Saturday's Adventures

Before we actually start on Saturday, we should finish up with Friday. Joisan and Phaedra were invited to a ballet of Don Quixote in Date City last night. It was quite a big deal 'round these parts as it was to celebrate 30 years of business for the woman who owns many of the ballet schools in this area. She brought a few male dancers in from Russia to support her own cast and with one exception (Phaedra was not impressed with one of the principal ballerinas) everyone was quite wonderful. The theatre was huge and totally full. When Masako stopped to pick Phaedra and Joisan up they felt a little over-dressed since they had worn their Sunday best but once they got there though they felt much better and not too over-dressed at all (except in the sense that they had clothes on at all as the theatre was rediculously over-heated as with all public buildings we have found). Masako brought her 4 year old daughter Chena and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves - although Joisan and Phaedra were both fading by the time the third act began. Masako speaks fantastic English and seems very nice and lots of fun but unfortunately she and her family are moving to Fairbanks, Alaska so we will miss the opportunity to get to know them better. Bed was the order of the day when they got home around 10pm so no blogging last night.
Today dawned beautiful and sunny. We had arranged with Phaedra's boss Kabara-san (?) to get some bicycles this morning and he brought his 7 year old grandson to help get us organized. We ended up with one tandem and two regular bikes and set off for an explore. The bike trail is lovely and wide and paved. It goes almost from our doorstep for at least 7km. It goes past the Chugakko (Jr. High School) and past the elementary school too! On fair weather days without snow it will be a very pleasant ride to school and in winter it will be a great cross country ski trail! Unfortunately, today was not as fair-weather as we thought and we were caught in an absolute downpour!! Thankfully it was a lovely, warm rain so we were not totally miserable. It was a wonderful family time and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. In total we rode about 8 or 9 km. The kids have expressed an interest in riding their bikes to school when the time comes. We'll see!
Once we were all home and dry, we had a bit of a lay-around. Ian is not feeling 100% - he thinks he's getting a cold. Hopefully he'll keep it to himself! We played on the computer and managed to have a visit with some fellow Skype-ers.
We've been having some power struggles with access to the internet due to the fact that there is only one connection spot for the LAN line. As a result Ian and Phaedra decided to make a computer store one of their stops for their shopping trip to Date this afternoon. Joisan and Taran opted to stay home and Ian and Phaedra adventured out to see if they could find their own way to the city. It didn't go too badly - we did eventually get where we wanted to go, however we did get there via the long route. We were impressed and proud of ourselves that not only did we get where we wanted to and get home again, but we also managed to indentify and purchase a wireless router that will hopefully (when we've had some help to read the Japanese instructions and hook it up) resolve many of the issues that have arisen thus far.
The other part of the shopping trip was an attempt to fill the larder so we spent far too long in a grocery store trying to pick nutritious and delectable food for the coming days. Unfortunately, once we got to the till we found that they did not take VISA and we had limited cash so we had to put back several items that cost us painful time in the grocery store. We have noticed that the Japanese people seem not to be bothered at all by things that we find increadibly annoying... there were multiple noise making devices (ghetto blasters) throughout the grocery store that were playing an increadibly annoying loop that got totally excited by whatever it was trying to draw your attention to and no one else seemed to even notice. We could not get out of there fast enough! We did manage to get some different kinds of fish and once Ian did the translation we discovered that we were having flounder for dinner tonight - yummy!
We got back home and put the rice on to cook and while Ian tried to deal with cleaning and prepping the flounder (he didn't realize they were whole when we bought them) Phaedra attempted to get the wireless router working. She did her best but found herself stuck so she was very grateful when Hiro showed up and offered some help. Unfortunately Hiro was confounded too so she called a friend who will be able to help set it up tomorrow evening. So, another day with only one connection. Hiro also brought us more corn - it is most delicious. She will be picking us up tomorrow morning to take us with her to Toyoka where there is a dance festival she will be dancing in. We are looking forward to seeing that! There is also a small welcome party for us tomorrow evening and we are looking forward to that too. For now, we are heading to bed - though it is only 8pm. Everyone is still tired and we want to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for Hiro at 9. Good night all!