Camp

Near the end of the school term the children seem to bring home information on a daily basis about different camps, day trips, study opportunities etc. which are offered by various groups in the community .  In the past I have tried to encourage them to join some of them, but they have never really shown much interest.  This year has been a bit different though as my son has decided he wants to learn how to make new friends (a bit hard to do with only 12 in his class...), so has applied to be part of a couple of different activities.  The first was a 2-night camp, which was run by the local "junior chamber international" group.  The main activity was a hike up the tallest mountain in Oita prefecture, Mt. Kuju.  I think it was about a 5 hour trek there and back and although they saw an amazing rainbow on the way, the view from the top was a little less exciting!  Mind you he spent most of his time telling us how windy it was and how he thought he was going to be blown off the edge, so at least it made a big impression on him.  

The organisers of the camp had funding to include 11 students from Fukushima, one of the areas affected by the tsunami, and my son said one of the best things for him was meeting these students and making friends with them.  There is still so much devastation in the area and it is so easy for us to start forgetting about it, so I think it was a good reminder for all of us that there is still so much that we can do.  For my son it was helping to give 11 students a bit of a break and have a fun 3 days.  I wonder what the rest of us could do.....

Washing machine

For the last couple of months we have been having washing machine problems.  If you held your mouth the correct way then you could occasionally get it to do a full cycle without having to open and close the lid a hundred times or turn it off and restart it.  Usually you just had to hope that it had completed enough of the cycle and that the clothes were vaguely clean.  We presumed it was going to be a costly exercise to get it fixed as it seemed like the computer wasn't functioning properly, but we were pleasantly surprised when the repairman finally came to fix it today and discovered that somehow a 500 yen coin had made its way into the outlet hose and was causing all the problems.  He has no idea how it could have got there, but judging by the colouring I think it has been there for some time... which blows my theory that the frog took it in with him thinking he had to pay for his wish-washy ride!

Although we still had to pay the call-out fee, after we deducted the 500 yen we found it turned out to be a pretty cheap exercise.

School "holidays"

I think I have mentioned before that I try not to write too many negative things on this blog, but.... sometimes I just have to marvel at the insanity of some of the ways things work here.  Today's topic is school "holidays".  The summer holidays here started on July 20th and the children will go back to school on September 3rd.  Wow - that's over 40 days holiday - yippee!  Time to play, time to relax and of course time to help around the house!  Only here in Japan it is not so yippee...  For the first week of the holidays my children had to go to school each morning for a couple of hours of classes designed to improve the level of academic achievement in maths.  This was compulsory for all 4th to 6th graders at our school - regardless of what level they were already achieving at.  I asked my children if they learnt anything new.... the answer, not one thing!  But, they did complete over 20 pages of handouts each day.  Unfortunately I seem to be in the minority in believing that holidays should be for having a holiday as most of the other parents seemed to be really happy that the school would be "babysitting" their children for the first week of the holidays.  

The kids don't have to go to school again during the holidays until the 6th of August - the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.  I think this day is an important part of their education and have no problem with them going to school this day.  Unfortunately the teachers use this day as a way to collect in half of the zillion pages of homework that need to be completed during the holidays and hand out yet more homework to be done before the end of the holidays.  Both my children are expected to do at least 2 hours of homework every day.  I think because the summer holidays fall in the middle of the academic year, rather than the end, means there is more pressure to keep the kids studying... I personally would prefer that they learnt how to clean the windows or wax the floors, but as I said I am in the minority here!

On a completely different note... I found this photo the other day which proves that, despite my daughter's insistence, I am still taller than my children... but I fear that very soon I will be the shortest - perhaps I'll have to start wearing high heels!

New camera

My birthday is not until October, but since I had been discussing the fact that I needed a new camera, my husband kindly bought me a new one as an advanced birthday present.  My only requirements were that it had a good macro function as well as a good zoom.  I didn't care what it looked like as long as it was easy to use.  He ended up getting me an Olympus SZ-14.  It wasn't overly expensive (I know because he had it sent "pay on delivery" and I was the only one here to pay when it arrived......) and so far seems to be doing the job well.  I haven't had any time to play with it yet, but a few frogs kindly made an appearance and the macro seems to be fine.  

