Another This And That Post

 It's January! Usually, this time of year is cold. The temperature usually hovers about the 10 °C mark. This week, however, has been very warm. Today it was 19 °C.

I had a little walk around the garden. Yes, it's still a disaster, but if the weather stays this mild, maybe we can do a bit this weekend!

I took a little video while I was out. The birds were really singing. I think you'll have to put the volume up to hear them, but for me, it was so nice. I never realised how quiet the winter is. In the other seasons, there are noises from different animals, birds and insects. I'm always amazed at the noise the insects can make; for such small creatures, they can really make a racket!

Took a couple of photos of a few flowers we have.

Nice bit of colour

A few more interesting photos from the past few days!

Rently?

This was a truck that we were following the other day! I think Marujun is a name, but rently? I love how the Japanese take English and use it in a very unique way!

These next photos are what happened when Mikey dropped his cards. 

When we are waiting for students at the community center Mikey sometimes practices his card routine. But of course, he occasionally drops them. However, I've never seen them land like this before.

The card is in the tatami mat!

If he could do that on purpose, it would be a good trick!

Lists And Routines

 Does anyone else make lists?

I keep a monthly to-do list. David asked if it's things for me to do or for him! 

One reason I keep this list is that some chores just seem to get away from me; having things listed helps a lot.

My basic routine is to keep the main areas of the house clean and tidy. Dishes, always a mountain of them! I do try to do them every day, also ask whoever has some time to do some. I try to do laundry every day when the weather is good, and I can get it outside to dry. At the moment, it's every other day, nothing really dries and having wet or damp clothes hanging around just isn't nice. Of course, I have to run the vacuum, that's almost every day, the wooden floors get swept, vacuumed and mopped! Cat hair! This time of year isn't a big problem, but as the weather warms up and they start losing their winter fur, it gets to be rather crazy. These are the things I try to get done daily. 

January to-do list

This is just the beginning! I usually add to it as I cross off things! 

The first item is to clean cob webs. I thought I had gotten them all in my big clean before Christmas, but I've noticed a few more. I know that we had a lot of spiders in September/October, but I helped many of them to move out, maybe they came back or left their kids here! I know I say I don't like insects, but spiders are alright, as long as they aren't too big!

The second item is to clean under my bed. My bed has drawers under it, to take them out and clean is really hard. Taking them out is alright, getting them back in is hard! So I usually slide my mattress off and move the board to get underneath! I hope to get that done tomorrow.

I'll let you know how I get on! I hope to have all the jobs crossed off!

Another list I have is things I want to buy!

Things I want to buy

I managed to buy a couple of the things on the list, a wet/dry vacuum cleaner and a vacuum cleaner. Between the cats and this house being very dusty, those two things are necessary!

The other items I'm trying to save for. But I think the printer I might have to ask either David or Christopher to buy on a credit card. It's something I use a lot for teaching!

The other things I can wait for!

Another list I've just started is places I hope to visit this year!

Places to visit this year

I'm not sure how many of these I can get to, but I thought having a list would help me to plan. I'm going to write this out in more detail later; this was just a brainstorming list. I want to figure out when to go and how much it will cost, so I can budget for things!

A few more lists or plans I'm thinking of making are to do with my words for this year: health and learning.

What are my goals for my health? How much weight should I aim to lose? What should I do to achieve that goal? What exercises will help me? Where to find help/inspiration when the junk food is screaming my name? I don't keep junk food in the house, which helps, but sometimes I get an intense craving for something! I guess one good thing about living in the middle of nowhere is that I can't just go to a shop and buy snacks!

Also, what should I focus on learning this year? Of course, Japanese. I had a dream the other night that I had to teach biology to 6th graders in Japanese! I woke up in a panic! I don't think I would ever have that level of fleuncy but to be able to deal with day-to-day life without panicking would be nice! I also want to read more classic books. I'm not sure what yet! I just finished Wuthering Heights, which was a lot more intense than I thought it would be. Thinking about what my next read will be!

Then I want to get into Japanese history more. Visiting historical places is more interesting with a bit of knowledge of the time period and area. All of my kids like history, especially David, so they help me to understand things!

Let me know in the comments if you are a list person!

As I develop these lists, I'll post them here!

Headache

 I fell asleep with my kerosene heater on (paraffin). Big mistake, as I woke up a few hours later to a lovely warm room but with a raging headache! I took some painkillers and opened the window a bit to change the air. I slept until just after 5am, when I had to get up to make some breakfast.

I decided to have a couple more hours of sleep. Unfortunately, my allergies started, so I took some allergy medicine and dozed a bit.

