Sports Day

In the fall, every elementary school in Japan has a Sports Day on some Saturday or Sunday. This past Saturday, our local elementary school had its Sports Day. The whole family goes to watch the children take part in various competitions as well as the parents joining some of the events. We got there to see kindergarten children with their parents taking part in a relay race involving rolling huge soccer balls:
and then running in over-sized shorts:
The next event was for elementary school children and their parents. They had to stick their face in rice flour to find one small rice ball:
and then run (looking like a clown) with a soccer ball around some pylons:
The next event was for adults from the nearby areas. I helped my local area in the tug-of-war event:
Here are some close-up shots of me in action:

And finally, here is Ayako and myself in front of the 'close friend' gate (exit gate) where the competitors leave through after each event (the entry gate was called the 'try your best' gate):
This was only a small bit of the entire day. We left at the lunch break and ate lunch in a small park nearby.
Since I've heard many stories from students taking part in or watching their children take part in Sports Day, it was fun for me to experience it as well.

Beach party

The whole summer, I haven't been down to the beach or been into the sea for a swim. So finally we got people together for a beach party to enjoy the last days of summer. Here's Indigo with Rory and Keiji playing in the sand:

Ayako, Christine and Julia playing in the water:
A nice sunset:
Keiji cooking on the BBQ:
Heather, Jack and Hiromi eating dinner:
Then we started playing with some sparklers that Heather and Eiki had brought. Here's Eiki and Emi lighting the sparklers:
Christine & Sam:
Satoko:
Eiki:
Ayako & me:
Then we enjoyed a big bonfire that we got going:
We camped overnight, only to be woken up at about 5:30am. There were already 30 surfers in the water and lots of vans with more surfers were driving by our tents. I tried to sleep again, but by 6 o'clock, it had started raining. Finally by 6:30, we decided to get wet and pack up the tent and head home. Now we've got lots of camping supplies drying in our house. Still, I'm glad we could have another beach party this year.

Tsukimi - Moon Viewing Day

Yesterday was Moon Viewing Day. Three years ago, I went to a temple where they had a special moon viewing ceremony. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see the moon this year, but Ayako still prepared a special meal that is eaten at this time:
We ate dango (balls made of pounded rice) with different toppings. There was red bean paste, green bean paste, soybean powder and sweetened soy sauce:Here's a picture of me mashing the green beans to make the paste beforehand:

Toyokawa Inari Shrine

On Sunday, Ayako and I went for a day trip to Aichi prefecture. On the way, Ayako was happy to stop off at a library that she has never visited before. We spent a couple of hours there. After that, we headed to Toyokawa to visit the Inari shrine there. This was Ayako's first time there, but you can see photos from my previous visit on my blog (October 2006). Here's the entrance to the shrine:
There are a number of buildings within the shrine grounds. Here's one of the pagodas there:
My favourite area of the shrine is a back area where there are many carvings of foxes; foxes being the symbol of Inari shrines.

Here's a shot of me with the foxes:
We had lunch while we were there, and Ayako was happy to eat some inari-zushi (sushi rice inside a pouch of fried tofu), her favourite meal when near an Inari shrine.