Happy Valentine's Day

On Valentine's day, Ayako was busy in the kitchen making up yummy meals for St. Valentine's day. For lunch we had heart-shaped omurice:
Along with red velvet cake:
For dinner, we finally got to use the fondue set that Barbara and Jason gave us for a wedding gift when they came over last May. We dipped strawberries, bananas, apples, kiwis and marshmallows into the chocolate:
Hope you had a happy Valentine's day too!

Hunting for Oysters

In the winter here, it's a good time to go picking oysters in the lake by our house. Here's a nice shot of a man searching for oysters to catch:

Saturday drive to Kuma

Since the beginning of 2009, I've been trying to go for a 20-30 minute walk every day. I usually walk one route, but decided to try a different route last Thursday. I went towards to the elementary school near our house, and walked up behind to a small shrine there (sorry, no photos). It was nice to walk a new route and break the day-in, day-out routine. So on Saturday, I thought that going for a drive outside of the city would be a nice change of pace as well. I decided to drive up to the small village of Kuma. The last time I was there was in October 2005, which was shortly after arriving in Japan. We started off the drive and as we turned the corner near our house, we saw a couple thousand ducks (Tufted ducks & Wigeons) resting in the bay area:

We then started driving north and first stopped at a dam on Inasa Lake:

As we continued north, I took some of the very narrow roads through the forests. I love the winding roads, but I always have to be careful of oncoming cars. Luckily today, I hardly met any other cars, and never had to back up to let anybody by:
We finally got up to Kuma, where we stopped at a popular restaurant for soba noodles. Ayako had the (not-so-common) thick noodles:
I had the more common thin noodles:
Very yummy:
We looked around at the store there and saw some daikon radishes being dried outside:
We then had a nice drive back home. It was a beautiful day for a drive today, so I'm glad we took good advantage of it.

Four Seasons night-out

On Friday night, a number of teachers and friends went out to a new Mexican restaurant in Hamamatsu to greet the new teachers on our staff. Here are some photos from the night:

Setsubun day

On February 3rd, there is a special day in Japan called Setsubun. Actually, it setsubun refers to the start of each season, but the start of spring day has special traditions associated with it. It seems a bit early for the start of spring, but oh well. Below you can see the materials needed to celebrate Setsubun:
At lunch time, we ate eho-aki (lucky direction roll). This is more of a regional tradition from Osaka area but we thought we would try it. Ayako made a large sushi roll with 7 ingredients inside. We then had to face north-east (this year's lucky direction) while eating the sushi roll. We had to eat it all at once without stopping and while remaining silient.
It was a bit difficult and I couldn't enjoy the sushi roll as much as I would have normally. Here's Ayako eating here eho-maki:
We decided afterwards that it was fun to try but we won't be doing it next year.
The next part was at nighttime, when demons might visit your house. We had a box of soybeans that we used for this. I opened the door and threw out two handfulls of soybeans while shouting "Demons out" in Japanese, and then quickly shutting the door so the demons can't get in:
Next, I threw two handfulls of soybeans inside while shouting "Luck in" in Japanese:
As part of the fun, I also put on the demon mask that came with out pack of soybeans:
I had heard my students talking about this tradition last year, so I was glad to have tried doing it this year.

Moonset

On Sunday, I was brushing my teeth before going to bed when I noticed that the moon was really low in the sky. Ayako and I were able to watch a pretty yellow moon set below a mountain range. It was my first ever moonset.