Hello everyone,


Let me start off with a huge thank you to everyone following and watching us. This is so exciting for us and we are so happy everyone is enjoying it. Please don`t be shy if you want more videos or written posts instead please let us know.


Yesterday was a big day for us, we started at 430am and didn`t stop till 830pm. We had a blast, it started out with us driving the low roads through the countryside (instead of toll highways) this took us 4hours. We took great video and pictures of this drive, you will get a sneak peek of these today.  Upon arrival we were told that we had forgotten to give a gift to one of our neighbors. The village we are in is still very traditional, it has a chief (selecting a new one yearly) and a tradition of new comers bringing gifts to neighbors. This is called Aisatsu. Aisatsu is a greeting, and greet is what we did. I was very nervous in the beginning since I have very little Japanese but every person we met was very warm and welcoming. All smiling faces and excited to see what we had to say.

                                 
In the picture I am holding one of the gifts, they are Japanese crackers with our names written on the wrapper. We handed 25 out in total. We couldn`t have done this without Tao's mama Sanae. Sanae took time out of her very busy schedule to have these gifts made up for us, Thank you Sanae.


Our plan yesterday was just to get the upstairs room ready for us to stay in during renovations. We prepared that room as well as ripped up the downstairs flooring and even took out doors, window, and a mud wall.

We swept out the whole room, walls every crack and cranny (remember bug free zone only). Tao put the plastic down to block dust and dirt from coming through.

This is our extra protection, an insect prevention tent. I love nature and all of its gifts (when outside of where I sleep) but the 8 legged ones and others make me scream, run and some times even cry. Japans insects are all super sized too.

                                                        Minmin zemi

This one was in the window of the room when we were cleaning it, he\she is just one of the many different types of cicada.  Each different type has its own song it sings and sometimes they can be deafening when a large group chants together.

Here is your final sneak peek of what we accomplished yesterday.
There will be a video posted next week of our first weeks work. We will explain what the concrete bin thing is too so stay tuned, very exciting.

Thanks again for joining us,
 EcoJima signing out till next week........