Reunion on Facebook

(young peer group of various nationalities)

It was in 1980 when a total number of 60 or more Rotary International ambassadorial scholars from the world got together at Georgia Southern College in Georgia, US. It was for an orientation for us to get prepared for the following school year to fulfill an ambassadorial task as well as an academic purpose. 　Two months was long enough to develop our life-long friendships. We shared lots of time with studying and attending activities prepared by the Rotary. We were much concerned about why we were there. We had enough time to talk about various topics such as our own concerns, country, culture, politics, academic interests and so many. We were just so frank to expose ourselves into a unique community and eager to understand the differences.

Of all my close friends, including me, none of us applied to the same universities in the US. It meant we would have little chance to meet again. That brought us about a desperate moment of good-bye at a municipal airport while carrying a large luggage and going through a gate for each destination in the US at the end of summer.
If Apple or Windows had been there with us those days, it would not have been such a sad farewell. I think they arrived in a society a little bit late for us.
Since then, many had failed to keep in touch with one another except one or two.

Now this is what happened last fall. Owing to Facebook, we were united again! It was really amazing and dramatic. The only thing to do was that you just type out a friend's name in a friend search box. Then, look what you got there. Like we drew a fishing net, we found out familiar faces one after another. Sometimes we had to ask others in the Internet whether a profile picture we saw was exactly the one we had been looking for. Yes, it has been 30 years. It sometimes was not easy to tell. But most of the time, this kind of anticipation turned to be a big scream of joy at a computer screen. "Bingo! We got you!"
This way, now we had 17 members in our Facebook group all from different continents on earth.

(right click to open this in a new window for a larger image)

We're now seriously thinking of the whole reunion in person somewhere in the world not on Facebook anymore . In a timely fashion, in May, the Rotary International will have the International Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Ahead of the main conference there will be also the Rotary Alumni Meeting for granted students. It would be nice if some of them can get together during the event. Yet, taking the mileage indicator into consideration, Bangkok might be too far for some of us. The choices are Argentine, Belgian, Brazil, Egypt, Finland, France, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico,Thailand and USA. Wow! I don't have any idea.

They are going to make it SOON !

One day this past July, I was on the Net browsing to seek for any chances as a volunteer interpreter. I typed out "volunteer" in a search text box and hit an “Enter.” Well that was when I came across with an amazing “Travel Volunteer Project.” I signed up then and there for a supporter in Aichi.

(for those who missed my previous post about this project, please have a look at here.)

It was really fortunate that the Project team gave me an opportunity to support Katy and Jamie when they got to Aichi as their 20th destination. One thing which impressed me was, well, it must be a very obvious matter for them, but for me, it was their resolution to this project.

I took them to the Toyota Automobile Company on Oct.25, the first day in Aichi. As soon as we were ready to start exploring the exhibition floor, they stopped for the discussion and they quickly walked in the different directions with each camera. Soon they were busy moving around, taking pictures, reading panels and taking notes one after another. Sometimes I lost either of them from my sight. For them this project was not just a lucky pleasure sightseeing but a mission to report for bringing back the tourism after March11 disaster in Tohoku.

The great part of this project is that a selected Travel Volunteer is supposed to appeal to the world every day by way of all kinds of SNS such as a Blog, Facebook and Twitter to introduce what they see. Apparently they came to learn Japan is much bigger than expected from north to south and safe enough to explore the land. Since Jamie is a professional writer and Katy a professional photographer, I see their spirit of the journalists in all over their posts. The posts are very enlightening, informative, well researched. Being sprinkled with his specific way of looking at things, his journals are quite interesting for the Japanese readers as well in terms of learning how the first-time visitors to Japan see our country. And look at Katy’s photos! Always beautiful and stunning! She marvelously sends us her message as well.

I'm sure their Blog will make a very special guide book of Japan!

Last week, they reached to the southernmost destination, Okinawa. Now they’re heading back toward their starting point, Kanazawa. They only have 6 prefectures left as of now. It will be a great moment of the accomplishment for the Project Team not to mention Katy & Jamie. All of the Japanese private/public supporters who participated in this project will surely be overjoyed with this moment, too.

Time flies. Who did ever believe that the “Travel Volunteer” makes a journey to all of the Japanese 47 prefectures in 100 days?

Well, they are going to make it SOON!

Travel Volunteer Project

I was going to talk about them before they visited Aichi but I didn't make it. In fact I wrote halfway and saved it. So let me start from the very beginning.

