A trip to Sano 2

Hello!

It was nice and warm in Tokyo today.
How was the weather in your area?

Let me continue to write about my trip to Sano-city.

After the temple visiting, we went to a crepe shop... more eating!

The owner of the shop seems to loooove the Beatles, especially John Lennon.
There were many pictures of the Beatles.

The inside of the shop was very cute.  It was very cozy to stay here.

Everyone ate one crepe... It was quite big.
My sister's daughter, Yuina, ate 2/3!

After the crepe shop, we went to the Sano Flower Park.
This park is very famous for 'Japanese wisterias'.

Although the main purple wisteria trellis wasn't blooming yet,
the small pink trellis were very beautiful.

Here is the main huge purple wisteria trellis.  Not yet... (ToT)
This must be very beautiful when it's blooming
(the best season was around May 10th this year... we were too early to visit).

Other flowers were also beautiful, so we really enjoyed staying there.

In the evening, the wisteria trellis were all lighted up.
This picture is around 6 pm.

This is around 7 pm.

After we left the park, we went to a restaurant.
We couldn't eat much because we were sooo full!

On the second day, my sister's family, my husband and I went to an outlet
shopping mall.

On the way to the mall, we found an interesting shop. 
Thi is sticked deep fried potatoes called 'Imo-Furai' in Japanese.

In each prefecture, there are some famous local foods in Japan.
I've never seen this Imo-Furai in Tokyo, and  this one of the local foods
same as Sano-Ramen noodles.  It was very good!

This is the end of my trip to Sano.  Mostly eating...
Thank you for reading!

A trip to Sano-city

Hello!

It has been such busy weeks for me from the end of April to last week
since my job has to do with education.

As I wrote a couple articles ago, students become new grades in April in Japan.
Students usually start new after school programs such as piano,
swimming, learning English, etc...
My job is correcting (checking) papers (7th graders English) at home.
I got many students this year, so had to correct many many papers every day!

Although I spent busy weeks, I went to 3 short trips.
Today, I am going to introduce my first trip to Sano,
where is a little northern part of Japan.
It takes about 2-3 hours by car from my apartment in Tokyo.

Sano city is in Tochigi prefecture:
http://diddlefinger.com/m/tochigiken/sanoshi/ (map)
(I hope you can see where the Sano city is...)
By Wiki, the city population is 124,001, and the total area is
356.07 km² (137.5 mile²).


The purpose of this trip was to see one of my old friend.
She got married and moved to this area three years ago.

There are some famous foods and places in Sano,
so she and her husband took us some of them.

First, Ramen noodles are famous here and there are many
Ramen noodle restaurants (about 200 shops in 137.5mile²!).

This is a quite famous Ramen shop called Ramen-Ogane.
Probably Ogane is the owner's last name.

The soup looked gold!
There are huge hams on top, so you can't see the noodls below... I'm sorry!

Also we ate Gyoza-dumplings: the ingredients are minced pork, cabbage, and
other veges.

After eating noodles, we went to a big Buddist temple called
Sano Yakuyoke-Taishi.

There was a big golden bell.

I will introduce more tomorrow!

A collection of dinner!

Konnichiwa!

Today, one of my high school friends and I went to a cooking school
to learn how to make Chinese food.

We made Sho-ron-po (a kind of dumplings, xio lung bo in Chinese),
a pork rice bowl, soup, and mango jello.  They were all good!

I like to cook different countries (mostly Asian)' food.
The other day, I cooked Pad Thai.

Sometimes I cook Korean food, too.   I will put pictures when I cook.

Though I like to make diffrent kinds, basically I cook Japanese food.

This bowl is called a 'sticky bowol' (^ ^)/

From the top of the bowl;
The pink is minced row tuna fish (this is the only one which is not sticky).
The white is a grated Japanese yam.
The browns are Natto!   Fermented soybeans.
The dark browns are a sticky kind of seaweed.
The right greens are boiled okuras.
There's a white rice on the bottom.

From the right of the picture, Miso soup, stired vegetables, the sticky rice bowl,
and steemed vege.

It's a very healthy menu.

This is a typical and traditional Japanese food, called 'Shabu-Shabu'.
As you see in the picture, you dip pork slices (very thin) in the soup.

I made 'Soymilk soup', so that's why the soup looks white.
When the meat gets boiled, it is dipped in the light brown souce,
which is sesami souce.

After finishing all the pork slices, Udon noodles are put in.

These are all easy to cook, so let me know if you want to try to make (*´ー｀*)

Thank you for reading!

Mt. Fuji #2

Hello again!

How are you doing?
I'm very fine.
It's 11:30am here, and I'm going to have my hair cut in the afternoon.

Let me continue the article about Mt. Fuji.

After 2005, I have climed it twice.
My husband proposed me on the way to the top in 2007!
At that time, he was working all day and start climbing up at 11:00pm.
He was too tired, so we went back without going to the top. 
However, it was my precious memory.

Then, the next year, 2008, we climbed again with Hanae and my husband's friend.
This picture is almost the top area.
It is around 8:00am. 

From the right: Hanae, Shu, my husband and me.

We saw  very interesting, beautiful, and spiritual (?) clouds on our way:

Feel like climbing up the Mt. Fuji?
Please come to Japan!!

Thank you for reading （＾＾）/

Mt. Fuji

Hello!

It was very nice sunny day today.
How was the weather in your hometown?

On the sunny day like today,  I can see Mt. Fuji from my apartment very well.
I now live in 6th floor in my apartment.

This picture is not taken today (it's on Jan 24th),
but I can always see the mountain like this when the weather is nice.
I use my telephoto lens with my camera, so I can take the mountain pics clearly.
In fact, I live about 90 km (55.92 mile) away.

