at the park

Shikoku Mura

The vine bridge.
This was "girl's day" so there were many dolls on display. You can buy sets of dolls like these at a mall, they can be very expensive, we saw some for $5,000.

taking a breather

These pictures don't do the place justice, there were many old farmhouses and assorted buildings from around the island, collected into a villiage on the side of Yashima (mountain plateau near Takamatsu).

Ritsurin park

Sushi bar

Colette wasn't sure whether to like this shrimp tail or not
Oishi desu!
Little boats circled around in a moatlike ring around the bar, and we took the sushi we wanted. Later they counted the plates to figure out how much we owed.

Bite it with those little monkey teeth!

Family visit

Both busily "working"
Attack the cameraman!
Too cold and windy to be standing here . . . the background is the longest car and train bridge in the world, the Seto Ohashi.

Typical family shot.

Konpira

From on top of Konpira . . .

Colette rubs the elphant's trunk for luck
She wore a yukata (summer kimono) over her sweater.

Kyoto pics

I went to Kyoto with the folks yesterday and returned this morning, Nicolle didn't come because it would be too much walking for a preggo lady. Here are some photos from the trip:

Kyoto

Kyoto: seguoy, ne!!

Too beautiful for words!

Konpira

We went to the Konpira shrine on Monday and were amazed. First while we were driving around looking for a parking space we found this massive tree. Many of the trees in Japan have these big braces to help hold up the huge branches. They had even made special places in the concrete to allow the roots to grow. Funny thing is that this massive tree was in a bus parking lot.
The walk up to the shrine is lined with little shops full of all kinds of cool things, some of them very japanese like this pilgrim hat on Colette, or the gold plaited turd keychains, while some of the things were not very japanese at all.
We saw lots of really cool japanese swords, the man in the picture was working on a sword so intently that he didn't even look up when we took the picture, which was amazing because we have never been so gawked at like we were at the shrine. It was kind of surprising since we thought that they must get a lot of tourists, but I don't mind, and neither does Colette usually.
This was a strange temple or something that we saw in the area surrounding the shrine, we didn't get any information about it at all but it seemed so different from the other shrines and temples that we have seen so far. This was after we had been walking around for several hours so we were pretty tired.


The city had a cool canal running through it with black carp swimming in it, and cool bridges crossing it every other block.

baby and karaoke

I was looking at this picture more closely and I realized that the baby looks just like Rob when he is sleeping. Another funny thing is that the doctor and the nurses were impressed by the baby's nose...a gaijin hana-foreigners nose-which is highly desirable here. Also when the doctor was trying to take this picture the baby kept sticking his tongue out. It is amazing how much care they take of us here. They did a complete "baby check" where she checked all of his organs, limbs, digits and anything else you can imagine that they can see on an ultrasound. It was amazing to see how developed the baby is already.
After the baby visit and a nap we went to karaoke with Justin and Sarah, William and Samantha and Kelsey. Rob brought his sax along just in case anyone wanted him to play along with them. It was lots of fun, and Rob enjoyed it alot.


We had the "blacklight room" so Colette at first was scared to go in but eventually she calmed down and enjoyed the show. Here she is sitting with Samantha. Colette knows that everyone is willing to play with her so she takes full advantage and loves it when there are other people around.






The videos that are the background for the words on the tv are hilarious. Sometimes the videos kind of tried to go along with the song and sometimes they were completely random. Justin and Sarah are singing their hearts out in this picture and Colette was mostly just watching the crazy videos. I don't know if she entirely grasped that we were singing the songs until the end and even then I am not sure she understood why. We decided that karaoke in japan is the only way to do it and we will take whoever comes to japan to visit to sing karaoke. It was great fun.