Our Shopping List

Three Nintendo DS at home and I think the boys will be getting a new one when they get to Japan this year. Raimie somehow managed to do something to his green DSi Lite (and can't get it to play any downloaded games anymore) so he'll need a new one and Zaini talked about getting a Nintendo DSi XL a few months back.

That handwritten paper in the photo? Oh. That's Raimie's list for Ultraman and Kamen Riders toys he wants to buy in Japan! He even put which shop to buy which.

At the moment, he has 19 items to buy at Yodobashi Camera and 6 items to buy at M-78 shop in Kawasaki.

My shopping list? It involved buying souvenirs for people. At the moment - I have about 30 or so people to buy stuff for, and that's not counting stuff I'm gonna buy and bring over to Japan for people there, which Zaini said is madness on my part. I tend to agree with him.

Keeping Fit While Cruising

When we were in Pittsburg, Kansas, Bill and I had to see doctors.  A continuous tingling on my left arm had me alarmed while Bill developed a cold that wouldn’t go away.  Increasingly, we had been feeling out of shape, both literally and figuratively.  And so the topic of keeping fit within a cruising lifestyle has come up.  And this includes both the matter of food intake and exercise.

We used to go to Bally’s (a chain of gyms) three times a week.  Some nights we even walked to the supermarket or deli, roundtrip 2-3 miles. When we started our cruising lifestyle, through Boise, Denver, and Calgary (homes of our children), we invariably found a Bally’s or a community center with excellent workout facilities.  When we started to navigate the Alaska Highway, however, our routines changed.

We realized that the convenience of a nearby exercise facility is crucial. At first we thought hiking would take the place of a gym.  When we tried that, hordes of mosquitoes rejoiced! And then it got either too cold or too hot. So the habit refused to take hold. Then the thrill of Phase I, the sight-seeing phase, took over.  New routines were formed, not resembling exercise except for leisurely strolling.

Six months later, when we entered Phase II, the relaxing/seeing phase, and bought M’A’turn, we bought yoga mats so we can exercise right there on our new and spacious floor.  We did, for a month. But that habit did not take hold either.  We tried playing table tennis, billiards, mini-golf, and pickleball when we got to the North Carolina campgrounds. Sadly, those did not become habits either!  

But we thought there must be a way of keeping fit through exercise while cruising! I dreaded the thought that we may be slipping to the sedentary habits of sexagenarians. But I bravely reasoned that we have not yet formed good exercise habits simply because we are still in transition from our old lifestyle.  Discussing the matter with Bill, we now resolve to do the following every day:

1.       Exercise for 15 minutes immediately after waking up.

2.       Walk for 15 minutes before nightfall.

3.       Find the time to play at least 30 minutes of one sport (table tennis, billiards, mini-golf, badminton, pickleball or dance).

Now let us shift to the matter of food intake.  In Phase I when we were doing a lot of driving in the RV, we would cut up a lot of veggies (celery, jicama, and carrots), bring a lot of fruits (apples, bananas, cantaloupes, and grapes), and always have nuts for snacking on. We also opted for lots of water.  In Phase II when we settled at campgrounds longer, nesting in our ‘home’, we started to cook more meals.

 So, combined with minimal exercise and more food, would you like to guess what happened? Yes, we packed the pounds. So, now we also resolve to:

1.       Eat only one big meal a day, preferably dinner.

2.       Graze throughout the day with a small breakfast, a light morning snack, a light lunch, and/or a light afternoon snack.  

3.       Eat out infrequently, preferably only during an occasion or celebration.

Examples of a light breakfast are: a pancake, a toast, or a bowl of oatmeal or cereal. A light snack would mean a bowl of popcorn or chips, a cookie, a banana, or an apple. A hot dog, BLT or deli sandwich could make for a light lunch (in fact, maybe it should be half). And then we reward ourselves with a big meal (but not too big) at the close of day, like meat and potatoes and salad or pasta, garlic bread, and greens!

Wish us luck!

Next Thought: Nourishing the Soul While Cruising    

                                                                                                                                                                                  

A New Mission On The Upcoming Trip?

Drainspotting anyone? 

I read a blog post by Jamaipanese titled Drainspotting: Japan’s Artistic Manhole Covers and thought that finding and photographing these cool and artistic manhole covers would be a cool project while vacationing in Japan. I first took notice of these artistic manhole covers in Himeji. I saw them while walking towards Himeji Castle from the train station.

Zaini has his stamp rally project and he'll happily hop on trains and stop at every s.i.n.g.l.e train station in Japan for a stamp and I should have my own project too. Other than trying to photograph everything and anything for posts in this blog, that is.

