What have I been up to?

Well, not all that much, really.

Yesterday, the Kaminakas invited us to a local kaiseki restaurant run out of someone's house nearby (within a kilometer or so). The food was quite tasty--mostly related to spring, including mountain greens, young bamboo, potatoes, fresh wakame, and so on. It was somewhat unexpected it (the last time we got a personal invitation was two years ago), but when we asked, they said it was to thank us for having taught the class for all this time, which was quite kind of them. There wasn't quite enough normal food, but we got a giant tub of 竹の子 (take no ko) rice, which was really, really tasty.

The main thing I was happy about was that, other than a couple times where we used English because we didn't know the Japanese word (like e. coli. Had to look that one up :p) or where we didn't understand something and Kaminaka-san defined it for us, the entire night was spent talking in Japanese. A minor achievement, but every bit counts.

My parents are coming to visit on Friday. That'll be fun.