The tank!

Originally uploaded by Mistress B

Finally, after two years of trying to get quotes or even passing interest from tradesmen, we have managed to get our water tank installed. It's a 12,000L tank - the smallest we could get that could also be installed on the site rather than trying to get a prefabricated tank up the drive and up the stairs.
Plumbing is yet to go in but fingers crossed that's happening in Jan. Phil then predicts we'll see another 5 year drought in the mountains.
Special mention goes to Phil's herculanean efforts in first digging and levelling out the area for the tank, which as anyone who has seen the steepness of our block will know, was quite a task. Secondly, he had to lug two tonnes of sand up the steps to lay the base for the tank, and thirdly, had to lug half a tonne of crushed rock to lay around the edge to stop the sand being eroded.
And he still managed to get out of bed each morning, albeit with some serious groaning.

What's a girl home alone to do?

I'm normally fine to deal with small spiders and rescue them with the tried and true glass-and-cardboard method, but this hairy monster is a little outside my weight category - about 10cms wide.
And of course, spider-wrangling hubby is away until tonight, so it's a bit of a Mexican stand-off between me and Harry (the hairy one). He's on the far wall of my office, which is fine as long as he remains there. I don't fancy doing my live-to-air radio interviews with him creeping towards me.
Could make for interesting radio though...

Bianca and Sprout in Nikko

Check out the sprout bump!

Ernest Cafe - Best coffee in Nikko

At the end of a big walk around temples you need a good coffee and like an oasis in a coffee desert we saw Ernest’s mobile cafe alongside the road. The van was immaculate with a beautiful chromed front. He converted it to a cafe himself.

‘Twas very good coffee and Ernest was a lovely gentleman. He took our picture and put it on his blog (did I mention he is a marketing guru) and then took our picture outside his van AND THEN gave us free homemade caramel on a stick. BTW you should have a look at his latte art as it's cool. Go Ernest!

Train ride from Nikko

We are just back from a great day in Nikko. It's 2 hours from Tokyo on the slow train but it was a lovely journey through rural Japan.

I tried to get the whole journey captured on my little camera taking shots every 5 seconds but my camera only lasted 1 hour after a week of use =( so 700 shots later here is a 45 second video of the first half of the trip. I was hoping to get more people on the train but it didn't get busy until the battey ran out (typical). You get the sunset anyway so stop complaining and watch the video.

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