Erin Hughes.com

10 years is a long time.

So I have been married to my wife, Satomi for 10 years. I do not know what to say. Yesterday for our anniversary we had a small lunch and then went to look at a potential school for Eric, a couple of beers. Then back to our everyday life. I picked up Eric and she went grocery shopping. No big presents no promising for another 10 years, just back to our life's.

One thing I do remember was 10 years ago I wanted alot of stuff, maybe cause at 25 I had nothing still. Seemed like we were always spending money on shit I wanted but did not need. Now I want less of everything, and more time. I also remember how I said I would make a certain amount of money by a certain age. I did that. How I did not know anything about computers 10 years ago compared to now, and how when I got out of the Marines 10 years ago...... I had no idea what I was gonna do or how. Over time I changed allot, I learned allot and I accomplished more than most people would have thought I was capable of, and I am still going for more.

That is me, the outside has changed a bunch, but the inside is still basically the same.

Every year, the rice has to get planted and harvested. The planting is time consuming but not so difficult. The harvesting is a lot less fun cause it is straight hardcore manual labor. This year was no different. I didn't have time to help with the planting and last year I did not help with the harvest. So this year I felt obligated to help out after everything that my father in law has done for me since I moved here.

We got a late start and did not get moving on picking the rice till almost 9. By that time I was rearing to go and thinking about the fact that I had to be on the train heading back to Tokyo with Eric by 17:55.

My father in law, he drives his rice cutting combine tractor, like he paid $10,000.00 for it. Slowly and carefully. That is why at about 1030 AM I was relived to see my brother in law Koji had shown up. He is my size and while he is not much for heavy lifting he does drive the tractor a little faster, like he stole it in comparison. With him behind the wheel things started to move along allot faster and by 2 pm we had finished the 2 large fields and were heading over to work on the third and forth.