Getting ready for the Doll Festival

In most of all Japanese families, we celebrate the day of March 3rd as the Doll Festival by setting up a display of traditional Japanese dolls called "Ohinasama". It's a historical culture of ours ever since 300 years before to pray for girls' good health and happiness throughout their lives keeping away from the bad evils. People had believed that those dolls were to take girls' places in carrying away every bad evil.

I have a daughter who has just turned to 20 years old. Even now, though she is away from home for her university , I make it a rule to set up her "Ohinasama" at home which her grandmother gave her for her first Doll Festival twenty years ago.

Dolls are carefully put into a wooden box for almost 12 months except a month or shorter than a month before the arrival of the first day of spring in the lunatic calendar.

It's such an exciting moment for girls and their families to open the box , set them up on the display with some spring flowers arrangements and some special sweets.

Where should I start ?

I've been writing my blog at another site for years in English. As I've been updating my blog, I' ve reallized that that site was not really adequate for writing in English. It is basically programmed for the Japanese language. As the english sentences go to the end at the right margin, the words are cut halfway and the rest of the letters go on to the next line. I handled this by arranging the tugs on the sheet. This hasn't cleared every thing yet. Whenever I wanted to change the template, the same trouble came up to me. So I'v just lost my interest in updating my blog then.
Well, since I want to write in English, why not using the English blog site. Then I won't have any troubles in styles and my site won't get garbled. So I arrived at this Blogger a couple years ago and still was not able to give up on my another site. Today I 'm back again hoping I will be able to stay writiing on this blog as I used to in my old one.
Just for my own interest, here is my blog in english which I had been working on so long.

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!