I find frogs all over the place, but the frog in the last picture was probably in the strangest place so far.  It jumped out of the washing machine.... after it had just finished a full cycle!  It wasn't hopping all over the place, but it was moving and didn't seem too disturbed - just squeaky clean!

All in double digits

Okay, okay, okay... enough complaining!  I'll challenge myself to a blog a day for at least the next week to try and catch up on all the happenings here and give my brother some reading before he heads off to the real world called work!

First up - it was my son's 10th birthday yesterday, so my children have both now hit double digits.  It is school holidays here right now so you would think it would make it easy to have a proper celebration on his actual birthday, but..... unfortunately most of my work schedule doesn't change in the holidays, so we split his birthday in half - sushi for lunch followed by bowling yesterday.  Cake and singing tonight.  In Japan "coming of age" is considered to be 20 years old, so I guess we are half way there!  Happy Birthday Masaki!

Flooding in Kyushu

I have to apologise... again!  I have received quite a few e-mails from people in New Zealand who are worried about the flooding in our island.  I didn't realise it had hit the news there..... sorry!  In short, there has been terrible flooding in a few different places on our island in the last few weeks - some of which is reasonably close to where we live, but our immediate area has been swamped, but not flooded.

One of the worst hit areas has been Hita City and Yabakei - about an hour drive from here.  After we took Mum to the airport in Fukuoka we drove back through this area and it was pretty shocking to see all the houses, business and rice fields completely filled with mud.  It was really sad to see some of the bridges from the cycling trail we did last year completely washed out.  I really hope they rebuild them, but I'm guessing it won't be their first priority.  I know that they were hit hard again after we had driven through so the damage must be even worse than the photos above show.

In our immediate area we have had torrential rain off and on for the last few weeks.  Every time I think it is over another huge cloud comes over and thunder and lightening precedes another huge downpour.  There was one clap of thunder that was so loud at lunch time today that I literally jumped out of my chair and shouted something that small children shouldn't hear.... felt a little silly, but as I was the only one home I guess it didn't matter too much!  During the worst rain the small bridge to some of our rice fields was literally under water.... and the tiny creeks became raging rivers.  But, we have no lasting damage and hopefully the rain should finally stop in the next few days.  I can't wait to try and get the house aired out... just in time for school holidays! 

First eggs

Sorry.. I haven't fallen off the edge of the world, just been every so slightly busy lately!  We had a really nice (if not very wet) time with Mum, which I will catch up on in the very near future.  But, before I forget... we got our first egg yesterday and another one today.  They are tiny (the second photo shows them with a regular egg), but apparently delicious.... my son was determined to be the first to try them - raw on rice.  Not my favorite taste, but I guess at least we know they are fresh.  Here's hoping they continue to lay through the heat of summer and we can start having egg surpluses again.  If my calculations are correct they started laying at 112 days old.

On a completely different note.. I had another of those "am I really living on the same planet as these people" kind of moments the other day.  We had called in at a bread shop that a fellow kiwi had told me about - way off in the wopwops.  As my mother and I walked into the shop the lady seemed pretty surprised and commented that it was the first time that she had had a foreigner in her shop.  I was a little surprised by this as my friend had made it sound like she went there relatively frequently, so I said that my friend had recommended it and that I thought she had been a few times.  "Oh" she said - "do you mean the New Zealander from Kunimi?"  Yes...  "Oh she comes in all the time".  She then proceeded to go and get one of the french bread rolls and gave it to me for free because that is what "the New Zealander from Kunimi" always buys....  Katy, I guess even if your husband thinks you will never be "Japanese" enough - the bread shop lady doesn't consider you a foreigner!

Any experts out there?

Sorry I haven't been updating lately... I promise to be better in the very near future!  But for now I have a question.  Does anyone know which country this very old kimono (?) is from?  Apparently it was bought in Japan, but my initial reaction was that it is perhaps Chinese... but then I thought maybe it is Korean... and all my searches on the internet have come up blank.  Perhaps it is actually Japanese - I'm stumped!  If anyone has any knowledge of this kind of kimono I would really appreciate some insight from you.... or at least Big Kev would be very grateful!  The bottom picture is of the box that it came in.  Thank you!