Travel Volunteer Project! What is all about? What is Travel Volunteers then? Well, I need to start the explanation from the March 11th disaster by a huge earthquake and tsunami and damaged nuclear plants. This news of huge tragedy was so quickly reported all over the world and people in the world were just shocked to see how the nature could be fatal to man and his world. In fact every TV news kept sending the awful scenes how the tsunami attacked the towns and cities in Tohoku and eventually it swallowed up 20 thousand people and still many missing even now.
Due to the world TV news, many people in the world just believed the tsunami swept away all over our land and in fact some overseas TV and newspapers reported as if it were the end of Japan. This brought a confusion among world travelers that Japan was not a safe country to visit anymore. Many trips were canceled one after another even in the area far away from the devastated regions. During the spring which was the high season for sight seeing in Japan, the numbers of the visitors from abroad were dropped sharply. English speaking guides whom I know were shocked to know every request for guiding were all canceled.
The tour industry faced the fatal damage although of all the land, west part of Japan was nothing affected and nothing happened and remained just the same as it was as usual.
In order to prove it and bring many foreign visitors back to Japan, one travel company called Magellan Resorts in the city of Kanazawa launched "Travel Volunteer Project." Please check their project website to know more about it here.

It was in July that I have known of this project and right on the spot, I applied for a volunteer supporter to guide the elected travel volunteer when he/she visited Aichi.
There were 1897 applicants for Travel volunteer from 85 countries and eventually the couple of Katy and Jamie, a photographer and a writer from England won this tremendous opportunity to visit all of 47 prefectures in Japan while updating their blogs and photos outwards telling many parts of Japan aren't changed and the many parts of our country are as beautiful and safe as they are always.

So their journey started on Sept.15. Yes it's almost 2 months have passed since then. Time flies. Now how many prefectures they have visited by now? Here is a map.



Yes, while I stayed away from blogging, Katy and Jamie came to Aichi and I had such a great opportunity to accompany them on Oct. 25.
I'll talk about it next.
At the same time please follow their great blog with fascinating stories and beautiful photos. You'll love it.

(continued)

Is our country strange?

I'd like to share this video here in case you haven't had a chance to see this before. This is an English Version. It's really cool and well explained using lots of statistics. Really a good job. It's created by one young Japanese graphic designer. Partly well generalized and partly not. Partly ironic and partly true and not true. Partly hilarious and serious. I like it. This video gives us the Japahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnese to think of ourselves, what we have gone through so far and consider what we should do next for the future. I'm pretty sure there's not only Japan in the world that has some aspects which are not welcomed. Each country has both sides. It's worth looking at our own country from another side of the globe. Enjoy!



For some reason, the English version from You Tube is not available anymore.
The video produced by Kenichi Tanaka was introduced in this site here.

Thinking of what I can do

I know how significantly the Internet has been playing its role throughout the country right after the quake, the tsunami, and the nuclear crisis. It was so amazing how fast people in and out of the nation started to exchange information and concerns about the disaster. They even organized the volunteer groups by way of their blogs, Twitters, Facebooks and many other SNS.

There are lots and lots of volunteers working for those people in seriously damaged areas. I totally would like to send them a great gratitude for their efforts and resolutions.

There is not much I can do now but I'll keep thinking of what I can do today, tomorrow, next week, or next month. I'll keep thinking of it. For the moment, I think I'll be updating by way of the Internet how volunteers and people in the disastrous areas are fighting against the cruel situations for their recovery to get a basic daily life.

At the same time let us keep sending messages to people in the world that other areas, the western part of Japan such as Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka including Nagoya are safe and sound. We're here to make our own lives to be any kinds of help to those in Tohoku. Even many non-Japanese businesspersons are coming back to work from abroad to Tokyo after some hectic situations. Ready to make our domestic economy active again.

Cherry blossoms are in full bloom in my city and this frontline is going up northward day by day up until it reaches to Hokkaido, the north of Japan. Cherry blossoms are very special to us in our minds and thoughts. It surely brings lots of HOPE to people in Tohoku very soon.

Read also a related story about the picture above from here.

Have a nice weekend!

I didn't see him for two weeks. It was so hard to see him off at the time the Internet was not so widely used in our daily life. Oh, it was just a story about 10 or 20 years ago not an old story of half a century ago, I'll tell you.
Thanks to the arrival of the new technique, I don't have to send an air mail in care of the hotel front desk, nor make a call, nor ask the hotel front to hand out a fax document to him while he was out.
Anyway, we've been doing this for years and years since we got married. Now I don't have to worry too much anymore. I can get him on the mobile phone, send him a message to it and to his PC anytime. The world is surely getting much smaller and so is our bloggers' friendship over the webs.

I've been busy for this past week what with visiting new friends from OWOH on the net and what with my daily life. Now he's back and the things in the house are going around a bit faster.

Have a nice weekend to all of my friends.
Is there any plan over the weekend?
Whatever it is, have a restful one. Another Monday will be with us so soon.

