resolutions and roadtrips

japarkansas signing in.

school started and life has flown by.  we, matsubabies, have been busy, busy spending extra time helping students prepare for the speech contests and helping our schools in anyway we can in preparing for the cultural festival. in our free time we have been road-tripping, baking and festival hoping.  our very own, japaussie, was in the infamous kumamoto city's drunken horse festival and japokland was a dancer in a festival in a town she teaches. however, i am still waiting for my festival debut.  we all were able to visit the beautiful bamboo lantern festival on the castle grounds.

festivals are always welcomed. the food, the culture, the company, the laughs are all highlights of life in japan. another great part of living here, is our opportunity to explore. everything around us is new and unfamiliar. we spent september on the road. well, not the entire month on the road, just the weekends. we trekked to one of the worlds most active volcanoes, sakurajima, in kagoshima. the same weekend we took hot volcanic sand baths and onsen'ed at a sacred dragon shrine, located under a camphor tree over looking the ocean. we ate black pork we white-water rafted in hitayoshi. we karaoked the night away. we ventured to aoshima to see the devils washboard and the local shrine. we drank mango beer and ate mango ice cream. we had a photo shot with the mayor of miyazaki.  we ate chicken namba and got free citrus drinks.  we spent hours in the car laughing. we took hundreds of pictures on over five cameras. we were able to really enjoy kyushu.

this week has been big for me. with shannon's help, i was able to accomplish one of my 2010 new years resolutions- to bake in a rice cooker. last sunday, it started with cake. four hours of cooking and still gooey, but oh so delicious! then tuesday evening, the brownies began to bake...three days later, in the rice cooker, they were still baking. thursday evening the baking stopped. they are now gooey centered goodness. yum. and now, the latest batch. this evening i put the blueberry muffin mix into the cooker...ONE cycle and it was finished! i drowned it in butter, and mmm another rice cooker bake success! another resolution checked off and a new shumi established!