California Vacation - Day 4 - Friday - Ramen

Sigh! It's Friday already! My work week is over. Our guests are suffering from jet-lag and all the rich foods, so we decide to go to a local Ramen House. It's called Shin Sen Gumi and one half of the restaurant is for ramen and the other half is yaki-tori, or Japanese BBQ. Oh, yummy! Sorry, no pictures today--I guess I should have brought my camera!

California Vacation - Day 3 - Thursday - Fashion Island and home

While I was working everyone went to Fashion Island to shop with Suzy and the kids. Lucky them--it was a beautiful day! They ended up eating at Ruby's on the pier in Huntington Beach--a local landmark! Here's a photo I took a couple of years ago of Ruby's!

California Vacation - Day 2 - Rainforest Cafe & Groceries~

I had to work on Wednesday, but we all met for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe in South Coast Plaza. I just love going to that place to see all the tropical fish and their Disneyland atmosphere is fun too! We met Shaun and Rhett and had such a fun time. I almost always get the Buffalo Chicken Salad and this time was no exception! You can see a picture of Johnny with a huge chimichanga--he's gone 3 years with hardly any Mexican food, can you imagine!? We all split the Volcano for dessert--a huge brownie sundae with a sparkler on top. We all yell Volcano-ooh! as it comes out!

After I get home from work, we decide to barbeque at home. Matt is the best grill master and makes such tasty chicken. After dinner we walk to the grocery store. Manami has never seen an American grocery store and the cereal aisle makes her gasp out loud! The produce section is another fun thing. We spend time guessing the price of different items and weighing watermelons and things to see how much they cost here vs. Japan. We spent almost 2 hours in the store looking at each item. I never knew grocery shopping could be so fun!

California Vacation - Day 1

Johnny and Manami land at LAX at around 3:00 in the afternoon, where Matt is there to pick them up. They get home and rest until I get home from work at 6. Then we are off to Huntington Beach Pier. We got to walk around for a minute and then we ate a fabulous dinner at Chimayo's, right on the beach! Afterwards, we had coffee with Nicky (Matt's brother) and went to Matt's sister's house to say "hi".

Where has the time gone!?

Oh, my! It's been over a month since I last posted--I swear I'm the worst blogger ever! We've been busy with tons of things, including getting ready for our visitors. Matt's cousin and his fiance', Manami, are here for a month from Osaka, Japan. These are the same people we went to Japan to visit two years ago! We've had tons of fun so far, so I'm going to interrupt my Japan vacation memories with some notes from our California vacation! I hope you enjoy the little slice of life from Southern California. Manami has never been to the US before, so everything is new and exciting.