We Love Yu.

His name is Yu Darvish from Japan.
Now,he is a pitcher for Texas Rangers.

He was a No.1 star player in Japan. Many people said he was going to play in MLB soon even while he was in junior high.

But he had denied those rumors and kept saying that he would quit playing baseball if he had to play in the USA because he loved Japan.

Few years later,he changed his mind. The situation around him was changed,I mean.
Since he was too good player,no player could win against Darvish. One of the player said to him "Let me win." He knew it was joke but he became sad. And got bored about those circumstances.

He feels like challenging.
And we have to let him go even we are sad.

I'm still not sure that's right choice to play in the U.S. because we see him struggling which we never seen.

Well,I hope he is right.

Our Imperial Family.

Ladies and Gentleman,they are our Emperor and Empress.
Isn't this just lovely?
The Emperor married Empress Michiko in 1959. She was the first commoner to marry into the Imperial family.
The Emperor and Empress have made and effort to bring the Imperial Family closer to Japanese people. After the Great Earthquake and Tunami disaster,they visited several prefectures which is very rare but Japanese people felt they were closer.

The Emperor is 79 years old this year.
He has underwent successful heart bypass surgery lately. I've heard that he had taken the surgery earlier than he planned first because he wanted to attend the ceremony of memorial event of the Tohoku Great Earthquake.

We noticed Michiko Empress was in Kimono that day. She usually put the dress on. According to the paper,she wore kimono because she prepared for the emergency in case the Emperor fell down. She said Japanese sandals are better than in high heels.

A Girl's Festival.

It's March 3rd,a Girl's festival in Japan.

Dolls dressed in beautiful kimono and representing the Emperor ,Empress,and their court are displayed to cerebrate the growth of the family's girls and express their hopes that girls will be beautiful and graceful as the doll.

I had displayed those dolls when I was very young but stopped doing this when I was high teen like as other family did. And I have no idea where those doll are now.

So I visited next door (antique shop) to take some pictures.

By the way,our next door is a treasure house. I'll report of them someday.

being a teacher.

Actually,I guess it is called an instructor but they called me a teacher. And that is not too bad.

I've started rubber stamping class since last Friday.

I always wanted to introduce the rubber stamping and sending the card culture to everyone around me. Then I've started to sell the card I made and opened the card making class.

I've had 2 classes,three students. We made two types of cards.

The Valentine's Project. The cards were supposed to sent to someone very important for students but they said they were keeping those cards.

Flour Paradise.

You may want to think about Wheat Free Diet.

But not today.

We had a big new year's party last night at local Benihana-type steak house.

It's supposed the shef is standing behind the plate but we did everything by ourself.So it was like we reserved whole restaurant including the kitchen.

Because we wanted to do something a regular steak house don't do.

We wanted to make Japanese-type pizza called "Okonomi-yaki."

"Okonomi" means anything you want and "yaki" means grilling or baking.

There's a guy who works at the steat house.When we made a plan to have a big Okonomi-yaki party,we started negotiating to him to use the plate at the steak house because we needed big enough plate for 17 people.

Everybody made own one by ourselves.

The party was so successful! Okonomi-yaki was delicious. The owner of the steak house gave us super delicious beef for free!

We were stuffed. We drunk a lot,laughed a lot...

Just today,let us forget about diet.Let us be in a flour paradise for awhile.

Auspicious!

We visit the Shinto shrine on New Year's Day.
It's called "Hatsumoude". It's the first visit paid on the New Year's holidays to a shrine. People pray for a long life and happiness for the year.

I bought a fortune paper called "Omikuji" after pray. It's frotune written on slips of paper.People buy then at shrines and tie them onto the branches of nearby trees in hopes that a good frtune will come true or that a bad frtune will be kept away.

My result was Best Fortune!
I decided to keep it instead of tying it to the tree.

A New Year.

A Happy New Year!
I wish we all will be filled with a lot of joy,laughs, and love in 2012.

I've got some new year's greeting cards from my friends on New Year's Day.
It's a Japanese custom to send greeting cards on New Year's Day to friends,business acquaintances and customers to wish them a happy. This custom is similar to the Weastern practice of sending Christmas cards.

It's supposed to drop those cards by the end of December but I had no time to do.
I wrote the cards on New Year's Day.

When I saw the cards I've got,those looked same to me because those are printed (typed) even addressing side. It is not interesting. The greeting cards were handwritten long time ago but many people choose to type it these days.

I decided to wrtie the cards by Japanese calligraphy brush,handwriting like old people did. It's been long since I used the brush last time.
It wasn't easy to handle the brush.You need to concentrate your attention on the brush and card.I thought that was like Zen.

My handwritung was not good at all but I felt pretty good.
You know,taking some concentrated time then thnking about friends,then write the cards cafefully.
I guess it is not bad to have this event at least once a year to stay away from busy life just for awhile.