The first snow in this winter. Snowfall on the last day of the year. Uh ! Cooooold !
Have a very nice last day of the year 2004 !

Stay calm, the earth !

It's so depressing to know that the big wave caused by the gigantic earthquake in Indonesia killed more than 12,000 people of the nations along the Indian Ocean, including many tourists for holidays from the world. Why? What's wrong with our planet? It's not simply a matter of the news far away from my country. Earthquake is basically a natural disaster which can threaten anybody anytime without any notice. It had just jolted the central-nothern part of Japan two months before and brought about incredaibly huge damages on our lands and in residents' hearts. And gradually and very slowly things are seemingly going upword with hopes.
Then this news from the Indian Ocean slaps our hearts down to the depression. Please for the sake of us, stay calm, the earth. We are only powerless human beings against the Nature and the Universe. Let us live up our short span of life just in peace. I can't help praying these words hoping the Nature can hear us. Gosh, only if they had had a tunami warning system------

Now it's the coming of the New Year

Now the Christmas of 2004 is over. I went to the office today, even though it was Sunday, to get together with my colleagues. For one thing it was for having lunch all together at a Japanese restaurant. We have 10 staffs including the boss. Usually we won't see all of them through a week. So it was really nice to meet one another at the same time and have luch together. We looked back over this past year and laughed a lot about who did this and that and all sorts of pleasant topics. And after enjoying the meal, there we had another enjoyment. Cleaning up our office ! That was today's main event! Gee, it was really a good exercise after a big lunch. Haveing a lunch before cleaning up was a perfect decision.
Now from tommorow being away from my job, I'll be playing a role of a very busy housewife preparing for the New Year's Eve and the very first day of 2005. Oh boy, that makes me feel dizzy.
(I changed the style sheet of my blog in case I won't have enough time to sit at the computer before the coming of the new year.)

It's Christmas!

Here is my short Christmas greetings to those who are very special for me.
Thanks for coming over to my blog.
I hope you might enjoy it as well as I do.

Please click here and you will see my greetings.

Out of order

It's been less than one year since we got this coffee maker. It is out of order again! Again means this is not the first time. It has gotten useless twice in a year. I didn't handle it in a wrong way nor didn't drop it, but all of a sudden the switch went dead. Why? Again? No kidding! Last time they said they'd changed a fuse. Is it this fuse again? Then why? Is there any other cause that the fuse has blown again? I brought a coffee maker today to the shop I bought it from and ask these questions to a salesclerk. He couldn't make me understand to any of these questions. All he could do for me was just to fill out a repair form and check the date on his watch and tell me "it won't be back before New Year." Gosh! It isn't my responsibility, rather it's their responsibility to sell such a poor coffee maker which get useless in a short period of time. They should be kind enough to give me a new one. I was disappointed with their attitude towards their business. I should have called up the customer service center at the coffee maker company at first hand. Without a coffee maker, how can we go through Christmas and New Year ? We can't enjoy espresso. That's really disappointing.

His absence

I got up 5:30, still dark outside. I woke my husband up to send him out for his golfing with his colleagues. How happy they are! They are enjoying golfing away from the daily trifling matters while their wives must have been busy vacuuming the rooms, doing the laundries, or washing the dishes at this time of the day with other busy schedule to get prepared for lunch for the rest of the family and to go out for shopping for Christmas and New Year by the time their husbands get home.
Fair or unfair? There are various ways of analyzing it. Many wives, of course, are simply miss their husbands hoping to spend time together with them. However, husbands should know that many wives might have a subconscious desire to enjoy their own life after ten or twenty years of marriage life. There once was a popular, funny but cynical TV commercial copy for mothballs. A middle aged, overweight, full-time housewife is skipping along the street chanting "It's so nice as far as my old man is healthy and won't be home till late."
That connotes that a husband's absence from home makes a wife's life easier as far as he is healthy and works hard for his family. Well what do you think?

Hectic time of the season

Now it is December. I went to Takashimaya department stores to send out some "Oseibo"(a year-end gift) to our family acquaintances.
See, there are lots of people here and there, everywhere.
This last month of the year is quite busy for everyone, especially for every housewife. New Year is right on the way so December is the time to get everything ready and set for the coming year, such as cleaning up the house, sending out the New Year cards, and cooking the special New Year dishes right on time for the first morning of the New Year. Oh, but, here is one more important event for us. -----Christmas! Though most of the Japanese are not Christians, Christmas is such an important event for every families and friends and lovers in Japan. I have to get the presents for the family, make Christmas dishes. And on the next day right after Christmas, you put every Christmas decorations away into boxes and we all set ready for the New Year. Whew, just this simple imagination makes me feel dizzy. So those last five days before the New Year is by all means, very very hectic time of all the year round.

Rose! Rose! Rose!

A good friend of mine gave me a bunch of different roses in colors, sizes and types
I'm not familiar with roses. Of course I love flowers, but I'm not goot at learning their names by heart, not to mention different names of roses. Roses are roses.
They are just gorgeous and beautiful enough to fascinate me with their charms.

On the train

It has been cloudy all day and the temperature never goes up higher than 16C. The air is cold and it is chilly outside. This morning, I had to go downtown to the main bank office to deal with our family bank account. Well, I drove to the car dealer first and left my car there for its safety check-up. Then I walked to the nearest station and get on the train to go downtown. It's so fun to watch many kinds of notice or commercial advertisements on the walls or some hanging from the ceiling on a train. I'm especially enjoying watching the advertisements of the weekly magazines. Some are very social and political and some are full of gossips headlines of popular TV and movie well-known faces. Well, this is one of ways to kill time until a train gets to my destination.
Nowadays, people with commonsense refrain from talking with their cell phones on trains and in hospitals. However, look at some people there on a train I took this morning. No, they are not talking to a cell phone but, they are busy inputting mails to send out or busy net surfing some their favorite sites. I am always skeptical whether this is ok for those that have pace makers embedded in their hearts.
"Excuse me. You better not use your cell phone on a train. Some radio waves might cause a problem on some people." I spoke to myself. No one could ever hear it. Otherwise, some one might come to me and speak ill of me, or in the worst case,might flap me in my face shouting "It's none of your business."
Well, with a sigh, I just hopelessly look up those magagines advertisements flapping in the air . "Shut down your cell phone while you are here!" I wish there were those warnings with large letters in stead of gossips headlines.