On Tuesday evening, after all of Mio and Dan’s hard work making their snowman, we went out for a little family froyo date before dinner. 🙂
Family Froyo Date
frozen yogurt
Mountain View Obon Festival
On Saturday afternoon, we drove down to go to the Mountain View Obon Festival. We’d always heard about it and had wanted to check it out, but it’s about an hour drive away for us so we hadn’t gone until this year. We originally wanted to attend on Sunday because that’s the day they have the bon-odori, but Dan had an obligation that day, so Saturday was the only time we could go together. We had a wonderful time experiencing Obon together as a family!
Mio has been doing this funny thing where she pretends to sip water, and then afterwards lets out a big burst of breath, like it was really refreshing. I’m not sure where she learned it from… I have a feeling it’s from this beer commercial, which comes on a lot when I’m watching Japanese TV shows. Here it is on video.
Around 6pm, we headed over to the stage area where Jun Daiko was going to have a taiko performance.
Here’s the last half of Jun Daiko’s finale performance of “Inazuma.”
Afterwards, we headed over to downtown Mountain View for a ramen dinner and frozen yogurt for dessert!
I’m really glad that we made the drive down to go to the festival this year! It was memorable, and I think it’s great to give Mio exposure to Japanese culture and traditions so that she can develop an appreciation for her ethnic heritage.
Playing with Puppies
On Monday, my sister, father and I took Mio to a local pet store where they have puppies that you can play with in the store. Mio is really interested in dogs and other animals lately, so we thought she would have a lot of fun with them!
We chose a shiba inu puppy to play with, and got a playroom with him in! He was so adorable…
Shibas can be extremely hyper and overactive, though, and this puppy definitely had a lot of energy! It kept trying to jump on us and kept biting on the ends of our clothes and pulling… it was intense.
So playtime only lasted about ten minutes, but it was fun! We spent some time looking around the rest of the pet store together…
There was a frozen yogurt place nearby, so we went to Sweetberry for an afternoon snack!
I just noticed that day that Mio is starting to grown in four more teeth (her first molars) in addition to the eight teeth she’s already had for months. She’s had the central and lateral incisors for a while now, but she’s just starting to grow one molar on each side, on both the top and bottom (so one in each quadrant of the mouth). I’d heard that the first molars start to grow in at around 13 to 19 months, so she is right on schedule!
Monday was a bit cooler and cloudier compared to Sunday’s pool weather, so we couldn’t break out the baby pool again, but Mio still had fun romping around the backyard.
In the evening, Auntie Miwa wanted Mio to try on the new Harajuku Mini clothes and sunglasses we’d bought for her when we went shopping earlier in the day, so we had some dress-up time. Check this fashionista out! 😛
Sunday with Sylvia
We were spoiled this weekend by the good company of visiting friends. Not only did we get to see Vee on Saturday, but my friend Sylvia flew in from New Jersey on Sunday for a business trip, so I got to see her over lunch as well! 🙂
We braved the rain to have a delicious Middle Eastern lunch at La Mediterranée in Pacific Heights — the food there is amazing!
After lunch, we grabbed some froyo at Yoppi next door. I’ve known Sylvia for as long as I can remember — we became fast friends at summer camp one year (we must’ve still been in elementary school!), and were pen pals for years. 🙂 I’m grateful that we still keep in touch and can see each other from time to time, even though we are on opposite sides of the country.
Weekend in SoCal (Part I)
Dan and I were both in Southern California this weekend, although we arrived separately and were in different parts of SoCal and didn’t see each other for much of the time. Dan and his film buddies were in Pasadena to shoot a short, and they drove down on Friday night, whereas I flew down on Friday morning and stayed in Irvine and Torrance to spend time with my friends from college — our plans just happened to fall on the same weekend, so we ended up both being down there but ironically separated until it came time for us to drive back up to the Bay Area.
Dan may blog about his shoot a little later, but this post will be all about my adventures this past weekend. 😛
My good friend Mariko lives in Irvine, and I hadn’t seen her since last June, so I was really happy to have a chance to go spend some time with her this time. Our friend Shun from Virginia Tech is moving back to Japan, and he was stopping by SoCal for the weekend before flying to the other side of the world, so it was a good chance to see him as well, before he left the U.S.
We spent most of Friday in the Los Angeles area and Saturday in San Diego. Here are some photos from Day One in Manhattan Beach and Irvine….
Looking at the photos, it looks like all we did was eat, scamper around the beach, and go eat some more… and more… and more…. which I suppose is essentially the gist of what happened. There’s just so much good food in the area, I end up wanting to eat everything I see. It was really nice to spend time with college friends and reminisce on our days back at Tech — sometimes I wish I could just go back and experience it all over again. (I believe I suffer from a bit of Peter Pan Complex.) But it’s comforting to see that your close friends from those days have never really changed that much, and that you can always pick up right where you left off with them. It really makes me grateful for the friendships I made and have been able to carry with me.
Stay tuned for Part II, in which we encounter giant sea creatures and scale treacherous rock cliffs. (Sounds so epic!)