Sorry for the long delay in updates. Been procrastinating as usual :P. Clara, Braden, and I have been keeping busy. Braden's duties at the Prefectural Office will be changing a little now that his supervisor has been changed, and while the new supervisor gets acclimated Braden will be taking on more duties at the office. Clara and I went to two Halloween parties, one at a parent/child support center called Yumoa and one at our Church. Both were very fun and we saw some pretty cute costumes. Clara was a princess :).
Today was Culture Day, a national holiday, and Braden and I decided to celebrate it by visiting the Tokugawa Gardens at the Tokugawa Art Museum. Since it was a holiday, the entrance fee for the garden (not the museum itself) was free (it's usually 300 yen) which was a nice surprise for us when we got there. We went with our good friend Asuka and her son Chihaya. Her husband couldn't go because he was at the Cosplay Summit in Nagoya (we actually didn't know that was today or we would have tried to go to that too!) The Tokugawa Garden is a beautiful little oasis in the middle of big city, as you can see here:
Clara loved it. She wanted to walk by herself all over the place, but there was a lot of water, little streams and a lake and such, so we had to carry her much of the time. (She always headed for the water when she saw it. She loves water!)
She was pretty wiggly during every picture, so there aren't any of her just smiling, silly girl.
Anyway, it was a very pretty walk through the garden. The maple trees are just starting to turn red, most were still green. The maple trees are turning red a little late this year because the autumn has been hotter than usual. I would like to go to the garden again when all the trees are red, but next time I'll have to pay the entrance fee :P.
The weather has gotten a lot colder recently and so Braden and I have started winterizing the apartment. A lot of cold air comes through our big windows, but a member of our church mentioned that Japanese people often buy plastic curtains to go behind their regular curtains, so I got some at the store this week, and it really does seem to help keep the cold out. Now all we need is a space heater near the bathroom. A kotatsu (a low table with a heater underneath and a blanket that goes over the top) would be nice too, if we can find an inexpensive one.
Japanese stores are a lot like American stores when it comes to Christmas decorations. That is, they put them up really early, like around Halloween. They don't have nearly as many as American stores, of course, but they have them all the same. Braden has to work on Christmas but we'll make it special still :).
