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Kept Mona away from school yesterday because she had a fever and half of her class has been hit with a virus that causes sever vomiting and runs for a full week. Some kids are even in the hospital. Fortunately, Mona was back on her feet the next day, and doesn’t appear that she has cought it, even more fortunately, I don’t have it – yet. Yesterday was the teacher visitation day, so even though we kept Mona home, the teacher (who is visiting all the parents of sick kids as well) may have brought it to our door step.

Since Mona was feeling well, and there was little chance for me to get work done with her bumping around the desk, we went to pick some wild veggies from the mountain.

This last weekend was another big weekend for Tomoe and her bread sales at the Nanohana Festival in Iiyama.

While Mona and I played in the flowers, Tomoe was busy selling out of her bread. Amazing taiko drummers (children form the nearby village – I have video but have not had a chance to upload it yet) And lots of kaki-kori crushed ice with colored sugar topping for Mona. The man running the sugar-ice booth was right next to Tomoe’s bread booth and was in love with Mona. With good reason too. When Mona started eating a hot dog from his booth, his hot-dog sales increased dramatically as people walking by saw her and wanted one too. In Japanese this is called “kanban musume” or “signboard girl/daughter”. I think she may have a career.

I have way to many photos from the event to post here, but many more on my flickr account for anyone interested.

Oh, and we got our first frogs of the season for Mona to torture.

So, this blog has become more just a means for me to easily look back at photos from previous years and remember what was happening when. May 1. Last week I finished a trip with my Swiss couple J & R. Given the rain, which didn’t make for much good riding, Mona probably had the most fun, as she tagged along, made mochi rice, spent a night playing with three of the most docile cats I have ever seen, and didn’t mind Mona’s love and affection.

When it was all done we went to help Tomoe sell her bread at the local nanohana festival (rape flower). Mona spent the afternoon picking flowers and handing them out to random people walking by. It was really great to watch the people’s face as they take the flowers from this strange little girl.

Back in the yard, there are no flowers coming up on their own, so Mona and I went to the shop and purchased some. Mona planted them in the back yard.

DSC 7702 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Why?!?!?! The weather forecast yesterday said this week was mostly clear and would look like it did when I went yesterday with Mona to check on part of the route. Beautiful blue sunny skies.

This morning, a few hours before going to meet the customers, and the weather site calls for rain. Rain is what I worry about most. Although I know it is not my fault, a bright sunny day can make even the dullest parts of the ride wonderful, and rain makes the best parts of the ride miserable. (but the bath at the end feels better)

In the background of the videos you see Mt. Naeba. This is a portion of the ride where the snow is not cleared yet, so we have to walk the bikes over the snow.

DSC 7753 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Photos of the current snow situation. Also, today we picked our first fukinoto for the year, and had our first tara-no-me tempura for lunch (grown in our neighbor’s greenhouse)

Its amazing how much more quickly the snow is melting compared to last year. I have customers coming in five days. Originally I had suggested that we do the trip somplace further south, because I Was worried about snow. Luckily they said they didn’t mind cold and snow, and would rather be someplace a bit more remote, like here. Looks like it will be perfect amount of snow maybe even some flower buds?

Compare to March 21 last year, and first fuki harvest on March 20, but with lots more snow.

So I am on day 4 of Shawn T Insanity workout now. I figure I gotta be able to at least keep up with my customers at the end of this month without being out of breath. I think it will work well for that. But it really makes me sad that I consider this a good workout, when back in my “better” days, it would have been a nice warm-up.

It is bad timing because 1) I am not sure it will be effective quick enough to help me with the April 2 clients, and 2) There are only two weeks left before the ski hill closes.

Yesterday was another beautiful sunny day, and all the lifts were running, so I couldn’t resist heading to ski right after my Insanity workout. My legs were jello and it is hard to ski on jello, so I am missing out on the last two weeks of my season pass.

Today is another beautiful sunny day, and it is also the village snow festival at the ski-hill. Last year Tomoe had a booth selling waffles. Its always a lot more fun when you are selling something, or involved in some way, so even the rain wasn’t too bothersome. This year, she had a previous obligation so did not register to sell anything.

I will certainly be taking Mona to the festival though, and hopefully she will agree to put in a few runs on the beginner hill, which is about all I can handle now as well (I just got back from todays workout).

In the photos above you can see Mt. Naeba in the background.

