Good English

This was what was on the toilet when we got to our hotel room for training camp. Does this mean clean?

Electricity...how much

This is a pay box that goes down and is connected to the outlet. It 100 yen, about $1, for 5 minutes. So, if you need to use the outlet you have to pay. 2 years ago we were at a practice at a different gym than we normally practice at sand one of my teammates plugged his phone into the wall to charge. No long after a guy came running and said he had to unplug it and couldn't use the outlet. Not sure if electricity is really expensive here or not but thought that was quite interesting.

Hanawelle

Today we got our elf-he appeared. If you know what elf on the shelf is then you know what I am talking about. For those of you that don't, you have an elf that you put in a different place everyday leading up to Christmas. Every night the elf then flies back to Santa and tells him whether you are naughty or nice. He then reappears the next morning in a different spot . Sometimes he is hard to find and it is a game for the kids to see if they can locate him.  In our house the favorite game at the moment is hide and seek so our elf will fit in nicely.

As part of the tradition of elf on the shelf you have to name your elf as soon as he comes. So, today we let Myla choose a name. I am not sure where it came from but she named the elf Hanawelle (Hana-well-wee). We all thought this was a really cool name and good way to start our elf in the shelf tradition.

Hanawelle on the tv

Getting ready for winter

Here in Toyama and in the northern part of Japan there are places that get a lot of snow. Because the temperature stats close to freezing the snow here can be really heavy. To protect the trees and bushes people use ropes and bamboo pled to help protect trees and bushes from breaking due to the eigt of the snow. Even though there is no snow yet it is pretty cool to see all the trees with what looks like a cone around them.

(For the trees they attach a bamboo pole to the trunk extending up into the air. Then they attach ropes to this pole and the other end of the rope is attached to branches to hold them up so the snow doesn't snap them)

All around town, at businesses and people's homes the trees and bushes are like this. This only leads me to believe there will be a lot of snow here as the other 2 places that we were at in Japan didn't have this (they were a little warmer and didn't get much snow).

Funny English

This weekend we had away games and when we are on the bus we stop at rest areas to go to the bathroom. Many have things for sale, like sweets. I took a few pictures of some of the English sayings on the sweet boxes.

Hope you enjoy.

Kids shirts

Here are 2 kids/little girls shirts we found in store. Maybe the sayings are a little different than what you would find in the U.S., but we think they are sort of funny.

Cantaloupe

How much does your cantaloupe cost?

$18?

Good English

Another great example of good English where we are:

When we were on our way back from our last road game we stopped at a conveniencecstore to get something to eat. This is what some of the options were:

One of my teammates got the: Pizza sand

Supposed to be pizza sandwich/wrap

And the second one-it says it's a rap (a ham and cheese rap to be precise)

And in case you are wondering, rap music did start playing when I opened this up.