Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

I've been meaning to post these pics for about a week, but have been too busy playing with Wasabi until now. She's currently sleeping on the mouse, so it's still a bit hard to post!
Last weekend, we went to Chiba to meet up with a bunch of our returnee friends for the second annual Umi no Hi (Ocean Day) get-together. We stayed at the same beach house as last year, since it's in a great location---right next to a ramen shop owned by the same people who run the beach house, and it's only about a block from the ocean.
Unfortunately, the wind was quite strong this time, so we didn't get much swimming in, but we still managed a bbq in the evening, and then a bonfire on the beach later that night after the wind died down. We also of course had a watermelon smashing contest/event, and Yuki pulverized it in the end. Much fun for all!

Fighting the wind


And they hadn't even started drinking yet...


Corn!




Roasted sweet potato


Watermelon smashing



Watermelon killer


Ramen



Bonfire


Scenes from my morning walk





Kakigori (shaved ice)