Speckles of Echols: Many things: November 7

November 7. Date night at Menbar. Their fried chicken and their ramen are to die for! Their fried rice is also super tasty.

Here's the pin in case anyone local wants to know.

メンbarたつや3 Chome-12-19 Marifumachi, Iwakuni, Yamaguchi 740-0018, Japan https://goo.gl/maps/uvTJsnnDVrEbefx38

Came home from this date, and Milo had lost his second front tooth.

Milo was overdue for a much bigger bike! We'll be lucky if this lasts a year. He's growing like a weed!

November 10th. We visited the Hiroshima Castle. The grounds were beautiful! The castle tower was rebuilt and is now a museum. There were dozens of Koi in the mote surrounding the castle. So pretty!

This Eucalyptus tree was the only tree in the area to survive the bomb. Its beautiful.

November 11: Kuga Park, take 2 with Daddy and Milo.

This grape juice was delicious, and strange - as are many Japanese things It had little jelly cubes of aloe vera in it. Haha! I loved it. I think only one of the boys actually liked it.

November 12: Mikan picking at Wakabayashimikan Orchards

Mikan are Japanese tangerines

November 13: Burger joint at the pier the night before Miyajima

We were all starving. It was a long drive to get to our Air bnb to check in. The food was tasty. We left our car there, and walked 15 minutes back to our hotel. That night was hard. There was a sign on the door before we got there that said we had to keep quiet because the residence in the apartment really like their evening quiet. This is where our boys totally clash with the Japanese culture. They are loud, and rowdy, and our new most common phrase when we're out in town is "RESPECT THE CULTURE!", and "do you see anyone else here doing what you're doing?!". Hahaha. Its fun.

November 14 : Miyajima!

This place was amazingly beautiful! Miyajima is an small island not far from where we live. We stayed the night before in an air bnb near the pier so that we wouldn't have to deal with traffic in the morning. It was about a 15 minute ferry ride to the island. There are probably hundreds of wild dear roaming the island, but they are protected and have no fear of people. Its great as long as you don't have any food in your hands. They're a little like goats and will do what it takes to get to whatever food you have.

We stopped at a couple souvenir shops, which the boys loved, and wanted all the things.

We road in a gondola on a ropeway to get to the top of one of the mountains. It was a very pretty ride! We were planning to hike down after getting to the top. Little did we know, the ride didn't actually take us quite to the top. We tried hiking for a bit, but since we knew we still had to hike all the way down the mountain (ropeway was not cheap), we gave up on hiking to the top to save our energy. Its a good thing we stopped because the hike down was brutal. What we thought was going to be 1 hour downhill hike, ended up being over double that! It was mostly stairs, and often quite steep (my legs died that day). Blake carried Sam almost the whole way. We had to stop for lots of breaks and ended up running out of snacks and water before we got to the bottom. Luckily, the boys were troopers, and we all survived. We got some BBQ chicken and chocolate covered bananas at the end, and ended on a high note. We'd love to go back when its not a Saturday. There were so many people there in the afternoon, and my empathic self just doesn't love being jam packed in crowds. But the morning was lovely, and the trees were amazing! We also loved all the deer.