Spaghetti Ice Cream....

How about a little peek into Japanese culture? :) Today we are showcasing the novelty item, Spaghetti ice cream.
Now, spaghetti is one of my favorite foods...and ice cream is also one of my favorite foods....but together? When we first saw this several days ago at a convenience store (we call them conbini (ko-nn-bean-ee) here.) Mama was so turned off by the idea she told us not even to talk about it! Lol!
Yesterday however, Malachi, Minks Kid number three, oldest Minks boy at thirteen, got permission to buy it with his own money.
I thought it would be perfect for a blog post. ;) I mean, who else does an entire post on spaghetti ice cream?? :D It's ridiculously novel.
Well....I'm afraid however this rating will not be very high. Malachi brought it out last night....
Here he is with his happy face before he tries it! He was pretty pleased to have something new to put on our "strange foods we've eaten" list.



This is the package. I'm afraid that with a package looking like that and advertising how yummy the tomato gelatin chunks in the ice cream are, we probably should be considered forewarned. Lol


Two bites later...Malachi stopped eating it. We started to tease him a little. His first announcement was..."it's SALTY!" ....Well naturally I guess spaghetti wouldn't be sweet. But it is still odd for our American minds to wrap around.


I asked to try it so I could give my opinion too. I tried a bite. If it was anything but a dessert it would probably have tasted good. But I'm not too keen on the idea of salty tomato ice cream with tomato gelatin chunks. Soo...it wasn't bad tasting, just too strange to swallow. Haha, get it? Swallow? Ok that pun was half on purpose. Lol.
Zebulun (number six, age five) also decided to try it. His first reaction was a thumbs up...then he really tasted it, and his expression changed so quick it was absolutely hilarious! Josiah also tried it, but pretty calmly handed it back. No one else wanted a taste. :P
Daddy wanted Malachi to pose with it, wearing funny expression, but Malachi, probably wondering why he spent 100 yen (one dollar) on it, didn't really want to.
Haha, big sister in for the rescue. I made this face, but right when Daddy took the picture I couldn't hold it any longer, and I burst out laughing! So, it's a rather strange picture. In fact, I think I'm being pretty brave putting it on our blog! Lol! But we all thought it was pretty funny so I thought maybe others would like a good laugh too. :)


Well, I hope this post didn't make your stomach turn somersaults. :D Japan has a lot of really amazing food, and so when we see something unusual, we like to try it. We do have a pretty good list going on too. ;) It's kind of silly, but maybe it's almost a hobby :D We always like to try things though...not only is it fun, but it also expands our minds to other cultures and our tastes to learn to appreciate other countries' food. And honestly, I think every country I've tried food from I've liked at least one of the things from that country! :)
Anyways, have a very good day!
God bless,
Victoria, the funny MK ;)

Happy birthday...to Josiah and (very late) to Zebulun

Howdy!
The 15 of April is Josiah aka Joe's birthday. He turned 9 years old.
He has always reminded us of Curious George. He's pretty shy, but he's the corniest little kid out there! His latest favorite things are cowboys, and he has always liked his bicycles. Therefore,I made him a cowboy cake! One of my hobbies is cake decorating and I was eager to try out making my own fondant. While I didn't care for how it turned out (our tastes since coming to Japan 13 years ago has changed to where we don't like super sweet things very much), it was an interesting experience and I'm going to try to find a different recipe someday. :) It was fun to work with however.
The design was really last minute, and I worried that it looked too "Viking" but everyone else didn't think so, so that was good. :)
















And it was only today I realized that I don't think we ever posted about Zebulun's birthday! He had his birthday three days before we left for Japan, and things were pretty crazy. I honestly thought I had gotten that post published, but I guess it was one of the ones I never got around to.
Zeb is very energetic and independent. He is also very smart. He learned his first two kanjis at age three. He likes to help people vacuum and ever since he got saved a couple months back, he loves to tell people about God, getting saved, or going to church. One time when we were staying around our home church, he told a young lady at a restaurant how good our church was. "We have a neat nursery too", he added. Lol!
Zeb on his birthday....Malachi likes to do snap circuits (electricity and batteries and what not...I certainly don't know how to work it) and he arranged them just so to play Happy Birthday for Zeb.



He likes little dogs and animals....(this is my aunts dog)


Especially his stuffed animals!




Have a great day! :)
Victoria <3

Smorgasbord

First off, we are still alive and safely in Japan.
Third, jet lag is a nuisance.
(Haha yes the "third" thing was on purpose...thankfully we are over it mostly!)
I'm just going to put some pictures on here, smorgasbord of our last two weeks or so back in Japan. Enjoy!

Flying out of Korea.


Inside the plane on our way to our island!


Sapporo ramen the next day with a Japanese friend-- I thought it was brilliant because they had hard boiled eggs in bowls on each table to eat with your ramen!


Traveling the four hours back to our house from the airport.



Some of us ended up sleeping, like Zeb here. :)


Two girls excited to get back!





Yes we still have snow....big time. Our last few weeks have been an awesome mixture of rain storms, super clear days, and blizzards. (That is Hokkaido for you!)


This is what the main highway looks like on our island!


One of the many temples.


This place serves pumpkin ice cream. But not pumpkin pie flavor...just pumpkin. It wasn't bad.


Back in the land of tea! Yum!


"Welcome home" in Japanese.


Thoughtful signs.


My ultimate favorite Japanese food, sekihan!!! It's amazing ;)



Our little eight passenger van! :) after a twelve passenger for a year in the states I couldn't help laughing when we all got in here. It works great here in Japan, but I'm glad we had a bigger van for furlough!



Many many thanks for the people who prayed for our safety! We had a good trip and it was relatively easy getting through customs. Only one notable difficulty, when Malachi held up the entire line of customs in Korea because of his dangerous backpack...he had a box of Legos, a tin of metal puzzles, his entire coin collection, and a couple tools. :P They thoroughly searched his backpack, did a pat down on Malachi etc. It took the Koreans a while to figure out that he was ok, so we had to wait for him a couple minutes.
I hope you all have a lovely day. Here is an inspiring quote I read in someone's home back on furlough that I liked.



Victoria <3