Fireflies in Forest Park

Last year, there was a going-away party that we had for our friend Jen in Forest Park. We camped there and luckily got to see lots of fireflies at night. So I decided to arrange a trip to go there again this year and hopefully see some fireflies. Ten people came in total, with five of us camping overnight.
Here's a photo overlooking part of the park. All the tents below are from a Scout group who were there for the weekend. We tried to find an area far away from them so we wouldn't be bothering each other:
Here's where we set up camp...we liked that the park has carts so we could easily carry all of our stuff in one trip:
Here's Doug and Robin playing catch:
Here's Emiko and Ayako walking over the stream (which is a great place to see fireflies at night) that went by our campsite:
Here's Tatsuo and Daniela (taking photos):
Later on it got dark and we could go and see many fireflies in the woods. It's tricky trying to get a photo of them, so this is the best I could do (they don't sit still well for photos):
It was after watching fireflies that we started cooking dinner on the BBQ:
and so getting late before actually eating:
Afterwards, we relaxed and had fun playing with candles as you can see Jack doing here:
The next morning it started raining shortly after getting up. We set up a tarp over a picnic table and relaxed. Soon though, Sam and I started playing frisbee golf in the rain:
Later, we found a tall bamboo pole and started having a javelin-throwing contest:

As well as trying to do caber toss (bamboo toss I guess) with it:
Overall, a very fun, but a little wet, weekend.

Engagement party

On Saturday night, there was an engagement party held for Ayako and myself at Sam's house:
It was nice to have many friends come as well as to receive nice gifts from them (mainly different forms of alcohol):
Although we did get some nice flowers as well as you can see Ayako holding above and them on display below:The alcohol we did open was some champagne as well as sparkling sake (which was weaker than regular sake and very delicious):
I'm wondering if somebody shook the champagne that I opened:
Here are some pictures taken of friends at the party:

Making ume juice - first try

Ayako was given a bag of ume (like green apricots but sour tasting) from her sister last week. And just like if you are given a bag of lemons, you make lemonade, we decided to make ume juice. The other option was to make ume liqueur . We went to the supermarket and bought a ume juice container, some fruit alcohol, and sugar cubes that gradually dissolve. We put everything together and it looked like this:
The alcohol is needed to make sure that the ume doesn't go bad. To make ume liqueur, you just add a greater amount of alcohol. The sugar cubes took a week to melt so that the sugar gradually went into the ume to produce a sweet and sour syrup. Twice a day we shook the jar to mix everything together. After one week, we had this:
We strained it and had a ume syrup. We added four times as much water to produce a juice. We thought it was good, although not as thick or sour as I used to drink in Korea. Her sister took us tonight though that she usually lets it sit for 3 weeks. So Ayako is off to the store to buy more ume and we'll see what 3 weeks produces. Stay tuned...

The Odo cottage on Lake Hamana

I went with Ayako today to have lunch with her mom, dad and brother. Besides their house in central Hamamatsu, they also have a small cottage on the big lake in our city, Lake Hamana. Here is a picture of us at the cottage:
And here is a picture after we had a delicious lunch of eel, which is famous from Lake Hamana:
It has a wonderful view of the lake. Here is a picture from the table in the first picture:Ayako's mom was thinking of selling the place, but now we've decided that we would like to live there. There has to be some renovations done to the bathroom and kitchen area, but other than that, it seems like a nice place to live. Not a typical house style for Japan, and definitely not typical for Canada, but we like it. Here's a picture of it from outside:
The path in front of the cottage is a bicycle path that goes around the whole lake、which is 60 km long.

Camping trip

Ayako and I took an hour drive east to find a new place to camp. It was run the local town, which means it was free. When we got there, I was impressed with how nice it was. It was along a river, so it was a long, narrow area for camping. We saw that a group of young people (around 30 of them) had set up an area to have a small rave during the night so we set up camp further up the river.
You can see in the back ground, that we had a nice waterfalls near our site:
Here's an up close shot of the waterfalls:
Further down the river was a nice place to play in the water along with a nice view:
When we were going to the site, we took a wrong turn and we drove up a long narrow road to the top of a small mountain range. We found that the area had been turned from a forest into a tea growing area. It was impressive to see tea fields going all the way down different sides of the mountain. (sorry, no picture) However, here is a picture of Ayako pretending to take a bite of a (possibly) poisonous berry:
We did see a few snakes there as well. There were signs that poisonous snakes were about, but the ones we saw were friendly and left us alone. As for the mini rave that happened. Since the campground was free, they were allowed to have a rave, and luckily it wasn't too loud during the night. I would like to go there again with it hopefully being quieter next time though.

I Love New Tokyo

I was so happy today to finally find a website where I could buy and download a music album I've been looking for. I basically wanted one song called "I am not zen" by a band called Ambulance from the UK. I heard this song from a video somebody had made of Tokyo entitled "I Love New Tokyo". I thought it was a great video of everyday life there and the music fit nicely with the video. So since I've been listening to the song all day, I thought I'd post the video I found it from for you. Enjoy:

Wrong place/ Wrong time

So today I was lucky enough to have the morning off since my Friday morning class finished their contract last week. I decided to go for a bicycle ride to the beach since it was a nice day. On the way back though, I was stopped by the police. My main guess for why they stopped me was that I was a foreigner on a bicycle around noon time. They were curious as to why I wasn't at work and was this really my bicycle. Everything was fine, although 10 minutes later, I was stopped again. This time by an undercover cop on a bicycle. I told him that I had just been stopped and so he let me leave without further questions. It's funny that I've never been stopped before but then got stopped twice in one day.

For some reason, this has been the fourth time I've been stopped and questioned by police since the year 2000. Each time was a wrong place/wrong time situation. Once was in Korea and twice in Canada. Anyways, since I wasn't in a rush today, I enjoyed getting to practice my Japanese skills with people who couldn't speak English. I was proud that I could notice my Japanese improving.

I've also noticed twice now that older policemen here are much better to deal with than younger ones. Older policemen are more patient and they use simple Japanese so that I can understand them. The younger ones try to seem tougher, but since they don't use simpler Japanese, they just confuse me rather than intimidating me. Although it was good practising my Japanese with them, I'll try not to make it a regular habit in the future.