Spring

We have been busy with a group of college kids who have never even slept in a tent before! How can one get to be in their 20s but never have slept in a tent?!?!?! We will try to remedy that tonight. Young folks like this are "easy" customers because as long as they have their cell phone to stare at they are satisfied. They are also a lot of fun and ready for anything - today we ride a loooong way up a big hill - still, I am looking forward to a "more mature" couple vi sting from England tomorrow.

I have plenty (200 or so) photos from the university kids, but for now here are two that I took three days ago when the Japan Agriculture Newspaper called to say "Hey, what's up? You missed the deadline" for my monthly photo feature. I doubt that this is what they has in mind, but for me this depicts "life in a farming village". Last year at this time there was 20-40cm of snow on the ground. This year the old ladies are already weeding.

As I was out looking for something to photograph, I accidental received two more fields that we now have to plant. The owner of the fields thought that there was not enough dirt in one of them so he asked another neighbor to fill it up. I wasn't even sure that we would be using the field, so I later went back to the neighbor and told him not to bother with adding dirt, but apparently he didn't understand me because a few hours later there was a pile of fresh dirt in the middle of the field.

The other field we received is right next to a road so we plan to just plant a few flowers or something that is nice to look at as people drive by. We already have too many vegetable fields, and not enough people to eat everything we grow.