Look who's 16!

Happy (belated) Birthday, Danzie! The world will be a scarier place when you start driving. ;)

Last weekend

You may remember back in June I went rice planting with some of the other Shimonoseki JETs at the house of one of my conversation students.

Planting rice, back in June

Last weekend, Becky, Angie and I went back to harvest the rice...or at least to pose for lots of pictures to make it look like we harvested the rice. We didn't really harvest all that much of it, truth be told.
Once again, Emiko was the perfect hostess, preparing a huge meal of traditional Japanese dishes. Emiko and her husband have an absolutely gorgeous, very traditional looking house out in the country (in the town where Angie lives).
Mitsuko, one of the other students in my conversation class also performed a little tea ceremony for us.
After rice harvesting, we drove to a farm in the next town to go pear-picking.
It was a sunny, but not too hot and humid, day! It has cooled off here very suddenly, and much much earlier than last year. I remember wondering in late October of last year (as I sweated even with the aircon on in my apartment) when on earth it was going to finally change from summer to fall (which didn't happen until November). But this year it was cooling down by the time I came back from Canada in early September! It has been a pleasant 22-25 degrees all month! However, this is causing all the rice fields to be finished much earlier than they should be, and some of the trees seem to be just dropping their leaves without the leaves having changed colour (they just die, turn brown and fall off). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll still get some nice fall colours later on from other kinds of trees. It is nice to have cool weather, though!


TEA:

whisking the tea

RICE:







Emiko's daughter said she doesn't like to go in the ricefield because she's afraid of frogs. We were told that they get picked up along with the rice stalks by the harvesting machine and then die inside the bags of rice, so no one likes them. There were loads of them in the field!



Most rice isn't harvested by hand these days. This is the machine they use for harvesting (modelled by Becky in my hat).


Emiko's daughter, Marie, in one of the harvested fields.


bugs



LUNCH:
Itadakimasu!



PEARS:









If you click on this picture of Angie, you can see that all the pears have been pre-bagged while still attached to the trees to keep them from being eaten by bugs.


Too stuffed to move!


Behind us you can see grapes, which have also been pre-bagged.

Are we in Canada yet?

maybe...I found this "conbini" in the streets of Vancouver the day after flying in. I never noticed before (not that I ever spent all that much time in Vancouver) but there are A LOT of Japanese restaurants there. Quite literally every other restaurant you pass is sushi or some kind of Japanese food!


yes, definitely Someone found this antler and gave it to Katie. I guess this is what comes of being friends with treeplanters. My kids have been going nuts over this picture though!


OK, back to chronological order (warning: this is a really long post)

I got to fly in the Hello Kitty Plane! Everything was Hello Kitty...the boarding pass, the headrest covers, each little plastic cover on the food, the sugar, salt and pepper packages, the flight attendants' aprons...


The day after I flew in to Vancouver Josh took me shopping and then to Phantom of the Opera, which was amazing. Then we made cheese fondue and I ate way too much food (many kinds of cheese, crackers, blueberries..).

The big boat that goes to my island ;)


This is my precious baby, Bella, who is now 11 years old! I was so happy to see her!



Partying...Canadian style:
Josh had a big BBQ party at his house on the day we came back to Victoria.


Liona, Carson, Bryan eating BBQ


Country singing girls (Josh rented a karaoke machine which was aparently audible many kilometres away.)


with Vanessa


Josh's new puppy


The next day we went to a market on Saltspring Island and then went sailing except there was no wind. then we headed back to Vancouver again because my aunt and cousing were visiting from Guelph. the next day we went to the PNE (Pacific National Exibition, a giant fair in Vancouver)

With Josh's cousin, my cousin, and my mum, on our way to the PNE




my crazy cousin:





Brooke on the swing ride

Me on the swing ride

2-day-old pig


The log ride. Josh's cousin was terrified of every ride.


Sandcastle competition


with Brooke at the end of a busy day.


After the PNE we headed down across the border to my aunt and uncle's cottage on a lake in Washington State.

in my uncle's boat

Tubing!




Dad in the boat


Danzie after we failed to react to her "slow down" hand signals. haha


my aunt and uncle's "cottage"


nachos, wine and cheese


Stayed two nights in Washington then headed back up to Van, visited Meghan, then the next day went river rafting.

with Meghan


Ah! Giant pancake breakfast before rafting!


Nice view. This is 2 hours north of Vancouver, near Squamish.


Rafting (Josh is first on the left and I'm right behind him.)





then back to Victoria again, for more visiting:

having lunch with Grandma


the Thursday market in the little town of Sidney, near Victoria.


Maya takes a break (?!) from grocery shopping (actually, she pushed the cart around the whole store like this!)


cooking with Maya and Katie. Maya left to travel around Europe (ii na) a few days after I flew back to Japan and Katie is now doing beetle-probing (checking for evil beetles that kill lots of trees) up in Northern BC.


making borsht with Maya (if you don't know what this is, you're missing out) Yum! If only I could get beets in Shimonoseki!


Mmm, Canadian food. This is poutine that we made with fresh cheese curds from the Sidney market.




with Ra at Tim Hortons


Halloween fun at the craft shop


with Danzie and one of the artichokes that I planted right before coming to Japan.


with Harumi. Harumi and her husband Brian are expecting their first baby! Omedetou! And they're moving to Japan this month.


with my sister and my cousin


Fancy Dinner with the family: