Top 10 of 2009--Tokyo, Japan

I know that this post is a bit late as an end of the year wrap-up, but December and January have been busy. Since I am now officially calling our main floor moved in I thought I would take some time to blog. Here are a few of our favorites from last year in Tokyo, in no particular order, we enjoyed so many different things!

#1 All of our great friends. We truly developed some wonderful friendships, here are a few friends from J's school.

#2. Takaosan. Great scenery and hiking!

#3 Mt. Fuji. I really wanted to see Mt. Fuji close up and during our last week in Japan we took a trip with some great friends.

#4 Kashinomiya Park. Actually I could write a whole top 10 list just about parks. This park held a lot of great activities and we spent tons of fun filled hours playing in the grass and riding scooters.

#5 Undokai. Everything about J's school was fantastic. He was really sad to leave Japan in large part because he enjoyed school so much.

#6 Festivals. Lots of different kinds of fun festivals.

#7 Trains.

#8 Tama Zoo. Especially Tama Zoo with friends!

#9 Train museums.

#10 Grandpa and Nicki's visit to Japan!

#11 Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea.

#12 Tokyo City office building. Great views and totally free!

Skiing

J went skiing with us yesterday. What a difference a couple of years make. He was skiing on his own and he had a great time! Here are a couple of pictures.

Skiing down Milk.

J and I in the lodge getting some hot chocolate.

Curry

Yesterday we went to a really fun curry restaurant. It was train themed and they actually bring you your curry and drinks etc. on a model train! The kids loved it.

The restaurant interior. Lots of cool train stuff, including a clock just like they have in stations.

Taking the water from the train.

S was a bit scared of the train at first.

Here comes the curry!

J had the shinkansen special. It came in a special dish!

Takao-san and fall hiking

We took advantage of a national holiday and a nice crisp fall day for some hiking.

We took the chairlift up half of the mountain.

Then we enjoyed hiking up to a temple and viewing the leaves along the way. Here is a picture of a monk playing a conch horn.

We also got our books signed. Including yours Grandpa and Nicki!

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.