Intereresting processes

A few days ago, I was lucky to get photos of a grey heron eating a large fish (Bora in Japanese). An egret was watching just behind the heron.






The other interesting process for me was seeing how an apple pie changes after cooking. Ayako baked this apple pie yesterday. The first photo was before baking:
The second photo is just after baking:
A the third photo was some hours later after the pie had cooled down. I was amazed how much the pie goes down after cooking.

Hana-no-mai sake festival

On Sunday, we went to the Hana-no-mai sake festival, which we go to every year at the end of October. Yet again, we could receive a nice sake glass to refill with sake as often as we liked and then polish it off:
We also found that we meet the same people there each year. Here's me with Masaki:
Here's me with a friend who I see each year at the sake festival. We'll have a good time talking and drinking and then wish each other well until next year:
There's also the entertainment there like these strangely dressed clowns who walk around playing music:
Here's Ayako with Kathleen, Christine and Heather at the shrine:
It was only a small group of us who came out this year:
And here's Christine and Sam getting out of the mini shower that came through:

Early Halloween

Ayako surprised me today by making a Jack o'lantern out of a small squash:
And here's a shot of it with some yummy pumpkin pie (that Ayako made with tofu):

Local festival

Unfortunately, I'm sick this weekend, but I was still able to take a photo from our house of our local festival passing by. It's quite a bit smaller than other areas festivals that I've seen.

Full moon tonight

Japanese pears

This is the best time of year for eating Japanese pears (sometimes called Asian pears). They are different than western pears, in that they look like a large apple, although they have a golden colour. They are quite crisp and juicy, like a Macintosh apple in the fall. The taste is similar to pears back home. One thing I like with the pears here are that they never go mushy like western pears do. One thing that's not so nice though, is the price. It costs about 2 dollars per pear. Anyway, we enjoyed sharing one for breakfast today:

Thanksgiving dinner

Since it is Thanksgiving weekend back home, Ayako was eager to make a Thanksgiving dinner for me here. Since she has never eaten a Thanksgiving dinner in Canada and only gone by what I told her and what she read on the Internet, I was very impressed with the delicious meal that was served to me. You'll have to trust me that the food tasted as good as it looked:

Construction at Roland R&D

I went for a bicycle ride today, and noticed that there's going to be some construction going on behind Roland keyboards research and development building. That's quite a bit of land they are going to have to flatten:

2 Farewells and a birthday party

On Friday night, we went out to say farewell to Benjamin and Valerie, who are both heading back to the States:
There was a surprise visit by J. Scott (hope he managed OK on his 'bike' ride back to Chiba):
Here's Ayako with Emiko & Heather:
And a shot of Ayako with Benjamin:
On Saturday night, we went to Christine's birthday party at her house:
Here's Christine (the birthday girl) with Ayako, Megumi and a mystery man:
Stef, Kathleen, Heather, & Jack:
Philip (the opera singer from England) and Taka (Ma-chan):
Keiji (with Pete) was a little sleepy at the end of the night:
There was an 'international food potluck' theme to the birthday party. The food was absolutely amazing. I wondered why this potluck was so much better than previous ones. My guess is that the international food theme made everyone try some new recipe, and thus some great dishes were brought.