Strawberry picking

Yesterday I went strawberry picking and made strawberry preserve that night. I like making preserve or jam very much! Homemade jam makes me happy every morning. 

This morning breakfast

My husband and I go strawberry or grape picking a few times every year. A strawberry firm where I went to yesterday was the best-equipped place. They have the latest model of greenhouse, with air-conditioning, automatic curtains, automatic fans, etc. They cultivate strawberries in the way that they plan them, not on the ground but on kind of shelves. So it's easy to cultivate them, and we, the customers, are also easily able to pick them up and are happy because the strawberry plants hang down from the shelves so they are not soiled by soil. Furthermore they have new and clean restrooms; that's very important for me. 

When we were picking up strawberries, an owner woman who guided us when we arrived there into the greenhouse. She brought condensed milk for us and we chatted with her for a while. According to her story, she improved and supplemented equipment for her son. It seemed that he said if she improved the equipment, he would take over the firm after retirement. So she did it by using a large amount of money, as much as you can buy a house! Wow! How happy her son is!

Remodeling 2

Continued from the last blog. 

I gradually came around to changing our butsudan, the family Buddhist altar, to a new one. I think it is the best idea! 
I had a talk with my sister about the subject. She said that I would be able to do what I like, but I felt she wanted to keep it at the bottom. Umm, I had already started to choose a new butsudan, but I was right back where I started. 
Yesterday morning I started reviewing my plan thoroughly and spent all day on it. I used CAD software and planned the room on the assumption that there is a big butsudan in the room. I tried to put some furniture here and there on the plan, then amazingly a good plan resulted which was very different from what I had originally had in mind. By combining the butsudan with bookshelves the same color as the butsudan, the big butsudan doesn't stand out so much. Bingo! Let’s go with this plan! 
This time, I’m going to lay a light brown carpet on the tatami, so I hope that the Japanese room seems to be connected with the wooden-floored room. I ordered the carpet straightaway. 
I’m looking forward to the completion of the remodeled room.

Remodeling

We had hand-rolled sushi for dinner. It’s my favorite, so I ate too much. Where is my diet? 

I mentioned that I took a new interest in my last blog. It was that I was going to remodel a Japanese room at my place. I moved here two years and three months ago, and my place looks just like a place I have lived in for ten years. It is a really cozy place except for the Japanese room. Actually I didn’t want the Japanese room. If I had decided to buy my place a half year earlier, I could have changed it to a wood-floored room. Although the Japanese room is next to the living room, now it has become a kind of storage. I have been worried about it and at last I decided to start remodeling the room. Now I’m planning how to change it and I really enjoy it except for one thing; it’s a big problem for me. The problem is a family Buddhist altar that my father bought when my mother died. It is imposing and beautiful, but pretty big and a little dark for my place. I know it is better to keep it, but changing it to a smaller one is also an idea, I think. To be continued...

Kage-Fuji

Yesterday I wrote that I was going to finish off the Electric Box today, so I tackled it in the morning. However, when the time came to play the game as much as I wanted to, I lost my interest a little and I took an interest in something else that was much more enjoyable. I will write about it another day. 
I took part in the photo club monthly meeting today. As usual, it was pleasant and relaxed. We all brought ten pictures and showed them on the screen and exchanged impressions of them. One of my pictures was a picture of Mt. Fuji, but it was not normal. It was really mysterious and was called “Kage-Fuji”, a shadow of Mt.Fuji; It was a rare phenomenon. I’m not quite sure but it seemed that a shadow of Mt. Fuji appeared on the screen within the water vapor in the air. Fortunately I could take it coincidentally on January 29th. 
Today there were four people who brought Kage-Fuji pictures. All of them were beautiful, but everyone said that mine was the best. Bingo!

Going all the way

As I mentioned in my last blog, I’ve been hooked on an iPone game, Electric Box. I can’t stop playing it! I thought I would stop when I cleared this stage, but when I cleared the stage, I wanted to play just one more stage! What will I do? Things having come to this, I’ll just have to go through it to the end. Now I’ve completed level 44 of 65, so there are 20 stages left to go. I’m going to finish all of the stages tomorrow, and I promise that I will definitely return to my daily routine. 
So now I return to the game! BG

iPhone applications

Recently I’ve been suffering from lack of sleep. I think the reason seems to be the snow. 
When it snows, I’m excited about whether the snow will stay or not, so I check outside the window every thirty minutes and don’t want to go to bed. Of course, I hope for heavy snow, although people who have to go to work the next day must be angry. 
It snowed a lot and I stayed up late last night. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, so I started on an iPhone game. It was ‘Electric Box’ that my husband showed me a couple of days ago. At first, I wasn’t so interested in it, but as I cleared a few stages, I was completely hooked on it. The idea of the game is to run through electricity from the power source to the target, using a kettle, a laser beam, a refrigerator, an electric bulb, etc. it’s simple but really mental. It was too intriguing to stop playing. So when I eventually stopped it was three o’clock. Oops! 
Likewise, I’m enjoying other iPhone applications, such as Sudoku, Coin Dozer, Akinator, Talking Tom, Kaeru jump, etc. I’m always surprised that they are filled with plenty of funny ideas. I played free games at first, but partly because it’s cheap I buy some without thinking. They are good business. 
Well, I’m going to attempt stage 31 before going to bed.

