2009/05/03

Our family sang on the stage

We had a concert on last sunday.

Akio-san and his friends sang songs at this concert.

That was great!!

Of course our children attended to sing a song, too.

We sang"You are my sunshine."

We have practiced this song over and over every night.

Children like this song.

When Towa cries in the car, Wara always sings this song to him.

You can listen to our song at You tube.

2009/04/14

We planted potatoes


Our wwoofers, Hester and Davin, and Akio-san planted potatoes this morning.
Akio-san thought now is the time to plant potatoes before the rain.

Wara-chan and I also helped to plant them.

First, we cut potatoes into quaters and then put some ashes on potatoes.

Therefore, potatoes wouldn't do bad in the soil.









Wara did a good job putting ashes and planting potatoes.

Akio-san, Hester and Devin planted all the potatoes before it started to rain.

Great!!

I hope we can eat yummy potatoes this year again!

2009/04/09


It's full moom today!


Cherry blossoms in Matsumoto Castle

I went to Matsumoto Castle with my children and wwoofers to see cherry blossoms at night.
We, Japanese people like to see the cherry blossoms in spring.

We usually need to pay money to enter the Castle, but we can enter for free at this cherry blossoms season.

Cherry blossoms were illuminated by the light at night during this season.
We were also able to listen to the traditional Japanese instruments.
What a beautiful songs they were!

There was also a tea ceremony in the castle garden.

I was happy to see the beautiful places there.

2009/03/16

Humama garden


We took a break in our garden this morning.
Hu-mama want to made our garden like a Tasha Tudor.

Tasha Tudor is Amarican.She wrote many picture books for children.
And Her gerden is special and great.Humama love her gerden so much.

Now Humama admire her, she found many flowers bud in our garden, she
replanted them and make road in the gerden.

She imagin Towa will play in her gerden this summer.

It was fine day today, so we can see great mountain when we drink tea.

2009/03/10

Family trip!!

I triped Nagoya, Shizuoka and Yokohama with my family from 6th until 10th on this month.
Our family go to trip once a year.But I hope if children will grow up, I would like to go to trip many times in a year!!

First, we went to Nagoya to meet Mizuho-kun and Mayumi-chan.Mizoho-kun was our neiborhoood. He finished his school in Nagoya in this March.
We went to his school.He painted nail art to my finger.



And We saw Mayumi-chan too.She was a wwoofer 2years ago.
We went to Nagoyakou-Aquarium with Mizuho-kun and Mayumi-chan.
It was so great. I like to see dolphins.I would like to swim with the dolphins someday.



After Nagoya, We went to Sizuoka to see Akio's brother's family.
They have 3 children.So Huwa and Wara are so happy to play with them.

Nextday, We went to Yokohama where I grew up. I met friends from high school.

I spend all good time with friens!!

This is a nice trip!!

2009/03/03

Kendama

It is a typical Japnese toy.
Huwa is playing with it everyday.
He is addicted to play Kendama.
It was given this by his elementary school.

Students have little skills of playing Kendama.
I will show you Huwa's playing.

First, he plays Kendama with songs, and then he plays like baseball.

He is getting new skill everyday.

2009/02/08

Interview!!




I interviewed Jessica, Jenny and Chihiro today.They are wwoofer our farm now.Jessica leave here after this interview.I said to them "Would you talk about funing? "

Plese show this video.

Thank you very much Jessica, Jenny and Chihiro.

2009/02/03

ehoumaki

I am Towa penguin!!


It's Setsubun today!
We eat ehoumaki on Setsubun.

Setsubun is the end of winter in the old calender,which is on February 3rd.

We have Setsubun ceremony.

In this ceremony,we always say"demon is out, come on luck"
as you throw soy beans toward the front door.

It means to make bad luck go away and welcome the good luck.

Ehoumaki is said to be a good item to welcome a good luck.
Ehoumaki is a big sushi role.

We eat this sushi as you face towards the best direction.

This direction changes every year.

The East-NorthEast is the best direction for this year.

Um---.Yummy!!

So,I upload mamy videos to our Japanese blog for "You tube."
You can watch our family!

http://tsuiteruogurayama.blog81.fc2.com/

Thank you!






2009/02/01

We make carrot & apple juice

We cut apples and carrots to make carrot & apple juice.
We take out the bad parts from the apples.
This juice is very tasty.
Carrots are sent to our farm by another organic farm.
The farm owner is a friend of ours.
I like this juice.
Did you know that apples & carrot juice is good for your health?
Akio-san brings these apples and carrots to the jyuce factory.It takes 3hours from our farm to the jyuce factory by truck.
He went to threr 3 times because we made 3000bottles this year!


2009/01/25

We cut apple trees




She is a first wwoofer this year.Her name is Kaori.She came from Tokyo.
We cut all the apple trees on one of our 7 orchard.
We use these trees for the stove in my house.
We need trees to make a fire in our stove.
But this is not reasen to cut apple trees.
So,Kaori is collecting cut-trees now.
It hurt my feeling when the trees were cut.
Because I saw these trees had beautiful flowers and lots of apples last year.
If we didn't cut these trees, they will have many apples this year too.
We have many reason to cut these trees.


2009/01/15

It is very cold here!!

Look at this picture!! It's fine this morning.
The temparture here is -10℃(7Fahrenheit)

I look forward to reading the thermometer every morning.
What degreee is it today?

Whenever I looked at our car, I remembered the movie, of "Back to the future".

Have you seen this movie ?
Do you remember the scene when the time-machine appeared from the truck? The car looks frozon

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=yosuvf7Unmg

I can see crystal on the window of the car.
I give my dog some water every evening, the water become ice by the morning!!
That is how cold it is here!!

2009/01/10

We took a part in the ceremony in this small area. We call this ceremony, Sankurou.

It is a burning ceremony of ornaments from the new year, and we take this smoke and wish for our well being for this year.


Here is how we start this ceremony.
First, we knock on neighbor's doors and collect some used new year ornaments form each house, then we built like an ornament delta corn, using bamboo and pine trees.

When we burn this, it has a good sound.

I like to seeing the fire.

I like this celemony, because I grew up in Yokohama.

We weren't able to make a fire like this.

Because Yokohama is a big city.

There is no space to make a fire.

We can make a fire here, and can get together with neighbors at the same time .

Children and parents look fun. We had a good time together.



2009/01/01

A Happy New year!!

This is our Osechi

A happy new year!!
How's your new year?

Our family is all well!
We woke up early and watched the sunrise and pray to the sun.

We ate Osechi and Mochi .
Osechi was cooked yesterday.

We prepared Osechi for new year until the day before.
Osechi is a special menu only for the new year.
We serve food in the special lunch boxes.

Each menu has a meaning.

For example,Kuromame(black beans)means if you eat this you will be all fine and can work well.

We went to the book store and McDonald.
This is not a typical Japanese culture for the new year.
That is only our family culture.(culture?)

We usually don't go to McDonald, but our children want to go there.

SO, we go to McDonald once a year.
It's today!!

Our children are so happy because they are given a special toy from McDonald.

I hope this year will be a good year!!