Monday was a holiday, so we slept in a little bit, and then headed off to lunch at Kuniko’s parents’ house. They had bought a couple of bento boxes for us to snack on, and from there we headed to the family farm to do some work and kill time until our appointment with the rice polisher.

Kuniko’s dad had already harvested the rice, and so at around 3 o’clock we went over there and they had already processed the rice. The guy there used a machine to meter out the rice into bags, 30 kilograms at a time. 30 kilograms is around 70 pounds, so they were pretty heavy bags.

Everyone gathered around and tied them up, and then I threw them onto the truck. We got three truckloads out of there, and now everyone will have plenty of rice to last the whole year long.

It was a good experience – and despite carrying so much heavy stuff it wasn’t too tough. We came back to the homestead after that, and Kuniko’s mom cooked us a big dinner, with curry and sashimi, and we drank cold beer and just relaxed. It was a good end to a long weekend.

It wouldn’t be a visit to the in-laws without being sent home with loads of fresh vegetables. We had several bags, and even some birthday cake that Kuniko’s mom had made for me.

On the way home we hit Ito Yokado to take advantage of a sale and to see our old hangout. We even bumped into Yasu’s mom, and got to see pictures of Yasu’s brother’s new baby.

After that we came right on home and took a hot bath together. The nice thing about the bathtub is that we can both fit in this one. I’m hoping to take a bath every night this winter. Tomorrow is back to school – but I don’t have a really tough schedule this week so it should be a piece of cake.