Doing the Dekapantsu(big pants) relay race

the famous "No More Cry" dance

Tug of War of course

Picnic time with Ray, Akiko and kids-Kazu, Yohe(yoyo), and Ken-Ken and their grandma Toshiko(Nai-Nai) and A-Tan(a volunteer at the farm)who is good with all the kids

Sage showing us how he climbs the trees at school

Doing a family team game, Ray won the game for their team!

Kai racing in the little kids race for a big bag of treats, made his bored day!

Sage's Japanese writing, he told his teacher about his newest experience, eating snake, no pics sorry! Toshi and Kenji caught a snake and cleaned and we all ate it, Sage really wanted to tell everyone at school about it. When they had an exercise to tell about something that happened outside of school this is what he told. He can't remember if he told the teacher in Japanese or English, but somehow the teacher got the story right and let Sage copy it. The other side is a picture of us all getting ready to eat the snake, sorry I didn't take a picture of that side..oops.

The stuff in Sage's backpack, they have to keep all their books at home and bring only the ones listed on the schedule for the day. Then a bullet train pencil case, a hard plastic sheet that goes between workbook pages to write on, and some of his text and workbooks. His subjects are, math(sansui), Japanese(kokugo), music(ongaku), writing(shyoshya), crafts(can't remember), seikatsu(everyday life), a morals class, and gym. Plus a "family" class a couple times a week with kids of all ages that are in his immediate living area. They cycle thru the week with the most in math and Japanese.

Japanese textbook

math textbook

Sage walking to the schoolbus

Getting on the schoolbus, and no, the buses are not yellow here! and not all the same. The backpack on the boy getting on the bus is the typical first grader backpack. All the other kids have one, Sage at times wishes he did too, but we had just bought him one for Christmas...

Cross country run, getting ready to take off, sorry, Sage is behind the back teacher's arm

After the hard run(half mile plus some), Sage thought he couldn't do it, and said, mom, my side hurts, I can't, but when we cheered him on as he would go by us, he sped up for a bit at least. He was dreading the day, but by that night, couldn't wait for the next cross country run in the fall. The glory of completion, maybe last but not least!