Fireflies

Yesterday we went to see fireflies in Tsukuba. I tried to take a video but it didn't come out clearly - here you can only see one firefly, but in fact there were many.

In the video you can also hear many amagaeru frogs - they were so noisy! And we could also hear an ushigaeru which is a kind of bullfrog.

It is really important that we don't use agricultural chemicals and try to keep the small rivers in Tsukuba clean because fireflies only live in clear water. I hope that in a few years there are more places in Tsukuba we can enjoy watching them.

Swimming again

Photo from Hotel Okura's website

On July 1st I started swimming again after a seven month break. At first I was busy, then the earthquake hit and the pool was closed, then the hours were shorter. From July the schedule returned to normal and I thought, "Right, now is the time to start again!"

For now, my swimming week starts on Wednesdays, so every Wednesday I'll try to give you an update. The week starts on Wednesdays because Tuesday is my total rest day. Last week I started on Friday (it was the 1st, and my holiday).

On Friday I was really shocked because my body simply wouldn't move like my head thought it would. I stopped after 1.5km. Before when I was swimming seriously, I could swim 5.5km five times a week. I guess it will take me up to New Year to return to my full strength.

By the way, I'm a member of Masters Swimming Japan. Of course I don't race, but it is interesting to read the members magazine and see the times of races for each age group. It is amazing that men and women in their 90s still swim races!

Super easy cucumber salad

This season cucumbers are very cheap so I buy a bag every week. There are lots of ways to eat cucumber and here is an easy salad:

Chop cucumber and mix with one small pack of daikon kimchi that you buy from the supermarket. Finished!
It is nice if you keep it for a day and allow the kimchi to flavor the cucumber, but you can eat it right away.

Beets

I was given some beets by a friend so my husband made some soup that was really delicious and healthy. I don't know exactly how he made it , but it contained beet, carrot, onion and pork. 

With other beets I made beetroot pickles. Beetroot is really nice in salad sandwiches - you should try it! (You can buy beetroot in cans, and the taste isn't so bad.) 

How I make a cup of tea

I've drunk tea since I was a small child. Most Australians my age or older like tea, but many younger people prefer coffee. I like also like coffee, but usually at home I make only tea. Why? It is difficult to make good coffee at home, and it is VERY rare for me to find a good cup of tea at a cafe. 

It is easy to make nice tea at home if you use leaf tea. You can choose a variety and a brand that you like best. For varieties, I like English/Scottish/Irish Breakfast tea, which use Assam tea. I also like Kandy tea and sometimes buy it. 

To make good tea, you need a pot so that the leaves can fully open in the boiling water, but a pot for one person is too big and troublesome. The answer? Use a net from a green tea pot and put it directly into a tea mug! Use one and a half to two teaspoons of leaf tea - it depends how strong you like your tea and how big your mug is. And you MUST use boiling water. After adding the water, let the tea steep (soak) for 2 or 3 minutes. 

The best pumpkin in Japan?

What kind of pumpkin do you like? I like to buy Kaseda Pumpkin from Kagoshima. It has a lot of flavor and can be used for both savory and sweet dishes. Some types of pumpkin can be dry, or the opposite, watery. Kaseda Pumpkin is a good texture.

I usually try to support local farmers, but if you compare Edosaki Pumpkin (from near Tsukuba) and Kaseda Pumpkin, I'm sure you'll agree that the Kaseda one is better :)

My favorite food

Do you remember in spring I asked you to guess what the pink flowers were? Well, here is the answer!

This year I was lucky to get two apricots on my tree. Yes, only TWO even though there were many blossoms in spring. But it's okay because last year I got zero ....

I adore (adore = LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!) apricots, so it is a pity I only had two - one for me and one for my husband.

I was talking to the farmer from the local farmers' shop and he said that apricots don't grow well in Tsukuba. Not only that, but the Japanese variety that is commonly grown in Nagano is much more sour than Western varieties.

Hot, hot, HOT

Wow, today was hot. Suddenly a very sultry 33 degrees. That was the official temperature, but I think it was about 35 near my office and near Lala Garden, because of the roads and concrete.

I don't have a room thermometer in my house and I'm glad I don't. It is now 9pm and I don't want to think about how hot it is inside my house :(

Wildlife!

Last night I came home from work about 11pm and I was amazed to see an itachi [weasel] in the long grass in front of Lala Garden! It was just going to step onto the road - I guess it wanted to cross over to the Sky Hotel side.

I was so surprised to see the shining eyes, but so unlike a dog! Luckily I could slow down and I "beeped" the car horn so it moved back into the grass.

I was thinking about it all the way home, and you won't believe this, but just near my house (on the bank of the Onogawa River, in the rice fields) a tanuki [raccoon dog] crossed the road and walked along the riverbank on the other side of the small bridge!!!

