Month: June 2011

I usually teach at a kindergarten on Mondays, but the schedule was changed and I ended up with an unexpected day off. So, this morning we decided to do a bit in the garden as it’s going to rain this afternoon. My Mum in England sent me some seeds for some giant sunflowers a while ago, and they are much bigger than Japanese sunflowers. Hana planted them with me, and is really enjoying seeing how big they will grow.

This is a little Hydrangea that is growing from a cutting my Dad sent me when they moved house. I am amazed it survived the journey!!

A couple of years ago we brought back some acorns from England and planted them in pots in our garden. We ended up with six little oak trees!! We gave a couple to friends, and have the rest in pots in the garden. They are very different to Japanese oak trees, but will be too big for our garden. I might ask the kindergartens I go to if we can plant them in their grounds, or ask a friend of mine in the city office if we can plant them in the park?

The headmaster of the kindergarten I teach at gave me some Morning Glory flower seeds, and we didn’t really have anywhere to plant them, but I stuck them in the soil in a corner of the garden and they are growing!! Put a net up today so they have something to climb up………

We wanted to make the garden a bit more private for when we have BBQs, so I put this up and got the ivy growing up it a few weeks ago. It has made it much more private.

And today the radiation levels outside were very low!! The lowest levels since we got the Geiger counter, so hopefully they will remain that way. Fingers crossed!!

The mini car!! The power steering went on our car the other day and while it’s being fixed we are driving around in a little courtesy car. Hana loves it!! She calls it the Noddy car, and thinks it’s great!! Anyway, not a lot going on today, but will put up a more interesting post sometime soon!!

All the best,
Eddie

Hi there everyone!! Welcome to our new homepage!! It is almost finished, just need to get the photo gallery finished and the mobile site up and running. A designer called Deanna Wooten, who is a Canadian woman living in Tokyo did the homepage for us and we think she did a great job. The idea is that we can now share more of what we are doing with friends and family, as we are not keen on the whole Facebook phenomenon. Anyway, here are some new photos…………

Hana is getting bigger all the time!! She loves this dress her Auntie Emily sent her for her birthday, she thinks she is Mickey Mouse when she wears it!!

She can now speak both English and Japanese quite well, and understands the difference between them. She will speak in English to me, but then when we get to the park she switches to Japanese to play with her friends. However, she does still mix them up a bit when there is a word she only knows in English. I have found her saying English words with a Japanese accent when she is trying to speak Japanese and doesn’t know a particular word!!

Hana’s Auntie Hannah in England sent her a kids dress up box for her birthday, and Hana loves walking around with her plastic crown on saying “I’m a princess!”.

A lot of people have been emailing us about the nuclear situation in Japan. It has been very worrying!! There seem to have been a lot of cover ups and the truth is starting to come out. It turns out that when the government were telling people not to worry some of the reactors were in meltdown!! However, we live quite a long way from Fukushima and have been very careful about what we eat and drink.

We decided that as Mami is pregnant we should get our own Geiger counter so we can be sure that where we live is safe.

Inside the house the levels are very low, and nothing to worry about.

However, when you get outside the numbers go up a bit. This number is still quite low though. There has been a lot of debate about what the limits should be. The level of 0.5 microsievert per hour would translate into an annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, which was the evacuation threshold for Chernobyl. However, the Japanese government has raised the evacuation threshold to 20 millisieverts, which has a lot of people worried.
This number below was a bit higher than we had hoped for, as it is getting a bit closer to the 0.5 microsievert per hour evacuation threshold level that was used in Chernobyl.  However, we are not outside so much, so the actual level we are living with is much lower. More like 0.1 microsievert per hour. We have also tested our food and water and its very confusing as that uses another unit of measurement, however, it looks like there is nothing to worry about.

It has been a scary time for us all, but we are hoping things are going to set sorted out and everyone in Japan will be able to move on with their lives.

On another note, we have taken over a company in Tokyo this year. We supply teachers to teach at kindergartens, so we are enjoying the challenge of that. Here is a link to the homepage for that business (it is all in Japanese though)
https://aeschiba.com/meisei/index.php

Anyway, I am going to keep this page updated much more often from now on, as it is much easier to do it than with the old homepage.
Please feel free to leave some comments in English or Japanese!! Thanks for stopping by!!
Eddie