Mellybird - you can get the arm protectors here at all the hardware shops, 100 yen shops etc., but basically they are just a tube of material with elastic around both ends.  If they weren't so cheap here I would probably make my own....

Rainy day entertainment

 I have had enough of the rain.  I think we have had one fine day in the last week and today we had torrential rain ALL day.  The kids couldn't handle staying home all day again so we braved the weather and went bowling..... it was quite fun if you could ignore the excessive noise and the smoking zone which was conveniently just behind the seats where you sat when it wasn't your turn - ie most of the time.  My husband discussed the placement of these smoking zones with the manager, but apparently there is too much demand for smoking that the non-smokers just have to put up with it.  I can't see us going there again in the very near future.  And of course our washing machine is broken at the moment so we can't wash the smoke smell out of our clothes and even if it wasn't broken it is raining so hard we couldn't get the clothes dried even if we did manage to get them washed!  Perhaps I should just hang them outside and spray them with washing liquid!  

Here's hoping the forecast for the next week (basically rain every day) is wrong.  Bring back the sunshine!

Nan's arrival

The massive volumes of rain that have fallen over the last few days seem to have washed away all my blogging enthusiasm... clouds are forecast for the next few days so hopefully I may be a little more motivated!

Mum arrived on Saturday morning.... in the middle of a huge downpour.  My son and I made a snap decision on Friday night to drive to Fukuoka and stay the night so we didn't have to get up at 5am and drive in the pouring rain to get to the airport in time.  The correct decision as we ended up feeling very refreshed - especially after the dip in the nice onsen in the morning, just before the complimentary breakfast.
Since Mum has arrived I think we have had one day of reasonable weather - and we managed to make it to a lake which has beautiful irises.  A nice wander - even if only 25% of them were in full bloom.  Here's hoping the weather improves a bit in the next couple of weeks....... otherwise my dream of having my garden weeded for me will remain just a dream!

Berries

Blueberries

Boysenberries

Gooseberries

Unfortunately my wonderful raspberry patch has been taken over by horrible weeds this year and needs to be transplanted - another job on the "must do, but have no time to do" list.  Fortunately some of my other berries are starting to take off and although they'll never replace raspberries, they are better than nothing.  Ready for picking right now are boysenberries... not huge quantities, but a few each day.  Gooseberries will be next then the blueberries will probably just pip the blackberries at the post.  That is of course providing the rainy season doesn't come in force and make them all rot away......

Identified

When I first got married I can remember snickering when I watched my mother-in-law getting ready to go out into the garden with her funny hat, her arm protector thingies and her leg protector thingies.  I can remember thinking "if I ever look like that I have been here far too long....." and then... I realised that I now wear the funny hat and the arm protectors (sorry, the photo is out of focus...).  I still don't wear the leg protector thingies though so I guess I am not officially part of the old fogies in the fields group ...... yet! 

On a similar note, I think I have worked out what is causing all my itchiness - straw!  On Saturday I made sure I was completely covered up, but spent most of the morning carrying straw.  Almost immediately my legs started itching ... in exactly the areas where the trousers I was wearing were wearing very thin.  And then the next day I stupidly rushed out to cart the remaining straw into the tunnel house before the rain set in and... forgot to put proper gloves on.  The result - my hands are red and itchy all over.  I'm happy that I have worked out what it is, but not so happy that it doesn't give me an excuse to not pull weeds out anymore.....

Top three posts of all time

I'm always interested in the different ways people connect with different blogs.  Blogger provides pretty good basic statistics of how many people have been looking at which page, which country they are from etc.  My favorite statistic is which blog posts have been viewed the most.  Most of my posts are viewed by about the same number of people, but there are three posts which have been viewed more than 10 times more than any of the other posts.  They are:

No. 1: Thunder Thighs
No. 2: Goldfish Revisited
No. 3: Spiders

I'm presuming that the out of proportion number of views of these pages is due to people randomly searching for something on the Internet... interesting what people search for!  I would hate to think how many views I would get if the goldfish and the spiders got together and revisited the thunder thighs....   

(just to test the theory I just googled "goldfish, spiders, thunder thighs" and my blog came up number 4 out of 18.000... - on my search engine anyway!.)