I made the same stupid mistake of leaving my heater on, I woke up 2 hours later with an even worse headache! One side effect of the allergy medicine is headaches, so between the heater and the medicine, I wasn't feeling that great!

I took more painkillers and have been drinking a lot of water. I feel a bit better, but today is one of my teaching days! I think I'll go for a walk while Mikey is teaching the younger class, might clear my head more. 

My bucket list of places I want to visit is growing. Hannah keeps sending me maps of places that look really interesting. One place is a shrine that Mikey went to over the New Year holiday.

Yesterday, Christopher was showing me this massive bookstore in Tokyo and a few other places. It looks more like a mall than just a bookstore. I don't think they sell English books, but there's a massive stationery store inside that I would enjoy!

I have to get ready to leave soon! 

Here is a view of the mountain. The weather is very strange, it was very cold the other day, it even tried to snow, now it's warmish again! Today it's sunny, but the wind is rather biting!

When I went out yesterday to say "Good morning" to the mountain!

Coming Of Age Day

 Today is another national holiday in Japan, Coming of Age Day.

Although there have been ceremonies to celebrate young people reaching adulthood, the modern form has been around since 1948, and it's held on the second Monday of January. 

The age for adulthood was lowered to 18 in 2022, but most ceremonies still focus on 20-year-olds, probably because drinking and smoking laws haven't changed.

Local city halls and community centres host ceremonies called Seijinshiki.The ceremony usually involves speeches from local officials,  reunions with classmates and visits to shrines. And of course, photos, lots of photos.  The shiki part means ceremony. I know this because David doesn't like anything with shiki in it. For example, the graduation ceremony, known as sotsugyoushiki. 

I'm not sure if this still happens, but in some places, young people would be given gifts. One of my students told me that her group were given Japanese plum trees to plant. She said that every year, when the tree would blossom, about the end of January, it would remind her of her Coming Of Age Day and the determination she made then to live a good and productive life!

Young people get to dress up in their best, special kimonos for the girls, called furisode, suits or hakama for the boys.

Girls in their furisode

None of my kids attended this ceremony; they weren't really interested. Instead, we had a little party at home. Some of my students who went to the ceremony said it was a nice day, but a lot of money, especially for the girls. The kimonos are usually hired for the day and cost up to 250,000 yen, about £1000. 

I like to see the news on this day, as there are usually segments showing the young people all dressed up and going to the city hall or shrines. 

Also, this is a nice little break; everyone is back at work, trying to get back into the rhythm of life that had been interrupted by the New Year's holiday. This feels like a little breather before the real work of the new year starts! 

Japanese Study

 I keep saying that I'm going to get back into my Japanese study, but time passes, and I don't do anything!

This afternoon I was determined to do some study and reached for my laptop!

I realised that this was the mistake I kept making. 

I keep looking for resources to study instead of studying.

There are some good sites out there, but I get easily distracted by links, then YouTube, then something else catches my eye. I then look at the time and find an hour has passed, and I haven't even started to study!

Today I decided to pull my books out.

I have a lot of books. As I said before, I have a bad habit of collecting books but not reading or using them!

My Japanese textbook

I bought this book when I first came to Japan, about 35 years ago. It still looks new; there are notes inside as I've been through it a few times. The notes tend to trail off after the first few chapters! The sad thing is I bought some books for teaching English at the same time, those have been replaced many times as they just fell pieces because they were used so much!

Today I wrote out some of the vocabulary from the first lesson.  This book uses hiragana, katakana and romanji (Romanised Japanese). I want to write the vocabulary out with kanji as well. I'll ask one of my kids to help with that.

I also wrote the important grammar points. These are things I know but don't know!

I think I pick up a lot of Japanese just by listening to things around me. The kids talking, when I'm out, students who change between Japanese and English, YouTube videos, etc. I can hear sentence patterns, but I've never really studied them. This time I'm going to pay more attention to grammar. 

This is my notebook today!

It's a start

I also found an old kanji drill book that we bought for the kids. We have a copy machine, so I used to copy the pages they needed.

This is today's effort.

Kanji practice.

I did two pages of this. I know the meaning of most of these kanji, but how to read and write is another question!

This is rather bad, I put the date on when I was trying to learn before!

May 8th, 2017!

Nine years ago!! 

Leave me a comment to encourage me!!!

Home

 What makes a place a home?

Is it the building?

Is it the people you share that building with?

Is it the memories that you make there?

I've been thinking about this for a while now, actually, since we were told that we had to leave the old house and move back here. 

