What a difference a couple of months makes. When I left here at the beginning of March the trees and bushes were dry twigs and branches, the fields were brown dirt, and the mountains were white. Now the trees and bushes are green, and many of them bear brightly colored flowers. The little trees that line the road outside the house now are covered with white flowers. The house garden has blossomed with pick, white, and purple flowers. The air is flower scented but that isn't all. There are frogs calling all around the flooded rice fields. They sound a little like diesel engines idling nearby.

The brown fields that I last saw in March are now reflecting ponds. Many have been planted with rice so the reflections are stitched with little green shoots. Others wait for the tractors to wade through.

We went for a walk today. Considering that we only went around the block it is amazing that it took us over three hours. But there was so much to see. Up at the corner is a farm. I had walked by the bare shrubs in February looking through them at farm machinery and greenhouses. Now those shrubs form a green wall broken with the bright hues and lovely perfume of flowers. Wakana had talked to the farmer and wanted to visit him so I could see his operation. We went into his dooryard and found him in the machine shed. He happily took us around the little farm and showed us the greenhouses and machinery. He plants rice but also has a little nursery business doing some landscaping on the side.

The process is fascinating. The rice shoots are grown in trays in the plastic greenhouses. When they get to be about six inches tall the trays are set in the planter which then sets the little plants in the mud in neat rows. The floor of the greenhouses are carpeted with thick green mats. Mr. Masubuchi has nearly finished his planting, there are only trays covering half of the floor in one greenhouse. .He showed us the combine used for harvesting the rice. Unlike the huge machines that harvest wheat in the Midwestern United States this machine is about the size of a mini van. It cats four rows at a time, separating the heads from the stems, grinding up the stems and spewing them back into the field. The heads are taken to the farm where they are winnowed and packaged for sale to the big rice producers. He says he can get seventy to ninety kilograms from one small field.   I still need to work out the area of one of those fields.

We wandered on stopping at a convenience store for something to drink. Wakana bought something she called a "Jumbo". It turned out to be an ice cream sandwich except that the outer covering was made from the same material as is used in an ice cream cone. It had a waffle design making it easy to break into pieces for sharing. It was very tasty, totemo oishi!

We headed down towards the grade school. We were going to cross the grounds to get to the main road. There had been a baseball game and the teams of girls were playing while the adults picked up the equipment and loaded the cars. When the visiting team was ready to leave they lined up on one side of the field and, bowing to the other team, shouted some for of farewell. The other team had lined up to receive their farewell and they bowed shouting their own farewell. It was a very civilized way to end a game.

We were walking by a house made of dressed stone and greeted the owners where they were working in their garden. It was a little old couple, the woman bent nearly in half from osteoporosis. They invited us in to view their garden and we wandered around making polite noises and talking with them about the neighborhood. Wakana learned that a house we had admired earlier was owned by a family she knows. She and the old lady talked while I looked at the poor sad garden and tried to traumatize their granddaughter. The kid was in junior high school and refused to try out her English. The garden was in sad shape. There were bonsai trees that had split their pots and were growing too large to be considered bonsai. I counted three stone lanterns that had fallen over. There was a dry pond with a little stone bridge. And in the middle of the garden, buried in dirt up to its hubs, was an old blue van. The poor rusty thing had a stick holding its side door closed.

We wandered on. Down near the main drag I noticed a car lot but we couldn't figure out if the cars were for sale or rent. Coming around the corner we realized it was parking for a huge open house. There is a house shop down there. On a small patch of land, a former rice field, several house companies have built model homes. There are ten or twelve of them in there and they were having an open house. Wakana and I went in to look at the houses.

They are beautiful. They are modern and open and clean and full of wood – floors, doors, wainscoting, timbers, etc. There were wood stoves and modern kitchens. They tended to look very modern but the tatami rooms looked very traditional. One room had a charcoal fire pit complete with hanging iron kettle. The rooms were large as were the windows. Many rooms included glass doors that opened to let the outside in. There were some sliding glass doors but most opened like folding shutters. There were balconies and gardens too. Stairs were invariably wide and trimmed with wood. One house had lots of brushed aluminum and plexiglass but still boasted plenty of wood also.

We were escorted through every house we visited. The sales persons made a point of giving us gifts as well as brochures. We needed a wheelbarrow to get home. We got flowers mostly but also a plastic and metal clock. Wakana had to fill out a form at each place and, of course, she gave them her parents' address. I think my in-laws will be getting lots of phone calls and visitors in the near future.

By then we were hungry so we headed to Douton Bori to eat okinomyaki and yakisoba. It was nice to sit for a while. The waitress was the same kid we had talked to on our last visit. We ended up inviting her to visit us in Guam and that excited her. She is the kid who plays Okinawan folk music and jazz on the piano.

All in all we had a very nice day. It was great to walk the same routes I had used earlier but not to need a coat or hat. Actually I needed a hat. I think I got sunburned today.