Park

Since we don't have our own cute kids to post pictures of, we took a few of some random Japanese kids (we actually took a bunch, but are only posting a couple). The slide was a lot of fun. We didn't try out the white bouncy thing, but several Japanese adults did.

Sunflowers

We visited a park not far from us and found a huge sunflower field with several different colors of sunflowers. The picture with the large tree gives an idea of how big the field was. The pictures look a little darker on the slide show and I don't know how to remedy it. If you click a picture you can enlarge it. BTW, I do realize that the pink flower is not a sunflower! Erik made some great tasting honey...what a cute worker bee.

Money Bags

We forgot to post this picture earlier. This money came from the bank, not a monopoly game. To get our mansion we had to pay: one month's rent (200,000 yen), deposit (200,000 yen), key money (one-time fee that everyone pays when renting a place in Japan: 200, 000 yen), agent fee (200,000 yen), and fire insurance (10,ooo yen). I don't know why we look so happy to be paying this much money. Anyway, we heard that it is much worse in Korea. A friend told us that he had to carry a suitcase full of money, 3 years worth of rent paid up front, to get his place. What we had to carry was mere chump change in comparison...