Japan Family

Man Eric is getting big. He lost his 2 bottom teeth about a month ago and his top 2 in the last 2 weeks. Sorry I am so slow with the pics I am working on a remedy for this. Here is my not so little 6 year old all 122 centimeters {= 4 feet} with out any teeth. He is skinny like me when he was I a kid and just as wild. I am a little worried about him just cause he just can't sit still unless he is watching Shawn the Sheep. We play soccer as much as we can when I get home but sometimes it does not turn out so good. Here is a shot of him getting ready to play. Sorry I have not posted so much about him or anything else but I am planning to make up for it allot in the very near future. E./

Every year, the rice has to get planted and harvested. The planting is time consuming but not so difficult. The harvesting is a lot less fun cause it is straight hardcore manual labor. This year was no different. I didn't have time to help with the planting and last year I did not help with the harvest. So this year I felt obligated to help out after everything that my father in law has done for me since I moved here. We got a late start and did not get moving on picking the rice till almost 9. By that time I was rearing to go and thinking about the fact that I had to be on the train heading back to Tokyo with Eric by 17:55. My father in law, he drives his rice cutting combine tractor, like he paid $10,000.00 for it. Slowly and carefully. That is why at about 1030 AM I was relived to see my brother in law Koji had shown up. He is my size and while he is not much for heavy lifting he does drive the tractor a little faster, like he stole it in comparison. With him behind the wheel things started to move along allot faster and by 2 pm we had finished the 2 large fields and were heading over to work on the third and forth.