I'm always fascinated by the manhole covers I saw there, but I didn't take any photo of them because I felt cheesy & weird doing it. Chancing upon the post by Jamaipanese make me raring to go on a drainspotting mission.

Even this photo on the left, I asked Raimie to act cute for the camera although I actually wanted to take photo of the cute paws (or something) on the cover. Raimie said it looked like paws on Blues Clues. LOL. Photo taken in Ikebukuro way back in 2007. 

Jamaipanese, coming? :) 

A Trip To A Movie Scene?

I've always pooh-poohed and made fun of tour groups itinerary that feature places shown in popular dramas and movies. Especially those "Winter Sonata" tour group to Korea. And these "Winter Sonata" tours are still around and popular now, 8 years after the drama was shown!

But come to think of it, the three of us made several trips to places in Japan based on what we saw on TV too. We don't follow any tour group, true.

Nevertheless, we've arranged our itinerary to visit places we saw/featured in movies and animes.

Our first trip to Japan was made due to the drama Over Time. It wasn't neither because of "Oshin" nor was it because of Ultraman, but we fell in love with Japan due a story about friendship and love.

The drama somehow put Tokyo Tower in a romantic light and of course, Zaini and I wanting to be romantic decided to visit the tower. So, off to Tokyo Tower we went in 2002, to mend my broken heart. But truthfully, the tower isn't all that it hyped to be. It's better to view the tower from afar than be in/on it, IMHO

We went to Kobe because the city was featured in a 2006 Ultraman Movie titled "Ultraman Mebius and Ultra Brothers".

We also happily made our way to Kasukabe because that's the home of Crayon Shin-Chan and also the home of the late Yoshito Usui.

Maybe for the next visit, we should head to Yokohama. After all, it was the city featured in last year's Ultraman movie - Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend The Movie.

We've been to all over Japan, but have yet to explore Yokohama although it's so near to Tokyo! We do have to make a stop to Kawasaki again anyway because Raimie has a date with his Ultra Heroes!

Coming Home to Kansas, Part 2

The next town we visited was Joplin, Missouri.  It was a surprise to both Rosemary and Jack that the biggest continuing flowing waterfall in Missouri is right there, just about 30-45 minutes away from their home. Grand Falls is fondly called ‘Little Niagara’ because, although it is not tall at 25 feet, it spans a wide area, thereby looking just like its big brother. We had so much fun taking many photos and marveling at the marble-like rocks, carved by the waters that run through them, all around it. We wondered more at the many residential homes that surrounded the largely unprotected mini-wonder.

Just a few miles beyond the falls in Carthage, Missouri stands a man-made wonder, the Precious Moments Chapel and Garden.  Inspired by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in Rome, Precious Moments artist and creator, Samuel J. Butcher, designed and constructed the Precious Moments Chapel as his way of sharing the joy of his faith with the world. He used his beautiful and innocent Precious Moments messengers to bring well known and loved stories from the Bible to life in dozens of murals – all hand-painted by Sam himself, covering nearly 5,000 sq. ft.. And, leading to the Chapel is the Avenue of Angels. It was especially interesting for me to find out that Sam makes the Philippines his home now and there built a wood works and a doll factory! 

After being inspired by a wonder of nature and a man-made wonder, we were led next to the wonder of a man.  The George Washington Carver National Monument in Joplin is a tribute to George Washington Carver (1864–1943), an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. Much of Carver's fame is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts (more than 300 uses) and sweet potatoes (more than 100 uses). He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.

In addition to his work on agricultural extension education, Carver's important accomplishments also included improvement of racial relations, mentoring children, poetry, painting, and religion. He served as an example of the importance of hard work, a positive attitude, and a good education.  He is also remembered for his humility, humanitarianism, good nature, frugality, and rejection of economic materialism. Thus his life undermined the widespread stereotype of the time that the black race was intellectually inferior to the white race. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed him a "Black Leonardo".

It was a very inspirational day for us and soon we went home to beef mechado that was slowly cooking in Rosemary’s wonderful crockpot.  The next day, Bill and I went to the thrift store to buy our own small one for M’A’turn. After the rest day, we headed for Kansas City. Rosemary has three children from a previous marriage to the godfather of Frontenac, Kansas, which adjoins Pitstburg. Dick Palucca owns and operates Palucca and Sons, a well patronized deli and store.  Becky, the youngest, a Pittsnurg law enforcement officer lives in Frontenac and helps his father.  Joe and Bill live in Kansas City. 

