Rice Husking

Last weekend we learned about and helped with the process of husking rice at a local park. J and B helped plant the rice in the spring. So, it was fun to be a part of the end process too. Here is a picture of the rice when it has been cut and dried for a few weeks and is ready to be husked.

First, J stuck the ends of the dried bushels into a machine that knocked the rice kernels off of the stock.

Then, J turned a crank, turning a fan to blow the heavy rice kernels from the light chaff.

S. helped pick up the scattered grains. This is better than the sand box!

Finally, J. put it into another machine too take off the outermost husk off of the rice, leaving brown rice. Yummmm. Too bad, they later polished 30 percent of the rice grain to make it into white rice. But, still, I can't wait until the harvest festival in a few weeks where we will get to eat the rice that we husked!

Sports Day!

My first post when we moved to Japan a year ago was about J's undokai. He just participated in his second undokai! I could not believe the difference that a year has made. Last year he was afraid to join in the dances and races for the most part. This year he was very excited about the preparation for undokai. When we watched him perform and race with his classmates and interact with them in Japanese it was amazing! What a great experience this year in Japan has been for us and I am so glad that our children have been such good sports throughout all of the changes. Here are a few pictures.

Also, S really likes coloring, I couldn't have the whole post about J. He fills notebooks.

Matsumoto Jo

I feel that J has been able to do a lot of really neat stuff in Japan. However, he hadn't been to see a castle. We lived in Matsumoto for a summer about 9 years ago. They have a really neat Japanese castle in Matsumoto; you can climb all the way to the top. So B and J took the 3 hours bus ride to Matsumoto to check it out.

J took this one.

They spent the night with our friends and their two cute girls.