This mountain is the highest in Japan. It is 3,776 meters (12,388 ft) high.
Believe it or not, it is still an active volcano!

I have climed up 4 times and made to the top 3 times.
Climbing this mountain is always hard...
very windy, cold, sometimes foggy, rocky, and steep!

These pictures are in 2005, a year after I came back to Japan
for good from Maine.
I climed with my friend, Hanae and Tomoko.
They are my Kyudo (Japanese archery) friends.

The right is Hanae and the left is me!
You can see '3 hours to the top' on the board.
From this area, oxygen is less and less, so we need cans of oxgyon to inhale.

We usually start climbing up from 11p.m. without sleeping,
but this year, we start climbing up from 4pm and stayed in a cottage at night. 

This is the dinner at the cottage... curry and rice.  We LOVE curry!

The dinner was nice, but I couldn't sleep at all... too noisy!
People are coming in and out, so I needed ear plugs.

This is the sunrise view on the way to top:

Very very impressive!!

Then, keep climing up and up...:

You can see many people!  Mt. Fuji is open only two months (July and August),
so it is a very popular activity during summer time.

You can also see 'Torii' (a gateway at the entrance to a Shinto shrine)
in the center.  There is a shrine on the top. 
I wanted to get a charm for health for my father at that time.

The top looks like this:

You can walk around this crater, but it takes about an hour plus!
I have never done it because there's almost no energy left to walk more...

This blog becomes very long, so I will continue tomorrow.

Thank you for reading!!

Bobbin Lace

Konbanwa (Good evening) from Tokyo!

It was rainy all day today :(

I went to my sister's apartment to learn the 'Bobbin Lace' from my aunt.
My mother, sister and I have learned it from her about 4 years.

My aunt is my mother's cousin, and now she lives in both Tokyo
and Hokkaido, where is northern part of Japan.
When she comes back to Tokyo every month about two weeks,
we learn the lace from her.

She had learned the lace when she lived in Sultanate of Oman
because of her husband's job.  Since the country is influenced by England,
she had learned the English style bobbin lace, which is a little different
from other European's lace.

When I got married, she made this ring cushion for me:

This is my treasure!

Well, what we made today is this:

I'm sorry that this picture is not taken well... This is a bear!

For this bear, we use 16 pars of bobbins,
and when I make it's arms, 5 more bobbins are added.
Also, we will make three baloons, so it will be very cute.
I will put up the picture when I finish this in the next lesson.

Thank you very much for reading!!

Sakura

Hello!

These days, the weather is not so good in Tokyo.
It's getting warmer, but we have many rainy days.

My host mother in Maine taught me a very nice expression in English
when I stayed her house (Aug 2003- June 2004).

'April showers bring May flowers.' 

I really like this beautiful sound and the meaning.
I looked up this expression and found that it came from the Old Mother Goose.
(My host mother might have taught me already at that time,
but I'm sorry I didn't remember!)

Here  is the longer version of the expression:
'March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers.'

I think that the literal meaning is very beautiful, but the meaning behind is
much more deeper and very impressive.

'If you have a hard time now,  you will be able to get over it.'
(Maybe the meaning is close to this.  I'm sorry that I can't translate well.)

In Japan, Sakura (cherry blossom) season is almost over,
and now other flowers and greens are beautiful. 

Here are some Sakura pictures I took (about 10days ago):

If you click these pictures, I think they will be bigger and easy to see.

It was cloudy on this picture day, so the back of Sakura is not good.  :(
I took these pictures near my apartment.

Have a nice weekend ♪



  

Hello from Tokyo

☆ This weblog is mainly written for all my host familes and friends.

Hello, my families and friends!
I hope all of you have been doing well and have happy lives there!

Finally, I have decided to start writing a weblog for keeping up
my English writing skills (too late?).

Since some of my host families and fiends have no facebook account,
I thought that weblog might be the better way to let them know how I'm doing.
I hope my English isn't too hard to read for you...please let me know
if I write something strange or you don't understand what I'm writing about.

I'd be very happy if you read this blog when you have time.  Thank you!

Today, for my first day of this blog, I am going to start writing about
'April in Japan - entering schools'.

In April, most schools start new grades in Japan (The school year ends in March). 
My younger sister's daughter became a first grader (6 years old and she was in
a nursery school until March).  Now she goes to an elementary school
from Monday to Friday. 
Once or twice in a month, she goes to school on Saturday.

Here is my niece, Yuina.  She is wearing a 'Randoseru', which is a typical
and traditional backpack for elementary school kids.
When I was at her age, boys must wear black backpack and girls wear
read (some private schools are different).  Now kids can choose the colors.
Yuina chose 'rose pink'... very nice color I think!

Only first graders must wear this yellow cover for the backpack in order
to show that children are crossing the roads.  Usually most children walk to school
(I used to walk about 25 min to school!  No school bus in a public schools
in Tokyo), so they should be stand out from drivers.

This is her elementary school.

Her class is '1-1', which means 'first grade-the first class'.
There are 34 students in one class, and there are only two classes in one grade.
When I was in the first grade, there used to be about 45 students in one class,
and there were 3 classes at least in one grade. 
This means that the number of children has been decresing in Japan.

This is her classroom and this is her first day.
The teacher is introducing herself. 
Yuina said that the teacher is very kind.

Usually there is a big black board in front and students sit fact to it.
When I was teaching Japanese in elementary schools in the U.S.,
I was very surprised when students sometimes sit on a carpet making a circle.
I liked the teaching style very much.

I will stop for today.  Thank you for reading!

P.S.  All pictures today are taken by my sister and her husband!