John & Takeshi's visit

A friend of my parents, John, came for a visit to Japan threes weeks ago. He was staying up in Tochigi prefecture with a friend, Takeshi, who he is pen pals with. On Friday, they came for a visit to Hamamatsu. We first started with a tour of Yamaha music. We saw how a grand piano is put together, which was the same tour my family went on back in May. Here's a picture after the tour of John playing a reed organ in the display room:
We went for lunch, and John got to try eating eel, which he quite enjoyed. He said it tasted better than the eel he was used to back in Britain. Afterwards, we went to the Museum of Musical Instruments. He is a picture of John and Takeshi in the 'hands-on' room playing some bells.
In the evening, the came back to our house, where Ayako had prepared a wonderful meal for them.
The next day, we took John and Takeshi to pick clementine oranges at our neighbors' farm:
Ayako's mother also joined us. Here you can see us with our neighbor, Uchida-san. He is very lively for 84 years old.
Afterwards, we returned home for lunch and then took them to the station to see them off. John is probably on a plane right now, heading back to Canada. I hope he enjoyed his stay in Japan.

Daidogei Street Performers Festival

On Sunday, Ayako and I visited Shizuoka city to watch the international street performers festival, which is called Daidogei. I also came to watch this festival in 2005 and so you can see my blog entry from that here. There are lots of performances throughout the downtown area, but most are in a large park in the downtown area.

It is a very popular event, so huge crowds surround the performers. Because of this, many people bring their own step-ladders so that they can see the performances better:
There was also an area where you could try playing with some juggling equipment. I started getting good at the plate on the stick trick:
I taught Ayako how to juggle, and later on she was juggling with three balls:
And here's me juggling:
Later on, Steph and Nick joined us to watch some performances:
Here was a group from Ghana:
They were very flexible:
Very, very flexible:
I was able to get a videos of some of the performances as well:

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.