Summer in the City

Time has slipped away on me again with three weeks seeming to vanish into thin air. While I write an actual post about our lives, here are some photos of what our summer has looked like so far.

On July 1st we celebrated our third Canada Day in Japan. I made poutine and the boys tried it for the first time. Theo seemed to really like it, but as always with anything containing potatoes, William was not too excited.

Rosie was happiest of all with her piece of barbecued corn on the cob.

Even though we barbecue A LOT in the summer, we occasionally head over to the local 100 yen sushi restaurant to change things up a bit. The boys decided that during this meal they would be sushi zombies. 

Rosie, who can never be left out of their shenanigans, tried her hardest to be a sushi zombie too.

We've also been working on removing the training wheels from Theo's bicycle. He has been wanting us to do this for a while, but his balance still needs a little work. Here he is taking a popsicle break on one of our biking trips.

Summer time at our house means trying to avoid using the air conditioner as much as possible. Instead I boot the kids outside and let them splash around in the kiddie pool if they get sweaty.

"I yam wot I yam and that's all wot I yam!"

Rosie enjoying taking a stroll around the block.

Inspecting a large caterpillar we found on the bike shelter. 

The Japanese star festival, Tanabata, is held on July 7th. People write wishes on coloured strips of paper and hang them along with paper cut into pretty shapes and designs on a young bamboo tree. Here are the boys posing in front of a Tanabata tree we found at a local department store.

Some people also go star gazing on the evening of the 7th, but since it was pouring rain it was kind of out of the question. With all this rain we've been having, I got to see a gorgeous double rainbow.

Another way we enjoy summer is with one of our favourite traditional Mennonite meals, rollkuchen and watermelon. It is quick to make and really light but best of all there are never any complaints no matter how many times we have it in a week.

And that's a little glimpse into our world these past few weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to get a real post up soon! 

Japan's Seasonal Flavours

Japan is a land that is highly aware of the changing of seasons. I often get asked if we have four seasons in Canada and when I say that we do, I am met with a surprised and seemingly never ending "eeeeehhh?!?", like they assumed that Japan was the only place on earth that had four distinct seasons. In some ways they are right though. Japan relishes in the changing of seasons like no other place that I have ever lived.

Baby William trying to break his way into
a pack of sakura flavoured yogurt

In Canada we fairly passively observe the changing of seasons. Spring is met with a "Hey, its nice that the snow is gone and flowers are on the lilac bushes", but not that much more. Maybe because of year round climate controlled houses the seasons are merely something you see outside your window, not a cold, heat, or humidity that you endure all day long. If Canadians dealt with humid, sticky houses when it rained, freezing cold houses in winter, or hot and humid houses in summer, they might find a way of celebrating and glorifying the changing of seasons a bit more. We also like to have constant access to our favourite foods all year long, even if this means we are importing them from across the world and they taste like little more than bland shadows of the foods they should be.

After moving to Japan, we noticed fairly quickly the availability of certain foods and products only in the right season. Want to buy a fan in the winter? Sorry! Have to wait until the appropriate season. Is it an unseasonably warm spring day? Be prepared to get some looks like you are a crazy person if you wear anything other than long sleeve shirts, a sweater, and pants. Do you want to by strawberries in October or tomatoes in December? Not every store will carry them, and if they do you will pay and arm and a leg.

In late spring, I am always happy to eat boiled soramame

Summer is the perfect time to eat a delicious meal of cold noodles like somen

Would winter be winter without eating mikan every day?

Nabe. In winter we revel in it and every other season we
remember it fondly. 

The strict seasonality of products can occasionally be pretty annoying, but once you get used to changing your shopping and menu planning every three months it is really fun and wonderful. I look forward to spring every year because I love how sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured products suddenly show up on the shelves. In summer I am always happy to see my friends warabimochi and all sorts of fresh veggies like tomatoes, cucumbers, and edamame cheap and readily available. Even though brassicas have never been my favourite, we eat turnips, cabbage, and daikon fairly often in the winter months. Though this is something we never really needed to do back home, it has made the seasons into something that we celebrate and anticipate. It is also a way to overlook the unpleasant things that come with them, like heat, cold, bugs, and rain, making them seem more bearable.

Every New Year my children test just how much
fresh mochi they can ingest in one sitting. 

Canada Trip Part 2

This post is going to be a little heavy on the pictures. If that doesn't bother you, then plunge ahead.

