Fukuda Family

Here are some of my photos from the retreat. Enjoy! The former head priestess, Shundo Aoyama, taking a break from preparing tea for guests.  Our first meal The altar A rubbing of angels Stone sculpture in garden Preparing tea, which ended up as the bowl for Papa! (There were about 10 others preparing tea for the guests, so Papa got lucky!) Doesn't he look satisfied? Some of the young nuns enjoying tea Moriyama-san's turn Our last meal at the temple Priestess Aoyama giving a lecture on Zen Buddhism A woman who either Papa or I ended up sitting next to by coincidence. She lives near the temple and studies flower arranging under Shundo Aoyama 4 times a month. 

Papa and I went to a 3-day zazen gathering in Shiojiri, to Muryouji Temple, which had been until recently been run by a 82 year old Buddhist nun named Shuto Aoyama. She was there at the event to preside over the 150 participants, serve tea, and then give a very enlightening lecture at the end. Both Papa and I did our best to sit through the long zazen meditation sessions and sit and dine properly with very specific instructions of how to arrange and eat from, then clean, then wrap up our bowls, chopsticks.! It was good training for the brain to say the least. Here are a few photos from the event taken with my monk friend's camera. Opening ceremony Papa hanging out with my monk friend, Moriyama-san (He recently walked for a month and a half around Shikoku on foot on a pilgrimage of the 88 temples there in the name of world peace. It was his 10th time! A very cool dude! He had to stop at the 51st station, midway since he was called back to his temple to help with diff...

Today I think I made a big mistake ... I up-graded my laptop to windows 10 Now Mr. windows or Mr. google know that I am in Japan and when I try to find things I used to get by clicking on an icon, the icon is gone and my computer is speaking to me in Japanese (and no option that I can find to translate) Trying to type in my mail is so slow that I have to click on the enter for every letter. A simple sentence takes about ten minutes. My games are all gone and replaced with a choice of three that I would never want to even look at. At least Ben's quilt is making progress with the computer time cut by 99%.

Wow, our house feels very empty! We just had a lovely visit from Paul and Ben, thanks to Lucien and Julie- thanks for sending them over, guys! The boys arrived late on a Thursday afternoon. We met at the airport, and went home via bus, picking up a snack at the local Whole Foods: A very nice birthday surprise from our friend Kevin and his son at an early birthday party that night/pizza dinner: Tim had taken off Friday through Monday so that we could head up to Maine for some camping and... whitewater rafting! Scary! We still have to purchase the photos, but believe me, that was some excitement! We'll be sure to send you photos when we have them. Paul sat at the helm and was bounced to and fro; Ben sat 2nd in line for half of the trip. Both boys jumped into the rapids, took off in inflatable kayaks, and in general, were much braver than their aunt. ;-) We rented kayaks and a canoe from our campground after a stellar buffet breakfast and had a great 9 mile trip down t...