Wheat harvest year 3

I started on my wheat growing journey 2 years ago - and have managed to slowly increase the volume I've grown each year.  For previous harvests see ....

2010 harvest

2011 harvest

A couple of days ago the predicted phone call came saying "wouldn't it be best if I harvested the wheat soon", but I dug in my toes and said that my mother was coming next week and it would be a great bonding activity.  And then today dawned hot and sticky and the threat of rain in a couple of days meant I decided that I would actually harvest the wheat today - but the kids would help me, so don't worry mother-in-law and father-in-law, I can do it without your help.   And then I started to harvest the wheat.... in the intense heat... my daughter stopped before she started, my son managed one row and slunk inside.  The parents-in-law arrived and I decided it was probably quite a good day to stop refusing just on the principal of it and invited them into my garden to help me (I am so kind!).  About an hour and a half later and the harvest was finished.. and then I went to bed for half an hour!  Kind of happy I wasn't in my really stubborn mood today!  

Just as the harvesting ended a neighbour wandered by, commenting that I should get on with harvesting my potatoes.... I smiled and nodded..... and went to bed.....

Rob - with regard to your question concerning braces... there has been quite a big change in my daughter's teeth already and they document it very well so we can actually see the progress in the photos etc.  The only thing I regret is that we couldn't get another quote from somewhere else - because there is no where else near us!  I think it depends a lot on what the problem is - for us it was more than just cosmetic so definitely worth it.  Just remember the price will probably go up A LOT when they hit junior high school.....   There is also a lot of commitment involved on the part of the child regarding cleaning and eventually wearing the retainer for another year or so when the braces come off so I think it is really important that the child is actually willing to commit to this... otherwise the teeth will end up going back to their original state and will require more attention in the future.

Rice field preparation

Preparations for rice planting are in full swing here now and it is another time of the year when the distinct male / female jobs come into play.  One of the biggest problems with rice fields is that they need to be water-tight.  They need to have a very hard clay base with mud on top.  They also have to have "walls" to prevent all the water from just draining out into the neighbouring fields.  There seem to be two basic ways to make these walls in our area and I've been watching my mother-in-law doing the more labour intensive version over the last few days.  Basically she goes around the edge of each rice field with a bit long strip of black plastic stuff and pokes it in the side of the rice field and then jabs thin bamboo sticks into the ground to keep it in place.  She has been doing this for at least two days now - probably longer... just going slowly around and around each field.  If it was me I would have lost concentration after the first side and gone to a shrine to pray that the gods would keep the water in for me.... but somehow she just keeps managing to smile and keep on going without a break.  I'm guessing she will be out there again tomorrow.

The other way of making these walls is for a man to get on a tractor which has a special "rice-field-wall-maker" attached and drive it along the side, making a very thick, very impressive wall in about 10 minutes.  I'm thinking I might need to get myself one of those if I am ever expected to make the rice fields water tight in the future....

Nancy - thanks for commenting.  It was definitely bust size they were measuring - no waist measurements needed.  I could almost understand waist (almost...), but bust.....????  Here's hoping they get around to changing the forms before next year - when I may not be in such a smile and nod mood!

Smile and Nod day

There are some days when I feel like protesting and trying to change some of the insane things that we are faced with here and other days when I just can't be bothered and stick with my "smile and nod" attitude and just let the strange things go flying by.  Fortunately yesterday I was in one of my "smile and nod" phases as I had to get a very basic health check completed so that a couple of schools could finish all their paperwork for the pitiful financial gesture they pay me each year.  

The first smile and nod moment was when they handed me the forms on June 6th and told me they needed to be filled in by May 31st.... so could I ask the doctor to just write May 31st on them.  Sure, why not... the doctor just smiled and nodded when I asked him, so perhaps the Venus movements of the previous day were having a positive effect on everyone.  The second nod and smile moment was when they told me that they really needed the forms either today or the next day...  again, sure, why not - it is not as if I work or anything (in reality I work at 8 different places at last count).

The final smile and nod moment was when I looked at the information that I had to supply.  Just to remind you - this check was to make sure I was healthy enough to teach at primary schools for a total of 17 hours... in the year!  

