The Twelve Tasks of Heracles Sister #4

Of all my sisters, perhaps Sister #2 is the most mysterious, the most unknown to the readers of this blog. Today, she shall remain so. Her day will come. Let us turn our attention instead to the slightly less mysterious Sister #4. This week I pulled Sister #4 away from her duties as a freelance high school student and set her on a quest to perform a series of tasks—most importantly those of serving as chaperon for me and Yuko during another of my brief visits to Sapporo and of beginning work on Yuko’s wedding dress #2.


Sarah (Sister #4) joined me in Kazamaura for the weekend before we made our way up to Sapporo together on Monday. There is an unwritten rule that wheresoever two or more Elliot children shall gather, even there they shall watch no less than one movie together. Just to make certain, we pulled my good old Board of Education funded VCR and television unit out of the closet and watched three movies back-to-back.


Sarah Carrying Out One of Her Tasks


Picking Asparagus for Supper in the Takahashi Garden


Eating the Asparagus Carefully Wrapped in Pig Flesh (Mmmmmmmm. I can’t wait to keep my own pig. I hate the world of commercial farms and slaughter houses; but to tenderly raise my own bacon from a piglet; to feed it scraps from the family table; to scratch him behind the ears during slow moments in the day; and in the autumn to teach my children the basics of porcine anatomy and the butcher’s arts . . . . Ahh, pipe dreams.)