R/C Crop Dusting

This morning on the way to work, Heather and I were sitting in traffic when we spotted a guy in the field next to us spraying a patch of winter rice with a remote control helicopter. The Japanese make good use of their limited tillable land and will grow crops in every nook and cranny. This field is right inside the city limits and next to the road. We had enough time to see him take it off and start his first pass. Not sure if he was fertilizing or spraying insecticide, but he definitely had an interesting method.

Tokyo Giants Vs. Yokohama Baystars

Last night a group of us went to the local baseball stadium to see the Tokyo Giants Vs. Yokohama Baystars. It was the first time the Gaints had played in this area for 50 years. It was sellout crowd, and I the believe the Kiyohara stadium holds about 30,000. The Giants won 6-1, It was colder than all hell after the sun dropped, and believe it or not the only food/refreshments sold, were beer, coca cola, and donuts(what more does the typical Japanese baseball fan need?). Kind of odd when the game started at 6pm. Needless to say attrition took its toll on our 15 people group and by the 7th inning Heather, I and our neighbors were the last to bail. Sorry, as there are not so many good pictures as I mainly focused on staying warm and sipping my dinner.

Pete Dye VIP G.C. in Imaichi, 今市市

Today some we all skipped work for a day and headed out to play the Pete Dye course in Imaichi. The weather was perfect, the course was challenging to say the least, and of course we all shot stellar scores, relatively speaking.

http://www.pacificgolf.co.jp/petedye/index.asp

CoCo's

While the guys were out golfing today, the ladies and I took a trip to Ashikaga and out to the Coco's winery to have lunch and sip a little wine.

The Mashiko Pottery is complete

Saturday, Kindra and I returned to Mashiko to pick up the pottery we made a while back. Here are the results of all of my work. While it shrank about 50% I was happy with how it all turned out.

Hanami at Hachimanyama Koen 2008

OHanami at Hachimanyama Koen 2008. Just another mellow Sunday afternoon in Utsunomiya. My guess is your starting to understand OHanami at this point so we'll just post pics instead of babble about it. More pics in the Flickr folder.