Today was very rainy- and I'm completely ok with it because it means one less day of hauling Jaclyn's hose across the front of our house and back to my garden. Hopefully my plants all got a deep drink today and will be sprouting up pronto! Last night I could barely get to sleep because of the strong winds whipping through our corner of the valley. It seems that when the seasons change around here we get about a week and a half of intense wind. The same thing happened last fall when we were moving into more wintery weather. I remember it clearly since it was always coming from the direction to which I was biking to get home after school. The wind was so strong that my bike and I would literally stop moving between each half cycle of my feet on the pedals. This time around, I can mostly just laugh into the wind, but it is still keeping me up at night. Unfortunately there are apparently still others that are trying to bike into it. During my morning teachers' meeting, a homeroom teacher announced that one of his students (a great kid with a Beatles obsession) was biking on our day off yesterday when he and his bike were knocked over by the wind. He broke both bones in his lower leg and had to have surgery with an 8 month recovery time (so through the mugginess of Japanese summer and an entire season of basketball for him). The poor kid!

Ok, so the tulips were not at all what I'd been imagining. The event was kind of a Japanese take on the Rose Parade. They'd decorated the boulevard leading up to Zenkoji Temple in Nagano City with tulip petals, rocks, evergreen fronds, and pepples arranged in a gigantic Italian mosaic design. It was impressive. A bit strange, but neat. I wish I could share pictures because it is pretty difficult to describe. Just imagine the Rose Parade squished down to one dimension and paste that image onto a street. Add about 10,000 people and a surprisingly hot sun. A once a year event that I don't think I will feel obligated to repeat next year. ;)

The area rice fields are filling up with water. It really seems strange since they're so close to the edge of the street. I get this eery feeling that I'm driving through a flood zone on the way to school. The other evening, as I was driving to my Shodo class, I glimpsed a perfect image of the Alps in front of a lingering sunset reflected upside down in the rice fields. It almost felt like I was driving across the sky instead of the water. It took my breath away but I recovered quickly enough to avoid ruining the image by driving into it! Ah the hazards of spring!