Girl's day

March 3rd is "Hina Matsuri". It is a day to celebrate the girls in your family. Dolls are displayed and special sweets and foods are eaten. We celebrated with Kie's grandparents. Kie especially enjoyed putting out her dolls and we all had a nice dinner together. We departed a bit from the traditional food and had chicken w/egg rice bowls which Kei helped make. Although we did have the traditional clam soup and sweets!

It was good to celebrate our daughter!

What happened to February?

How could I miss a whole month?? The signs of Spring have been all around in Japan and I have been thinking how unusually warm it is and how the frogs are here already and that the Cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in places.... In February this was unusual but the months have now caught up with the seasons.

The first sign of Spring at our house is the annual migration of the frogs. (I am sure there is an anthem that announces this somewhere.) First we hear the frogs from all sides of our house. They bark like small dogs. Then we start to see them at the door and along the path to the gate and next thing you know they are in the pond. The bottom of the pond is currently covered with frog eggs. The fish just seem to put up with it. The big difference between the fish and the frogs are that the frogs are afraid of us and the fish aren't. (This explains the absence of frogs in the picture.) Sometimes, I am afraid of stepping on the frogs but otherwise they are kind of cool.