The problem

Since last night there has been a problem that many of my pre-posted pictures don't show up.
Some don't lose links but some do.
I found out it might be a bug problem which shows in many other bloggers posts.
I'm going to leave this for the moment to see if there is an easy way to get rid of this.
It's really disappointing and irritating that the pictures are not shown
and I have to click each blank to see it.
Sorry about this inconvenience.
If you have any good advice, I would be most happy.
I'm going to work on this in the evening.

Thank you for visiting.

Over 70 comments came in

It's been less than 24 hours since I posted "One World One Heart" last night.

This is "OMG." Is this what OWOH is all about?
My post on OWOH has still been attracting bloggers over 60!
I've never had such a large number of comments in any of my previous posts before.
Every single comment is so sweet and heartfelt.
More than anything else, I feel so glad to hear that they like my posts in the past as well as the giveaway. You know, it's such a nice compliment for me whose native language is not English.

Thank you so much every one who kindly came in here today.
Now I feel so happy that all of a sudden, I got so many friends, that I'd never expected to come across in this world unless I had made one step forward and joined OWOH.

It'll take for a while for me to visit your blogs but I'm sure I will gladly do and will enjoy"talking" to you.
Let's stay tuned until we see who will be the lucky one!
We have still a week to go.

"One World One Heart 2011"

Hello! Welcome to "My Hodgepodge".
I'm so happy to join "One World One Heart" from Japan.

A couple days ago, Jeany in Germany whom we've known each other in this blogsophere over the years, introduced me in her blog about "One World One Heart" project. As I was reading what it was all about, I was carried away with this project for bloggers across the countries.

"One World One Heart" project had been brought to all the bloggers(strictly limited as blog owners) throughout the world by one artist whose name is Lisa. Please visit her blog and learn more in detail about "One World One Heart".
This is a huge giveaway project that I've never run into before.
Go and visit Lisa's page to see more than 800 participants enrolling in this project with beautiful give-away presents. It is something like exchanging handmade gifts but there is more to it. You will know how large a number of women in the world, keeping their blogs, expressing their own thoughts and own life-styles, opening their doors to the outward world. By getting a chance to visit their blogs, we'll be able to know one another. That's friendship. Thus, the whole world is getting smaller. How nice this is.

So I've also made up my mind to join this project by presenting my giveaway. Of course, you can join the project just by visiting others , enjoying their blogs and leaving a message saying you'd like to sign up for a give away.

Well, to tell you the truth, I'm not good at handcrafts.
I love making things with my hands if I have time, but this is only for my own pleasure. None of them makes a good gift to be sent out.
So here are some cute little goodies I've bought from some shops before for adding to my favorite collections.

Let's enjoy "One World One Heart" together. This time it will be the fifth and will be the last project after all. How lucky that I joined the last "One World One Heart"project.

Here are my giveaway gifts: a very small set of dolls and three small pocket envelops.


The dolls are called "Hina Dolls." On March 3 we celebrate the Girls Festival in Japan by decorating Hina Dolls at home. Those small pocket envelops are originally for putting in small amount of money to hand out to others in Japan. They are too cute just for envelops.


In order to join my give away, please leave your comment , your blog URL and your e-mail address here. I'll choose one lucky winner by lot.(I'm ready to use one lottery free soft from the web.) Don't forget to write your e-mail address. Otherwise, if you were the winner, I've got to choose the second person.

Finally thank you Lisa for your taking time for this project for five years.

the reason why I expose myself into English

Owing to the Blogger, the Twitter, the Face Book, I get the chances to expose myself into the English language world. There I have time to think, make an outline of an idea, search vocabularies, type out my idea into words and finally let it out in the Internet.
I do enjoy every step to express myself outward world. Since I hardly have a chance to talk face to face and exchange ideas with native speakers unless I go to the language school, writing English means a lot to me in terms of keeping up with it. More than anything else, it's so exciting to communicate my friends in the world with English. If I don't manage the English language, there would have been no other door open to the new world of friendship. Language is amazing.

Today I’d like to talk about some twitter friends who are generous enough to help out the Japanese twitters tweeting in English. Language-wise, they tell us many good advice, instruction and some cultural background information which is useful in learning the foreign language. Some kindly correct my sentences if I ask to. Mostly they are the language experts whose majors at colleges were the teaching English as a second language or the linguistic or the literature and some of course with their unique backgrounds. There are some Japanese with the similar backgrounds as well. It's good that I can have both of native speaker and the Japanese.

@phrasemix introduces us with lots of useful vocabularies, phrases and is kind enough to check our English sentences very systematically. @sawage runs his private language school in Japan and gives us kind instruction as a teacher. @zen_to_satori is a Japanese and has a good command of English. He knows what mistakes the Japanese learners often make and kindly shows the right sentences. @CaroneeSan is an English author, entrepreneur and more. She is always so carefree to talk of the cultural background from the woman's point of view. @nyeigo is a language tutor who lives in NY. He talks about some popular idioms and vocabularies often used by the native speakers.