The categories (from memory):

Height

Weight

Bust size

Eye sight test

Hearing test

Blood pressure

Quick check with the stethoscope on my chest and back

Can you guess which categories I may have questioned if I wasn't in my smile and nod phase?  To give the school credit they were also apologetic about the whole thing, but in order to get the funding they needed the specific form filled out.  I wonder if I could claim some kind of compensation if during the time I am teaching my bust size increased or decreased to a huge extent.... or maybe if I lost a few centimeters off my height.....

Braces

A few months ago we started down the long (and expensive...) road of getting Emily's teeth sorted out.  They didn't look too bad, but after many nights of crying during dinner because it hurt to bite etc. I decided to go and get them checked out at the orthodontist and he confirmed that the current positioning of her teeth was such that she couldn't actually bite properly.  For the last few months she has had a brace on the inside of her teeth to push them all out and yesterday she got the top braces on to straighten them all.  Fortunately she was quite happy to get them and even opted to get the more visible, but less painful silver braces rather than the slightly less obvious, but often more painful white ones.  Another fortunate thing is that we got them before she started junior high school... a word of warning to anyone living here - the price of getting orthodontic services increases rapidly when they hit junior high school... which would probably put them completely out of our price range!

There is only one orthodontist in our vague area and he seems very nice.  I like going there for two reasons - the first is this nifty slipper dispenser which sterilises all the slippers before it plops them out the bottom (you can see a pair just coming out in the photo).  You may remember my experiences of hospital slippers at a skin disease clinic... after this sterilised slippers are the best!  The other reason I like this orthodontist is because there is free coffee in the waiting room.  And aromatherapy.  And quiet to read my book while Emily is having all her teeth dealt to.  Mind you for the amount we are paying I might ask if they want to hire a masseuse too....

Venus Viewing

A few days/weeks/months ago (I've completely lost all concept of time lately) the whole of Japan (and half the world) was excited about the big "ring of fire" eclipse that was visible from here.  I was instructed to go and buy some special viewing glasses and we all sat around in the morning waiting for the big moment to occur.  Only we were glued to the TV rather than the skies as it was so cloudy we couldn't even work out where the sun was!  I almost threw the glasses out in frustration, but fortunately just threw them into a cupboard rather than the rubbish as they came in handy this morning when we got to view Venus making an appearance in front of the sun.  Compared to the eclipse, the tiny pimple on the moon wasn't overly impressive, but at least we could see it (not that you can in the photo!).  A nice way to start another long day....

Apple of Grandparent's eyes!

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but I can't find the blog entry, so I'll just repeat myself a bit.. unless the blog entry I am thinking about was actually one of the zillions that I have written in my head, but not quite managed to get into cyberspace.  In which case I will only be repeating myself to me and not you!

We live in the Japanese countryside.  My husband is the eldest (and only) son in a farming family.  He works at the city office because farming for a living is no longer a viable option in this area.  He chose the job because it meant he could still fulfill his eldest son responsibilities by living in the same area as his parents and helping with the farming etc. in the weekends, with the unspoken assumption that he will take over all the responsibilities when he retires.  

My son is the eldest (and only) son in our family.  There is an unspoken assumption on the part of my parents-in-law that he will follow in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, great grandfather etc. and stay on the land.  Unfortunately there is a very vocal mother around though that has made it clear that he will not be expected to stay around this area if he chooses to go and pursue other dreams.  In fact I would be really disappointed if he didn't leave the area for at least a few years (or decades) to go and see what else there is in the world before deciding on where he wants to settle.  His latest dream is to become a police officer - he said he is sick of watching all the people being murdered etc. and he wants to try and catch the bad people so that others can feel safe.  I told him he should be a teacher and therefore try and educate people so that they don't do bad things in the first place... but I'm off on a tangent! 

Lately he has been asking to help out with the "men's" work around the place.  His latest entertainment is using the weed eater... supervised of course!  This is making his grandparents very, very happy..... I can already see them visualising the future farmer.... while I visualise the future wanderer... who eventually sees the light that this is the best place to be and comes home to roost just about the time I am needing help with my nappies!  It will be interesting to see which path his life eventually takes......