Maybe I was lucky to see two creatures in one night, or maybe I could find the tanuki because I was driving slowly and carefully, hoping to find another weasel.

I've seen the body of a tanuki not so far from my house after it had had a road accident, but I've never seen an itachi in Tsukuba.

You should go out tonight and see what you can find :)

PS. Of course I couldn't get photos last night because 1. it was dark!!! 2. I was driving, and 3. I didn't have a camera. So I checked the internet and tried to find photos as close in body shape as I could.

Talking about Israel

Today Meirav told us about Israel and Judaism. 

Judaism = cultural, religious, and social customs of the Jewish people.

Jew = person who belongs to the Jewish faith (noun)

Jewish = (adjective)

It was very interesting and I think the 90 minutes passed too quickly. I want to study more by myself about the customs of Israel - it is a very small land but has a very, very long history. 

One of the very surprising things was that people don't eat much fish. I expected that fish would be a main food group because of the long coast on the Mediterranean Sea. It was also amazing to hear that the Sea of Galilee is actually not a sea - it is a big lake of freshwater, not salt water. 

She also told us about the water problem because the Sea of Galilee is Israel's only source of freshwater. I can understand that because Australia also has a water problem. But it seems for Israel it is much more serious. The process to change seawater --> freshwater that she talked about is called DESALINATION. 

de = not

sal = salt, in latin

She also showed us some photos and a very, very beautiful shawl that is used for praying. The design was simple, but the subtle colors were lovely and it was very soft to touch. 

I've asked Meirav to give us a cooking lesson in the autumn, when it becomes cooler. I'm really looking forward to it. 

A new scratching post

The cats have a "scratching post". This is a stand with a post in the middle, that is wrapped with rope. The cats use it to scratch on. Maybe scratching like this is a natural cat behavior because ALL cats do it. If you don't have a scratching post, they will scratch your walls :(


Anyway, the old scratching post was becoming old and the rope was coming off, so we bought a new one. This new one has 4 mice hanging from the top. Kuro LOVES them and started pulling them immediately. Dusty tried to look but Kuro growled and hissed at him.

If you watch the video below, you can see them playing and listen to Kuro hissing. Dusty is trying to bite the string holding one mouse so he can run away with it.

A day at Costco

Yesterday some friends and I went to the Costco in Misato. Luckily we were there about 9:30am because it was already open (the official opening time is 10) and there were already LOTS of people inside!

When we left, the store was absolutely packed with people, all pushing giant sized carts here and there. Actually I think it was too busy and that it would be much better if Costco limited the number of shoppers who are in the store at one time.

At a glance, things seem to be cheap, but please be careful because if you calculate carefully, some things are not cheaper than in stores in Tsukuba. The things I bought are cooking ingredients that I cannot buy near here.

I'd only been to Costco once before and that was about 8 years ago in Makuhari. I think the Misato store is smaller and with less variety.

Anyway, going on a weekend is probably not such a good idea :)

Not all my things!
We shared one cart for 3 people.

Cherries, figs, dark chocolate for cooking.

"service", not "サービス" = 0

In katakana, the word "サービス" usually means "for free" or "a discount" (on the price).

BUT in English, "service" doesn't mean that, so please be careful :)

So in a shop ....
"I'll give you this one for free."
"We baked a new kind of cookie. Here, would you like to try one?"
"It's almost closing time, so bread is 10% off."
"I'll give you a 20% discount if you buy 3."

Please check "service" in your English dictionary to find all the regular meanings. There are lots!

Today, I took my car for its 6 monthly service. What does that mean? Well, every 6 months I take my car to the dealer where I bought it and they check that it is running smoothly. If you look at the photo, you can see all of the points they check.

My car is now only 18 months old, so it has no problems at all. This morning, it only took 30 minutes for the mechanics to service (verb) the car. To be honest, I was a little disappointed it was so fast because I was having a good time reading my book in the comfortable waiting area :)

Who's in your family?

Here is a quick quiz of words you need to explain who is in your family. Try to translate the English words into Japanese, as quickly as you can ....

ancestors
aunt
brother
child
children
cousin
daughter
descendants
father
grandfather
grandmother
great aunt
great grandmother
great-great grandfather
mother
nephew
niece
parents
siblings
sister
sister-in-law
son
uncle




-------------------------------------------------------------------

ancestors 先祖 aunt おばさん brother 兄、弟 child 子供 children 子供たち cousin いとこ daughter 娘 descendants 子孫 father 父 grandfather 祖父 grandmother 祖母 great aunt おばあさんの姉 greatgrandmother ひいおばあさん great-great grandfather ひいひいおじいさん mother 母 nephew 甥 niece 姪 parents 両親 siblings 兄弟 sister 姉、妹 sister-in-law ぎりの姉 son 息子 uncle おじさん

Something delicious

Have you ever had something delicious that was so memorable that you truly couldn't forget it, even years later?

