Wednesday 29 April 2009

Golden Week

At this time of year in Japan we have a run of consecutive public holidays known as Golden Week. A lot of companies close down completely for a week or more. H 'only' has the actual public holidays off, which means today and next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. My offical working day is Thursday, so I will have classes tomorrow as usual and the only change in my schedule is that one of my private students has cancelled Monday's class. On the other hand H will be around, and other friends who are normally at work will be free too.

Today we kicked off the holidays with a barbeque lunch at home with friends. Previous barbeques with these friends always seemed to coincide with bad weather but this time the weather was great, even bordering on too hot (I know, I know, always complaining...). We even made use of the parasol Mum and Dad bought in 2001 and which we hadn't used since...

Some of the other things I want to get done or have planned for over the holidays:
  • meet up with some friends on Saturday who have a little monkey a little older than K.
  • a second attempt at the international family picnic on Sunday
  • make something for H's birthday
  • put together the armchair I bought for K's room and put up the new clock for the living room
  • have a play with my new rubber stamp making kit
  • finish my current monkey-related project :-)
  • and now for the big one... Sort Out The Garden

We moved into this house 2 years ago and had the front garden (actually kind of at the side of the house, but anyway) done soon after, in a traditional Japanese style:

However, get to the end of that garden and you are faced with this:

Which doesn't look any better from this angle either:

It's rather embarrassing to even refer to it as 'the back garden', since it is really just bare earth and a load of weeds. It's supposed to have a nice lawned area, some shrubs and a little vegetable patch.... My excuse for not having done anything to it yet is that, for most of the time we've been living here, I've either been pregnant or looking after a little baby. That one is beginning to wear thin now and anyway, I want the lawn for K to play on. So hopefully, by posting it all here, it'll push me to actually get on and do something about it...

Don't hold your breath though.

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