Because We Suck

In lieu of having actually posted Christmas cards, we wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a great New Year, not to mention Chanukah. We're off to Tokyo, Kyoto, Shikoku et al for the holidays - photos to come. よい おとしを!

December in Yokkaichi

December brings Christmas parties at our house, snow, general merriment and completed hand-knits. We hereby include some photos of the aforementioned, along with a very belated photo of the tiny car we now own (tentatively called the Mie-mobile).

We also went to a mochi-pounding ceremony near our house. This is an important pre-New Year event where the community pounds the new mochi (rice paste) and eats it with, for example, sweet red beans or cabbage. The most important part of the pounding process is not to pound the hand of the old woman who kneads the paste as you pound it. Eesh.

Autumn in Kyoto, again

We went back to Kyoto to indulge Sam in the usual autumn leaf spectacular. We visited a famous garden at night, a new area of northern Kyoto (Ohara) and began the season-of-warm-soba-eating in style.

Kirara Matsuri

Kirara Gakuen (Fiona's school for disabled kids) had their festival (Matsuri) in November. Here's some selections. NB Fiona was dragged into playing the Taiko drums at the last minute - they'd been practicing for weeks but she had a 30-second primer before going on stage...

English Club Christmas

Fiona stayed up til 1 o'clock baking gingerbread men for her English Club kids...