HOUSE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINALLY...

This is AMAZING. We have worked so hard to get to this point and now LET THE CONCRETE FLOW!

I have to pinch myself when I go to see this process unfolding. It's like a miracle taking place. Noi is soooooooooo excited. She keeps saying, "My bedroom is going to be there!" as she points......

Summer is Here!!!!!

We are excited to finally be able to enjoy hot summer nights! Having dinners outside in Hideto's grandma's ZEN garden, which is now, since she stopped tending it about 115 years ago, a quaint Japanese area with amazing trees. Hideto said when he was growing up, their neighbor had even more of these trees and he used to run around the two yards and find Japanese insects, but then the property was sold, and now there is a hotel there! It was supposed to be a "real hotel" but now it's a "love hotel." But, this garden....in it are relics of the Tadenuma past here, a sesame grinder, a pickles "container" - both made of heavy cement and used two hundred years ago...Hideto started thinking about how to make it "people friendly" and we set up our table and lawn chairs next to the gigantic boulders that somehow his grandparents or great grandparents managed to have moved here....these are not common, I've never seen them anywhere else. There were rocks placed as a walk way and Hideto moved those so Noi could run around without tripping and when he lifted them, underneath were Ant Cities! Noi was loving it! She learned how well ants work together to move their babies to safety and how they worked together to accomplish their tasks. This was my first time to see so many ants together like this too.

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.........