Froggy Fetish

I think I have a problem when it comes to frogs. Despite their noise being overpowering at night (and during the day if you want a nap), I find them incredibly cute! Today my son and I were picking some cucumbers when I spotted this little fellow taking a break on the cucumber vines. I told my son to keep watch while I raced to get the camera - getting back just in time to snap a couple of shots before it decided to hop off to quieter pastures. As we were coming back in I commented to my son that I was sad because I hadn't managed to get any really cute shots of the frog. His reply "Don't worry Mum, I'm much cuter than a frog." So he put on his cutest face and asked if he could pose for a photo. You can choose which is cuter - my son, or the frog!

In other news I went back to the hospital again today to swallow the silly stomach camera - or rather have it pushed around inside me.... I won't go into details, but am glad I don't have to do it every day! I'm also grateful that I took their option of being put into a semi-unconscious state while they did it! Unfortunately they still couldn't locate the problem so hopefully it just disappears on its own and I won't need to gag again for a long time.... Oh - and it has stopped raining.. for now anyway!

New love of concrete

There are days when I drive around in Japan and think how sad it is that they have managed to make almost every natural river into a concrete spillway. The concrete sides seem stupidly high and ruin the beautiful scenery which is everywhere here. Of course that is when I am driving around on sunny days.... unlike today! Today I am very grateful for the huge amounts of concrete that have been poured into the rivers near our house. We have had continual rain for the past couple of days (lucky I harvested the wheat, aye!) and the rivers have swollen to pretty near full and the rain is still not stopping. Of course all the farmers around the place are smiling as rain means the rice planting can go ahead as planned. They hardly need to even use the spillways to add any water to their fields - a good thing when everyone is trying to flood their fields at the same time - saves on fighting over who will get the water first etc. I'm guessing that we have had enough rain now though - if someone could just turn the tap off for a bit I would be happy.....

Wheat year two

You may remember that last year we harvested our first ever wheat . The volume wasn't huge so in the end we didn't bother milling any of it into flour, but the majority of it was planted out again for this year's harvest. I planted a much bigger patch than last year and it has been growing very nicely - well as nicely as wheat can grow. The best thing is that it takes up quite a lot of space and therefore keeps the weeds down in a large part of the garden.

This morning I got a phone call at 7am from my mother in law asking if I had to work today. Yip - kindy class this morning and another class later in the afternoon. "Oh - that is very unfortunate" was the response, followed by silence. I should have guessed, but apparently the wheat that I planted all alone, jumped on with the help of my son, looked after all by myself and that is planted in MY garden HAD to be harvested this morning or it would all go rotten. The forecast is for rain for the next 3 days so it absolutely HAD to be done this morning.... Unfortunately I wasn't willing to cancel anymore classes this morning so apologised that I couldn't harvest MY wheat exactly when she wanted it done. In the end we agreed that she would cut the wheat and I would come home at lunch time and tie it into bundles and stand it up in the tunnel house to dry out. Of course when I got home at 11:30am the wheat was already all harvested, bundled and standing up to dry in the tunnel house.... I know I should feel "guilty", but I don't - I smiled, nodded, said thank you and went inside for a nap! I'm hoping we can use a friend's machine to take it all out of the husks and hopefully we should have enough to actually make some flour this year. The next problem is finding something to plant in the big gap that is now in the garden before the weeds take over.....

