Garbage Police!!!

Just when you thought it was safe to take out the trash. . . you get caught by the garbage police!!! That's just what happened to us the other day! Here, we have to separate our trash into basically 4 categories: raw garbage (food waste), plastics, newspaper/magazine/boxes, and recyclable cans and bottles. And there is a separate trash day for each. There isn't a dumpster, so you have to bring your trash out the morning of. . . not even the night before. We do actually separate our garbage, like good Yokohama citizens, but I guess one day, we packaged our paper-recyclables incorrectly and it was left behind. (Usually we just fill a box up with our paper recyclables, and they've taken them before.) But this time we had the box taped shut, so I guess the garbage people didn't take it. That's when the garbage police came! (Each apartment is supposed to take turns each week to keep the garbage area clean, etc. Although I really doubt people actually do it! BUT, I guess I was wrong!)

When we got home, the box was sitting near our mailbox with a letter attached which read (roughly translated) something like this:

Dear **san,
Today was the paper recycle day, and this box was left behind. We (the members of the apartment committee) opened it up and found out that it belonged to you. Sorry to cause you so much trouble.
From, apartment #000 (the apartment in charge of garbage duty this week)

We were kind of upset/surprised/shocked that they actually opened up the "trash" and decided that it was ours! Usually I don't put anything with our name or address in the trash so I'm thinking how they determined that it was ours. (could have been because it was one of our moving boxes or it could have been the English magazines inside) I guess some people must have seen us throwing it away. I guess we shouldn't be upset since it was our trash, but we were just wondering why the garbage people didn't take it. So, now we have to keep the box in our apartment for another 2 weeks until the next recycle day!

Beware of strong winds!!!

Yesterday it was such a nice day that I decided to hang the laundry outside to dry. Nope, we don't have a dryer, so we hang all our clothes to dry. It's quite common not to have a dryer in Japan, and during the summer, you can see everyone hanging their laundry, futons, blankets, etc. over the balcony to air. Anyway, I had our laundry and a blanket out on the balcony to dry. We went out for only a short period of time (probably gone for about 40 minutes) and when we came back, I noticed that the futon was folded over, almost falling off the rail and a few shirts were missing from the laundry rack!!! Yikes what had happened while we were gone? We flew into action and grabbed the blanket and brought the laundry in. But what happened to my t-shirts? I looked over the balcony and noticed that they had fallen down to the balcony of the apartment on the first floor (we live on the top, 4th floor)!!! I'll have to go and retrieve them later on today. We were just thankful that it was our t-shirts and not underwear!!! I don't know if I'd want to retrieve those from the neighbour!!! *on another note, there was one incident where a pair of shorts from next door flew onto our balcony!*

Golden Week Vacation

This year for Golden Week, we didn't go anywhere too far. The highways are so crowded that we hate going anywhere during the long holidays! Who wants to sit in traffic for hours? (plus, I don't think my bladder would be able to handle sitting in the car for long periods of time!) However, we didn't exactly stay home during the vacation either. We went around locally, trying not to use the highways if possible.

We went to the Aburatsubo Aquarium along the Miura Peninsula, which is about a 45 minute drive from our house. It's a really nice drive, and the area has a country-side feel to it. Not exactly the touristy spot, but beautiful none-the-less. The aquarium was really small, and we couldn't believe that they actually charge 1,700 yen (roughly $17) for entrance to this tiny place! We had a coupon, so it came out to 1500 yen per person plus 500 yen for parking. This place is nothing like the size of the Monterrey Bay Aquarium!!! but, it was nice anyway, mainly a good place to take small kids who don't have a long attention span, since you can go through the whole aquarium in a few hours. There was even a dolphin and sea lion show, with a cute monkey act squeezed between performances.

We also visited the Tama Zoo, which is another local spot, about 40 minutes away. We were just surfing the Internet looking for local places to go to, and I thought of the Tama Zoo. I've heard other people saying that they take their kids there, so I thought we'd check it out. We looked at the web page and found out that May 4th and 5th are free entrance days!! Yeah!!! We were lucky that the next day just happened to be May 5th, so we couldn't pass up this opportunity!!! We arrived at 8:30am (doors open at 9am) and it was already crowded! Obviously we weren't the only ones who knew about the free day!!! The main attraction of the day was the Lion Bus. It's a mini safari (costs extra) where you get on a bus and drive through the lion enclosure for about 7 minutes. (by the way, the bus is actually painted to look like a zebra, not a lion). There are a few strips of meat hanging on the side of the bus so the lions actually come up to the bus and you can be face-to-face with the lion! Definitely exciting and worth the extra 350 yen! The usual cost of admission is 600 yen for adults, and can you believe that kids 12 and under are free? It is definitely worth the money and we'll be going back when our kid is big enough. The only setback is that parking costs a whopping 1400 yen!!! That's more than double the regular admission price!!!