House

We've been in our house just over a month. I finally feel like I've organized enough of the house for us to show it. Here's a video tour:

Aquarium

Cassie was on spring break this week, so Friday Jason took the day off and we went to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. It takes about an hour and a half to get there, if you take the expressway, which is a toll road. We didn't tak the expressway; we took the 58, which goes along the shoreline, and has beautiful views of the East China Sea. We stopped for lunch on the way, so it took us about three hours.

The Churaumi Aquarium is located in the Ocean Expo Park, which is this 6+ mile park along the shore that has a variety of activities and gardens. Near the aquarium, they have these cute animal topiaries. We didn't walk the entire park, but we're excited to go back and see more in the future.

Friday, we concentrated on the aquarium. First, we went to the petting pool. Jessica was a little nervous this time, and Carston mostly just wanted to play in the water. But the rest of us enjoyed feeling a few animals from the deep. Then it was on to the varius coral reef tanks. Here we got to see what it would be like in the waters off the island. Carston loved looking at the fish. Check out this huge grouper. This picture does not do it justice. It was bigger than Carston. They also had some blacktip reef sharks in this tank.

The biggest attraction at the aquarium is the Kuroshio Sea tank. It is a 1,980,290 gallon tank. The window is two stories high, and they have a switch back walk-way down the two stories so you can see the entire thing. Inside the tank they have 3 whale sharks, as well as many rays, smaller sharks, and other cool fish.

They also have a neat Shark Research Lab with interactive shark exhibits and a tank full of bullsharks and the like, as well as the jaws from a dinosaur shark. (Carston couldn't be bothered with this.)

Here's the website to the aquarium if you are insterested in checking it out: www.kaiyouhaku.com/en .

After the aquarium, we went over to check out the sea turtle tank and watch the dolphin and whale show in the park. The kids wanted to sit in the splash zone, but they didn't get too wet. They were disapointed, but it was rather a cool day, and I knew if they got wet, we'd be sorry.

On the way out, we checked out the manatee pool, but they were being shy, and then we went to the kids adventure land, where they have a playground for the kids. I forgot to take a picture of the playground, but they had a bunch of nets for the older kids (3-12) to crawl around. They have a lot of that here, but we'll blog about that later. Then we headed home. We were all exhausted, but we had a nice day together.

Carston Plays Barbies!

The Cowley family has realized that there son, Carston, plays barbies like his two older sisters! Here are some pictures:

This is Carston holding the barbie called Elina.[Above]

This is Carston with a bright smile while holding Elina.

This is Carston handing a fairy toddler barbie to one of his older sisters, Jessica.

This is Carston's face when he's upset, or doesn't get what he wants. Isn't it funny?!!!

My Lessons on Yen

I have a large number of family members who have served missions in Japan, but I guess that I never really discussed Japanese money with them. I knew, of course, that the Japanese currency is called yen, but I guess that's about all I knew, and I was a little surprised about some of the differences.

The first thing that surprised me is that there are no decimals with yen. In America, coins are usually fractions of dollars; such as a quarter of a dollar or $0.25. In Japan, the smallest currency is 1 yen. No fractions, no decimals. Now I understand why at 87 yen to the dollar, the yen is stronger than the dollar. 1 yen would be similar, although currently more valuable, to a penny. There are a lot of 100 yen stores here, which are similar to dollar stores, except that with inflation, everything costs 105 yen.

I was also surprised at how many coins they use. The Japanese coins are 1 yen (smallest silver), 5 yen (copper with hole in the middle), 10 yen (copper, no hole), 50 yen (small silver with hole in the middle), 100 yen (silver, quarter sized), and 500 yen (large goldish looking). (I'm not really sure what the metals are, I'm just describing what it looks like to me.) So, your 100 yen, would be like your dollar, which in America, is mostly printed on bills. Thus Jason and I had to begin carrying coin purses, because we use the coins quite often, and it was a pain having them mixed with our American coins.

In America, our paper currency is printed in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar bills. Japanese banknotes are printed in 1000, 2000, 5000, and 10,000 yen bills. (I didn't have any 5000 yen bills to add to this picture.)

The sign for the yen is ¥. There is also a kanji symbol for yen, which I can't find a way to import. That was really confusing to me at first, because I'd try to find the price for something and not be able to find the Y with the lines through it.

Today, the on-base yen rate is 91 yen to the dollar. This is pretty high, compared to how it's been since we got here. It was around 87 yen to the dollar for the last couple of months. We've also discovered that we can get a better yen rate off base, than on base.

Things are pretty expensive here, which I did expect. McDonalds for our family, (which would be an interesting post for another time) is about 2,730 yen. That's $30. I've heard, although I haven't looked, that electronics are three times the price off base as they are on. On base, they are a little more expensive than they would be at home. We've been able to find good prices on produce at the farmers markets, and a few restaurants that are reasonable. We want to experience things, so we know we're just going to have to pay the price. Fortunately, we get a cost of living allowance to help with these expenses.

We're figuring things like this out and doing okay. Luckily, we have a lot of people to help us and we have a good sense of humor!

Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! We had a nice day, although it started out a little crazy. Let me start by saying that I have an old alarm clock that automatically adjusts for daylight savings. Now, first, Japan does not do daylight savings; and second, it's an OLD clock, so it adjust on the old weekends. So, Carston woke up last night at 5 AM (by my clock) and Jason got up with him and got him back down. But, it didn't last, so I went in. After I tried to put him down, AND tried sneaking out of his room after just sitting in his chair while he slept in his crib, I decided to let him cry it out. An hour or so later we were back to sleep. Jason had been up late, and we were sleeping away. When I woke up and looked at my clock, it was 7:45! We pretty much have to get going at 7:00 to get everyone ready and to church on time. So I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall and admonished the girls to cooperate with me this morning. I got them fed, and ran up to get myself ready. After we got everyone ready, and snapped a few pictures of everyone in their Easter clothes, we jumped in the car and headed out. Now, it takes us about 20-30 minutes to get to church. So, I looked at the clock in the car, and started to calculate how late we would be. For a minute, I was pretty proud of us, because I thought we might make it on time, if they started late, since it was now 7:45. And then, wait a minute, "Why does that clock say it's 7:45?" And then, we realized what had happened, so we went back home and got Carston some breakfast. We still had our Easter egg hunt after church and had an early dinner of ham and yummy potatoes. Dessert is coconut cake, which I bought, because I'm so domestic! Here are some pictures of the kids!