At the other house, I felt at home. Even though it wasn't mine, and toward the end, it needed a lot of work done on it, it felt like home. It was comfortable, I could relax there. 

This house has never felt like a home. Even when it was newly built, there wasn't a feeling of being comfortable.

My mother-in-law had this built after a massive typhoon took off most of the roof of the original house. 

After it was built, my mother-in-law and her mother just moved all the old stuff they had back into the new house. Having all the old things put in made the small rooms seem smaller. 

There's a small living room that is off the dining/kitchen area, but it was never used as a living room, just a place to store things. 

Another thing that stopped this house from feeling like a home was the fact that they put their names on everything. When I first noticed this, I thought it was because my Grandmother-in-law had been in the hospital. I was bringing in some laundry as it had started to rain when we came to visit. I noticed that some of the towels had her name on them. A hospital stay would explain this. But I noticed that the fans had their names on, the heaters for their own rooms had their names on. They even had identical sewing boxes with their names on! This made it feel more like an institution than a home!

Also, the ornaments my mother-in-law collected weren't displayed; they were just stored in cabinets. And the only photos were of dead relatives in the room where the Buddhist altar was.

I never had a sense of home when we visited here; it was just a place to live.

When I look at old photos of where we've lived, I like to notice the things on tables or shelves.

I notice cups or dishes and wonder what happened to them!

What happened to those glasses and that tray?

If you look very carefully, you can see some piggy banks on the windowsill. These were promotional gifts from a bank. But they have a funny story attached to them. Hannah had one; she was about 9 at the time. She kept taking the money out of the other one and putting it in her piggy bank, until she got caught! Hisao put tape on the other one, which Hannah tried very hard to take off. She was a bit disappointed that her source of income dried up! 

This photo, as well, brings back memories and a feeling of being at home. 

This was January 2024, the lads were playing some daft game, talking and laughing. I look at this photo and see all the books we collected, some were for teaching, others were my reading books. The silver box that holds the Christmas decorations and the tree waiting to be put away. All of those things are now in storage because this house is too small!

Even after living here for a year, it doesn't feel like home. 

There is no real place to hang out together. We have a sofa in the dining area, but no living room. I thought about changing the tatami room to a living room, but I will need to use that room to teach in! 

I really don't know what to do to make this house feel like a home. I thought about putting up some photos or some of Hisao's paintings. I would love to paint the walls in the tatami, entrance and corridor. At the moment, the colour is this horrible green colour, which reminds me of snot!

This green colour.

It doesn't look too bad in the entrance during the day, but the tatami room and corridor are dark, and this colour just makes it feel darker!

Of course, having nine cats doesn't help with keeping the place nice. They have destroyed the doors to the tatami room!

Naughty cats!

But the doors are made of paper, the wooden doors are alright!

I really want a living room. Sometimes we hang out after eating, but the room is either too hot or too cold. Having a space where we can be together would be nice. 

I know my kids are adults and want their own space, but having a place to hang out together or to invite people to would really make me more settled here.

Leave a comment if you have any ideas about making a house a home. I'll try and put up some more photos of this place, maybe I can draw the layout, so you can see what I'm up against!

Mikey's Birthday

 January is a birthday month for my family. Mikey and Christopher, just days apart, my niece's birthday is in the middle and Dad's birthday towards the end of the month.

Today is Mikey's turn. He's 34 today! 

I remember coming home with him from the hospital, totally freaked out. I had very little support, no real close friends to call on who had babies. My mother-in-law wasn't that interested until Mikey was older. I didn't even have an international phone line at the apartment we were living in! To call Mom, Hisao had to drive me to a nearby park that had an international public phone! 

The first few months were hard, but he was such a lovely baby ( except he didn't sleep much!). 

When he was 7 months old, we visited England. He went to my parents straight away; he wasn't a shy baby at all. 

This was at the airport, we had just arrived in the UK!  He let Mom pick him, no crying, no fuss!

I often wonder how much a person's character comes from nature versus nurture.

Mikey is still very outgoing. He loves to entertain, to do his magic show, and to talk to people. Even as a baby/toddler, he had no problem with other people being around!

David is the opposite. He really doesn't enjoy other people's company. As a baby/toddler, he was very shy. He never warmed to anyone outside of his family. 

With these two, I can see that their natures are very different. I don't think my parenting style changed that much!

Just a few photos!

With Hannah, 21 years ago.

In England

Dressed for the kids' Christmas Party.

With his Granddad in England.

His magic show, December 2025.

He took Hannah back to her apartment this morning. I gave him some money to have a nice lunch with her!