Christmas lunch and dinner

Ayako and I had a quiet Christmas together. Ayako was busy making a 'Japanese Christmas" lunch, which included a vegetable Christmas tree made from mashed potatoes, broccoli, and star-shaped carrots:
The Bûche de Noël Yule log for dessert was delicious:
We had a western-style Christmas dinner (although having ham instead of turkey):
Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanksgiving dinner

While Japan is celebrating Sports and Health Day on Monday, Canada was celebrating Thanksgiving, so Ayako and I invited another Canadian, Johnny, and his wife, Yoko, over for a Thanksgiving dinner:
Here we are before tucking in:
And here was this year's spread...yum yum:

Golden Week Activities - Hamamatsu festival

We were joined by some friends from Toyohashi today and went down to the beach to see the kite festival:

We could see the kites flying well before we got to the area:

Here I am in front of one of the kites:And here are some of the friends that joined us:
Here is Ayako with Yoko:
In the next few photos, you can see some of the groups with their areas' flags and them flying their kites:

In was quite windy and so the kites were getting tangled more often than I've seen before:

In the video below, you can here the bugles that are played and you can see some groups together trying to keep their kites up in the air while trying to untangle them:

After, we headed downtown for the international food festival

Ayako and I didn't stay to watch parade of floats this year since we had free tickets to go see a movie. We saw Alice in Wonderland, which I thought was alright, although I still don't like wearing the 3D glasses. After the movie, we were able to get a close up look at one of the floats (yatai) all lit up at night:

Golden Week Activities

Golden Week started on Saturday for me this year. I usually have about a week off for the holidays, but I only have 5 days off this year. On Saturday, Eiki and Emi came for a visit. Eiki just got back from a year spent working in Brazil, so it was interesting listening to all of his stories.
On Sunday, we had a fairly relaxed day, but did enjoy going for a bicycle ride. I tried to find some new places to visit, so we found some remote areas near us. Here are some Fuji flowers blooming:
We had a good view of our house from across the lake on the way back. It's hard to see in this picture, but our house is on the left side of the picture:
Here is a close-up of our house (in the centre of the photo):
Here was a nice shot shortly before sunset:
On Monday, we went for a drive up into the mountains to find a shrine on the top of one of the mountains. I love driving in the mountains since the roads are only single lanes and so the trees feel very close. Here was the entrance to the shrine:
They were having a special ceremony that day since they had picked new tea leaves the day before. Here you can see the tea leaves drying:
Here is the shrine on the top of the mountain:
You can see how high up we are in the following photo:
There were some nice mountain birds that I don't get to see where we live:

Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend

On Saturday, we had some friends over for lunch (sushi). You can see me with Yoshiko and her granddaughter, Hiromi:
Yoshioko is the woman who straightens my back from time to time. Reiko (a secretary at Four Seasons with Ayako) also came but is camera-shy. We enjoyed lots to eat and chatted during the afternoon. We were also able to go for a short walk to watch the sun set.

On Sunday, Ayako was busy again preparing lots of food for Canada's Thanksgiving Day. We invited Christine over to have Thanksgiving dinner with us. We started eating just before four o'clock:

Ayako did careful planning for when to make all the food and how to do it all from scratch. Here's a close-up of what we ate:
Ayako also made some cute cupcakes for Christine's birthday, which was last week:
Here we are after singing 'Happy Birthday' to Christine:
We had another wonderful day relaxing and talking and going to watch a beautiful sunset. Ayako outdid herself this year by serving even more delicious food at Thanksgiving than last year.

Happy Canada Day!

When I got home tonight, I found that Ayako had made a Canada Day carrot cake for me. After I sang 'O Canada' (using the maple leaf toy that plays the tune when you press its face), we tried some of the cake for dessert:

White Day

It's been a busy past month, and so unfortunately there haven't been many exciting photos to put up on my blog. The last entry was for Valentine's Day, where (in Japan) women give gifts to men. Ayako made me lots of yummy food on that day. And so a month later, on March 14, men return the favour on a day called White Day.
In the morning, I made Ayako some strawberry pancakes:
For lunch, I made grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup. In the afternoon, I baked some chocolate chip cookies (some using white chocolate chips):
Here's Ayako enjoying a cookie:
And for dinner, I made a chicken casserole with cheese and mashed potatoes with herbs. Ayako was happy to enjoy some homemade dishes that I prepared.

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!

Christmas dinner

We went over to Christine & Sam's place for Christmas dinner this year. Christine and Rory were busy in the kitchen all day preparing the turkey and the rest of the meal. It was my first time to see Matt & Momo's baby girl, Ume. Here is Ayako with Momo and Ume:
And here's Matt with Ume:
The other youngster there was Rory and Julia's daughter, Indi. Here's a shot of her in the kitchen, from her level of view:
Here is a shot of the wonderful turkey before it was carved up:
And here we are after opening the Xmas crackers and putting our hats on (done before the meal, which was a first for me):
Here's a shot of almost the whole group (sorry Momo & Ume):
There was some delicious gravy for the turkey, fresh from the gravy cow:
And here is a plate full ready to be eaten:
After dinner, we were given some small musical instruments, which started up some small tunes:
And at the end of the night, we had Ayako's Christmas pudding. Here's a shot of it after being doused with brandy and lit:
Sorry, there isn't a shot of the cake afterwards. It was eaten too quickly. Ayako was happy that all the Brits there thought it tasted fabulous. I thought it was great. Maybe the richest plum pudding I've ever had. Ayako also found out that it was a bit too rich for the Japanese who were there. We had a wonderful Christmas and a delicious dinner which left us all very full...hope you had a Merry Christmas too.