Last minute guests

At lunch time on Monday I got a phone call asking if we could host 4 girls... on Tuesday! For once my extremely busy schedule was basically empty so I agreed and somehow despite almost continual rain we managed to fill in 1 night and 2 days and they went away very happy. I think for them the rain was a blessing as their "agricultural experience" in which they are expected to "sweat" turned into lots of cooking, some pumpkin carving (our only reasonably big one that grew this year..sob, sob!) and some scarecrow making. Of course not even the rain can stop me getting them to chop some wood though! The chickens were let out for a wander, but have decided they quite like the road so chances of letting them out when I am not in the immediate vicinity are decreasing every day.
Yesterday afternoon I dropped the girls off, went and taught a class, picked up my children and we raced home to secure anything that might fly away in the incredibly strong wind that was supposed to be coming with the incredibly strong typhoon. My husband had to sit at his desk at work just in case something terrible happened to some poor citizen of our town (of course work comes before family!) but they were all sent home about 9pm when the incredibly strong typhoon changed its course and only brought relatively light winds. Oh well, I guess we should be grateful that it didn't flatten all the rice and that the outside of our house is now extremely tidy! I hope everyone else in Japan got off as lightly as we did.