Hello all!  I just wanted to drop a brief line and let you know about my Mother`s Day weekend!  I had a great time.  On Saturday, we got up fairly early and packed a little picnic and headed out to Lake Ginzan, in Ikuno, where there is a place to rent boats by the hour.  We got ourselves a little boat and then made our way out onto the lake.  The weather was perfect.  The lake was dark green in color, and clear enough to reflect the crystal blue of the sky.  The temp was a whopping 65 degrees.  Not hot enough to break a sweat, breezy enough to keep you cool, with need only for sunscreen and a hat to keep from becoming a lobster.  Yes, Mom?I put plenty of sunscreen on Jessica.

We picnicked beside the banks, underneath some blooming trees (mmmmm) and we tied our little boat off to the island in the middle of the lake and climbed the steps to the shrine on the island.  Pretty neat stop.  Then, after a couple of hours paddling around, where Jessica got a chance to show us her strength in rowing, we headed off in the car toward the Ikuno highland area.  The mountains in this area are absolutely beautiful!  We have plans to return and hike around when we have the whole weekend to do it.  Since we did not have any further plans for the afternoon, we just kept driving until we reached the second highlands nearby, with a quaint little village there next to a hydroelectric plant.  Since Jessica will be studying hydroelectricity in her homeschooling next week, we decided that it would make a great stop.  I have MeeMaw to thank for this kind of exploring.  She and PowPow just drove, and we would stop when we saw something interesting.  That is the way I like to do it now.  We find the neatest places this way!  The place we stopped is called �gEl Village�h, in English.  And �gEl�h stands for Electricity.  There were large sections of pipe on display so that you can see the size of the pipe, and a chart nearby with graphs to show the location of them inside the dam structure.  The dam and the power generators are all there in the background, and this is what you see while you look at models of the turbines and waterwheels there in front of you.  I especially liked that she could put her hands on the parts that the water touches and see how the shapes help to make them effective in turning when water spills on them.  I think it was a good stop.  Inside the visitors` center, there is an area where they discuss electricity and what it is used for, etc.  The monologue is all in Japanese, and it is intended for much younger children, but the display was amazing.  First, you sat on little benches and the lights went down, and then lights came up on little villages all set up over your head.  They are all mounted upside down, but when you look up, it almost gives you the impression of looking down on the top of them from the sky.  Lights come up, the festivals start moving, and people fly around in airplanes, hot air balloons, and ride on bicycles in the sky.  Little cars and trains were all moving around, and for a few minutes I was completely overstimulated.  Jessica felt the same way, but still we sat spellbound for the show, watching everything moving at once.  It was pretty neat.  Very elaborate and a little weird, but still pretty neat.  After the show, we headed out back, where there is a greenhouse and some fairly elaborate gardens, which I am certain are there since gardening has so much to do with generating hydroelectric power.  Hee hee?Actually I am still wondering why it was there, but it certainly was beautiful.  We saw some blooming plants that I have never seen before.  One was especially intriguing.  I absolutely cannot describe adequately what the blooms look like, but imagine something fantastical, right out of the movie �gToys�h perhaps�cthe blooms are about the size of ping pong balls.  They are flat on the bottom and fan out like daisies.  The petals are much thinner, though, and are tipped in a bright blue color.  The centers all rise out of this bloom in a weird symmetrical way, and kind of look like miniature carousels with three separate levels.  I have never seen them before.  You will just have to see the pictures.  We made our way back to Wadayama and cooked a little dinner and watched a little TV. 
Sunday morning, I was awakened by breakfast in bed.  It literally almost WAS breakfast in bed because Jessica nearly dumped a bowl of cereal on me for Mother`s Day.  She made breakfast for me (her own idea) and it was such a sweet gesture.  She made a bowl of my favorite granola for me.  I usually have granola and yogurt, with strawberries if we have them.  She tried.  There was most of a bowl of granola in there, with not nearly enough yogurt to keep it moist.  So I crunched on near-dry granola.  It was the best bowl of cereal I have ever had.  She was so sweet about it, too.  After breatfast, I went to put away my bowl, and there on the sink were two potted plants full of blooms for me.  There was a hydrangea in brilliant gold with pink tips, and the other was that weird carousel-looking flowering plant.  Fantastic.  They got them at the greenhouse yesterday!  Those two are pretty sneaky sometimes.  Anybody know anything about this second plant?  I have to find out how to take care of it.  One of the adults in my English Club on Thursday night, Mr. Azumi (whose mother is the tea master I told you about a few letters ago) has a flower shop in Tooyoka, and perhaps he can tell me how to care for it, and will tell me the name of it also, I am sure.  I will keep you posted on this important news!  Ha ha!
