Photos, Friends,Malls and Pink Panther!

        This week we learned that since the girls are fair skinned, light haired and Elliot in particular is very blue eyed, people take pictures of them a lot! We will just be walking down the street out in town and someone will whip out their camera, snap a picture of them and keep on walking. My first reaction is to pull them closer to me, because in the US, a strange person taking a photo of my children would be creepy. I've been told it's quite normal here and that the Japanese are just amazed with blonde haired, blue eyed children. I wonder  what they do with all of the pictures they take of America children with those traits? Do they have a photo album with all of those pictures?
       On another note,we made some new friends this week! The B's have been WONDERFUL to us. It has been such a blessing to have met them and that my girls get along so well with their girls and the adults get along well too! I cannot thank Mrs. B enough, for calling us out of the blue to invite us over to play on a rainy day. She really was a lifesaver!! The B's also took us to explore the 100 yen store, which is a slightly higher end dollar store. It was really fun to check out a store out in town and really nice to have someone who spoke english to do it with!  I see myself visiting that store often, as they have every type of storage and organizational box or container you could ever need and in a ton of super cute colors!
    On Saturday Josh, the girls and I decided to venture over to the Ginza, which is basically a mall, but it runs in a long strip for about a mile and a half, with streets and cars running through it every so often. On the way there the girls found a water fountain to take a cool drink from and were quite surprised when they pressed the button to get a drink...

The Ginza was pretty cool to explore, but I don't see myself going there too often. Hannah took this picture, which is a little blurry, cause she wouldn't stop and stand to take it.

We bought a few things at the toy store in the Ginza and thought this was kinda neat too...

I have no idea what it says,  but I know I bought two things!! It's very different being the minority for a change. The Japanese are very nice though and are more than willing to help you any way they can. One woman at McDonalds helped me practice my basic phrases while waiting for my food to come to the counter!!

It's getting late, but I can't leave until I will share with you how clever and desperate my girls were to watch a little Pink Panther the other day. While skyping with their friends the other morning, Hannah figured out that if she could teach her friend Sebastian how to log on to Josh's Netflix account and find Pink Panther, then have him turn the computer around to face the TV, that she and Elliot could watch an episode or two through skype with their friends.. Here they are, in Japan, on skype with their friends in Annapolis, watching Pink Panther through two computers!! Pretty smart I think!!