Monday, monday... It's Monday again.

I had a fun weekend: Saturday morning the ground was still soggy enough (from 2 days of rain) that I pulled a ton of weeds in my yard. I'm getting ready to plant tulips... as soon as I can choose colors and places. Maybe I'll wait until it rains again, because it was so much easier working with the ground soft! My yard is still a jungle, but it helps to have a few things that are supposed to be there so that it doesn't look completely neglected. My tomatos are actually still growing and I have loads of carrots waiting to be harvested. My one canteloupe officially has a big bug hole, so I guess maybe I'll skip the fruit next year (hypothetical next year, that is...). The eggplants never really did their thing, either. Lots of flowers are still blooming, though... just takes some searching through the grass and weeds to see them!

On Saturday afternoon, Jaclyn and I packed up the car and headed for the JET camping party. It was a really nice camp site on top of some hills edging Matsumoto. It was too bad it was cloudy, but even with the clouds the view was incredible: we could see the entire city of Matsumoto, plus all of Misato, Horigane, and Toyoshina out to the mountains on the other side of town. It was a relatively fun, diverse group of about 25 of us. Jaclyn and I shared a tent and Keisha, Danielle and Angie snagged the site across from us. We hung out most of the night and got to know a few of the newest JETs better (and determined that there is a pretty pathetic selection of guys this year... poor Danielle!). Before we were too tipsy from the beer we all returned to our tents and collapsed. It was just the right temperature- I slept really well... until Danielle unzipped our tent and barged in at 7am!!! She swears we were awake.. but that's a silly thing to say after you've already broken into someone's tent out in the woods... of course we were awake at that point! Anyway, it was a good time.

After hitting Royal Host for breakfast after we rolled back down off the hill, we each went our separate ways. I decided to take advantage of the be-au-tiful weather to take some rice harvest photos. This weekend the harvest was in full swing... I think it looks really, really cool. Many of the fields around here are really small, so the farmers choose to let the rice hang to dry in the fields- which requires them to harvest it by hand. The beams of wood with the rice hanging from them, in the stepped rice fields... ahhh... its a picture that will always remind me of Nagano.

And, speaking of Nagano- its almost apple time again! We are signing up for the Apple Marathon again: Jaclyn will run the 5k, Danielle and I will run the 10k, and Tom will suck it up and do the half again. I wish I were in better shape... but at least this gives me a reason to start being more consistent. I need my box of apples!!