Films

Japanese movie "Departures" won Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and "La Maison en Petits Cubes" won the Best Animated Short Film award in the 81st Academy Awards celemony.

It is great that Japanese films are approved of in the world of film!!

I saw the director, Mr. Yojiro Takita, on TV interview and watched his film in the past. This was about media, and the main character was a TV reporter. It was only minutes that run on the screen, however, I somehow felt his perspective.

It was kind of serious and raising a question.
How the media should really be and what is the real world of media...
I studied about media and communication, so it is eye-catching for me.

There are difficult questions, but important.

Anyway, I definitely want to watch "Departure" and "La Maison en Petits Cubes".
Have you seen them?

Is outfit so important?

" You should dress better!"
I was told by an elder when I was talking about my mother and sister.

Whenever I visit to my mother's house, she tells me " You should wear better."

My mother is a kind of person who care what to wear and makeups, and so is my elder sister, but not me.

I do not think I wear old-fashioned outfits, but I just do not care about what to wear.
I feel outfit is not that important compared with inside of the person.
Besides, I am a little busy to care enough about my outfits.
Maybe I put being busy as an excuse...

I want to know how to manage time and organize things for husband and a child to be better-dressed wife and mother;)

I will work on it, but if someone has an idea, please help me!

Unpredicted

Last Saturday, my daughter's nursery school held performance.

I was supposed to take time and enjoy preparing for this exciting event.

However, I found my husband had to go business trip and it has been snowing a lot more than I expected!

This means I could not park my car on the ground of nursery school and had to find space and do preparation all by myself in the morning!

Oh my God!

However, when I went to the nursery to pick her up on Friday evening, I met my only mum-friend and she offered me a parking space at her house.
Thank God!

When one shuts, another opens!

Thanks to the friend, even though it was snowing and we were little late, I was able to take her to the nursery with the friend's daughter without a big trouble:)

My daughter's class did "Three Little Pigs".

Children were divided into three groups by their height (maybe month). We could see the difference among them, small, middle and big pigs. They were all cute.

This was a second time to perform in front of many people for my daughter, she did a great job at her age!

I surely saw her growth.

I took some pictures... somehow, my micro SD did not saved and it saved only pictures I took on the way home after the performance:'(

Oh my God!

Plus I am not sure if I recorded in video camera well...(Triple oh my God?!)

This weekend...

My daughter's nursery school will hold an event that children perform plays and songs.

I heard teachers have taught them acting and singing for about a month.

I really look forward to watch it:) She will play "Three Little Pig" and she is a middle one.

I will put some pictures of it on later!

Soup curry

I was not a curry eater. I mean, I did not choose to eat curry. I just did not.
Most Japanese like curry, and rare to find who hate curry.

Ever since I became a pregnant, I have started to eat curry regularly.
I was able to eat curry even in morning sickness period. I could not eat most of food, but curry. This is interesting.

The other day, my friend told me that she was engaged. So I took her out for lunch to celebrate.

When we went out was Saturday lunch time, many restaurants were full.

Then we found soup curry restaurant which has seats. This is a kind of famous one, I think.

This is "Chicken and vegetable curry with Nan".

It was very nice and delicious. The Nan was good. This is not Japanese traditional home dish, but soup curry. The name of this restaurant is Buzz curry and cafe.

I liked this kind.

I realized that me not was curry eater, paid for curry.

Amazing!

Valentine's Day?!

How did you spend your Valentine's Day?

This time, I made truffles for my friends whom both my husbands and me are close to.

We got together and enjoy tea and played card games!It was fun!

HOWEVER,

I was too busy to take time to get any present for my husband...

So I said to him "Sorry that I could not prepare anything for you".

"Never mind" he replied.

Yesterday, on Sunday

My husband asked me to make temaki sushi. This sushi is not nigiri, but used seaweed to roll rice and ingredients such as egg and fish.

I prepared egg, cucumber, cram paste and natto.

He came back a little late, when I was trying to put our daughter to sleep.

I just warmed up soup and push dish on a table so he can help himself.

HOWEVER,

When I came back to living room, he said " I wanted Tuna Roll, I just ate all cucumbers with mayonnaise..."

Sushi I made was not he was expected... He wanted to eat tuna salad roll!!!

Oh my goodness!

Sorry, but I always appreciate you...

Morioka Cold Noodle

Do you eat cold noodle in winter?

Yes, I do!

Last Saturday, my husband took me to a Restaurant whose Cold Noodle is very famous.

This Cold Noodle is called "Reimen" （冷麺）in Japanese.
We sometimes go and eat at this restaurant and also enjoy grilled slices of meat.

