Officially the rainy season is over.......!

now we can feel the temprature jumped up by few more degrees!!!

some places they are recording 38, 39, almost 40c....

We got our room air conditioned 24hours!

My hubby and I are renting room by the station, and kids are staying at my parents.

so, I`m back and forwards between two places everyday.

I get up about 5:40, put some clothes on and leave. It takes 15 min on foot, so I`ll be at my parents around 6 o`clock.

6 o`clock in the morning, allready feel the heat is starting to build up....

It`s going to be another hot day....!



The front of our apartment.
Next year there will be a very tall building here.
walk 3minutes looking building site on my left, and cross over the junction.

and keep going straight.

The street gets narrower, and no pavement to walk on.

There aren`t many cars at all this time of the day, but soon traffic builts up and it`s not so nice to walk there.

And then I walk pass my kids`s school. The building you can see between trees is their school building.

Then, come to the street lined with trees. This is front of Japanese Tabaco Research Center. There are a ditch,trees and bushes, so we have seen a bit of wildlife ; frogs and tadpoles, dragonflies, butterflies, lizards and a snake!

Soon after this curve, there is my parents apartment. The corner of the building can be seen from here!

Yey! That was my 15min of walk! I`m arrived at my parents`s.

This looks quite high, but only 7th floor. so very modest building.

Let`s go in!

After the first door, we have to ring or open the second door at the intercom.

This is the hallway, and at the end, there is another door.

And then we get to the lift. There is a security camera inside and you can see if anybody is in it while you are waiting.

Inside the lift, it has air conditioning!

Bliss!

Bye-Bye!

Trip to Kyoto

My Hubby and I went to Kyoto, the place he used to live, I went to school and we hung around together before we left to England.

We took Hankyu-line train and on the platform, we found this.....

Woman only sign!

We have lots of problem with men in a train especially in a rush hour. In rush hour, trains can be totally fully packed, and can`t avoid body contact. Then these men use that opotunity to "feel" girls and wemen... so, now we have some carriage dedicated for wemen.

But does it mean that wemen who get on the nomal carriage, they don`t mind to be touched?? ........... No!!

Anyway, we got to Kyoto and just walked around a lot!

I only have few photos....

The entrance of bar my hubby used go so often. It`s now called something else, but after a long walk, we managed to find it!

One of narrow lane, there are traditional Japanese restaurant lining up.

maybe you can see Geisya girls in the evening?

Behind of these restaurants is the famous Kamogawa river. These restaurants have a platform so people can enjoy their dinner looking over the river in a barmy evening.

It was cloudy-rainy day and was quiet on the river bank, but when it`s sunny this place will be filled with people especially young couples .

The trip down to the memory lane....

First weekend since their dad arrive to Japan. It was nice sunny day so we took a picnic to the park by the river.

Kids dicided to do some bug hunt rather than play with water.

The challenge! The Bug Hunters!

They found pretty orange butterfly, big beautiful black butterfly which was about 20cm across, they caught some dragonflys, grasshoppers and a long-horned beetle with white spots on black back which was rather handsam.

A grasshopper and a long-horned beetle. grasshopper loved aubergine we put in a cage for them! He was really chomping on it!

And they found a cast-off skin of cicada. There are thousands of cicada here in summer and in the morning, oh, they are sooo noisy!

And the creature of the day.....

they found a tortoise!!

It was soooo lovely!

Hunny was very happy and she really really wanted to keep......

I think it might have been somebody`s pet and it was released as that person didn`t want to keep anymore.

Oh, it`s so swee~t!

That evening, we found another cicada, this time it`s in the pupal stage.

We took it home to watch.

The skin we found earlier on the left and in pupal stage one on the right.

It was happning quite quickly for first an hour, but in half way it slowed down. We waited for a bit but wasn`t happening much and also it was getting late. So we went to bed expecting to here loud buzzing noise in early morning. But sadly,something gone wrong and it was stuck in a skin and it`s wing and legs were formed squished..... next time I see one, I`ll leave it as it is to not disturbe......

