We Finally Made it to the Kintai Bridge

So the "touristy" spot closest to us takes 3 months for us to visit?!? No excuse Dillers! We finally drove the 15 minutes it takes to the Kintai area with our friends Nick and Neda last weekend. It was SO COOL!

The parking lot was free but it was 300 yen to cross the bridge. With all the other extras it was about 1800 yen each but totally worth it!!

The Iwakuni Castle up on the mountain. You can hike up to it (which we want to do next time when we have a few more extra hours) or take the rail car.

Too bad you can't go rafting here... too shallow.

View from the bridge.

These are the cherry blossom trees that are apparently STUNNING in March when they bloom.

The Kintai area is known for its soft serve ice cream. Each stand had about 100 flavors to choose from!

It's finally fall here so the leaves are changing. The average temp is still in the 50's most days.

The map of the Kintai area.

There were a lot of beautiful shrines and fountains.

Looks like they're right under the spray doesn't it?

Nick and Neda tell us we're very "Americana"... they mean that in a nice way ;-)

The view from the rail car. Not gonna lie, it was kinda scary. They packed us in this little rail car like sardines.

View from the top. Straight ahead is the Marine Corps Air Station (we're a "station" not a "base")

Iwakuni Castle

Joel and me being "Americana"

The inside of the castle was a museum with tons of artifacts... mostly Samurai swords, but other cool things like this ex-gargoyle :)

Our house is in this picture.... way off in the distance on the side of a mountain.

Close up of the Kintai Bridge from the top of the Castle.

Every 15 minutes this clock would light up and play a tune.

We weren't too adventurous with our ice cream choices... Joel got Vanilla with Adzuki Beans and I got a Chocolate/Local Specialty Vanilla Blend. We could have gotten flavors like green tea, curry or garlic... maybe next time. :-p Glad to know we have a place so cool so close to us! Anyone who comes to visit is getting this tour for sure.

Hofu Shrine Festival and Yakiniku

Last weekend, our friend Ted invited us to go "find" a Shrine Festival that was occurring in the city of Hofu, about 2 hours away. We're all cheap, so Ted set his GPS to take us a route without tolls (it would have been about $25 bucks each way to take the highway). So we took some windy mountain roads and wound up in Hofu where we struggled to find the festival. It was a pretty large city and the address system in Japan is horrible, so the GPS couldn't find the exact place the festival was supposed to be taking place. Thankfully, Joel and his mad iPhone skills found it and we were able to walk around and see the sights. It was really fun and really different!!!

Ted is super tall. :) To the left, you can see the paper streamers that were up all over town.

The street vendor food here is quite different. Joel ate a bar-b-cued squid head, yum! I ate the tentacles... a tad chewy but the sauce was tasty. You just can't think too much about the ways things look and what it is you're actually eating, LOL.

These stairs were the only way to the Shrine.Talk about steep!

The Tengmangu Shrine of Hofu.

Not sure what these cards say, but there were a lot of them hanging on this wall.

The view of the city from the Shrine.

Scenic walkway,

So picturesque.

This looks familiar! Is that guy making a hamburger?!

The hamburger was good... but different. It had lettuce, tomato and an egg on top. The vendor put about 3 sauces on it, but around the patty itself, not on it. So you got an oozy bite of sauce with each bite.

They were storing the parade mini-shrines in the parking garage where we parked. I like the Mazda advertisement, LOL.

We didn't stay long enough to watch the parade, but at least we got to see the "floats".

After the festival, Joel and I went out for some Yakiniku style food at an AMAZING restaurant in downtown Iwakuni. We met up with 3 other couples on base then took taxis into town. For 2 hours, we had all we could eat and drink, then we went back to our friend's apartment to play Catch Phrase. We had SO much fun!!!  

Technically, the dinner out was a belated birthday celebration for Nick and myself. They are Texas fans, can you tell?

We had a room to ourselves with 2 tables full of food! There's a little button you hit to let the servers know we want something. It feels rude, but most restaurants here work on the button system instead of servers constantly coming to the table to check on you.

We are about to get stuffed.

They give you a bunch of raw meat and veggies (not pictured) to grill over a charcoal fire in the middle of the table.

Grilling this garlic bread was the BEST. And it's typical to have edamame beans as a snack on the table at most restaurants.

We will definitely keep coming back to this place!

Japanese Thanksgiving

I decided to make a bunch of random things for Thanksgiving since we are limited oven-wise (we basically have a convection oven, so it's not even big enough for a frozen pizza!) But I digress... here is a Mexican flavored Veggie Tart that I made as an appetizer. Turned out I chopped up some wacko hot white chili to add some heat to the vinigrette and paid for it dearly. More on that to come...

Second course consisted of twice cooked Japanese baking potatoes (SO good!!!) combined with bacon, onions, and dill. Yummy!

All the sudden, all of my fingertips start burning like they're on fire and they are unrelenting!! Joel and I were clueless as to a cause until we remembered that darn chili I chopped up and used my fingers to de-seed. OMG! I then started trying to soak them in anything that provided temporary relief. I think the toxicity really affected me because my fingers are really dry anyway, so I lived in pain (literally, I thought my fingers were flaming with fire it burned so bad) for about 2 hours. I tried soaking them in milk (in the picture), oil, cold water, rum (REALLY reaching on that one, but you never know...), and lotion. NOTHING WORKED. So I suffered like a champ and Joel did most of the food handling for the rest of the day.

This picture does not do the redness of my fingertips justice. They looked horrible!! I mean, they were even burning under my fingernails! Under my fingernails people!!!

This stuff was my favorite - probably because it had beer and cheese in it and was therefore bad for me. You got it folks, Beer and Cheese Soup. SO de-lish, there aren't enough words. This recipe is a keeper. Thank you "Food and Wine Magazine"!

I made homemade mashed potatoes (with sour cream and butter, so good). Then Joel rolled fresh cooked shrimp in the taters then covered them with panko crumbs. Joel fried them and we dipped them in sesame dressing.

Last but not least (actually not last, but I forgot to take a picture of the Pear Pie I made!), we had more mashed potatoes, Asian cooked fresh cabbage and scallions, along with a couple of Cornish Hens. Yup, you heard right. Cornish hens. They're totally awesome and fit in our tiny oven. Turkey is just not going to be an option for the next few years. But we had a marvelous Thanksgiving and are SO happy because our household goods arrived 2 days before!! So were able to eat all this wonderful food on our own dishes and sit on our own furniture and wear clothes we haven't seen in months! You can bet your sweet bippy we were SO grateful for SO many things this year. God has been very good to us here. :)