We left sort of early, and headed out toward the north?our first stop was at Chorakuji Temple in Muraoka.  When Robbie was here, we saw it, but I wanted to bring Ken back to explore it more in depth.  We had a great time.  The large golden buddha statues really take you by surprise when you first enter the hall.  We climbed to the top of the pagoda and had a look at the mountains and the valley in front of us, and then explored the great hall with the hundreds of statues on display.  We had fun.  Afterward, we went out to the farmer`s market where they have great veggies at great prices, and picked up some stuff we like.  Then, we went on to Onsen-cho, the famous spa town nearby.  It was nice because it was not too terribly crowded.  We got some eggs and corn-on-the-cob, and immersed them into the boiling springs to let them cook, and then we went down to the riverbank and soaked our feet in the spring waters that come from the mountain there, nice and HOT!  We ate our lunch there by the river, watching the carp and the ducks swim around in front of us.  We also got to watch a crane fish there in the river, and we were about 25 feet or so from him.  It was interesting to see him catch a fish for his lunch and swallow it whole, and be close enough to see his throat jumping wildly with the motions of the fish.  Usually you only get to see stuff like that on the Discovery Channel!  It was pretty neat!  We left Onsen, and made our way back south again, stopping to investigate a sign that said �gSaruo Waterfall.�h  The arrow pointed us to the east a little more than a km., and ended at a small walkway.  We walked up, and were greeted by a wonderful natural display!  The forest there is thick, and very, very green, and the waterfall is about thirty feet at the bottom where it splashes into the pool.  It was not as pretty as Tendaki Waterfall, but it was still very VERY pretty.  We could see that it was much higher than that, though, so we hiked a little way up to the top of the ridge, and there the trees no longer obscured the seventy feet or more of waterfall that literally crashed into a pool in front of us.  It was amazing.  You don`t have this kind of experience every day.  I stood there and closed my eyes, and listened to the water thundering into the rocks where I stood.  I felt the vibrations of the ground.  The sound and the motion of the water PHYSICALLY moves your body here?you can feel the beating in your chest and in your knees.  We FELT the power of the river here at this place, and I thought about how really powerful moving water is?just look at the Grand Canyon!  The spray from the waterfall was refreshing also?and pretty much soaked us but it was well worth it!
So excited were we to find this new beauty-spot near us, that we immediately took off to the West and into the mountains again to check out the Outdoor Education Center.  We had heard that this was the place to go to find out about hiking trails and camping facilities in the northern part of the prefecture.  We found the building, and upon entering, we thought we were in the wrong place.  Then a man came up to us and started talking to us IN VERY GOOD ENGLISH about the facilities and such in the area.  We were grateful to him also for giving us maps of the area and showing us how to reach some pretty spots!  We plan to do some camping on the weekends fairly soon!  Next weekend is an English camp, and the three of us will help another JET with an English crash course for 12 students who will soon do homestays in Oregon.  The next weekend is a training weekend in Kobe, where we will be for five days.  It will be a fun time.  Then we are into the month of June.  Can you believe it?  The first year is drawing to a close really quickly.  Wow, do we have a lot to do!!!
We went home after that, and did the rotation of clothes thing?put away the sweaters and get out the shorts?and there is just something really magical about the coming of warm weather.  You know?like the day that you walk out on the front porch in your bare feet and the breeze blows over your toes while the sun shines on them at the same time.  That feeling of �gmmmmm?I like this weather---�g just kind of seeps into your brain.  I watched the breeze playing with the azalea bushes next to the river, and then it was time to go to dinner.  Ken and Jessica treated me to Mother`s Day dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in the pass, where they have this great little yakitori dish of beef in a wonderful sauce, complete with some soup and veggies, and of course, rice. 
Well, I had intended for this just to be a quick note, but somehow it turned into another one of my novels.  Sorry about that?I hope that everything is going well for you and please let me know what the heck is going on with all of you!  Love and etc., from all of us here to all of you--Lynley