Luka and Leiya's first week in Japan

Already nearly a week has gone by since Leiya and Luka arrived in Japan.  In a nutshell, jetlag and sleeptime has been a major challenge.

Before Leiya and Luka even arrived, Leiya was sending us emails saying that she and Luka had arrived at the Indiana airport, then at Atlanta airport, then a few hours later that they had boarded their flight and were taking off.

She said the 14 hour flight was fairly easy as the plane had hardly any people on it at all so they had a whole row to themselves and there weren't that many people who could be bothered by any fussing Luka did.

In the meantime, Tetsu and I drove the three hours from our house to Haneda Airport and kept out eyes on the arrivals gate when we began expecting Leiya and Luka to come through...  And there they are!

But as I say, jet lag is hard enough to manage on one's own but trying to get a two year old to adjust takes a lot of strategy or else mom and child get on different sleep cycles and mom is the one who loses out! 

When everyone has been awake (and in a good mood) we have hit the toystore and the second hand store to get at least a FEW toys for Luka to play with while he is here (thankfully he really likes digging in Jiji's (grandpa's) garden.  And at the supermarket Leiya found lots of snacky foods that she has really missed and so now she is introducing them to Luka.

Each of our cats is adjusting at various degrees to having new people in the house.  Toi is terrified and runs from the room whenever Luka bounds in (and Luka does seem to like to jump up and down when he sees Toi.)  Cleo tries to ignore the added noise in the house.  We early on warned Luka that Chip would not tolerate petting or being chased and so in Luka's mind, Chip will forever be "the scary kitty".  As expected, Mi is her sweet self, curious about Luka and wanting to sit next to him and she gets kisses and hugs...  I can't say enough what a right decision it was to board John at the vets...  Luka is mostly tumbling around on the floor and occasionally throwing things and John would not have been able to stand the confusion.  Poor John!

Some friends with their own two year old grandson, recommended a park not too far from us where children can go on rides to their heart's content and we've already been there twice this past week.  The flowers are beautiful.

Everything is green and lush.

There is a bit of walking involved so I get parked at a picnic bench and watch over backpacks while the others go play.

Off to ride on a train!

Kiddy size train that is free for children under three and only fifty cents for accompanying adults.

A ride around with Jiji,

and mommy,

and Grandma Tani.

Everyone's having fun!

Riding the ferris wheel...

and a helicopter.

As you can imagine convincing Luka that it is time to go home can result in tantrums but we do get home and he quickly finds other things to amuse himself with.

One such object of interest was the string system we have with all our bedroom doors to keep the cats out of the rooms (the cats know how to open the doors).  A length of string is hooked around the door handle and then to a nail in the wall so that even if the door opens, the gap is not enough to allow a cat to enter (frustrated felines tend to pee and puke on things...  It seems to be done with purpose!)  Anyway, while Leiya and I were doing something in the sewing room, Luka took the opportunity to put the string over the nail, effectively locking us inside!  And then we couldn't get him to focus enough to take the string back off the nail!   In the end we had to telephone Tetsu to come upstairs to release us two captives.  I have since taught Luka how to take the string off the nail...

Anyway, lots of activity and lots of fun around our house these days!

 

Preparing for Leiya and Luka

Only two more days before Leiya and Luka touch down in Japan and we (well, Tetsu) is getting things ready for their arrival.  We've got a car seat lined up for Luka through the Nikko police department.  Tetsu has re-constructed Leiya's old bed which had been stacked up against a wall.  Things have been moved out of the bedroom they will use and have found a new temporary home in my sewing room.  Closets are being emptied and reorganized.

I'm not sure I'm doing much preparation...  I've spoken with our vet about taking John for the month though hopefully we will be able to visit him a few times while he is back in his old home (the vet had "retrained" him for a year before John came to us.  He needs some re-re-training plus he is going to put on a diet while he is back with them.)

Unfortunately Toi has had some medical problems and so I had to take him to the vet last night and he is under observation for a couple of days.  If all goes well and antibiotics kick in, when I drop John off at the vets tomorrow, I will be able to take Toi home with me.  All our animals are 15 or older and so one after the other they are needing extra care...

