デイちゃんと英会話 David's English school

I am excited to announce that David started teaching English! His first lesson is happening right now while I am writing this blog and Yuna is taking a nap. We did a lot of cleaning, discussing, and more cleaning to make this happen. Big thanks to my dad and mom as well as other family members!

So, welcome to the conversation class with David!

Entrance.

Entrance #2 where you take your shoes off.



Hallway.

Since he is teaching now, I am not going to bother him...

施設や家庭でできるレクセラピー講座

鵜飼 Ukai

I had been longing to watch Ukai for the past few years (you can watch the video from 6:45. It shows how they use the bird, U, for fishing). Just as I imagined, it brought us sensational yet stunning scenes. After watching the video clip, you think Ukai are gross but it was beautiful.



Since I reserved the seats under "Tueller,"they put us on a special foreigner boat with horigotatsu. (They dig into the floor to create chair-like seats so people can still "sit" when they use a Japanese style little table rather than folding their legs.)

Special thanks to my brother, Takuma, and my cousin, Hiromi, and her husband for accompanying us that night.





They are so fun to hang out with and I love them. She has been my great big sister.

Ukai started in the year 702 A.D. It is now a protected occupation by the Japanese emperor. It is only inherited through certain family lines so there were only two family names for U fishermen in Gifu prefecture. So I could not be a U fisherman even if I wanted to. A lot of things were kept in the traditional way, like......
How they move the boat.


Our boat looked like this.

A dancers' boat before the Ukai show.

The signal of the Ukai start was fire works. When the fireworks were shot high in the sky all the hotels along the river side turn off their lights so the flame that the fishermen use became more efficient to scare the fish.



The fishermen continuously move the strings so that the u won't get tangled to each other.













Thanks for the wonderful trip, everyone! 

Is our baby still a baby?

Our little Yuna has been growing so fast.



This is her coming back from English conversation class at church last night. She insisted that she would carry her own purse.

Her face also got less baby like compare to three months ago.



At Emily & Luke's reception. 

Sightseeing in Nagoya.

I am from Nagoya, well, actually from Kasugai city next to Nagoya city. Poor David. Since I lived there and never thought of "going sightseeing" where I lived, he never was introduced Nagoya's culture and history. I have to admit though, there are so MANY places that I have not been and would enjoy seeing. I am so grateful for our Bishop Ishikawa, our local church leader, asking if we would like to visit a weaving museum for his boy scout assignment.  On the train up to Nagoya, the Bishop found out that David has not visited anywhere for sightseeing in Nagoya city. So he changed the plan and we bought a day pass for city bus and subway. This is a quick summary of the Bishop's Nagoya tour for the Tuellers.

It was a beautiful day. We started at the Twin towers in Nagoya station. This is a view from the 15th floor but both buildings have 30 floors and up. They were the highest buildings in Nagoya city but ironically, a few years later, Toyota built their office building in front of those buildings, just a few meters higher than the towers.

From the towers, we took a bus to Toyota industry and technology museum, in other words, weaving museum. This exact place and the facility was where the founder of Toyota started his business. He started out as weaving factory and his son expanded the company and started making cars.

It was fascinating to see their creativity. I liked Yarn-spinning demonstration, David liked the display of the different parts of the cars and how they developed over the years, and Yuna liked this.



The bigger version of the yarn spinner. Recently, she likes anything that spins. She says "kuru kuru, kuru kuru," which is an onamonapia for the spinning sound in Japanese.




I learned that Toyota was called "Toyoda" before. (see the logo above)

After the museum, we took a bus and went to a restaurant in 名古屋能楽堂 Nagoya Nougakudou, by Nagoya castle. Can you see the symbol of the castle as a slice of kamaboko, the mashed fish cake? (I know it sounds disgusting, but tastes good. David and missionaries think it tastes nothing though.)

Sashimi on sushi rice.

Noh is a Japanese traditional play using these masks. We did not see the play but visited the museum and saw bunch of these masks.

In front of shyachihoko, the symbol of the castle. People believed that the golden killer-whale will bring water and protect from fire.

Luckily, David didn't have to wear fundoshi to help build the castle.






Our Yuna baby could not take it all.....



We said farewell to the Bishop and headed to David's favorite place, Osukannon.



Another computer project has kicked off. 

A video for mastering the slide

Enjoy! 

Mastering slide.

She put on a hat, including the strap, and was ready to go to a park yesterday morning.

Stairs and slides are her favorite things. Thus, this kept her going for about 30 minutes. This is her learning how to use the hand railing.

Wasn't she brave to go to a slide that was bigger than her daddy?! These little things make us proud parents. Thank you, Yuna!

Not only does she make us proud but she also makes us smile with her unique sense of humor. Any little step she finds becomes her sitting place. That comes from her Asian genes as I recall myself, sitting on a side walk step for a couple hours until my friend's grandma offered us Sushi.