Where in the world are the Wandering Hokies?

This blog has gone silent for the second half of 2012, but for perfectly excusable reasons! Between Summer festivals, Asian Travels, two full time jobs, and childbirth, we have been quite busy. The youngest member of the Wandering Hokies has joined us just in time for some European adventures as well! We will try to recap the past few months here and make a resolution to continue blogging. The main point of this blog is to capture the adventures we have traveling, but bear with us if there are more than one blog dedicated to our newest and cutest wanderer!



Photo by our friend, Michael Aragones.

Notes from Housekeeping

A brief touch of paradise

As an American, it is assumed we have been to all 50 states, or at least the most important ones.  And to our Japanese friends, the most important ones are Hawaii, California, New York (City only) and D.C. Angela and I had never been to Hawaii, a fact that confused our host nation friends, as Hawaii is almost a Japanese province.  A perk of my job is travel, so when I had to go to a conference on Oahu, Angela decided to tag along.  Flying a flight full of Japanese people, and seeing signs in the Honolulu Airport all in Japanese, it took a while to feel like we had actually left Japan.  Our hotel for the weekend before Angela left was on the strip in Waikiki, with an awesome view of Diamond Head Crater and the Pacific.  We spent a great weekend relaxing in the sun, eating American food, and touring a beautiful island.


Our first day involved napping and catching a picturesque sunset over the Pacific from the beach.  We have missed our daily beach sunsets from San Diego and relished this one.  The highlight of the day was dinner, enjoying fresh seafood under tiki torches on the Waikiki beach.  We also discovered the Honolulu Cookie Company outlet stores, with free samples until 10pm.  Delicious!


Our second day we were adventuresome and climbed another volcano. This time, Diamond Head was much kinder to us than Mount Fuji.  A fairly simple hike from the beach gave us beautiful views of Honolulu and the windward side of the island.  Much of the view reminded us of Point Loma in San Diego, with sail boats on the horizon and a tiny lighthouse far below.  We hiked to a coffee house on the way back to use wifi (we were lost without our iPhones!) and set up dinner plans with Japanese friends who had joined thousands from the home islands to visit during Spring Break. We had a great dinner and enjoyed the American waiter working for a tip (in Japan waiters leave diners alone and NO tipping is the norm; there is usually a button on the table to push when you need something so having someone come by just to check on us was different).  We walked the beach on a moonlit Waikiki night and went to bed early.


Our final day together in Paradise was a busy one.  Waking up before 5am, we had booked an Island tour with stops at multiple locations. We were picked up at the hotel by a local guide and together with a small group of 6 we had a fantastic day.  Our first stop was the Pearl Harbor Memorial.  A new visitor center has recently opened and had good displays to look at and read while we waited for a ferry over to the Arizona Memorial.  Going through the memorial was somber and beautiful, and interesting from a viewpoint of living in Japan and getting to know the other side of the Pacific War.



Oil is still leaking slowly from the Arizona, and surviving crew members are still laid to rest there today.  After the memorial we drove north on the H3 (there are three interstates on the tiny island) and learned all sorts of facts on the way to the DOLE Plantation.  While driving by the middle lock of Pearl Harbor I saw my first command, the USS TARAWA sitting in moth ball state waiting to be recalled to serve or sold for scrap.

A brief stop at the DOLE Plantation allowed us to indulge in delicious pineapple ice-cream, and see acres of pineapples being grown.  Our next stop was the birthplace of surfing, the famous North Shore.  We stopped for a while and watched surfers try to catch waves on the famous Pipeline.  We stopped for lunch to eat some delicious farm raised shrimp.  After sugar plantations shut down, the state tried many indigenous industries for native Hawaiians to work on, and one was raising shrimp in flooded fields.  Part of the industry stuck, and we experienced the best shrimp we have had since visiting the Gulf States.



Another local favorite, the Macadamia Nut and Kona Coffee, were exhibited to us by the friend of our tour guide (whose grandfather had immigrated to Hawaii from Portugal to work in the sugar fields) at a roadside hut, and were delicious.  Driving around the island, we came to the windward side, which is less populated and more beautiful.  The water and beaches were breathtaking and mountains green and cliff like.  We passed a famous ranch where movies like Jurassic Park were filmed and part of LOST was set as well.  Before ending the tour back at Waikiki we drove up to a tall mountain pass and viewed Kaneohe Bay to view the spot King Kamehaha had pushed his enemies off a cliff to unite the islands (just before Europeans stopped by...).  A great tour that left us exhausted.

