Happy new year! It’s been quite a while since our last post, but for obvious reasons, we’ve been spending more time at home recently and I didn’t want the blog to end, unceremoneously. There’s a lot to talk about, and I do hope to expand on a number of subjects. For now, I want to hit the high-level topics – we’ll get there in time.

We’re finally, reliably, mobile! Sort of. There have been hiccups, but I’ll get there. First, I’d like to talk about about the journey from simply being people living in Japan to actual car owners.

In mid-April (yes, I realize it’s already almost June), I finally got to experience something we’d been unsuccessful in doing during our various trips to Japan over the past 8 years: I saw Mt. Fuji, and it was incredible.

“Ugh, more baseball? You just talked about baseball!" I hear you say. Hear me out, this isn’t about watching baseball. I mean, it’s definitely about baseball, but this time it’s about playing it. There’s a subtle difference. Maybe I should have made that a bit more clear in the title. Sorry about that.

Since coming back from Tokyo, we’ve had a number of relaxing days and fun interactions. However, one thing we’ve been light on out here in general is interactions with people our age. We’ve hung out with Seri’s cousins a bit, but it tends to be few and far between. Fortunately, we’ve made some progress!

This weekend, we took a quick trip to Tokyo for a somewhat unusual event: The A’s were in town, playing an exhibition game against Hokkaido’s own Nippon Ham Fighters. It seemed like a tough opportunity to pass up, so we packed our things for a quick weekend trip down south.

Hot on the heels (sorta) of my last post, I wanted to share our recent trip to Niseko and Sapporo before too much time muddied my memories. After our last, abbreviated trip to Sapporo, Uncle Moto and Hime mentioned wanting to see us again for a longer period of time. We decided to start with a snowboarding day, then travel to their house for a few more days before heading home.

As we settle in, I find myself noting interesting (to me, anyway) differences between Japan and the US. I also realize there have been a number of posts that mentioned describing things in more detail in “another post.” So I figured I’d take an opportunity to tie up the loose ends and talk about random things for a bit.

At the beginning of January, we took a short trip to Taiwan, then came back through Tokyo before heading back up home. It gave us a chance to see some new sights and some good friends. The trip to Tokyo also meant Seri could indulge in parfaits—plural. But that’s another post.

While most of you were busy sleeping, we rang in 2019 early.

The new year is a pretty big deal over here, but I’d argue the 1st of the year is actually a bigger deal than New Year’s Eve, unless you’re a rabid music fan. Having said that, we start on December 31st.