Last week, the restaurant held "Noodle Festival". It is not an event outside, but they serve noodles and grilled meat dishes cheaper.

This cold noodle which is put in the soup is very “elastic”. This really makes people addicted. Some people are hesitated to eat for the first time, but once they slurp up one line of the noodle they can never forget its elasticity. Then they somehow come to eat Rei-men from time to time.

The soup is so delicious! It is little sweet and you can put KIMCHI to make it spicy. This matches this noodle amazingly.

It has boiled eggs and pear on top. They serve water melon instead of pear in summer.

Fruit in noodle!?

Yeah, believe me, this is exquisite!

Holiday

February 11th is Holiday in Japan.

What kind of holiday? It is National Foundation Day.

National Foundation Day, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Foundation_Day&oldid=242776195 (last visited Feb. 10, 2009).

We usually put our national flag on the gate of our houses.

Since I am living in an apartment, I do not do this now, however, old fashioned Japanese house put flag to celebrate National Holiday.

How do you celebrate your national holiday?

I want to share this...

Which browser do you usually use?

I use this browser and RSS reader at my company.

http://shareon.jp/

This is a good stuff and recommend you to try.

This browser has RSS and COMBOO as plug-ins.

This Comboo is a original and interesting part of this browser.

With this software, you can make your original desktop screen.

You can cut a part of web page and put on your screen like widget. It has detail explanation on its homepage.

I actually cut a calender from Yahoo homepage and put on my screen.

You might find some points that need improvement though.

It is still worth trying:)

Celebrating the coming of spring!

February 3rd-we celebrate this day for the coming of spring.

It is called " SETSUBUN" meaning the day before beginning of spring.

Setsubun, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Setsubun&oldid=268659360 (last visited Feb. 6, 2009).

On this day, we do the bean-scattering ceremony from young kids to old grandmothers and eat as the same number of beans as their age. If you are 50, you should eat 50 beans! We throw beans to rooms of our house chanting "Demons Out!, Luck In!", and sometimes father disguised himself as demon to be a target of kinds.

My daughter celebrated this day and enjoyed the bean scattering at her nursery school with school mates. To prepare for this day, kids were makeing their own demon's mask and bean box.

She really like this mask and box, so she ask me " Where is my demon?" whenever I pickher her up at the nursery.

She is smiling with demon mask today, too:) I hope not she become a little demon...

Role of the first lady

Ever since President Obama swore in the office, people and media have been keeping their eyes on his governance.

Same to the First Lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama

Every step and every move they take, people and media are with them...

There are pros and cons on the first lady taking an action on politics, however; if you are people of America and want to make a difference to make it better place to live, what would you do?

I feel she also wants to change America, she is his wife...

I am not a resident of this country, but I wish this country recover the power and energy to achieve American Dreams.

Am I the only one think this way?

Chocolate and Valentine's Day

I love chocolates!

Talking about chocolate, I recall Valentine's Day in my school days.


In the West, people celebrate on February 14th and express love for each other by exchanging Valentine's cards and presenting flowers and gifts.






In Japan, this is one of special days when girls declare love and give a chocolate to boys they love. Many girls do it on the day for the first love confession.






Then the boys who received a chocolate returns a gift to the girl on a day called "White Day" which is on March 14th.





For me, I was not brave enough to do. I made chocolates to give every year though and ate by myself.


Of course they tasted bitter...

Mobile phones in Japan 1

I used to stay in the US for business around a year. I had moble phone to communicate, but the pohone was only for verbal communication.

No mailing function was avairable.

That was almost 8 years ago.

I settled Japan returning from the US, I started using Japanese mobile phones.

Japanese phones are very originative and stylish, though they are not that popular in the world.
The industry has been developing ever since it was released to our daily lives.
We have three major carriers, Docomo, Au and Softbank. They have improved and developed their original services and monthly fee options.

According to a survey, Docomo customers are satisfied with its good quality of talking condition and a large area of it.
The popular I-Phones are sold only at Softbank, though they are not working in full scale. The functions are limited. Softbank is also famous for a reasonable monthly fee. The cheapest basic fee is 980 yen (about $10) per month.
Au has stylish phones and famous for good quality in music play.

There are camera phones and TV phones.
Camera phone takes with 5.1 mega pixels. It takes very good quality pictures and ones with 8.1 megapixels are available at shores from this fall.
Another has so called “One-Seg (1 Seg)” function. You can watch TV with good view on your phone.

Three carriers are quite competitive to attract users with better equipment and services. That is why; Japanese phone service and quality have gotten better and better.
Of course, it is still improving and getting better.