In 1995 or 1996, I had Ogawa-ken rum raisin cream biscuits for the first time. I LOVED them! They were so unlike anything I'd ever had before. The taste was great and the texture of the biscuit part was so nice :)

But then I didn't have any for about 14 years ....

Two years ago a friend gave me some as a souvenir and then last year I found they are sold at Seibu Department Store in the special local area sweets section (sweets from different local areas around Japan). Usually they appear on Thursdays.

This brand is perhaps the original one in Japan, and surely they are the most delicious and famous. But nowadays I've become a little tired of them - maybe because I know I can eat them any time I want to.

By the way, there are 10 in a box, but if you can't eat them all, put them in the freezer and you can keep them for a few weeks :)

Vocabulary - temperature

These days the temperature is fluctuating very much. Here are some words you can use:

1. freezing
2. cold
3. chilly
4. cool
5. warm
6. hot
7. boiling
8. scorching

1. freezing
Casual English - this word is used in casual English when we want to say it is very, very cold.
"Ahh, today is freezing!"

2. cold
Cold is usually a negative meaning, that is, the temperature is cold and we don't like it.

3. chilly
Chilly is also negative. We use it when the temperature is too low for us, but it is not "cold".

4. cool
Cool seems positive, but if it is in autumn, then maybe it is slightly negative. In summer it is positive.

5. warm
Similar to cool, warm is usually positive.

6. hot
For weather, most people use hot as a negative meaning.

7. boiling
Casual English - this is used when we want to say it is very, very hot.

8. scorching
Casual English - this is the same as "boiling" but "scorching" means the heat is dry.
"I went to Las Vegas and the weather was scorching."

Event - special guest talking about Israel

Click to make map bigger

On June 19th (Sunday) there will be another special international guest - this time from Israel.

If you'd like to come, please read the information below and then let me know and I'll save you a seat.

＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊

"世界の会"　

外国人のゲストを迎え、特別クラスを開きます   

日時:    6月19日 (日曜日)

場所:   小野川公民館   [1階の会議室]

時間:    午後1:15 – 2:45

費用:    500円 

　　　(同じ日の部屋に入る際にお支払い下さい)

ゲスト:             Meirav　（イスラエから）

トピックス:

- 母国について、どのように育ったのか

- 文化と言語

- 仕事、なぜその仕事を選んだのか

- なぜ日本に来たのか、日本のことをどう思うか

- 将来は何をしたいか

- 趣味、 家族、 ペット、 他

彼女に聞きたいことを何でも質問して下さい。彼女もあなたに日本の文化について尋ねるかもしれません。ただし、あまりデリケートな質問はしないで下さい。

できれば出席される方は、事前にメールで知らせるか、直接口頭で私に言ってください。

Mulberries!

Have you ever eaten a mulberry? They are a kind of a 'wild fruit' that you cannot buy in the shops. If you are a little older, you probably ate them when you were a child but nowadays it is very difficult to find a tree.

I heard that mulberry trees were especially numerous in Ibaraki because this was a silk producing area. Why mulberries + silk? Well, mulberry leaves are what silk worms eat :)

The fruit are a very, very dark wine red. So dark they are almost black. (Sorry, it is difficult to take a good photo.) There were two kinds: small and very big ones.

For several years I've been asking everyone if they know where I can find a mulberry tree, but it seems most trees were cut down. BUT ..... Y-san brought me a box of mulberries today! I was so happy!

I ate a lot as they are (fresh), and the remainder I made into simple jam. I didn't simmer them for too long, so they still are quite big.

They taste a little like blueberries but are more sour and 'sharp'. Some people in Europe even make mulberry wine with them.

I love eating mulberries but now I have a big problem - the nails and skin on my fingers of my left hand are PURPLE! (From pulling out the stems before I cooked them.)

Tsuchiura First High School Festival

Today I went to a school festival at Tsuchiura First High School. I'd never been to a school festival before so I didn't know what to expect.

The first thing we saw was an amazing gate! I guess they use it every year.

Each student was wearing a class T-shirt that they'd designed themselves, and as guests left they could vote for which was best.




And each class had planned, designed and created a different theme for their classrooms. They'd spent a lot of time decorating the outside class wall and inside, too.

Some were really interesting, but the funniest was a 'haunted house' - junior high school girls who were visiting were screaming but I couldn't stop laughing!




I also found that the school still has one of the original buildings dating from 1902. The design is lovely and is based on western architecture. It is only open to visitors a few times a year, and inside some rooms are used as a museum. If you have a chance, I really recommend you go and see it one festival day.















 

Creatures ...

A skink right by my front door.

A frog on a window.

(Actually I put it there for Dusty to look at but he wasn't interested in it at all.)