Hello, crowd of 5 - four girls & one boy! 
The girls: Olivia, Amy, Alexandria and Mariah -
the boy: Ian.

Olivia had the great news of becoming a grandmother (again!) very soon! Congratulations!........Unfortunately, being a good granny, she'll be busy so we won't see her for about three weeks! An eternity! I'll miss you (really).
Amy brought in a newspaper article about barley cultivation in Inami-Cho. Apparently, it's the biggest barley field in West Japan. Barley becomes Mugi-Cha, beer (!!), an ingredient for Miso etc. as you can see, it's highly important for our daily life.
Alexandria told us about Imelda Marcos from the Philippines becoming popular again, and owning 2000 pairs of shoes (that's 4000 kicks = American slang for shoes). Mariah showed off her new electronic dictionary which she snatched for an amazing good deal: Just a 6 month old model going for almost half price! Wow! 
Ian had nothing to report today, and I told the group about my family outing to Takadao, where you can trek along an old, disused train line through dark long tunnels & beautiful scenery. I can really recommend it for a nice day out in nature.

Our cake  today:




And once again, the "skier's dictionary":



 


Thanks for showing up!

The "Master"