2015-05-31, What Was I Thinking?!

The field is across this river.

It was the day of the giant kite festival.  I'd mapped the location and it was 12km (about 5 - 6 miles) which should have been ok on a bike, maybe a 40 minute ride.  But...  it was soooooo windy - 13mph winds with gusts of 30mph.  It took us an hour and 45 minutes fighting the wind all the way.  Would the wind be good for the festival or bad?  They were flying kites so we thought good... but it turned out to be pretty bad.  Remember the time it was so windy for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and one of the balloons fell into the crowd?

After that exhausting bike ride this is what we found.

The kite had crashed, into people, shortly before we arrived.  People were being taken away in ambulances when we got there.

We did spend a little time there since we were hungry and too tired to ride home at that point. 

None of us had had this before.  It's some tasty meat wrapped in a sort of souffleish egg wrap.

Ice cream choices include purple sweet potato, sesame, and kiwi with chia seeds.  I had the blueberry yogurt flavor.

 There were some kites still flying, mostly newer types.

Evidently the flying and judging of the old fashioned paper mache kites had already taken place.

On the way back we sort of went our separate ways, or should I say at our very different speeds.  I stopped at a produce market and picked up some vegatables and a fruit called 'gumi' in Japanese and 'oleaster' in English.  I don't know what it is.  It's fairly small, like an oval green grape but red, and it has a semi soft pit/seed and it's somewhat sour and a little astringent.  Has anyone heard of it?

The ride home wasn't exactly with the wind since it seemed to be coming from the lake as well as from behind so by the time I got back to Hikone I could hardly pedal.  I filled the tub, which I haven't done for a while, did a wash since the wind should dry it quickly, and now I'm ready for dinner after an exhausting and not terribly fulfilling day.

2015-05-29, It's been a while...

I haven't been doing anything very interesting or exciting, but I thought I'd give you an overview of my last couple of weeks.

I did go out to dinner to a yakiniku (cook meat at your table) restaurant with 2 coworkers and that was really fun and delicious.

And last Sunday I had another 'sort of' coworker (she works down in the kindergarten so I don't see her very often) over for lunch and then we drove to some local sites.

Me

Wishes

Taga Shrine

An antique rice cooker.

Decorations on a house.

New word of the day - koke = moss.  Very pretty and soooo green!

Ito mochi, a specialty of Taga.  Ito means string and it's cut with a string
instead of a knife.  The colors are also applied with a string.

And I just got back from a zoo trip in Kyoto with the kindergartners.  It was a fun day although it's a pretty small zoo, which was good since I think it was about 90F and there wasn't much shade.  They petted a rabbit and a guinea pig, had lunch, got their pictures taken, and spent about 1 hour walking around.  The place was full of school groups.  Then back on the bus and happily most of them slept for the trip home.

The different color hats indicate different classes/age groups.
They're waiting to pet the guinea pig.

Lunch time.

A sampling of the cute lunch boxes the mom's packed.

My group.  6 children, 3 teachers and they still wandered...

2015-05-17, Everything's Coming Up Roses!

It's been a quiet weekend.  Nice weather but nothing to do.  Yesterday I finally found a reasonably priced vacuum cleaner at a 2nd hand store - and a cake shop across the street from the store.  And somehow I completely forgot about my Japanese lesson!  That was too bad since I didn't have anything planned for the day.

Today started off with getting up early and joining a neighborhood cleanup.  We just pulled weeds and grass at a nearby park.  I was hoping to meet some people and make some friends.  Don't know what will come to pass, I talked to a couple of people and they know where I live so we'll see.

Can you guess where I went after that?

Shosakai koen

Today I went to the big park that's not too far from work and took pictures of the roses.  Some are already finished (the purple ones that smell so sweet), some have more buds than flowers, and some are in full bloom.  You really can't get the feel of the place (or smell the sweet fragrance) from the pictures but I wanted to show you some of the beautiful flowers.

I like how they trained these rosed into a tree.

California poppies!

Which were my favorite?  It was close - the orange/yellow/red combo took 3rd place, the yellow one's took 2nd (yellow roses were the first flowers I ever received - in a box - from my Grandpa Sol for high school graduation so I have a soft spot for them), and in 1st place the white roses - so beautiful!!  But being surrounded by all of them was very special.

It's a big park, there are 3 playground areas and this baseball field
where some children's teams were playing and others were doing drills.

I still had a good part of ther day left and nothing to do so I started riding along this river and met 3 sheep (I forgot to take their picture) who are kept along the grassy area along the hospital parking lot.  It seems the Drs. or rehab people think that looking at the sheep from their rooms will be good

therapy for the patients.  Although they are so far away I think they would be dots, maybe the idea of

having living animals nearby is enough...  I spoke to someone who was feeding them and it seems

they are 'rental' sheep.  They go back to the farm when the weather gets cold.  

In an interesting turn of events I saw lamb chops at the supermarket (very unusual here) 

later that day.  I didn't buy them.  But actually I didn't think about seeing the sheep, 

I just didn't need them at the moment!

And all the rivers lead to Lake Biwa.  I found a couple of nice park like grassy areas with benches. Occassionally I'll have to bring dinner to work and go there when I'm done in the summer.  

After I find some good mosquito spray.

An island with a shrine in the lake.

I ended up at a shopping center and stopped for a snack - salt ramen.