Here we all are! What a special day we had today!

Another great picture!

I love this picture!!! This is Sasaki sensei's husband and Conner. How sweet!

Beside the gyoza is another form of sushi, chirashi sushi. It's rice with egg and sashimi (raw fish) with Japanese basil, seaweed, tomatoes and sesame seeds. This one had my favorite, octopus, on it! Conner liked it, too!

Mmmm.....gyoza!

Here's Conner eating the sushi! He loves seaweed!!

Here I am making my first sushi roll!

Like I said before, today we went to Sasaki sensei's house. She taught us how to make sushi! It's a lot harder than it looks! We really enjoyed spending the afternoon with Sasaki sensei and her husband. They are such wonderful people! We are really going to miss seeing Sasaki sensei on Tuesdays and Thursdays! We have learned so much Japanese this past year! Sasaki sensei is so nice and friendly and caring. She went above and beyond her job of teaching us the Japanese language by teaching us cultural things as well. She also took me to the grocery store to help me, and she taught me how to make somen noodles, miso soup, gyoza, matcha tea and sushi! Conner also loved her! He always waved and blew kisses to her as she was leaving!

Friends!

Hello! Wow! Only a few more days and we will be back in America! I cannot believe how fast this year has gone! This Friday Aaron had his good-bye party for work. Saturday we went to Emi and Greg's for a party. We had a lot of fun and a lot of good food! Today we went and spent the day with Sasaki sensei and her husband. Hope that you enjoy the pictures!

Well, I have posted so many pictures and I hope that you enjoy them! We are so busy for the last couple of weeks here, so I will try to post as much as possible before we get home! It's so hard to believe that we have already been here for 1 year and are just a couple weeks away from coming back home! It's lunch time here so I have to go for now! Have a wonderful day!

Here's all of us! We had such a great time!

After our walk, we went inside and enjoyed the New York Style cheesecake with blueberry topping that Aaron made! It was SO good!

Green tea field.

Aaron and Conner with the cherry blossoms behind them.

After we ate lunch, we went for a walk. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom and they are gorgeous!

He's a climber!

This weekend we were invited to a BBQ. We had a lot of fun and Conner had a blast playing with a dog, cat, chicken and other kids! Oh, and the food was delicious, too!!! We love Japanese BBQ!

This is Conner at the bus stop in Hamamatsu. We had to take 2 shinkansen and a bus just to get home from Tochigi! It was very much worth it and we had a great time with our friends!

Another shinkansen.

Conner and I waiting for our shinkansen to Tokyo!
(There is one behind us.)

This is the place that is famous for the hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkeys! We didn't see any real monkeys, though.

This is Michiko, Conner, Aaron and Tomo.

Since we were in Tochigi, we decided to go to Nikko park. Unfortunately, it rained. We still had a fun time, though!

This is Conner and Yuki! He LOVED her! This is when they were watching a movie and eating popcorn!

Not last weekend, but the weekend before we went to Tochigi and stayed with our friends, Tomo and Michiko! We had so much fun! One night we had a takoyaki and yakisoba party. Takoyaki is what Tomo is making. It is a cooked dough ball with a piece of tako (octopus) inside...it was very good!!! Yakisoba is fried noodles with pork and veggies. They also invited their friends, Masa and Yuki and we had so much fun together!

Aaron took this picture of Mt. Fuji from the shinkansen.

These are the Olympic ski jumps....Aaron did NOT go down these!! (and if he did, I do not want to know!!)

They had to take 4 lifts to get up to the top of the mountain!!!

Hey! Well...Aaron never updated the blog with his pictures from snowboarding in Nagano, so I am!! He had a wonderful time and I'm just glad that he didn't get hurt! Here is the group of guys that he went with on top of the mountain!