i am really behind in posting, sorry about that. life was so busy that i didn't have time to pause and write about it! saturday morning saw me waking up at 4! am! and that kind of threw me off for the rest of the weekend. the kids woke up way too early this morning, too, so i am still not at my best. but, i uploaded photos so let's get on with the post!

saturday morning yoshi took tommy with him to a wedding in miyazaki. they left the house at 4:30 (poor baby!!) and went to yoshi's parents' house. then they all went together to the wedding. since they stayed at the seagaia i'm actually kinda miffed (for a change) for not being able to go with. (this is normal in japan--usually only one person from a family--in this case yoshi, me and our kids--is invited/goes to the wedding. it was a family wedding, yoshi's cousin, so that's why my PIL went as well.) yoshi only took tommy with him because saturday was a harvest day included in the farming lecture series.

so, lucky me got to take hiro and sasha to the inaka farm to pull up onions and garlic, and dig up potatoes. i only got a few pictures taken before the battery died in my camera (the olympus), so i couldn't take photos of the coolest part: the potatoes. there were quite a few people there on saturday, so hiro only got to pull two onions (and sasha, nothing at all!) and then we prepared them for hanging. sasha especially liked that part, she was quite good at peeling garlic. she was sad when we had to finish (and i don't think we got halfway through, there was so much garlic and onions!) the harvesting of potatoes was pretty cool. first the tops were cut off (the bushy green stuff on the surface) and then a tractor went through digging up the potatoes. talk about a time-saver! very cool, hiro and sasha enjoyed that a lot! then we picked up the big(ger) nice potatoes and put them into baskets, leaving the little or buggy-eaten ones behind. then we were allowed to take whatever we wanted--from the ground! that's ok, we also got five onions and five garlic (how do you 'number' garlic? heads?) and got some nice ones.

afterward we went to lunch in the local jusco, then went for a drive. i ended up driving to nogata because i missed a turn, so we went to another jusco (AEON mall) and spent the rest of the afternoon there. sasha had fallen asleep in the car but i had to wake her up because hiro had to go to the restroom. *sigh* our evening wasn't the most pleasant, especially when they figured out that daddy wasn't coming home that night. sasha had a HUGE meltdown, i had to call yoshi twice to get him to talk to her. she actually wanted to walk 'by self' to find daddy....i gave them some chocolate pudding (which cures just about anything you know) and that calmed them down enough for shower and bed. THEN i had a couple of beers and then it was time for me to hit the hay!!

oh what a saturday....


ducklings (aigamo breed) at the farm


rice waiting to be planted