There are many opinions on what the best way to learn English. Some say "Why don't you get some native speakers and just talk to them. It's the faster way to learn how to speak." I'm not sure about it. My favorite way to study it for the moment is “writing”. By way of writing, I’ve got to think and make my idea clear. When I know what I want to talk, then it is way easier for me to speak up. That way I believe writing is a very important exercise in order to speak as well. I love to learn new phrases and vocabularies and once my thought are put into letters, they will stay in my memories as my own words.

How can I write the good sentences? What else I should do for writing better English? I've been always looking for the answer these days.

What language do you speak besides your mother tongue? How did you study it? Do you have any suggestions for me?

Let me try out

At last here I am !
It's been almost a month since my past blogging.
I was once so busy, lazy, and sometimes not in a mood to update my blog.
All these reasons were true for my absence.
While I was away from it, I still wanted to inform my friends of myself.
Twitter might be, then, easier for me to keep uploading since all I have to do is to write within 140 letters. As a matter of fact, I'm not quite sure what twitter makes a sense when I have my blog at the same time. But never mind, at least, you will "hear" my occasional tweets and know what I'm doing even when I don't update my blog.
So here in the side bar, you will see my twitter widget. Just let me try out.

Package across the sky

Here are the gift items Jeany has sent for me all the way from Germany.

Click here for more images!

How gorgeous! I'm so thankful and happy that she made every single goody by herself and was generous enough to send them to me in Japan.

She is such a talented woman who enjoys varieties of crafts especially her cartonnage are breathtaking. When I first saw her blog, I was just carried away to know how she made every part so carefully and patiently and finally so beautifully while it requires time and concentration before she completes.

Just coming across with her on the web is a great pleasure. Isn't it miracle that our paths crossed each other one day in the Internet world and now we are friends! This is something great about the blogosphere.
I love the sewing box. It's like a magic box. When you open it, you'll find a small one inside and it has many pockets as well on each four sides. How amazing and how delicately and carefully she went through all the steps. I love every item you sent to me. Look at the lovely European doll. She's so cute. You definitely showed me the excitements of handcrafting.
Oh, my, how can I be deserved with those presents. Thank you, Jeany. I do keep them for long.

Well, my friends, it's not the end of the story. There is more to say. I'll come back soon.

Inspiring hint from Dionne

Dionne is such a talented woman in many ways. She owns "City of Dionne". She is a graphic designer, a writer, a photographer, a cook and an organizer-----and maybe a bit more talents.
Well, more than anything else, she has a generosity to accept friends from different backgrounds and shows her understanding toward differences. Her blog is filled with deep insights and warmness not to mention her artistic talents.
She also writes some articles in different sites besides her own blog and I'm a fan of her articles.

In her recent post in Meylah, she introduced the importance of making a blog button and I found it very interesting in a sense that I can use this button not only for linking to my blog but also for directing readers to a particular site or post.
A button is not only for advertising a blog. I haven't ever thought of that. Then, why not try a button for my own post! Thank you Dionne for inspiring me.

I've just followed her step-by-step instruction and I think I did it all right.

If you want to read her post, just click on the green button above.

I myself made a button to lead you my tulip album in a side menu. Would you like to click on that button? Thank you!

New book!

My husband came home from Kualalumpur, Malaysia with the book named "Logomania"!!! I'm so happy! Because this is one of the books Ellen published last year. She is a professional writer and one of my blogger friends who lives in Malaysia. She writes books and articles for newspapers. Of course I've started reading the book. You know, even for one like me, whose mother tongue is not English, the book is so informative and it's fun to know the language backgrounds as well as the phrases themselves. I'm especially happy that I can start reading any pages depending on categories. I can pick up any columns from index as well.
(You can have a peek for her new two books in her blog.)

Unless I had a chance to come across to her blog in the Internet, I would have never had a chance to get her book. It's true to every one of my blogger friends, who gives me such an inspiring different essence in my daily life.

Speaking to myself-----

Once I've been away from blogging for these weeks, I feel like I'm in the midst of an awkward silence. I think I'm stuck! I am looking for the chance to make a step forward!

Just for filling you in!

Thank you for sweets words as for my not having updated my blog for a week!!!

I already have several topics I want to share with you. Here are some photos.

I'm always visiting each one of my dear friends. Then, time is up!

I'm so anxious to update my blog , visit you all and I love to feel each one of you much closer! Wait for me! I might come up all of a sudden when I find enough time.

Have a nice week!

By the way will you tell me?

Is there any way to know that I've got the recent comment on any of my posts? It would be nice if I can or anyone can know it instantly in the side menu. That way I won't miss it if it is in my previous posts. I've checked it on "Help" but according to the explanation, I have to change my template to classic one. I don't want to do it though. If someone has a good answer, will you tell me?