Noverber 13th / 14th / 15th

Nov 13th
Arrived in Tochigi in the afternoon. Once we had coffee, and settled in, we all went out to dinner at a Japanese Pub style restaurant. Mr Sotome has a balloon advertising his beanshoot company, and he lends us the balloon for the Motegi Balloon festival. Mie, his daughter speaks english very well, as she spent 1 year in Ireland. She just got married a week ago, so it was good to meet her husband, and question her on how a traditional Japanese Wedding is put together. She had 3 wedding dresses, 2 white western styles and 1 Kimono style. Lots of changes on the day , but makes for a beautiful photo album.

Nov 14th
Mr Sotome, has arranged a tether at the local Strawberry Fields Festival this week-end, so we were up early to help, but when we got there it started raining so the tether was cancelled for the day. I checked out the petting zoo, and this little goat kept following me around. Is he smiling or not ??
In the afternoon we went for a walk, and found a temple and park at the top of a hill. This shows Tochigi area, and it's surrounded by huge green mountains.
In the evening, the rest of the family joined us for dinner, and a nice relaxing evening.
The 4 yr old grandson shows derek how to make origami sumo wrestlers.
As Mie is tiny, she wore these heels for her wedding. Apart from a few stumbles they worked well!
Nov 15th
Good day for the tether, but the wind picked up about 11am, so we had to bring it down. Not a bad thing, as we had time to sample the strawberry ice-cream, pancakes and cakes!!
The manager of the festival gave us Bento boxes for lunch. So had a lovely picnic in the fields. We have to get out of Japan soon, as we are both eating too much and putting on weight!!!