New Years Pictures

The updates have been scarce lately because some stuff came up - good stuff. On Monday, instead of a quiet day, we had a jam packed day with a surprise lunch invite that turned into an afternoon. The Mogami's are a very nice family in Shikaoi by Sasagawa which are very involved in the Stony Plain/Shikaoi exchange program. The highlight of the afternoon was a game of Karuta, a traditional Japanese game involving listening to a poem and carefully and quickly finding the matching tile. It was Sean and I versus two of the Mogami's grandchildren, both in grade two. I was in distress at first because the style of kanji on the tiles was very old and I could barely read it. But it soon became clear that they had trouble reading the characters too. Sean was pretty much total dead weight on our team. The game was intense and despite not being as uneven as I expected, I still lost to two grandchildren. From there a feast at the Usui's New Years day and a trip to an onsen yesterday with the Sakaguchi family which we all came away from relaxed and rested.