Up at 5:30 and hoping for a quiet morning. I was good till 6am when little girls started appearing from upstairs. I guess a half an hour of quiet is better than none.

Had breakfast and got caught up on my journal. 8:45 am and I am going for a run. Just finished listening to an Eli CD and the girls are working on a jig saw puzzle.

Kenzie and I just got back from a little run/walk to Uncle Alice's brother cabin. On the way there we took a little detour through the golf course and checked out a couple holes. The course is very different than what I am used to. It is short, narrow, hilly, and the greens are made of black sand. Yes black sand.
They do this because the weather is so extreme that they would not be able to keep up on the necessary maintenance with grass so they use sand. Very different. When you are done on the putting surface you take a push broom with a big square piece of carpet on it and drag it across your tracks as to smooth everything back out for the next person.

We found a shed that was full of old clubs and small bags. This will be good for Matt and I as all I brought was a putter and a sand wedge and Matt had zippo with him. I hope to get things together and play some golf today. We have sunny skies at the moment but the poor maintenance guy is cutting the course and when I say poor I am referring to the fact that he is cutting the whole course with a 22 inch push mower. (see Photo)  It is only a 9 hole course but it still has a lot of area. He should get done in a couple days if the weather cooperates. I hope I can catch some of his work on the video cam.

We got to Alice's brothers in no time at all and they were getting ready to take Alice's brother's wife to the train station (to go to Tokyo) so she could go to work at the TV show that she is a co-host on. The name of the show is Harvest time and it is on the Angel network.

After lunch we are going to go to the sport center to play some tennis and swim. The girls finished the jig saw puzzle so I guess we will have to go to the 100 YEN store sometime today to get some more. For lunch today we had some seaweed salad and a chunk of white and a chunk of red tuna that I sliced up with my new KILLER sushi knife that I bought. Can I get enough SUSHI? I don’t think so. I kind of think of like eating pizza in America you just can’t get enough. YUM-YUM-YUM WASABI!!!!!!!

The girls had some cup noodles and it was very funny when Kenzie (the little entertainment package) asked Matt to please read the directions. Oh DUH they are written in Japanese. Unknown to Kenzie. So it was kind of funny but I guess you had to be there to get the full effect.

Alice's brother came by at 1:30 and we loaded up to go the sport center. It cost like 600 YEN a person and this let us use the tennis court which we had to set the net up.  Then we went swimming. I had the waterproof case for the camera so the kids enjoyed posing for MANY underwater photos .

I have a feeling there is some of today's entry missing, but this is all Nils sent me (he emailed it to me from the Firestation where he has been of duty for a double 48 hr shift!) I will add it later after I talk to him!
                                                                                                                               DAY 7