May 5th is Boy's Day here in Japan and in honor of Luka's visit, Tetsu had bought a small Koi kite at the dollar store to fly behind our house.  It was so tiny though that he thought he might go buy a few more and then I got the idea of making a Koi kite out of fabric...  I cut up some circles of fabric and heat-n-bonded them to part of an old sheet that I'd already used for backing in a previous quilt.  There is no batting in this and so the free-motion quilting on the raw edges slipped around a bit but in a few hours time I had a Boy's Day carp made.  

I sewed in some wire at the mouth edge and with some cord Tetsu got it rigged up on the pole with the dollar store kite.

With all that fabric, my hand-made Koi doesn't fly so well because of its weight but it is trying.

While cleaning out the closets Tetsu found his old college uniform and tried it on.  It still fits!!!

So military...  But I guess 50 years ago that was the way it was.  Standing at attention when a teacher or even an older student walked by.  Anyway, Tetsu was thrilled with his closet find but it has been packed away again...

I may not get around to any more painting while Leiya and Luka are here so I guess my monthly arty post will should be included here.   The school playground.

A neighborhood shrine on a hill...

I have a Japanese water-color book that I'm going through lesson by lesson.  I don't know where these places are but it would be nice to be able to do something like this with my own scenery...

Another lesson from the Japanese book.  

I like this quote and have put it in my bullet journal.  I have always claimed I can't draw or paint but I guess just picking up that pencil or pen or brush has proven me wrong.  

Leiya is getting ready to come to Japan in her own way.  She has packed away fabric and patterns that she has bought for me.  The orders of two new swimsuits for me have been delivered to her house as well as a new bullet journal.  For Tetsu she said she picked up snacks and edibles that he likes.  And she's been doing her final laundry and packing though Luka's help caused a bit of a panic.  It seems Luka added extra detergent to the laundry when Leiya wasn't looking.  Doesn't he look pleased with himself!

My next post will probably mostly feature Luka in Japan!  I can't wait!

A week in April

The cherry blossoms are making petal drifts in the street these days and for some reason the dandelions are taking over the empty lots and abandoned corners along the streets.  I spent yesterday putting away my winter clothes (it might be a little too early....  it  was cold this morning!) and Tetsu has plans to have his snow tires replaced with normal ones this week too.  

I saw M-san last week to finish up 6 of our On Williams Street blocks but I think we have decided we want to make three more each so that we will each have a total of 9.  Unfortunately that project has been put on hold because M-san is helping her father prepare for rice planting, and also because Leiya and Luka will be here soon and I need extra time to get things put away and cleaned up for their stay.  I think we have decided to move a single bed (that Tetsu uses) into the room that we use for storage for Leiya and Luka, and Tetsu will sleep on a futon on the floor of our bedroom.  That storage room needs some devoted dusting and scrubbing!  A lot of that excess is going to have to be moved into my sewing room...  thus my sewing with M-san is in a holding pattern...  Though I'm hoping to have M-san visit while Leiya is here as they have never met.  The above photo was one M-san took of Tetsu and me (and John) in our backyard.

I had a meeting to attend at the City Hall because I am one of the board members of the Traffic Safety Committee.  Would you believe I'm actually one of two vice presidents!  They were scraping the bottom of the barrel when they assigned me that title!!!  I can barely keep my place on the documents being reviewed let alone add much to the discussions...  We have a general meeting in May and the different yearly reports that have to be announced... budget, planning, changes in ruling etc were assigned to us committee members for making announcements.  I was gratefully only given the job of formally announcing the beginning and end of the general meeting.

"From now, we will hold the Nikko City Traffic Instructor Liaison Council General Meeting in 2023." 

Take my word for it, in Japanese this and a similar formal ending announcement are tongue twisters!   But really, there isn't much more that I'm useful for at these meetings...

Why the tea bottle painting above?  At the committee meeting we were given our choice of bottled drinks and I chose the peach tea just because I thought it looked pretty to draw!  

I really like artwork that is loose a bit a crazy and so I tried my hand at sketching and painting Marlene's house which had a slope covered with Pink Moss flowers.  I can't decide if I like this type of scribble when I do it though or if it is just that...  scribble...

