Meals

Tonight we drove to the local mall, a Japanese one, for dinner at the Pepper Lunch. Oh, and also so Joey could have Chicken Nuggets from McDonald's. Ordering food here can be fun. At some places, they have wax plates of food in the windows with little signs that say what they are. Small problem for us is we can't read them. At those places you motion for the woman at the counter to follow you to the window and point to what you want. Then she prints out "tickets" for your order and you pay. Then you go find a seat and give your waitress the tickets so she can go and pick up your food. At other places, like at the Pepper Lunch, there is a vending machine that reminds me of buying a subway ticket in DC where you put your money in and then press the buttons for the picture of the meal you want and your drink, then present your tickets at the counter. McDonald's makes it a bit easier for us, they have a sheet with pictures of their menu at the counter and if you look American, they flip it over and its in English! The Pepper Lunch is one of my favorite places to eat. They serve your food on what looks like a round cast iron skillet that is sizzling hot. The meal I get is beef, rice and corn. The beef is very thinly sliced, and only about 6 pieces of it, and not cooked (it cooks on the "plate" as you let it cool off) circling a mound of steamed white rice with a bit of corn on top. Its simple but oh so good. One nice thing is they give you a spoon for this meal. Brandon has the chopsticks down but I still can't get them to work. A sweet little Japanese man was walking by our table and asked if he could show Joey a magic trick. Joey enjoyed it very much. He then asked where we were from and we said, "Texas" and he responded by asking, "Like John Wayne". It was funny to learn that they think of cowboys when they think of Texas.

Everything else is going pretty okay here. We are looking forward to the weekend and spending time doing a whole bunch of nothing. I think Joey might talk Brandon in to taking the sled out some time this weekend, its supposed to snow again on Saturday, but other than that and church, we have no big plans. Things seem to be much more laid back and go at a much slower pace here. I'm not complaining. While there are some odd things we can't seem to find around here, there are some other new things we are discovering and don't know how we could have possibly lived without them back in the states. Heated toilet seats. Oh so very nice on a cold day. That's all I will say about that.

Oh, for those of you waiting for Christmas gifts to arrive from us here in Misawa, the wait will probably be a bit longer than usual. They tell us most priority mail takes about 3 weeks but with the holiday season they say it could take twice as long. Sorry! We thought we had shipped with enough time. We will try to be more on top of things next year!