Easter party, 花見、office ladies

Our Easter party was a great success as the weather was perfect, the eggs turned out nicely, the food was delicious, and the egg hunt was great fun for everyone. The only complaint we received was from Ryuto who thought the egg hunt would have been more exciting if we put stickers inside of the plastic eggs instead of chocolate candy.

Before the party Curtis and I made our way to church for the Easter service. Because it was my first time attending since Norman and his family returned to America I was afraid they were going to make me stand up and lead the prayer in Japanese, but they didn’t. I took with me from church several pamphlets explaining the story of Easter so I could pass them out later in the afternoon. Everyone seemed really interested in learning what Easter was all about so they happily accepted the pamphlets.

more pictures are here

On Saturday I enjoyed another nice day outside under the sun with friends doing 花見. After having a barbeque, Curtis and I played Uno with the kiddies and then a serious game of hide and seek. It seemed like they always found me first and then never found Curtis. He swore the reason was because he had the best hiding place ever, but I think he cheated.

see some more pictures here

I’ve got some more bad news and this time it isn’t in regards to my garden. The news is that the office ladies are no longer office ladies. Lately, the big boss has been shifting everyone around at work and one of the changes was implemented today. From now on the ladies no longer come into the office on their ways to and from school. The problem is that in addition to making really cute and elaborate paper cut outs used for decorating the schools another major responsibility of the office ladies was making the 8:30, 11:00, 12:00 and 3:00 tea. This morning when 8:30 rolled around our boss went to the tea station (yes, we have a tea station) to check on the hot water and upon seeing it was ready he quickly returned to his desk. Soon after awkward glances were exchanged across the room and as everyone anxiously looked around, Curtis and I knew what was coming. Our boss didn’t have to say anything for his body language said enough. Perhaps it had something to do with him looking at us and then the tea station and then us again and then back to the tea station that helped reveal his message. Hello, my name is Spencer and I am the new office lady.