The next day we checked out, got Angela to the airport and I headed to a military base.  The short stay was what we needed to escape the last gasps of a Tokyo winter and enjoyed the warm weather.  Though it was nice to be in America again, the island feels very foreign, and we heard more Japanese spoken than anything else!

Happy Two Year Japanniversary to us!

Wow…has it really been two years already?  The last two years in Japan have been amazing, and it’s definitely safe to say that we have fallen in love with this country and the Japanese people.  It’s difficult to believe that time is going by so quickly and we only have one year left in this amazing place.  Even with a year left, I find myself beginning to miss things.  I have randomly said to James “How are we going to have a house without a tatami room?” “How am I going to survive without a heated toilet seat?” “What am I going to do when I can’t pick up sushi at 7-11?”

So I think it will be a difficult transition when we leave Japan, but the memories will be with us forever.  And in our last year, I am making a huge effort to not focus on what I will miss, but to instead cherish every moment here and enjoy all of these amazing experiences.  When I begin to look back on this last year, it has been filled with such great friends and moments that I just realize once again how blessed we are.

Some of our favorite moments from this last year in Japan:

Learning all of the traditional Japanese Bon Odori dances and performing them in various festivals around our city.



Hiking Fuji-san (again?!?!) with a great group of friends.  And while it was also miserable, I am so thankful we did it again.



Decorating our Christmas tree in our first Japanese home.  The tatami room made for a great Christmas room.



Visiting Hiroshima and Miyajima Island in southern Japan.  It was quite a moving experience.



Relaxing for a few days in Kyoto and really getting to know the city.  Finding these adorable geisha lattes!



Drinking green tea with my mom in Tokyo



You only have one year left to come and visit us!  We’d love to have you.

Wedding Crashers

On a beautiful spring day in Kamakura, we happened upon this wedding party.  We had come to enjoy the sakura while they bloomed, but this beautiful bride was the highlight of my day.  She carried herself like royalty, taking perfect tiny steps, and making only slight movements.  Yet, she was beaming with happiness, and everyone was stopped in their tracks to witness such a special moment.

Takayama Sake Brewery or Nippon Brewing Science?

All regions in Japan claim to be famous for some indigenous industry, and tourists purchase the special local products to take home to friends and family. Takayama, a small ancient mountain town in Gifu Prefecture is famous for beef, wood working, special Spring and Fall Festivals, Sarubobos, and Sake Brewing.  In a late winter trip to the town, we wandered through wooden narrow streets and experienced fresh local sake.



Mountain water helped provide pure ingredients, and dozens of famous sake breweries still litter the old castle town's downtown area occupying old wooden buildings with little to indicate a large brewing operation is taking place behind the walls.  After buying a few wooden sake cups at a touristy sake store, we wandered into a quiet street and approached an open door of what seemed like a brewery advertising tastings.



Inside we found a nice brewery owner and some other tourists trying sake in an open room, with industrial barrels and equipment in the back.  We pointed at three sake varieties to taste, not being able to read the type.  Angela and I have had a very difficult time finding sake we enjoy tasting, but soon found ourselves enjoying the best sake we have come across. Maybe it was the setting, but we quickly narrowed down our favorite and purchased a bottle to take home.  The owner gave us a pamphlet in English about enjoying sake for dummies.  Most of our best experiences with wine have come from visiting the actual wineries, perhaps we need to discover more sake breweries more local!  Problem is the natural water near Tokyo is not optimal for brewing...



But we did discover that breweries often hang a large grass ball outside their doorway, so we are now on the lookout.  This may be to signify they have started the brewing season, or is tied to the Shinto religion where sake is sacred, but we aren't sure as both hypotheses were explained to us by local friends.

Five Years Later

Today is always a difficult day.  April 16th.  It's difficult to believe it's been five years already.  Five years, and yet it still seems like yesterday.  It's still difficult to talk about, difficult to write about. Difficult to even think about.  Being so far away from Blacksburg is perhaps the most difficult thing on this day.  I want to be there, to be with Hokies, and to be with people who truly understand what it is like to live day in and day out with this tremendous heart ache.  A heart ache that is coupled by love and joy and hope and a commitment to service and a passion for our university.  The dichotomy is something only a Hokie can understand.



Five years ago today, our lives changed forever.  We will never forget the amazing people we lost on April 16^th, 2007.  We will never forget Stack’s infectious smile and lively attitude.  We will never forget the outpouring of love and support we received from all over the world.  We will never ever forget those 32 Hokies who left us too early.  May we continue to live for those 32 every day.  So proud to be a Hokie.  Today, Tomorrow, and Forever.  Live for 32.  UT PROSIM.