has it been a month?

I'm not going to say that things are necessarily easy here, especially with two babies under age two (although this, by its very nature, cannot be easy anywhere) but time does seem to be flying by. This makes me nervous for the following reason: we will no longer be able to use the excuse that we just got here! I use this excuse for everything ranging from not having pictures hung yet in the house to not knowing how to say check please in Japanese. Yikes. To make matters worse, last week's Japanese lesson was canceled due to an accident on the train that made it impossible for our teacher to get to the house. She apologized so many times I thought she'd never forgive herself. The Japanese are so punctual, efficient and disciplined that when there is a delay to the train schedule the police (or men in imposing-looking uniforms anyway) stand at the train stations handing out slips that commuters may turn in to their employers explaining the delay. Sort of like a doctor's note. I'd like to see the MTA do that when the F train is tardy. Oh right, but NY does not publish a train schedule now does it.

When living abroad, you find yourself doing things you have never ever done before. I'm not sure I have ever gone to a sports bar with Nick to watch a college football game yet last Sunday I somehow found myself boarding a train at 8 in the morning then walking through a seedy part of Roppongi (or maybe it was just the hour) reminiscent of the Times Square of old (pre-Guiliani) to watch a Ducks vs. Trojans game at a bar called Legends. My first glimpse of Tokyo Tower was therefore with beer in hand, baby in the other, eating nachos early Sunday morning with a bunch of screaming ex-pats in the background. Bizarre indeed. Go Ducks. We also managed to find probably the only other guy in Tokyo who watches hockey religiously and we had a hockey night right here at the house Friday night. I even managed to buy six packs of non malt liquor beer and bbq potato chips. Go Sharks.

Apart from the above mentioned American cultural activities we also managed to have a night out last week sans babies. We went to a wonderful little, subterranean sushi joint where we shared a big table with another party, took our shoes off and sat on pillows. Nick managed to make the waiter laugh by ordering a bottle of sake (um, the bottles are quite large) and managed to force me to eat shrimp tempura (um, it was a miniature shrimp completely intact, eyes and all, with no fried breading disguising its pre-existence -- where's the tempura part??) It tasted like a french fry. I particularly liked the way the waiter poured the sake until it completely overflowed into its coaster and then said oops every time. Oops.

Here are some pics. I almost forgot to mention our neighborhood Halloween party. Food, kids, champagne, costumes, Halloween cookies shaped like pirates, (thanks Nick!), sushi shaped like pumpkins and monsters and trick or treating (or, like Chloe likes to say: "treat!") One of our neighbors, Ito #13, rang our bell around 8pm to hand us a special bag of treats they put together just for Tessa (baby treats!) because Chloe was too slow to make it all the way around to their house to retrieve it. Pretty impressive. And we thought our cookies were good.