My Toe!

But first...

Easter brunch!
Note: sorry about the crappy layout, blogger sucks with editing.

We were able to have Easter brunch which was really nice. We had a friend over and Caitlyn made some excellent food including peaches, carrot cake, deviled eggs, edamame, and chicken salad sammich (chicken grilled with garlic, salt and pepper, then mixed with terragon, mayo, diced almonds, finely chopped green onions, lettuce, rolls). It was delicious. Thanks ma and dad!

Caitlyn will soon be posting on our hanami season and our trip to Ise Shrine (which was amazing). We are finished with our first week of classes and it went quite well. I have one kids class of punks, but overall my classes are well-behaved. Caitlyn has quite a few private classes which she seems to enjoy. On another note, farmers have begun flooding and planting the rice fields, so it will stop looking so brown everywhere soon :P

Below are some pictures of a bamboo forest that is close to our apartment. We hope to go on a picnic in the forest soon. The bamboo forest is on a hillside, and at the top there is an amazing little park. The road up to it is one of the steepest grades I have ever seen, but it was worth climbing to see the sakura. The flowers were beautiful (and you couldn't see Yokkaichi! haha).

While bumbling through the forest, some old guy gave us a bamboo root and said the equivalent of "good luck." At the time we didn't know it was a bamboo root, but we found out later you are supposed to boil it and then eat it (it smelled like a husk of corn). In the picture of me, I'm holding the bamboo root from the old man.

And now...

My Toe!
Last Friday, I found out why you should wear shoes instead of sandals when riding a bike. We were heading to the bank, and Caitlyn was cranking at me to be "careful" and stop goofing around on my bike. Not more than two seconds after that, I tried a bunny hop and slipped off the pedals. My foot got caught between the ground and pedal, and it ripped my toenail off as well as quite a bit of skin off of my big toe. It looked like this:


To top it off, immediately after it happened Caitlyn said, "I told you to be careful!" Thanks babe.

While this didn't make it worth it, it was pretty cool when I was trying to find bandages and hydrogen pyroxide--I would show Japanese clerks and they would freak (and I didn't pass out! Awesome!).

More soon!

Chad and Caitlyn