Before meeting them, we went on 2 tours: the Harley-Davidson plant tour and the Hall Mark Visitors’ Center, both of which were in the Missouri side of the city. Harley’s headquarters is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but it operates four vehicle and powertrain operations centers where they also conduct tours for the public. The Kansas Center is the only place where they build motorcycles end-to-end.  The Dyna, Sportster, and V-Rod models are built there. It takes only about 45 minutes for the final assembly of a unit.  Harley-Davidson is the undisputed largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world.

The national headquarters of Hallmark is in Kansas City.  Its Visitors’ Center had many interesting things on display:  the history of the company, its keepsakes, its longest most popular line of cards, Pansy, the Presidential card line, the 17 different themed Christmas trees gifted to Joyce Hall, the founder, by the employees each year and the hundreds of crowns, each one creatively crafted by volunteer employees for their 100^th anniversary this year. There were also stations where the process of card-making was explained.  Finally, we all got souvenir Hallmark cards that sang 'Stand by Me' when you opened them.

Then we proceeded to Bill’s home. Bill graduated summa cum laude from Pittsburg State University where there is a plaque in his honor and currently works for a big textbook publishing firm.  His partner, Kevin, is a gifted artist so their home is well-appointed with nice works of art, paintings and prints.  We even got a special tour of the lovely garden that he tends. Actually, they had just come back from Paris where they had a private tour of the Louvre!!!  Soon Joe called to tell us that his meeting was over (he works for Accenture) so we all had dinner at Hereford House, a famous steak house in Kansas city.

We got home close to midnight so the next day was another rest day before we moved on to Colorado. Even good things must come to an end so we bid Rosemary and Jack goodbye for 2 of the best weeks we have had. Our trip out was going to be or 12 hours so we stopped at Salina, Kansas for the night.  We camped at the largest chain of camps in the country…Walmart.  Bill and I had a kick out of setting out our lawn chairs on the grassy portion of the parking lot, talking to our fellow RVers who were also parked there for the night, getting updated with our emails, and simply chillaxin with beer and iced tea.  

And before we touched the Colorado hills, we bid more goodbyes to the great Kansas plains…the herds of cattle, the lone small oil rig on vast fields of wheat, the low-flying crop dusters, and the dwarfed motorcycles on the wide, empty highways below the blue and white tapestry of skies.

Next Stop: Denver, Crested Butte, and the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado

Yahoo Groups Message Boards

I have been on many message boards on many different venues, over the years, but my absolute favorite message boards are the ones with Yahoo Groups.
http://groups.yahoo.com/

They differ from others in many respects - 

• Every message posted can be sent to an email box; 
• it is very easy to respond to any message;
• a Daily Digest can be set up and sent one time a day;
• a reader can go to the board and read there and not get anything in email;
• the posted messages can be read individually or by subject; 
• they are easy to turn off when on vacation or not wanting the emails cluttering the mail box. 
• plus many more positive aspects. 

There are thousands of groups on any and every subject under the sun.

Some of the groups I belong to are about RVing; eBay; The Law of Attraction,; Young Living Essential Oil; PrePaid Legal, FreeCycle and Buy and Sell groups in our city, plus many more.  

There are a few caveats - 

• on the social groups they tend to get click-ish and very personal.  And unfortunately there are always a few "mouths" who have to be in everyone's face and bring drama to the group.  They are best to be ignored and interact with the people who offer information and insight.;
• On the business groups there is alot of moderation, to prevent spamming, so there is a delay in responses going live.. I tend to think that on some of the give away boards the moderators get first dibs on the stuff being given away.

Some of my favorites are -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SpringsPlantAndSeedExchange/?yguid=205762662
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/eBay-Sellers/?yguid=205762662
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/AllAboutRVing/?yguid=205762663

Decluttering The Clutter

After six visits to Japan, we kinda accumulated way too much junk that now needs to be sorted and thrown away, I guess....

Both Zaini and I have this habit - we keep everything, and I mean everything as memorabilia. Notwithstanding the standard souvenir items, we have travel magazines, train schedules, theme parks tickets, train tickets, postcards, paper bags, plastic bags even receipts and price tags! We are seriously turning into pack rats! o.O

In anticipation of another trip to Japan and accumulating more junk, it's time to de-clutter all these junk to make way for new ones!

Anyway, seeing that we have way too many postcards we acquired in Japan, I think it'll be fun if I do a postcard exchange of some sort with readers here. Maybe I'll send some postcards to you guys when I get to Japan. What do you say? Anyone interested in getting a postcard from Japan?

If all goes well, it's just two more months before our 7th trip to the Land of the Rising Sun!

I wonder when I get to go for my first trip to the Land of the Morning Calm? I'm not giving up brainwashing my two boys yet!