And more Spring Break

Another great park of the trip was a flower park. This yellow flower is called a Rape Blossom (nice name huh?!) and there is a rode, about 20 minutes long, that is lined with these flowers and cherry blossoms- gorgeous! At the end of the road was a festival with a little children's train that kiddies and parents could ride through a massive field of these flowers....As you can see from the photos, the mountain we went to was beautiful, lots of greenery, a large resort, with very few people, and you can see the bird's nests in the tree. Those are eagle nests, I believe. Noi loved wearing the robe at the resort. I had to wrap her up in it, as it was adult size, and she was happy! She loves kimonos! Hideto picked several wildflowers to plant at our new home. Last Autumn during another trip to the mountains, he dug up 3 different maple trees and we planted them in pots and they survived the winter. My mom had a beautiful wildflower garden at our lake home and Hideto is hoping to have one as well.

SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!

Finally!!!!! We needed a holiday, so we went to a hotspring resort in the mountains in Northern Akita. We had a blast finding an outdoor hotspring located on a river, which was vacant, so they let Hideto and I go in together while Noi was napping in the car. We also stopped at a park with a great children's playground and a cherry blossom festival. Noi rode her new PINK bike and we also went to a bear farm. These bears are Japanese bears. The would stand up and clap to say they wanted food. I'd never seen anything like it. Noi could touch a baby bear and they had a grizzly bear. There are grizzly bears in Hokkaido. This was the first time for me to see one. I worked in Yellowstone Nat'l Park one summer while in college and HIKED all summer, and luckily never met one. This one creeped me out. We threw it some of the food for the Japanese bears and it didn't even move. It just stared at us like, "I'm waiting for you to fall so I can eat you." The food at the resort was incredible. Total deal - 3 meals per day, mainly locally grown organic food, plus the room and hotsprings for $100 per person and Noi was free. In CA that price would get you a shitty sleazy hotel room in the Tenderloin with shit on the sidewalk in front of the door. Yeah, we miss SF- hahahaha....On this trip, I discovered I love whole milk! Well, Akita milk. It's soooooo good! And the fresh ice cream, we were loving it. One night we had a stew made with horse meat. We didn't know it was horse meat, we had no idea what kind of meat, Hideto wondered if it was bear meat, so we asked, and it was horse meat. I hate to say it, but it was GOOD!!!!!!! We also had fresh mountain vegetables, which are really a specialty of Akita. If you live in Tokyo, you can't have this food. And it was funny when we went to Tokyo, all the restaurants in Tokyo Mid-town Tower had signs that read "Our produce from Akita" and it was really pricey.....We saw a lot of birds, including two beautiful cranes, 3 woodpeckers, and other types as well, took a lovely nature hike, I had a great massage- one hour for $40! In SF, $100. Yeah, I'm loving it.........

Koi-no-bori and Noi's daycare

Noi's daycare had the school decorated with "carp kites" to celebrate Children's Day in Japan. That's her and Hideto standing under them. Also, these are photos of Noi's swim class, which she attends with her daycare twice a month. She is the one in orange. They also have an English Class and Music Class. Our friend Brian's English school teaches the classes. You can maybe see her prancing in one photo and being near the teachers. Noi loves to be with the teachers and she loves dancing and singing these days. She is constantly singing and not singing any children's songs, she sings songs she is making up by herself. It's really cute!

Ryu's Piano Recital

We went to see Noi's cousin Ryu's piano recital. It was very good. Noi was excited to see him on stage and brought him flowers after the performance. Later in the day, we all went out to eat. Call me critical, but I couldn't stop thinking, "Why did his mom dress him in those horrible shorts!" All the other boys had long pants on and looked great. I think his mom really should have had a girl. Noi has also "inherited" several pairs of tights she used to dress him in, and as you can see from the photo here, which Hideto and I "captured" of him and his friends, as we came upon them while driving down the street, is that he is small for his age, so dressing him like a little "feminine" boy disturbed me, but who am I to talk? My husband and Noi's grandma have turned Noi into a "pink" freak. Everything has to be PINK. It's cute, but......