The art of putting people at ease

I don't usually use this blog as a space for "complaining", but have just had an interesting experience at the hospital which I thought I would share. The only time I have really been to the doctor here in Japan is when the children were born and then of course what seemed like every second week for various things for the children when they were small. We have a good hospital in our town, but the doctors seem to change each year so it is a bit of potluck as to who you will get. In terms of children's doctors we have had doctors who have been excellent with the kids, but hopeless with the parents and vice versa. The current doctor is excellent with both and it helps that I teach two of his children. He has a way of putting everyone at ease and not making you feel like you are being a hypochondriac for being there. But, unfortunately today I actually went to the hospital for me and therefore had to see the adult doctor who didn't quite have the same personal skills.
For the last few days I have had a really strange throat - it feels like something is stuck in there and basically it is making me feel yuck. So this morning when I woke up and I still felt stink I bit the bullet and went to the hospital - cancelling two classes to do so. From the very start I lost confidence in the doctor - he spent about 5 minutes asking a couple of questions, umming and aahing, asking a zillion times if I had eaten anything that morning and telling me how unfortunate it was that I had as he wanted me to swallow the stomach camera and I needed an empty stomach to do so. Of course he also answered his mobile phone twice during the "examination" too. He seemed to have no idea what was going on so got the standard x-ray and also a C-T scan ordered. That done I was back for the "results".... x-ray - yes, you have something which is causing a large shadow in your throat in basically the exact position you claimed it was. Unfortunately they can't make me swallow a camera tomorrow so would it be okay if I waited till Monday? Ummmmm.... do I get a choice? I guess it is going to be a long weekend!
Then came the results of the CT scan.... he pulled all the pictures out of the file, spread them out, put them all back into the file, said he needs to get an expert to look at them, talked a bit about the camera thing I have to swallow on Monday, pulled the CT scans out again, started to say something, stopped and then said that he would wait and get the expert to look at them over the next few days and then let me know what is worrying him. To be honest, I don't actually think there was necessarily anything in the scans that was worrying him, but his manner definitely got me worried! I think they should have special "human relations" courses as part of medical school - I'm sure they do, but I think this doctor skipped them!
Mind you having said all that - I am always impressed by the Japanese medical system. I was there at about 8:30am with no appointment and had all the x-rays, scans etc. and results in less than a couple of hours. I don't know about other countries, but from what I have heard it would take a couple of days to get it all done in New Zealand - and that is if you can get an appointment in the first place!

The Big Cycad

I can't count the number of times I have driven past the sign in Hiji which points towards "The Big Cycad" and almost laughed. To be honest I really didn't even know what a Cycad was - it sounded like something from outerspace to me and the urge to go and see a big one had never really got to a point where I was tempted to turn off and get out of the car. But we had a day to spare while Dad was here and my sister, Megan, had told us that it was definitely worth a look so we headed off to check out the biggest cycad in Japan. It turns out a cycad is a kind of tree and that this particular one is 650 years old. The tree itself is pretty impressive, but the gardens around the temple and the man working there who was happy to chat for ages made the trip well worth it.
The temple is a family clan temple which began in 1603 and has a good representation of the influence of other countries on the history of Japan. I can't remember all the details, but there were magnifying glasses, different kinds of pottery etc. from different countries as well as the Japanese adaptions of them. Out the back there was also a bit of a surprise - a graveyard with absolutely enormous "graves". They are the graves of the Kinoshita clan and look a little like things from a mythical land.
Another nice morning out and another nice discovery. Of course it helped that yet again there were no other people around to spoil the peace and quiet.

Ironing in Japan

A quick break from catching up on Dad's trip to introduce the art of Japanese ironing. I know that by posting these photos it will be revealed to all that I am not the perfect Japanese housewife in that I don't iron my husband's shirts... he doesn't even bother asking me anymore! This is a typical Japanese ironing board. It sits about 15cm off the ground and therefore involves a bit of flexibility to actually use it. My husband is 190cm tall (6ft3) and therefore ends up with his knees around his ears. His favorite style is actually the "squatting" style, but every time I tried to get a photo he would quickly sit on his bum. I know you can buy tall ironing boards, but it would be far less fun to watch him standing up to iron than his regular gymnastic poses! As for me... I am pretty hopeless at sitting on the floor to iron so choose clothes which need only to be folded.....

Princess Island- Himeshima

There is a small island called Himeshima or Princess Island about 3km off the coast here which we visited while Dad was here. It wasn't officially my first visit there, but the first time in over 10 years and the first time finding my own way around. Not that it is particularly difficult! The total circumference of the entire island is only 17km and there is basically only one road! We took the car over on the ferry and spent the day looking at some of the "seven wonders". First stop was the lighthouse where we had a picnic lunch under the trees and under the loudspeaker which announced very loudly that it was 12pm with its daily song. We then drove around the entire island stopping off at "A sacred spring that the princess is said to have created. It has been said that after having blackened her teeth, she rinsed her mouth and where there was no water, she clapped her hands before praying and a spring was formed." The kids tried and were convinced they must be princesses as the water bubbled up. There was also a spot where butterflies come to socialise and finally the most stunning spot of all - Sennindo. You climb up a steep mountain (this is Japan, the land of stairs) and all of a sudden you find yourself at the top of a cliff looking out over the ocean and the rugged coast. Then right at the point there is a small building with a beautiful pine growing behind it where it is said that if you pray on New Years Eve you will gain assistance from 1000 gods in times of trouble. A quick prayer to help us to get down the hill safely to the car then an icecream from basically the only shop on the island, passed the only traffic light on the island (apparently put there to educate the children for when they have to go to the mainland) and back on the ferry for the 20 minute ride home.
There are about 2,500 people living on the island, but I think we only saw about 10 of them. We kept meeting up with the other 15 or so tourists on the island though - I particularly enjoyed a conversation one of them had with Dad where he asked Dad "How young are you?" - a nice way to think about age!

