Last strawberry picking for the season.

We stayed busy this week, but not a lot of super exciting blog content.  The children had field trips.  Liam went to Nasu for a sleep over and Colleen went on a walk around Takanezawa.  I caught Liam on the  way out.  He walked with a different group than his usual walking group and was running behind a little, so they came to the door to get him.

This is a picture of Colleen with her group getting back from her walk around Takanezawa.

The yellow hats are standard for safety.  It improves visibility while the children walk.  I have been driving the car before when children were walking to school and it really is effective.  Both children had fun on there outings.

The weather is getting warmer all the time and we have also had a number of days with rain.  The end of this month will be rainy season.  I have not been through that yet so it should be interesting to experience.  As the weather has changed the frogs have overrun the rice fields and they are now starting to show up at our house.  This one was on our screen.

And another on the side of the house.

I can say they are not doing a great job keeping the bug population down.  Last week while riding my bicycle home from work (at night) I was getting pelted by bugs.  I am still itching from it.  Anyway, back to the story.  I was going about 21.5 mph on one of the roads between the rice fields.  Going that speed takes some effort so my mouth was open and I was breathing through it.  A giant bug went right in and got stuck.  I hacked for about 15 minutes and almost threw up a couple of times.  I am sure some of the farmers were wondering what was going on.  It stayed stuck there until I got home and drank water.  From now on I plan to wear one of those white masks for riding home.

On Sunday we went to the last day of strawberry picking at a local farm.  This time we were able to pick as many as we wanted and take them home.  The family cost was about $12.oo.  The strawberry farms all seem to be inside green houses and they are very well taken care of.

Here is me and the children getting ready to pick.  I wore my Santa Claus Nicholas shirt.  I picked it up at one of the local grocery stores along with a shirt that says a bunch of English that I can't understand.  The shirt coupled with my manpris pants makes for a very manly ensemble. 

This is Kate with some of her harvest.  We were able to get quite a few for freezing.  Kate will use them to make smoothies later.  She was jealous of my wicked cool pants so she played along too.

The children didn't last that long picking and ended up playing in the neighboring rice field.  They were mostly catching.....you guessed it, frogs, pollywogs, and tadpoles.  It seams every stage of the frog is now present in the rice fields.

After we got home the children went to the park to play for a bit.  Liam came home with the larvae of a beetle.  They found it around some trees.  We won't know exactly which kind of beetle it is until it grows and morfs into its final form.  That is of course if it lives that long.  He is really excited to see what it turns in to.  I am just glad I didn't swallow one of these beetles. 

Finally while on a bike ride I rode past a farmer harvesting wheat.  Two reasons that is interesting.  1. It shows how far ahead the season is in Japan, I think Ohio is months away from this.  2. The combine is tiny.  It was about the size of our Diva (the yellow car).  Of course the fields are smaller here so that is not a big surprise.  Sorry for the bad picture quality.  I took it with my cell phone.

Here is a better image.  I got this from the internet (Wikimedia).  It shows a little better the basic size and layout.

Here is the American version for direct comparison.

That is all for this post.  Have a good week.