Hi everybody! Work was incredibly busy this week, so I'm just getting around to posting last weekend's events. First, on Friday after dropping Reina off, Noa, Chi, and I played at the park next to Reina's school:



Then we ran around. Reina's school is in the background:



I spent much of last weekend fixing the light fixtures in the house. Reina was bored, so she played dress-up with Noa:



Then she read Noa some books. Here she reads him The Lorax:



We did manage to get out a bit. We went to Kakaako park. The park has some grassy hills where kids slide down on cardboard boxes. First we ate some lunch in our boxes:



Then we slid down the hill:



Here's a vid:

Lastly, the shrimp that Reina caught last week is pregnant.

What We Have Been Up To

Over the weekend, we went to the stream to get some fish for the tank. In Hawaii, people have dumped dozens of different species of freshwater fish into the streams, so there's lots to choose from, if you can catch them. Noa and I are ready to go (click for larger image):



Reina caught a bunch of freshwater shrimp.

Here's the tank. Chiharu caught a beautiful orange swordtail. We also got some guppies, some catfish, and some shrimp.

We also did some "camping" in the bedroom. Chiharu set up the tent so the kids could camp out over the long weekend.



Tonight, Reina got her homework done early, so we played a game of Upwords. It's similar to Scrabble, except the board is smaller and you can stack letters to make new words. She won, of course.

Reina's Commercial

Reina was in a commercial last year. It has finally come out. You can view it on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3XbWmz6sgI

I've also posted some stills from the commercial:

Happy New Year!

On 12/31 we went to Reuben and Mari's, friends who host a mochi party every new year. Mochi (pounded sticky rice cakes) is traditional New Years food in Japan, and Mari makes it fresh every new year. It's delicious.



After eating mochi, we did fireworks outside in the afternoon. On Hawaii, fireworks are the traditional way to celebrate the New Year, probably adopted from the Chinese custom of fireworks on New Years.





It was a full moon and this is what it looked like from our apartment rising over the mountains. We also did a bunch of fireworks at night to celebrate the new year. Our friends who live next door came over too.






The next day, we watched the sun rise and had traditional Japanese New Years food called osechi ryori. Our bento box here has rolled Japanese omelet, sweet black beans, white beans with konbu seaweed, tied bundles of konbu, white fish cake, carrot and radish vinegar salad, and special glazed chestnuts. We ate this with ozoni, a special New Years soup that has mochi in it. Chiharu's a great cook, so everything was fantastic!