Hell and Heaven

The same day we discovered the amazing garden in the last post we also drove past a sign that said in English "Hell and Heaven". We had half an hour to spare and so followed the signs not having any idea at all what we were about to discover. It turned out that it was a pretty strange place in the middle of nowhere. The sign outside (also in English for a change) let us know that Hell and Heaven was a tunnel network that it was constructed for the purpose of educating the people in 1820. There was a 40 meter long "hell cave" and a 20 meter long "paradise cave". You enter the cave system at the "court of justice in hell" and as you pass through the narrow cave system you pass various statues including "the god who has an ox head", "the Old Woman in Hell" and the "Pond in hell". If you make it safely through the narrow caves (designed for very short people...) you arrive at a very narrow, vertical "eye of the needle" which you literally pull yourself up with chains... sweating and swearing as you do so! Once you make it up the chains you find yourself in paradise - the top of a hill with many peaceful Buddhist saints around Buddha where "you will feel peace of mind".

I'm not sure that we found ourselves in paradise, but we definitely had a few laughs trying to work out what it was all about and squeezing ourselves through the needle. Sometimes it is best not to know what is coming!

Surprises

Sometimes you stumble across things that just make you open your mouth in awe. This garden was one of them. While my father was here we had a day where I had no classes, but no real plans so we set off randomly in the direction of a small town called Ajimu where our only real plan was to check out a private garden that I had seen very briefly on T.V. that morning. Thanks to the car navigation we managed to make it there with only a couple of u-turns (it was in the middle of nowhere...) and wandered into someone's private garden, called out and asked if it would be okay to have a look around and were told to go ahead... which we did .... and wow! It was a HUGE garden in which everything was beautifully sculpted. I gradually gained more information about the garden as the day went on and it turns out that it is actually a fairly modern garden - made by a husband and wife team who started making it after the husband retired from his teaching job. I'm not sure exactly how many years ago they started it, but it was fairly amazing. What I loved about it was that, unlike most Japanese sculpted gardens, it was designed to walk through. Every path you took led you to another little path and another little area, there were places to sit and areas of wilderness that were in the process of being changed into new garden areas.
Unfortunately the husband had just started his lunch break when we arrived so I didn't get a chance to talk to him or really thank him properly, but it is definitely a place I want to go back to again - there is no entrance fee so I think next time I'll take them some baking to thank them for creating a great place to wander around. You could see how much they love what they do. Another place I would highly recommend to anyone in the area.

New Places

We are very lucky in that my New Zealand family often comes to visit. It is always great to have them come and stay and it is a great excuse to explore a few new places each time they come. My father came for two weeks in May and we managed quite a few new places - I'll try to introduce some of them over the next few days. Most of them were places that we drive past often, but have just never bothered to stop at.
The first "new place" was Dazaifu - just out of Fukuoka City. Every time we go to Fukuoka airport to collect people we get off the highway at the Dazaifu exit, but have never bothered to actually go to the central area. It turns out it is a pretty amazing area. Firstly there is the Kyushu National Museum, one of four national museums in Japan. The building itself is pretty impressive, and the displays inside are well worth a look - especially as there is more than adequate English available.
A quick walk through a multi-coloured walkway takes you into a completely different world. A shrine constructed in 1591 where people from all around the area crowd to over the New Year period to pray for a good year and an amazingly peaceful garden at Komyozenji Temple. We were there in the rain, which in a way made it even more beautiful. Of course we were there at a time when there were very few people too which made it a great experience. Talking to the people in the restaurant where we stopped for a coffee we were definitely there at the quiet time... they were preparing for about 300 lunches that day, but on the busy days I think they said they would do up to a thousand!
Well worth the visit and a nice, quiet way to start the trip. For anyone that wants more details about this area, this link: Dazaifu Travel Guide, has some good basic information.
I had quite a few photos, but they seem to have disappeared... Dad - if you have the photos from this day that I took on my camera could you put them on a disc for me at some stage... thanks!

Enough!

