Just absent-minded?

I am quite shocked with what I did this morning. I burned the toast at breakfast once and twice and this is really silly but three times. And you will have pity on me. While burning the toast,I overflowed the washing machine with warm water pumped up from a bathtub. What's going on with me? I'm forgetting one after another.Aging? Booooo! I would say a housewife is just busy with one thing and with another. I hope so.

Your wish has come true!

I've just read this article on web now and cannot help posting here.
This is an article which is worth of reading the first thing in the morning.
A three-year-old boy suffering from an obstinate desease has been always wishing if he could have met the Ultraman , the great hero on TV that every Japanese kinds love. And finally his dream has come true yesterday owing to the arrangement by the volunteer group named "Make a wish of Japan".
An appearance of the Ultrama surely gave this boy the spirit of fighting and some sense of togetherness with the mighty hero to share the spirit together. Nice shot!

Thinking of January 17th

It has been ten years since then. We never forget this day. The great Hanshin Earthquake of January 17th 1995. I was awake in bed at that time. I never forget the instant the house swang very slowly from side to side. I jumped out of bed because I felt it dangerous and ran to my children's beds. My daughter was already running towards me with her pajamas on. This was in Nagoya but a short tremor was big enough to surprised us that day very early in the morning.
As far as we are on this jolting archipelago, we have to face with earthquake. We are just helpless against the power of the nature. We may lose our properties but then at least we have to protect our lives from the disaster. We should survive so that we won't be apart from our loved ones or won't throw them into a big despair and sorrow of lost. Let us pray for those who lost their lives that day and for those who were secluded from their families all of a sudden.
The same prayer goes to people who lost their lives and those who got big scars in their minds in Niigata Earthquake and in the South-east Asia earthquake and tsunami.

City freeway

So I drove the city free way to take my daughter to the exam center.
On the way back home, I took out my cell phone and look what I did. Here are some shots on the way. It has been just a couple of years since this freeway was open if I remember correctly. It's neat and comfortable and swiftly leads me to the east end of the city.
The road pulls into a underpass and the lightning in the tunnel is beautiful with orange color. And the freeway is connected to the next freeway to get back to home which pulls into a overpass. This was Sunday morning, the traffic was so much light that gave me an idea to take out my cell phone for good shots.

Entrance Exams

This is the sencond day of the university entrance exams by the Center for University Entrance Examinations. The test center my daughter was assigned is far away from the nearest subway station. The applicants are supposed to walk about 30 minutues on this cold and windy day of the winter. There is a city bus but which runs only once every one hour. Moreover, it was rainning yesterday, the first day of the exams. She had to get in a room by 9:10 at latest and her exam was over at 6:30 in the evening.
So I've decided to drive her to her center for the exams by way of the Nagoya city freeway. I drove in about 30 minutes from the west of the city where our house is to the east of the city the exam center is located. That's a quite fast and comfortable driving. If she uses the subway and walks, it would have taken more than 1 hours to get. I wonder why the Center office did pick up such a high school which locates in a inconvenient place as a exam center. There are more than 700 exam centers across Japan for two days. I bet there should be many out of 520,000 applicants across the nation who are forced to make a hard journey to a exam center before they really fight with their exams all day.
Wish them for a big "Good Luck!".

Coming of Age Day

An "adult" in Japan is legally defined as one who is 20 or over. They gain the right to vote on their twentieth birthday, and they're also allowed to smoke and drink. Municipal governments host special coming-of-age ceremonies for 20-year-olds on the second Monday of January. So my son attended this ceremony today at the gym of the elementary school he graduated from. It was almost like a alumni meeting for the first time since they graduated from the school seven years ago. It was nothing but the great moment of excitement to get into the gym where many old friends got together and to put their old memories together then and there to tell who is who. They surely don’t look the same as they were seven years ago. They are adults. Like my son, for those who didn’t have any chance to see each other often since the graduation, it is such a nice re-union. This year 1.5 million fellows turned to 20-year-old and had this celebration all over the country. They’ve now stepped forward to the new stage of their life with new rights and responsibilities as well.

No choice

My son has just come home for holidays from his university. When he comes home, there are always some adjustments I'm supposed to accept. First and foremost the amount of cooking meals is doubled, more laundries than usual, sudden shopping necessity owing to his poor interests in men's fashon---but more than this, he enjoys the previledge of driving my car. He took a driver's license this past summer but had no chance to drive since then. It's funny to see him coming up to me with two sheet of green-leaf-shaped stickers with his hands asking if he uses my car or not. In order to drive, he must put these sticker on a car body to draw other drivers' attention that he is just a biginner. He has no choice to own his new car now while he has a definite desire to get his favorite car someday. It's a "cappuccino" from Suzuki. My car is Toyota "Hi-ace" one box car. These are two extremes in size and shape. Sorry, he has no choice.

What a relief !

A good news ! They gave me a new coffee maker. How exciting ! Well, as I wrote about a coffee maker which got out of order all of a sudden at the end of the last month. Since the shop clerk told me it won't come back till the beginning of the new year, I thought it was ridiculous and finally I called up the customer service center at the coffee maker company. I explained the situation that it was not the first time that the coffee maker went dead in a year and the man over the phone was simply told me that it was their fault and that they could send out a new one right away. That 's the way ! The new one arrived just after Christmas. Thanks to our new coffee maker, I am free from staring coffee dripping through a paper filter each time. Now I know we can't really do without it. ( I should have written about it much sooner, but it seems that I've missed it.)

What a beginning !

What a beginning of the new year !
Yuck ! I've caught a cold on the very first day of the year. I must have caught this cold when I went to the Shinto shrine with my family to make a wish for our happy and healthy year. It was a cold and chilly morning and there was a long line of people so that we had to wait for long to get to the front. Isn't it ironic, though ? I made some wishes in front of the god and look what he brought me on that day !
Hopefully the year of a bird will have enough good luck on me all through the year. Well, too much expection only makes me feel down afterall. Just let me free from coughing, running nose, blocking nose, feeling my brain like cotton wool at this moment, now.

Greetings !

I only wish "peace" and "happiness" for every one !