Happy Sweet-Sixteen, Emiko!

Last night we threw a surprise sweet 16 birthday party for the 60 year old boss's assistant and the 60 year old boss. They've been best friends for 40 years! It was really fun. I made a robot pinata (and wrote ROBOTO-SAN on him! He had 4 faces and dangly arms and legs) and stuffed him with home-made carrot cookies and home-made dollar store (aka 100 yen shoppe) tennis ball poi we got to play with (Lansen has been giving me and Masaru poi spinning lessons--I feel like I'm getting a lot better). There was also a music jam session with the bamboo instruments Lansen's been making and I freestyle-sang a song about life WWOOFing on Keiko's farm (featuring the slicer machine I love so much, even though it cuts me...I think the real name is mandolin slicer? it has adjustable width cutting blades and adjustable slice thicknesses. a couple days ago making potatoes (we have so many potatoes...), I took off a pretty good chunk of my index finger tip. Had to tape it to go to work out of the "nightengale set-o" which is Japanese-English for first aid kit. Challenging to finish frying the potatoes without bleeding into them...doh). Emiko (the un-birthday girl) and I had a little song duel and I sang my favorite aria--Con te Partiro. It was fun to sing again, though I'm a bit out of practice without Wendy's lessons and kirtan...then we sang Happy Birthday in both Japanese and English and had chocolate cake, rubarb jello-ish stuff, soy-chiffon cake, and hagendas ice cream. It was a feast.