Looking at my previous post about my wonderful garden is making me depressed! Just after I took all those photos some horrible bugs came into the garden and basically ate EVERYTHING they could in one night. Peas, beans, lettuce, radishes, sunflowers, peppers - everything! Mind you, if the bugs hadn't come first I would have been depressed because we have just had about 4 days of VERY solid rain which has now left my garden like a pond. I am not sure if anything will actually survive, but chances are I may be starting all over again after the rain finally stops.

I am going to write about my father's visit here very soon, but in the meantime a quick update on the last couple of days. We had a group of junior high school girls come to stay for 2 nights - the first group for almost a year due to me being too busy to have them come and stay. The kids really enjoyed having some big sisters around for a few days and despite the CONTINUOUS rain we managed to do quite a lot and they were such a positive group that the rain didn't seem to worry them at all. Of course cooking became the main task - muffins, cookies, cakes, pizza, tako-yaki, roast turkey etc. etc. Despite them being so positive it was nice to be able to take them back this afternoon..... almost too much enthusiasm!
I'm not sure if this slideshow will actually work, but here are a few random photos of their visit.

Garden update

Here are a few photos of the vege garden (click on the photo to see it a bit larger...). At the moment it all feels very under control - zillions of peas coming on, the wheat growing tall, sweetpeas and lupins in bloom, first broad beans on the table tonight along with asparagus and snap peas, celery almost getting to the end of its life, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, chili, eggplant, beans and soyabeans getting bigger, boysenberry and raspberry bushes starting to flower, and potatoes and onions heading into their final growth stages. Very few weeds..... all a bit scary really! I'm sure that in a few weeks when the rainy season arrives the weeds will overtake the veges, but for now I am enjoying wandering around picking our tea!
Dad arrives on Tuesday so hopefully the great weather will hold out a little longer and the weeds will stay down so at least we can see the snakes coming....

Children's Day

Yesterday was the last of a string of holidays, but the only day that both my husband and I weren't working and that we could spend the whole day with the kids. It also just happened to be "children's day" so we decided to throw our bikes on the back of the car and head to a cycling road in Yabakei - about an hour drive from here. It is a beautiful area and they have converted an old railway track into a cycling track - a total of about 35kms. We only did a 10km stretch (20kms return), but it was really nice to be able to bike without worrying about cars. The hills are also very tame and it is neat to be able to ride through the old tunnels etc. I recommend it for anyone in the area. They have a great rental cycle service if you need it and the whole track is really well maintained. We will definitely be going back to do the other half in the very near future.
Here are a couple of videos from the ride....

Get out of jail for free

For anyone who has been following this blog for a long time you may remember a post I wrote way back in 2008 about a kitchen door that I was "not allowed" to use for about 10 years as it would bring our family bad luck. Three years on and although we haven't won the lottery yet we don't seem to have had an excess of bad luck either.
Last week I decided to take another risk and get us out of jail too. We had bars on the outside of the kitchen window which not only prevented us from cleaning the window (a good excuse really) but also blocked some sun and the view of the garden. I finally decided I'd had enough of them so got the compact driver and basically pulled them off! I removed both the windows completely then after cleaning them tried to put them back in... not such an easy task. Eventually they went back in though and I now have no excuses for not cleaning the kitchen window......

I've been here too long!

There have been a couple of time recently when I have found myself thinking that I have been living here far too long. The first was when I was at the tax office the other day and spent close to 2 hours waiting for them to make a zillion phone calls confirming different things, finding the correct forms to use etc. When I first arrived in Japan this would have driven me crazy, but the other day I sat there, smiled, chatted about the weather, the neighourhood and the world in general, listened in on some other people's tax problems, cleaned the gunk out from under my fingernails and smiled, bowed and apologised for putting them to so much trouble when they finally got it all done.

The second time was when I found myself with the uncontrollable urge to go and buy a hotplate for making octopus balls and getting excited when we started pumping out the octopus balls...... Of course our octopus balls also include asparagus, sausage, cheese, kimuchi, shrimps, parsley and whatever else I can find in the fridge. We also put banana, strawberries and chocolate in some and smothered them in golden syrup for dessert... not very Japanese, but very delicious! I had some more photos but somehow they have been deleted from the camera. I guess you will all just have to come and experience it for yourselves...