The photo below is of preparations for the festival. While it is nice and festive, it is really stupid. So much energy (fossil) is put into building these big snow domes, and a snow stage, and it would be just as fun, if not more, to have a full-day festival where the kids of all ages come out and everyone builds their own snowman or snowcave or snow sculpture or fort – and no need for all this heavy machinery (there are even more huge cranes that you can’t see in this photo, moving snow from left to right and then back to left again).

The video below is for grandma to watch with the cousins.

DSC 7106 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 7179 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 7110 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

For anyone interested in bulldozers and what not. This is how we take care of snow here. This dozer starts off in the field next to our house, where they blow the snow from the road in February, so that area accumulates a lot of snow. It has to be melted in time for the owner of the field to begin farming, but traditional methods, such as sprinkling black ashes onto it to absorb heat from the sun and make it melt faster, no longer work these days, because of all the extra snow blown onto it from the street. Nowadays, the dozers and blowers and trucks come in to move the snow from the field to a nearby river.

DSC 7136 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 7146 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 7109 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 7122 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 7178 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

So recently Mona is not getting as much schooling as she is supposed to (I guess). Between skiing and hanging out with us, there probably is not much book smart learning going on.

DSC 6648 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 6639 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Today was the third super clear warm day in a row, and tomorrow will be snow, so I took the opportunity to take Mona out of school to go skiing. This was her fourth time on skis. A guest lent me the harness a few weeks ago, and this is her second time to use it. It works well. I can let her ski on her own while still controlling her speed. She complains that it hurts, but that is usually when I am going too slow and it is holding her back.

This weekend Tomoe had a meeting with her group of people working to rescue old tools and documents after the earthquake caused a massive wave of “lets tear down this house while the government is paying for it”.

Her group stayed at one of the inns that I take most of my customers who are willing to make the trek up there. Here here is a pretty boring video of her playing behind a bear skin (the inn-keeper’s husband is a hunter). The video is long and boring, but it gives an image of what dinner is like up there.

DSC 6588 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

DSC 6542 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Aside from spending time with some of her adoring fans, we also took a little walk in the morning to the pre-school/kindergarten up there. There there are only two students, both boys, and at least of them was super happy the have a girl drop in. They played for a bit and the boy requested that Mona quit her own pre-school and become a full time student up there. Frankly, Mona is not against the idea, as when she tells me she doesn’t like school, I ask why, and she says “The other kids don’t like me”. It seems she only has two kids that she likes at her own class.

Of course, her current school has more kids so she can learn cool group marches like the Mickey Mouse March which she performs below in our home while watching a video of her doing it herself .

DSC 6628 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Spent the morning and most of afternoon at the schools winter festival – the winter version of summer’s “undoukai”. It was held at the ski hill, and the activities were designed for one parent to participate with child, and since Tomoe was along, I took the opportunity to ski, so missed most of the photo ops with just the kids playing.

At the end there was a lottery drawing at with a ton of prizes, including 38 inch digital TV, and Nintendo Wee. The tickets were distributed as part of a game where everyone had to run out and grab tickets “hidden” in the snow with big red tags sticking out, so they were not really hidden, and it was not much of a treasure “hunt”, as it was suposed to be, but I don’t expect them to burry a big screen tv in the snow.

The prize list is in the photo above next to the big “ringo head”, as Mona calls him. IN addition to the TV and the Nintendo, it included lots of outdoor gear, bags of rice, boxes of instant ramen, a season pass for the ski-hill, and a digital camera (suspiciously won by the guy who was drawing the numbers…hmmm…) In the end we didn’t even win a box of tissues – just a 10 yen piece of candy they called the “Try again next year” prize.

DSC 6079 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Mona comes home from school. This day Tomoe joined me to pick up Mona at the bus stop, so I was able to “document” the whole thing. The older girl who is waving at the departing bus at the end is a neighbor. When Tomoe’s niece lived here for six-months, they played a lot together. They were very young then, and this girl is now in junior high. I asked Tomoe when she thought this girl waving at the bus changed from “This is what I am supposed to do”, to “This will make the smaller children on the bus feel happy”. I assumed that at her age she was making a concious decision, but Tomoe says that she saw the girl waving at the bus even though there was only on or a few same-age kids on board. I guess it is just a habit – a nice habit – that kids in Japan rural areas have.

DSC 5700 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Above we have Mona’s little pageant. She was mini mouse.

DSC 6062 from Kevin Cameron on Vimeo.

Finally, shovelling in the back yard. The snow on the roof has to be shovelled because if it gets too heavy it will break the edge of the roof. This is on the second story level. The big hole she is putting snow into is on ground level.

I had to go get the shovel.