7th July is "Tanabata" the star festival in Japan.

This is the brief story about Tanabata...

Ten-Kou the God of sky had a daughter called Orihime(The star Vega) who wove cloth for the Gods. She was a very hard working girl.

And across the Milky-way, there was Ken-Guu(The star Alter) who looked after cows who also was very hard working. But as soon as Orihime and Ken-Guu met each other, they fell in love and did nothing else but spend time together. so Ten-Kou got angry and dicided to separate them and they weren't allowed to see eachother. They still didn't do any work as they were too sad to be separated, so Ten-Kou dicided that they can meet eachother once a year over the Milkyway on 7th July.

we make paper decorations and also write wishes on strips of paper and hang them on bamboo.

Kids made these at school and were displayed in shopping mall:

This one is with Tanzaku which their wishes were written.

And some with paper decorations.

And we've done some at home. As they are in school now and also we are being at my parents, I really don't do these things at home....

But we managed to make small ones! : )

This was few weeks ago, kids had a spots day at the school.

Sports day in Japanese school is a big event. not only running but also they do dance performance and children in each year practice a lot for this event.

It was a beautiful sunny day, all the children were divided into red team and white team, and fight against them with the points they get after each races.

The year 6 relay race.

Hunny was in a white team. She looks fast in this photo!

Viz in a costume for his dance. It was just sweet.

and good thing he is so tall in his year, we were able to find him so easily in a crowd!

Year5 and Year6 a mock cavalry battles.
They had a big fight which everyone joined in, and then they had one on one fight which was really intense!

Year1 ball throwing game.

Viz is the giant boy right in the middle.
Balls are going left, right and far back, but not in the center!

In between these games, each team`s cheerleaders came out to cheer!

This is "Roll the Giant Ball game" All the children did together.

I can see Viz right in the middle again.

And the climax was the performance from Year6 . The children asssembled themselves into various structures with music.

It started from one person movement and progressed to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 person structures.

Sorry about side-way photo! I tried to fix it but it`s not letting me. I need to do it when I`ve got more time...

Hunny is on the right in the middle row.

And this was the finale- 130 people pilamid!!!

Wow!! I had tear in my eyes......

They had so many practices for this every day, especially last couple weeks, even maths and japanese lesson had changed to P.E. lesson.

Each year lots of children have big bruises twisted wrists and ankles and some end up with broken bones while practicing...... When Hunny came back home and talked to us what kind of fall she or other had eachday, we just had to pray that big accidents won`t happen! But they have don really really well!

After this event, we decided to go out for dinner as they`ve done so~ well.

We went for "yakiniku" - indoor BBQ restraunt!

Hunny is Happy cooking her meat, but after 20min of eating, she was so tired and falling to sleep there.......

Hunny and Viz are helping my Dad to make "Umeboshi" pickled Japanese plum.

This plum is green or yellow with blush of slight red, taste very sharp and maybe give you an indigestion if you eat as it is. But it smells fantasticly sweet and fresh! Very tempting to pop one in a mouth!

They took little stems off plums and washed quickly in a alcohol and covered them with salt.

And put them all in storing jars and leave them to do their work.

That`all. we had two jars!

It will have to be left for a year at least till we can eat it.

This one, my Dad pickled them two years ago.

It`s sour and salty, and colour has changed to reddish brown.

We eat it with rice, or puree it to mix into sauses for fish, meat and veges.

It`s got anti-bacterial propaty so we often put in a lunch box as preservative in spring-summer time.

Viz on the roof balcony

It`s been pouring down with heavy rain since I woke up today,

and shows no signs of slowing down yet.

I just found out the rainy season will last till almost end of July!!!

(I was thinking it lasts only for a couple weeks, duh....!

And after that, the blasting heat of summer is waiting for us!!

It`s lovey to have some heat in summer but the mixture of this kind of heat and humidity is not nice and we really need to be by the sea or the woods with a river!