Travel to Nasu

Breakfast

We can not go to my home town Fukushima where my parents live in, and the nuclear power plants have exploded and been not quite safe yet, taking Kana on this long summer vacation .
If my parents don't visit us in Yokohama, they can't see their grandchild for time being.  So we arranged to be able to see each other in Nasu.  My parents were looking forward to seeing her and also Kana. 
It was great time that we visited Numappara-shitugen and Nasu garden outlet.  Nasu is famous for summer resort but it was very hot like Yokohama at the time.  Unluckily, a air condition at hotel Matsuya we stayed was out of service for 4 hours, and even after repairing it was weak.  All other rooms were full in that day and we got the price of hotel refunded.
A cheese cake bought at the cheese garden was full of rich taste and a cafe there called Shirasagi-tei which is modern interior and has nice view of verdant garden, was great to pop in on the way.

Lily in my garden

Lilies have blossomed in my garden this year too.  I got only 2 huge bulbs from somebody 2 years ago and they were planted without any expecting such tremendous wide opened flowers.
There are over 10 flowers on the stems. I picked up one of them to display it in my house before dieing.  The scent lasted all over for a few days.

Gathering of clams

Clamming season has come since spring, but we didn't have chance to get there for any reasons for recent few months.  Last weekend that was low tide around 11 A.M. was the best day to dig clams at Hakkeijima Marine park. It was not much sun lays at least before starting digging them, and then I didn't wear sunscreen well.  An hour later, Ken was enjoying windsurfing in the same beach where he comes every weekends for it, and I was digging clams with Kana who couldn't be there alone and feeling getting sunburned.
There were a lot of clams you can find them easily there, but most of all were tiny size and we had difficulty for long time in search of big clams that we can see at fish shops.
Hence, today's dinner soup was the clam miso soup!!  That was really delicious and we paid off in the end.

Hot summer without air conditioner

We can not use air conditioners this summer as much as we used it as ever for energy saving.  We are facing at shortage of electricity this summer, probably not only this summer though, because there are no nuclear power plants in Fukushima and the alternative energy to cover our life in this hot summer has not been ready yet and it would take long time.
I decided not to use my air conditioners as much as possible, then we went ahead to a shop to buy awnings that block sun's rays.  Most of all sold out already and we couldn't prepare some mounting hardware.  People think same things.  Anyway, only one awning was fixed up at East side of our house.  I hope we could spend cooler summer by this effect.