I saw Mrs. N twice this week because she is gung-ho to be making more quilts.  Thank you Rosa for the suggestion of the Paws and Pins quilt because Mrs. N jumped at that one and it was easy enough for me to use the instructions on the Missouri Star website and convert the inches into centimeters for Mrs. N to follow.  She got those blocks made in no time and I helped her put on a border and choose a quilting pattern.  Mrs. N is overjoyed with her progress and is thinking maybe she'll make this quilt again as this one is destined as a gift to someone...

Even the vet is relieved to hear that we didn't have any problems with John last week...  John has one very sweet behavior of letting Mi go first when drinking milk.  John sits and waits with his body wiggling because it takes him so much will power not to get to milk first.  You can just hear him thinking.

"Hurry up...  Hurry up.  Don't drink it all.  Save some for me."

And Mi just takes her sweet time and ignores the tail thumping and sighing behind her.

I went to the doctor's yesterday to pick up my monthly medication supply and I was surprised to find that acrylic dividers that have been set up between the reception desk and the waiting room have been removed after three years of the pandemic.  We are also no longer required to wear masks everywhere (and though my doodle tells a different story, the nurses and I were still wearing masks in the clinic).  I've also been going to church again after three years of online worship.  Just wonderful!  Happy Easter!

And thus has gone this past week of April.

March ends

March got completely away from me and hopefully April will have better things in store...

High points...  low points...  Luka update... arty things, quilty things.

Of course going cherry blossom viewing with the Yamada's (previous post) was the highpoint.  And I did get together with a couple other friends during the month.

The low point was that John bit Tetsu again, this time drawing blood and the discussion that ensued of whether we can even keep John, sent me to bed for four days.  I think it was the stress and rheumatism symptoms combined, because though I wasn't in that much pain, I just could not stay awake nor do anything.  We had already made arrangements for John to be kept at the vets for the month that Luka and Leiya are visiting.  There is no way John would stand for a child grabbing things and moving suddenly.  But Tetsu was ready to give up on John completely as he just can't be trusted not to bite without warning though the two of us are careful especially when we have guests.  We consulted with our vet who is willing to take John back or even just give us a break from him occasionally...  But John has lived with for four years and so though we don't have any great hope of a personality change in him, he has his cute points too...  

This devilish dog that I've committed myself to.

John and Tetsu made up though I continue to worry about the next time...

For the art...  well, since joining Skillshare, I have access to innumerable classes in painting and drawing and whatever else I'm interested in and so I've followed different teachers with different styles and techniques..

I was inspired to paint a Japanese tea bottle!  The packaging is so pretty during the cherry blossom season!

I also got involved in a week long challenge of painting teacups, (Barbara Luel's Skillshare class) and I pulled teacups from my cupboard.

In one class, the challenge was to draw on location but as I hadn't been planning to go out, I could only take my sketchbook and paints and see what I could do with the back side of our house.

To make things more complicated I decided to sketch with a stick!

And the finished sketch.

While I draw and paint, Tetsu gets things done, like painting our garden table.

He's so pleased with himself!

On the quilty side of my life, I had this nice McKenna pattern of fish... that I honestly never thought I'd make (it was given to me) but actually I realized I know a newly married couple who LOVE fish and even sent their wedding invitations with fish on them and asked for donations to the Reef Environmental Education Foundation in lieu of wedding presents.  I hope they will be happy to have a fish quilt from me.  

And M-san and I have been working on blocks from the On Williams Street website and we are practicing our machine quilting with a new quilting pattern each month on the same pieced block.  We've finished three now.

Family updates...

Luka-kun out for a walk.

And enjoying a ride.

And celebrating Daddy's birthday.

I steal photos from Julieta's Instagram...

Leiya and Luka will be flying to Japan on April 18th.  She wants to make a quilt while she's here so she's been out buying fabric and pattern.  She THINKS that a month is going to be enough time to make a baby quilt for her friend...  but with Luka uprooted, do you think he's going to let her sit down and sew for any length of time?  I have a feeling she is donating the fabric, the pattern and the advice and I will do the major part but I love having a project to think about with her!!