I'm back again!

After a long long break, I've finally tried to come up with my site again and rebuild my network with some of my fellow bloggers I'd known. Hoping to see them around here. I'm now trying to recall how to post in my own blog. That's the key.
It's a shame that it took for a while for me to log in my own blog. I've forgotten my ID and password. I typed every that word and this word one after another which came to my mind as passwords and finally I made it.OK that's enough for now.
I'll be back soon with my next story.

This evening, I had to stop at three different department stores one after another to do some shopping. When I finished all these shopping, I felt quite exhausted. Honestly speaking, I don't feel like making a rush to the parking. Do I have to hurry back home? Then I heard some one whispering in my ear, "Gee, you look so awful with those bags. Why don't you take a rest? After all you will be tied up with a lot of housework right after you get home. Just ten-minute break won't hurt you. While listening to this voice, I've already looked around and found one nice coffee shop across the aisle., well, strictly speaking, a traditional Japanese pastry house called "Akafuku". I rushed to the shop and dashed to the table, then I was stopped by the clerk. "Get the meal ticket first, please." "Oh, the ticket." They make it a rule to have the customers pay in advance. Gee, she didn!t have a mercy on me to have a seat and get free from these bags. Eventually I had to put these bags on the floor to pay. " Two pieces of Akafuku on the plate with tea please."
They serve several tiny mochi named "Akafuku" (soft rice cake wrapped with smoothly pasted sweetened beans) on the plate with Japanese tea or green tea as shown in the picture. They have served them ever since 300 years before at the shop in Ise, Mie prefecture primarily for Ise Shrine visitors who walked all the way from different areas throughout the country on those days. Here people used to take a rest and feel happy about the safe arrival to Ise Shrine and after visiting the shrine, they used to drop by at the shop again to feel refreshed with some "Akafuku-mochi" before starting a long journey way back home on foot.
Well, time went by. Nowadays this "Akafuku" are loved especially by many women and visitors from other parts of Japan at the shops in many department stores. Apart from the story of visiting Ise Shrine, when I get exhausted from walking in the department stores and feel like to have a coffee break, dropping by at "Akafuku" is undoubtedly the right way to take a rest and get my enegy full again to play my role of housewife or whatever.
So I went home with a feeling of happiness. Happiness is having something sweet, maybe.

Tulips tulips tulips!

Enjoy the flowers!By the way,this is not Holland, but Japan.

Enter

Shachi-bon

One of the fascinating things about making a trip is to encounter something really delicious or something really unique food you have never had before at any other places but "there".
Here is something that makes you feel you can't miss it before you leave Nagoya by all means. Let me introduce you tonight the famouse cream puff named "Shachi-bon". "Shachi" is legendally "dolfin-like- fish" and a symbol of the city of Nagoya where you can find a gold pair of "Shachi" statues on the top of the Nagoya Castle roof. The cream puff is actually shaped like this symbol of Nagoya and made out of many parts of crispy crust :body and several fins. And it has full of whisked fresh cream inside its body crust and eyes are formed with chocolate chips and it has a strawberry tongue as well. Isn't it an irresistible face ! You'll love it at first sight. Don't miss it when you land at JR Nagoya Station.
You will be able to have "Shachi-bon" only at this cafe at the undergound shopping archade just below the station concourse.

Can't wait for the arrival of the spring

clike on the picture to get a larger image

Enjoy the bees dancing with my message.
(Sorry this page may not work properly on Macs.)
ENTER

Slide Show

This time I didn't carry my digital camera with me. It is not that I forgot to bring it with me but that I believed that I would not have been in a mood to take pictures.
Well, I really had no time to do some sightseeing except in the afternoon on the first day in Kyoto.
With a limited range of hours I've decided to visit one shrine called "KITANO TENMAN-GU " where a famous historical person named Michizane Sugawara was enshrined. He was well known as a educated man who was trusted by the then-Emperor. The shrine has many plum trees and that day they were in full bloom here and there in the shrine. After getting back to the Kyoto station by subway, I had some time to look around the station building. This huge building was completed in 1997 and it has many facilities like a department store, hotel, theater, game center, shopping mall, government offices, various restaurants and an observation deck on the 15th floor.
You would be very much surprised to see how this modern building has a nice contrast against the ancient images of Kyoto.
It was lucky for me to carry my cell phone with me.
Here is a series of pictures I took with my cell phone camera.

