Coming out of hibernation

It has been a while since I have sat at the computer and done anything other than work. There are so many things that I have wanted to post about lately, but as I was commenting to my mother today - I seem to be only motivated by "deadlines" and recently have so many things that have to be done that I give up before I even try to get them done and go and sit on the deck and read my book instead! I promise I'll post about my overseas visitors and other events here very soon, but in the meantime..... here are a couple of photos from Sunday. I have no idea why, but I decided on Saturday night that I really wanted to take the kids up our mountain again so the three of us (my husband wasn't so keen...) set off and somehow managed to be at the top of the mountain eating our lunch by 9:30am! It was one of those absolutely amazing days with no clouds and after the recent days and days of rain it was an amazing feeling to be standing on top of the world and looking out over our little valley.
We almost didn't make it though as when we were walking up the road to the mountain track we heard the sound of wild boars screeching and chains rattling. After a quick phone call home to check that it was actually safe to keep going we discovered that not one, but three wild boars had been caught in a trap right beside the road and were doing their best to bash their way out of it. Wild boars are a big problem around here - they get into the rice fields and roll around in the mud destroying all the crops. They eat every single pumpkin, chestnut, potato and basically any other vegetable they can get their snouts on. As I keep trying to explain to my children - the boars are not bad, it is the people who have taken away their natural environment and food supplies. Most people in our area put up big fences to stop them getting in, but they are not usually very successful. The city we live in gives 10,000 yen to people for every wild boar they can catch and there are now businesses which are trying to utilize the meat. The neighbour who had caught 3 boars in one trap was therefore pretty happy with his haul for the morning. We were even happier that they had been "disposed" of before we came back down the mountain! Unfortunately I was too scared to take photos.... this is what they looked like though... only there were three of them in a small space... okay so maybe they were a little smaller than this, but not much!