Playing around in Chikugo. Nothing like an oversize straw hat to keep the sun off your face.

20 June 2009

Moyo is freakishly pleased with her cheap fans.

28 July 2009

It is festival season in Kurume, and Moyo gets to participate in the events. If I understand correctly, she is going to be performing some sort of dance as part of Kurume's Water Festival. Here she is just trying on her uniform.

31 July 2009

We went to a pool down in Kumamoto, and Moyo had fun swinging, swimming, and searching for crabs in the nearby stream that actually feeds the pool. There is no chlorine at all! Just clear water coming down from the mountains.

24 August 2009

Moyo participated in a ballet performance at an outdoor venue downtown. Check out the spooky makeup.

06 September 2009

Here Moyo is wearing the same uniform as in the picture above, but this time as part of the drum corps at the kindergarten.

11 September 2009

Moyo's kindergarten holds its field day. This is kumi-taiso, or "group exercise." Moyo is the one all the way to the right of this formation.

20 September 2009

Moyo sprints around the track during the relay race. At this point, her team is in the lead, although they ended up in second place by the finish.

20 September 2009

The elementary school Moyo will attend from the spring was holding its field day, and in Japan the potential new students are invited to participate in one brief event. As a congratulatory present, she received a giant pinwheel and a couple of notebooks.

03 October 2009

...and this is how she looked after the busy day in Chikugo.

03 October 2009

I went to see Moyo jump rope at the kindergarten, where they were having a competition for who could jump the greatest number of times and the longest. Moyo jumped 43 times, which was not bad at all, since she had only just (finally) learned how to jump. Just the day before I took her to a nearby grass field to practice, and she jumped off and on for about an hour, and her record high was 31 jumps, but most of the time she flubbed in less than 10. I thought she would probably do that during the competition as well, but she managed fairly well and set a new personal record. (Incidentally, the high score for the competition was in the hundreds, so Moyo still has a way to go.) This photograph was taken just after the competition.

13 October 2009

When we were in Chikugo, I caught a small gecko and showed it to Moyo, who said she wanted to hold it. I thought it would run off as soon as I set it on her hand, but perhaps it was enjoying the warmth. In any case, I had enough time to take a photograph. The gecko did run off thereafter.

18 October 2009

Moyo discovers mandarins are not transparent.

19 October 2009