Passport to Love: Japan

For one of Jason's Christmas presents, I committed to planning and executing a date night for us each month.  And each date night would be centered around a different county so we could travel the world without travelling the world.  Last night was our first and Japan was our destination.  The evening was pretty simple and mostly just took place at home BUT my mom took both girls for a sleepover so we had the house to ourselves and it was glorious.

I created this little display to introduce Jason to the night's festivities.  I made some Japanese Cherry Blossums (tissue paper glued onto tree branches) specifically for this but love them so much they will be decorating my house at least until spring comes.

First, we went to dinner at Hibachi House--one of our favorite restaurants.  We had edamame, cream cheese wontons, and split a steak hibachi meal.  Yummy!

We went back home where I had a couple of activities planned for us to do.  Jason turned on a Japanese radio station and we tried our hands at writing some haikus.  I had printed off a picture from each year we've known each other and we wrote a haiku for each of them.

2008 by Jason
Long pigtails, a rock
Sittin' on log in lava
Future Mrs. Z

2009 by Kaysie
All eternity
May 16th 2009
Oh happiest day!

2010 by Jason
Disneyland oy vey!
Kissing missus Santa Clause
On the cheek--friend zone.

2011 by Kaysie
A new baby cries
Our family grows by one
Oh, what have we done?

2012 by Jason
Mickey Mouse Ears oy!
A cruisin' we will go now!
Too much food, I'm fat...

2013 by Kaysie
Visiting old haunts
and soaking up nice warm sun
Return to Hawaii

2014 by Jason
Four Ziebarths all here
Big sis meets little sis first
War breaks out--be nice!

2015 by Kaysie
At one with nature
Family vacations rule
Yellowstone once more

Then, we divvied up the mochi ice cream balls I had made.  They didn't turn out great, but I would try it again at some point, being sure to follow instructions closely and not end up using so much potato starch!

Finally, we did some Star Wars origami.  He'd gotten a book as a gift and figured this was a perfect chance to give it a try.  He worked on a tie fighter and I chose C3PO.  And it was A LOT harder than we'd anticipated!  The way the book is designed, we had to flip back and forth within the instructions to figure out how to do different folds.  We both gave it a good effort but didn't finish.

Being the perfectionist that I am though, I gave it another go this morning and sorta succeeded.

Jason got his passport stamped and we called it a night.  Sayonara Japan!