Sometimes I think Easter Bunny is a mind reader. Like many international families we struggle a bit with keeping up the English reading and writing side of things here in Japan. I find it hard to motivate the kids when there are so many other things that they want/need to be doing. So when it comes to "Western" traditions that can only be done in English (no - Santa, the tooth fairy and Easter bunny can't speak Japanese.....) I try to at least get the children writing letters, reading letters etc. Easter is one of those times and this year the Easter Bunny really pulled through! I'm not sure if you will be able to see the following pictures clearly, but if you want to try out our Easter Egg hunt (without actually getting any eggs... sorry!) then please click on each picture to see it a little bigger and have a go.

It took the children about an hour in total (Easter Bunny had found some great hiding places) and they really enjoyed solving each puzzle before moving on to the next ones. Although my children still believe in the Easter bunny (and Santa and the tooth fairy...) my son did spend some of the morning saying "I think that perhaps Easter Bunny is really a person - there is no way a rabbit could do this!".

On the big size

Today the children only had to go to school till 11:20am - entrance ceremony for first graders... any excuse for a half day! I had to teach till after 11 and couldn't get to school in time to pick them up so they convinced me that they wanted to walk home and that I should walk from our place, meet them in the middle and then walk back home with them. Great idea, beautiful weather, big hill! I think I drew the short straw as I had to walk continually uphill and met them at the very top.... It was fun though and the kids were proud of the fact that they walked the 6km without fighting... much!
After a few minutes to recover Masaki helped me in the garden by pulling out all the daikons, turnips etc. that had gone to seed. He even discovered this every slightly overgrown radish. Yip - you read it right, this is a radish! Now if all the other veges would grow that big I would only need to plant a tenth of the seeds!

Real stories

A break from my photos today to introduce a blog that a lot of you will already be familiar with, but if you are not then I really suggest you have a look at. It is a blog by an amazing man called Jason Kelly who has started a wonderful project called "socks for Japan". Basically he is collecting new socks with letters attached and distributing them to people who are homeless etc. after the earthquake/tsunami. The stories he tells of his visits to some of the worst affected areas and the photos which accompany the stories bring the disaster to life - sometimes I find it difficult to get a full picture from the TV etc.
Anyway, his blog is http://jasonkelly.com/
If anyone anywhere in the world is willing to help out with this project I'm sure any extra socks and letters would be appreciated.

Progress

I have a very bad habit of not cleaning out my computer files and backing them up. The screen saver on my computer is "my pictures" and due to my cluttered filing system there are photos there from as far back as 2006. I am sometimes surprised by the photos which the screen saver randomly flicks up at me - great reminders of the past. Today I discovered a photo of my "top garden" that I had taken in 2007 and just by chance... on this exact day in 2007! By the time I got around to taking a photo the light was terrible, but it gives some indication of not only how much things have grown over the last four years, but also how the climate has changed. I have plenty of chamomile plants still around, but they are no where near at the flowering stage yet. I did a double check of the dates just to check that my camera wasn't lying and this blog entry in 2007 confirmed it - climate change is here to stay!

Peak

Today was one of those "it doesn't get much better than this" kind of days. I think it was the official peak in the cherry blossoms here and the weather was absolutely perfect for viewing them. Well it would have been if we had gone to a place where there were thousands of cherry blossoms. Instead we headed to the park with friends and sat around chatting while the kids played and played and played. We came away sunburned and happy!
Today's gallery is some flowers around our house, which have now really passed their peak. The problem with spring is that it passes far too fast and is followed by Japanese summer....

Potential

So much for a few pictures every day! I've spent the last couple of days trying to get rid of some of the weeds in the garden and as a result ended up falling asleep on the sofa at about 9:30pm last night and not waking up till 6:30am....hence the lack of photos yesterday!
Spring has definitely arrived here and although a lot of the blossom has already finished I discovered a lot of new "life" in the garden today that is just about to burst open. Here's hoping the weeds stay down long enough for them to reach their full potential.....
You should be able to click on the photo for a closer look.

A photo collage a day....

I have been so bad about writing blog entries lately that I've decided to stop writing for a bit and just give you a few photos every day to show you what has been going on here. Firstly a few random ones from Aussie. 40 kids, 2 weeks, 2 slight concussions, a broken finger, one kid left on a bus - all in all not too bad as far as "holidays" go! We had pretty much perfect weather and I think everyone had a great time.

Back to school here tomorrow - for the morning anyway. I just don't understand the Japanese system. One morning back at school tomorrow to basically find out who their teachers are and get their textbooks - home by 11:30am and then another 2 days off for the weekend.... why they don't just start properly on Monday I don't know!
So much for just giving you a few pictures... perhaps tomorrow I will be able to control my fingers more.