Valentine's day chocolate

How terrible!

It had snowed a lot for two days till Saturday. Ten centimeters of snow fell in a day around my place. Ten centimeters of snow is a heavy snowfall in Tokyo. My place is not the central part of Tokyo Metropolis, though. It got hot yesterday but it was really cold last night. 
I had a terrible experience last night. My husband and I drove to have some pancakes at the Royal Host. Their pancakes are good and we sometimes want to have them immediately. It was 11:30 pm last night and it took about twenty minutes to drive there. Shortly after we left home, we saw the emergency lights of a police car. It was a skid accident. We noticed that the road was icy in places. Till then we drove at a normal speed, but we slowed down  after that. Then how terrible! We came across two more skid accidents before we reached the restaurant. Oh, my God! We shouldn’t have driven on such a night. Anyway we got there safely, so we tasted midnight pancakes. 
On our way home, we drove slowly and carefully. Then how unbelievable! We came across three violent skid accidents again. With two of them, cars had crashed into the central divider, and another car flew off the road and turned over. How dangerous they were! 

Today’s lesson: Never drive when it's really cold at midnight. 
To begin with, having pancakes at midnight is wrong!

A bad memory

I used not to like learning English, but now I love it. 
About ten years ago, I worked with a young woman who could speak English. At that time I was very bad at English. On the other hand she could discuss with foreign companies in English. How cool she was! I was very impressed and it triggered me to learn English. 
Now I enjoy learning English every day, but even so I think that I wish I had learned more during my school days. That’s because it's shockingly hard for me to remember new words. 
For example, if I tried to study three new words in turn, I forget the first one in only one minute. Such as ‘mundane’, ‘platitudinous’, ‘tolerance’. To master these words, I needed to repeat sessions more than ten times. 
Or if I tried to remember three new words those starts from character ‘A’, I was confused their meanings. Such as ‘adverse’, ‘abrupt’, ‘avert’. Even if I could remember them at that time, I would forget after a couple of days. 
And idioms? I give up! 
However my vocabulary is steadily increasing little by little. So I can continue to learn English while having great fun.

What a wonderful day!

It has been snowing since early this morning. It’s gotten very cold today. Snow blanketed the park in front of my building. The view from my living room is splendid. I love it. 
On such a day, I like spending time cooking stew and watching my favorite DVDs at home, as I watch the snow through the window with the curtains fully open. 
I knew it would snow a lot today so I went shopping and bought ingredients for beef stew, and some bread yesterday. Today, I started to cook the stew from noon and stewed it throughout the afternoon while I did iKnow! (English learning site). Since I stewed it for a long time, the beef stew was really good and I ate too much. Oops!

And I love walking my dog in the snow. I walked my dog twice and he ran on the snow. He looked very satisfied. I think his form of running at full speed was beautiful like a thoroughbred. 
Now it's still snowing. After posting this blog, I'm going to watch Dr. House with a cup of coffee. 
What a wonderful day it is!

ChocoRing

When I walked my dog yesterday, my friend emailed me that she hung a choco-ring on a knob of my house, that was very popular in Ginza. Wow, I hurried home and found it. Her email said to freeze it, so I froze it immediately. 
I wanted to eat it soon but I emailed my sister, my nieces and my nephew and invited them to taste the good sweets. I’m a kind aunt! They were busy but my nephew came to my place for me. He was just freed up from studying because he passed the entrance exam for high school last week. Congratulations!
So I wrapped it in aluminum foil and warmed it up in the oven for 15 minutes. It began to smell sweet. It’s like a chocolate pie donut, umm, it’s difficult to explain. 
After warming it up, I unwrapped the aluminum foil, how sweet it was! Then I took a mouthful and found it very delicious! It was crispy and had plenty of bitter chocolate and a little walnut. They made a superb combination! My nephew really liked it and ate it at a good pace, so we ate it in an instant. I’d like to have had much more, so I ordered some choco-rings on the Internet straightaway. I really look forward to them being delivered but choco-ring is very popular, so it takes a maximum three weeks, they said. Boo-hoo-hoo!

