Shinpara Matsuri

As Matsuri season winds on in the immediate area, Shinpara, the community I live in held their wildly popular matsuri last night and tonight. Here you can see all 10 people from the community came out, so it was a great success!
No actually, Shinpara is a pretty far spread out community that is split into smaller areas, each of which has their own Yattai- or Japanese style parade float. Here you can see 4 of them, though sadly none of my yattai pictures came out very well.
You can also see the local shrine (dark, but it's in the background here), where Ritsy had to dig into her wallet so that we can offer some money in order to pray. Don't worry! It's not that much, I think 5 yen is an optimal offering, though we could only find a pair of 10 yen pieces.
Though her family don't live there now- she grew up with her friend Manami (you may recall they visited us, and we visited them previously) in the area. So we ran into her and Shogo and Eiho, their dad was drinking with Manami's parents, so we didn't see him. They were all happy to see me of course, and the two boys challenged me to a race. It's tough to teach kids such valuable lessons, but naturally I had to beat them! Sadly today my legs were soar from all the running...

You can see how big Ritsy's stomach is getting now- junior - or kicky-kins as I have started calling it, is definitely almost ready to come out!

On a sad note, we were given notice of a wake and a funeral in our neighborhood today. The man, aged 37, leaves behind a wife and young child. He was an avid motorcyclist and had gone for a trip up to nearby Toyohashi and lost control of his bike and was hit by a truck. Very sad. I had met him not too long ago too. He was at the Dainenbutsu practice I had gone to see- I remembered him as being quite nice. I guess the thing that struck me the most about it is his young age (just 2 years older than Ritsy and I), seems that side of life has decided to start taunting us now...

Gone and a wee party (or is that Wii party?)

Well, Suzuki's house is all but a memory now. They have left standing a single wall as you can see in this picture and there is a little single room 'house' still standing a bit to the left of this picture. I am still not too sure what the overall plan is with the property but it could mean a whole of new neighbors or something equally interesting...
Last night, Chris and Hisano threw a "yippee we have a week off in June" party for some of ESL College's students. I went down a little bit early armed with my blender, prepared to dazzle the masses with my fruit smoothie and awamori drinks (affectionately known as girly drinks).
As we awaited the students arrival we had a surprise visit from the man himself, Adam. He was filling us in on an exciting sounding meeting about some English teaching nonsense. I excused myself and headed upstairs to enjoy some of the delicious bbq'ed meat that OjiOji had cooked.
I had met Chris' student Yeni before but it was great to meet Simon (her boyfriend) and Sara (my new Facebook buddy) both very nice people.
Simon bore a bit of a resemblance to Harry Potter.
Our friends Taeko and Ayako came out and had a good laugh together between Cat Stevens songs.
Meanwhile Chris had brought his Wii which was quite a success at the party.
Thanks again to Chris for a good time at the party!

My Monday Musings

It's Monday- which means back to work! I am finally caught up on my tales from April and May so it is back to my regular topics! Not as exciting as excursions and parties, but I will try!

Everything is still progressing well with Ritsy- doctor says we are at 5 months now and junior is at 110 grams. She brought in a videotape from the sonogram but I haven't watched it yet. She still isn't showing, but I think pretty soon she will start to develop a belly. Man, it's really happening.
The house across from mine seems to be getting torn down. It used to be a dog kennel where they bred Welsh Corgi's but I met the man that lived there last year, Suzuki, and he told me they had to close down the business. He even offered to give us a free dog, but I actually find that breed quite annoying. I was surprised to see that he had to move away as well though- he was my only neighbour that could speak some English! But as we heard the machines working away one day and walked over to the other side we could see the house was now just a shell!
My other neighbour (ironically also named Suzuki) was telling my wife she is worried that they may build an apartment building there, but I am not so worried about that idea. I think a denser populated area could help the property value of my home improve.
Now is the season for the rice crops, so the fields have been getting flooded and we can see farmers planting them. The rice season usually coincides with the Rainy Season here in Japan as you can imagine the skies provide plenty of water for the rice to flourish. Here is a farmer working on his flooded field.