My recent Favorite

This is what I love to use these days. MY husband brought it home one day. Its arm shapes an interesting curve so that I can pinpont at the right part of my back to be patted or massarged with this machine over my shoulder.
I'm not a maniac for collecting so called "health care products" but this might be really interesting to have one at every home. When you feel your neck, shoulders and back stiff and sore and need some massarge, this machine gives you a moment of relaxation. See, there are eight different ways of massarge on menu buttons. There are four variations of patting, two of vibrating, and two automatic modes on this massarger. A head of a massarger on a picture is like a man's fist. It give you comfortable strikes and vibrations on your shoulder and back. If you want somewhat moderate touch, you can replace a fist-like head to a palm-like head. Well, if you want much moderate touch, why don't you replace a machine to someone sitting next to you in the living room. That's the best.

Chubu Centrair International Airport

People in the Chubu area are so much excited about the third largest and first 24-hour international airport led by the private company. The airport opened just yesterday. This new airport has some unique points.
It is unique in a way that it has varieties of commercial facilities such as its own amusement park, two hotels and around 100 restaurants, with a terrace providing a wide view of the sea plus a public bath with a panoramic view of the airport. What an exciting place just for a visit on weeekends.
If I had no job and had time to spare, I should have been one of 100,000 crowds of people including passengers and onlookers on the first day. 100,000 crowds of people! Amazing! Half of them were just curious onlookers. The TV news said that every train to the airport was packed with passengers as twice as much and there were long lines of people at every restaurant and a panorama public bath.
I guess there are two types of human behavior patterns when they face with a new encounter like the opening of the Chubu Centrair Internaional Airport. One type is that they are so curios that they can't wait. The first the best. On the other hand, the other type is that they are curious but also too demanding to jump into something new. I'm the latter one. I don't like a crowded train, crowded restaurant to wait for hours to be fed. I'll be tired of congestion. I'd rather fly overseas than stay in the airport!

Painting is fun

It's been long since I got this new painting and drawing soft. When was it that I got this? If I remember correctly it was way back in the winter of 2003. Then I just didn't have enough time to study paintings and almost forget about it. Then, all of a sudden, did you ever run into a situation that you can't resist trying it out. That exactly happened to me a few days ago. I just got in a mood to paint so I took out the tablet and started drawing with the pen-shaped mouse.
Once I start painting, my clock will stop ticking. I really enjoy drawing on the tablet and enjoy watching it on the desktop. There I don't have to make a mess all over with watercolors on the desk. All the works are to be handled on the computer desk top. I can mix the colors with some water on the computer palete and "click" on my favorite tool out of painting brushes from small to large, pencils, pens, sprays, chalks, charcoals, crayons whatever. Everything is installed in the computer. Well, I'm not a gogod painter but thanks to this drawing soft, I enjoy the world of painters.
Oh, there is one remarkable difference from the acutual paintings. That is, the computer painting provides us with the functions of "layers". One picture consists of many layers so that you really don't get into trouble when you want to erase a part you don't like anymore. All I have to do is just "delete" the layer I don't like and re-paint. That's really something!

Bean Throwing

We have many cultural ceremonies in our country. Maybe it is that we have four distinct seasons. This gives us varieties chances to appreciate the changes of the nature.
I love the bean throwing ceremony held either on February 3 or 4 depending on the year.
We call this day "Setubun". "Setu" means "the season" and "bun" means "divide". So it literally means the day marking the change from winter to spring. So today the third of February is the last day of the winter and tomorrow is the beginning of the spring which every one is longing for its arrival. Well talking of the bean throwing ceremony, not only at many shrines but also at every home family enjoys this throwing ceremony called "Mame maki". We throw the roasted soy beans in the house shouting "Out with the eveil and in with the fortune!" Then we open the windows and throw beans again outside in the garden shouting the same phrase. This way we believe we drive away misfortune and invite only good luck and health for the family. My two children used to love this ceremony so much and they used to throw the beans all over the rooms in the house shouting the phrase. Cleaning up the rooms was my job first thing in the next morning. But now the children are old enough to be reluctant to throw beans, which little kids are crazy about. So I take a part of this bean-throwing. Without this, the good fortune takes a glance at our house and might be just walking away. Oops, it's going to be a problem.
(Click on the picture to get a large view.)