Saturday, January 24, 2009

A visit from Eri & her family

On Saturday, we had a previous co-coworker, Eri, and her family over to our house. It was almost 3 years ago that we saw her and her husband, Munsu. You can see our previous visit here. Since then, Ayako and I have gotten married, and Eri and Munsu have had a baby boy, Shuto:
Shuto is now a year and a half old and he was very well behaved during their visit. He was fairly quiet except when pretending to talk on the phone or when he would talk with our thermos, which is shaped as a cat:
Ayako made some very delicious apple pie and pumpkin pie. Munsu shared his portion with Shuto, who actually ate half of it:
After watching him eat and drink, I could see how he got his round belly:
It was nice to see Eri and Munsu again, as well as to meet Shuto. Hopefully it won't be so long until we see them again.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Eiki's Bon Voyage (Boa Viagem) Party

Since our friend, Eiki, will be going to Brazil for a year starting from March, we had an early 'Boa Viagem' party for him. Christine and Sam came to our house earlier in the afternoon, so we went for a walk by the lake, and did some skateboarding as well:
They liked the old woman carrying 'daikon' (Japanese radish):
We then started playing silly games on the path with the skateboard:


And here is Sam doing a yoga pose on the railing at sunset:
We returned home and Keiji, Eiki and Emi came later on. Here's a nice shot of Eiki and Emi:
Ayako made lots of yummy sushi and Eiki brought many 'gyoza' (Chinese dumplings):
We gave Eiki and going away card and some small gifts. Keiji then interviewed Eiki (using wasabi as a microphone) about his feelings on receiving the gifts:
We then played Charades. Can you guess what animal this is?:
Answer: turtle Next is the charade for 'mind':
And a charade for the movie 'Meet the Parents":
We then took a break for dessert. Ayako made rum and raisin ice cream. Here she is showing us how much rum went into it:
Here's a couple of group shots we did at the end of the night:

Everyone went home at the end of the night except for Eiki and Emi who stayed over night. Here us having breakfast the next morning:

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Recycling duty

In Japan, garbage is put out on different days according to the type of garbage. In our neighbourhood, soft plastic, such as bags, is put out on Mondays, burnable garbage is put out on Tuesdays and Fridays, hard plastics is every other Thursday with non-burnable garbage on the other Thursdays. Finally, recyclable items are put out every other Wednesday. There is one person in charge of setting up the recycling baskets so that all of our neighbours can come to the area and put their recyclables in the proper baskets. The other neighbours go in rotation and assist the main guy. It was our turn this Wednesday. You can see Ayako below by all the baskets for recyclables:
It was about 0 degrees C today, so we wrapped up warm since we had to stand outside for about 45 minutes and assist our neighbours to separate their garbage. There are eleven different types of recyclables and so we had to make sure that everyone separated them properly:
Near the end of our duty, some neighbourhood children gathered near us to go to school together. The children waited until they were all there and then the leader got them in a nice line and greated them with a "Good Morning!". Then they set off for school together. I was impressed how organized and calm they were and how it was done with no adult supervision.

Anyway, that was the one time this year that we had to do recycling duty, which wasn't so bad in the end, except for the time 6:45 to 7:30.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Blogs of Interest

I often see Ayako reading other people's blogs about cooking. Since she enjoys cooking as well, I convinced her to write her own blog about cooking and baking. So if you look on the right side of my blog, you will see a link to Ayako's blog (in Japanese) under the 'Blogs of Interest' heading. You will also find other blogs from Hamamatsu as well as by other friends. Enjoy!

Labels

On the right-hand side of my blog, I've added a "Labels" section.
Basically, it makes it easier for you to see all of the post that relate to that label.

Happy searching!