So, we spent a month this summer visiting family in Manitoba. For those of you that aren't Canadian, or have no knowledge of Canadian geography, Manitoba is the province in the centre of Canada.

In the summer, it looks like this:

Yeah, it's flat. Really, really flat.

Theo got to practice his karate kid moves

and watch his grandpa shoot at targets with his bow. Here he is pretending to shoot an arrow

If you are wondering what that target is, it is a small rubber black bear.

We spent a few weekends at the vacation cottage that Dustin's parents own by Riding Mountain National Park. There is nothing better than eating outside and roasting your meal over an open fire.

Theo could not get enough of this dog. It is no surprise that he is now asking when we can get our own dog.

One of my favourite aspects of the nature in Manitoba are the bogs and marshes. We did not get to go on a canoe trip through the marsh, but at least we were able to go on a short hike using these great bog bridges. 

Dustin's parents, sister and brother-in-law took the boys to an amusement park geared toward young children. They had an absolute blast.

We also took the children here last summer right before we moved to Japan. Here is a picture of William in the creepy clown car from this August

and one from last August when he was 5 months old

Auntie Karlee and William on the carousel

The trip wasn't all about the kids though. Dustin and I were occasionally able to ditch them with the grandparents and get away for some much needed date time. Here we are enjoying some delicious sushi and martinis for our 7th wedding anniversary.

We found a LARP group (live action role play for those of you who have not attained our level of nerdiness) that was doing a demonstration in the park. Theo enjoyed hacking at this man with a foam sword.

Even William tried to join in on the fun with his weapon of choice, the war hammer.

Theo and his cousin had fun doing everything but eating their food

William got to know his great grandma and grandpa

Why was there a giant Adirondack chair in the park? Who knows, but it was a good place to take a photo

Thank you to everyone in Manitoba that made our vacation enjoyable, comfortable, and memorable. You are welcome at our place in Fukuyama any time!

Back Home

Has anyone been wondering if we fell off the face of the earth in the past month and a half? We did, sort of, but we are finally back in Fukuyama. We actually had been in Canada visiting family from the middle of July to the end of August.

It feels great to be back home, but we are still waiting for the internet to be hooked up in our house. They actually won't be coming to set it up until the end of September. I absolutely don't understand why it is taking them four months to do this. We don't have much choice, so mostly I have been silently gnashing my teeth and fuming about being inconvenienced and cut off from the world. Only three more weeks to go!

Here are we are last month, waiting for the bus to take us to the airport in Hiroshima City.

We left in the morning with lots of energy and hoping that the kids maintained their good mood for most of the 27 hours that it would take to get to Winnipeg. 

The trip ended up being extremely uneventful which is the best you can hope for. No children or minds were lost along the way.

Oh, Canada

Flaming Dragon

So patriotic

Last night we went with my step-mom to celebrate Canada Day and see fireworks. Because it gets dark so late at this time of year, we were loath to drive an hour to the Forks to go to their all out celebration and see fireworks launched over the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The show is really spectacular, but it is only dark enough at about 11 pm to launch fireworks and we knew that Theo would be a raging ball of angst by that time. Add a crowd and large exploding noises and who knows what kind of scene he would make. We decided instead to see the fireworks in Steinbach, which is only about 5 minutes from our house. They gave out Canada themed cupcakes (which Theo only ate the icing off of),  glow sticks, temporary tattoos, and flags.

William and I waiting for the show to start

The fireworks were not any where near as crazy and fantastic as the celebrations for King Sihanouk's birthday in Cambodia, but seeing as probably 80% of the fireworks they used are almost certainly illegal in Canada, I think Steinbach did well enough. It was a great opportunity to try out the fireworks setting on our camera. I was pretty disappointed at the pictures it took of the fireworks, but I am generally disappointed in all the photos our camera takes, so I wasn't too surprised. It ended up being a great choice going to Steinbach, since it was much more family friendly (i.e. no drunks wandering around shouting obscenities like in Winnipeg), there was a huge amount of green space for Theo to run in, and a fairly small crowd. This is the first time that we have done anything for Canada Day since we have had kids and I am glad, especially for Theo's sake, that we got to experience it one last time before leaving.

Dustin and Theo enjoying the explosions

I am not sure that we will have the time or energy to do anything for the 4th of July, but if we get ambitious we might shoot of a few fireworks in our back yard. According to my Aunt Hue, Canada Day is just Canada's 4th of July, celebrated on the 1st of July due to the early harvest. So if we go by her theory, we won't need to bother doing anything on Monday since we have already celebrated.