A documentary

I watched an interesting program on television yesterday. It was a documentary that discussed the problem of children who have resulted from China’s one-child policy. China is undergoing rapid economic development and many wealthy classes have appeared. They take good care of their only child and expect him or her to be their successor. In such an environment, a lot of spoiled children come into being, and they are called ‘ little emperors’. This documentary was the story of how to rehabilitate them in a school for rehabilitation. 
At first, I thought it was simply about hopeless children who are a real annoyance to their parents, though it was uninteresting. As I watched it, I began to feel angry with their parents. The children were the victims of their parents. And furthermore, they were the victims of Chinese policy. 
Before the children came to the school, they hadn’t gone to school for years and became delinquent. Their parents gave them up as hopeless, yes, they didn’t think at all that they had a problem themselves,. 
At the school, they disciplined the children to get up early, to make their bed, to wash their faces and brush their teeth with a washbowl of water, to take a bath, to make friends, to do things with friends and so on. All of them were home disciplined! At first, they opposed the rules and hated their parents. But at their interviews, they tried to understand their parents and wanted their parents to believe them, and they really wanted their parents’ affection. A child who was just before graduation said that he would be able to talk about his thoughts with his parents at this moment. I was deeply impressed by what he said. The child steadily developed as a person, while his parents didn’t… I hope his parents will change for him. 

I watched the documentary for a long time and was very stimulated. NHK and others broadcast many good documentaries, so I will try to watch them much more.

A reception number

I've been sleepy because I got up at 4:30 am yesterday morning. 

Yesterday was the day I went to the hospital, once a month. When I go to the hospital, my husband always takes me there on his way to the office. It’s easy, but I have to get up one hour and a half earlier than him because of walking my dog. It’s pretty hard for me, especially in the winter. Also for my dog too, I think. 

Usually when I arrive at the hospital, I go to a reception machine and insert my medical card in it. Then I hurry to a reception machine for a blood test. Although I get to the hospital very early, at 7:30 am, my reception number for a blood test is always higher than forty. What time do other people come to the hospital? It takes one hour to get the result of my blood test, so if I can get a lower number, I can go home earlier. This is the point! Yesterday my number was thirty-seven, I was lucky! I could get home before noon and I took a nap after lunch. 

As I write this, I’m making strawberry jam. The room becomes filled with the sweet smell.

How well the tripod worked!

At last I bought a tripod for my camera last week! 
I have taken pictures with a telephoto lens but the pictures have been bad because of camera shake. I knew it would be better to use a tripod, but I don’t like carrying one because they're pretty heavy and annoying to use. I have to lengthen three pods and fix them. It's a real pain in the neck! So I bought a monopod instead. When I use it, I need to lengthen just one pod, it’s easy. However, the monopod was not enough stable. If I take moving things, it's no problem, but it’s not suitable for taking static things or a distant view. In the end, I bought a tripod. It was a little expensive… 
Yesterday, I wanted to use the tripod, so went to take a night view with my husband. We took pictures of Tokyo Tower, some downtown streets and a night view of skyscrapers. I was deeply moved by the power of the tripod. The pictures were in focus, even though it was at night and it was so far away. How wonderful! Carrying the tripod will not bother me at all.

About a restroom

Today I’m going to write about restrooms. 
Lately I have been surprised by restrooms in public places, especially in the service area of expressways. Surprisingly their restrooms are well-equipped and kept clean and tidy. They even installed a Washlet! I have had a rather bad image of expressway’s restrooms for some reason, but they have been improving steadily. I have no idea which government office is responsible for trying to improve public facilities and I generally don’t assess any of their actions, however, I really value their improving restrooms. Likewise, many department stores have made their restrooms better. We prefer to go shopping to such stores, don’t we? 
There is a good restaurant in Yamanashi prefecture. It’s my favorite one, but their restrooms are very small and I can’t feel positive that they will try to give their customers a comfortable place. They serve good food but I will not be going there soon. 
Thus a restroom is very important for their business.

Tako - a callus-

I’ve been suffering from a callus on the sole of my foot. I can't believe that such a small thing can be so painful! I don’t want to do anything when I have a callus. It hurts whenever my foot touches the floor, so I hate everything, such as getting out of bed, walking in my room, cooking, cleaning and walking my dog. After doing these things, I feel pain even if I am sitting down. Why aren’t there any cures for calluses? 
Of course, if I go to a dermatologist, the doctor will cut it out and I’m released from the pain for a while, but this is a repetition of the same thing. I really really desire a complete cure! Actually, I underwent an operation to cut out a bone to stop the pain. I believed I would be free from the pain, but the pain returned two years after the operation! 
Anyway, I can’t stand this pain anymore. I have no option but to go to the dermatologist tomorrow. It's annoying because it will be crowded. Today's news said that recently dermatologists have been crowded because of this dry weather.

Assignment

Ahaha! I completely gave up on the math test yesterday! The test intended for high school students was too difficult for me. I’m going to try taking a math test for junior high school students next time. Maybe it will not be easy too, but I hope there will be much more possibility of solving the problems. 

So I’m tackling an assignment for my college. This is more important for my present situation. The assignment I’m tackling is to design a community center. I have previously designed some housing, but this is the first time to design a public facility. It is more complicated. I need to know the conditions of the site and the problems of the residents, etc. Through this assignment, I can learn the impact that architecture has on the environment, the view and the residents. 
Now I’m reading a book - The power of architecture. I’m only in the middle of the book, but they give me a lot of hints. This book inspires me very much. I borrowed this book from a library, but I think I should buy this book and keep it at hand to read anytime. Let’s order from Amazon!