Can You Find Any Difference in Those Pictures?

A picture taken on Dec. 23rd, 2008 follows,
A picture taken on Dec. 10th, 2007 follows,

I’ve been making it a rule to take pictures of my family in the end of every year.
I show you two pictures; one was taken a year ago and another was a week ago.

Do you find a big difference or find no difference?

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Tennis Tournament in Igashira Park

From the left: It's me, Ms Tajima, Hiroto and Ms. Kaneda.

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Even though the result turned out to be regretful to me, I enjoyed playing tennis in the tennis tournament held in Igashira Park today.

It became rather warm and gentle day comparing to that of a year ago.
I took part in the same tournament exactly one year ago with Ms. Tajima. We could beat some teams but could not win the tournament again.

The tournaments were divided into three classes: there were an upper level class, a middle level class and a beginners’ level class.
Participants can decide their appropriate class by themselves according to the unwritten classification.
Beginners or players older than forty years old could participate in the beginners’ level class.

We participated in the beginners’ level class … but …

Anyway, I have to thank God for being able to have friends with whom I play tennis and for that I have been in the perfect physical condition, no pain at all in any part of my body, since a few months ago.

Thanks everyone, Ms. Tajima, Ms. Kaneda, Mr. Kosuge, Ms. Itoh, high school boy Hiroto and staff who ran the tournaments for sharing the wonderful day with me.
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Rainy Days in December

Due to the cold rain, the tennis tournament that I planned to participate was canceled today. It was put off till next Sunday. I stayed home and relaxed all day long.
Only two weeks are left in this year.
Time really flies.

Bunny rabbit Nobi lives with us for more than two years. She doesn’t seem to become bigger this year. On the contrary, Emi and Rina have grown up amazingly.

I have to prepare Happy New Year greeting cards within two weeks and post them before the end of this year.

I make them with family pictures every year. It’s a tough but fun job to select the best pictures among hundreds of them that I took this year.

Modified Pictures

Since the 9th grade up to my graduation of college, I was a member of photography club. I used to take hundreds of pictures within a week, develop and print them by myself.

It really took long time to make satisfactory pictures. I sometimes spent a whole night to make a few nice pictures

But everything has changed regarding to the way of photography these days. In my case, I quit taking pictures using films almost five years ago.

Thanks to the software technology, changing colors, contrast and gradation have become quite easy work.

I modified two pictures I took last month spending only few minutes.

I’m satisfied with the results very much.

Don’t you think so?

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Party with My Colleagues

I was a member of the project to develop a new semiconductor production instrument at my company. The project was successfully completed in the beginning of this month.

We had a party to celebrate the success of our project last week.

This project took less than two years. The length of the development term was exceptionally short comparing other same kind of projects in our division.

We sometimes had very tough days to clear troubles, solve problems and accomplish the specification of the instrument.

We forgot every painful day and enjoyed the party together veeeeeery much.

Happy Birthday, Emi!

Emi, my elder daughter, had her sixteenth birthday last week. She is already taller and heavier than my wife. She has grown up amazingly over last one or two years.

Emi is a member of a drama club of her high school. I guess that most of her close friends are her club members. She seemed to have gotten many emails from them celebrating her birthday.

We didn’t have her birthday party, but I bought a birthday present to her. She has been asking me a new mp3 music player with larger memory size. I went to Yodobashi discount shop and bought one for her. Sony NW-S638F is the one I bought her.

NW-S638F is very cool and its various functions in a small body surprised me very much. Emi was jubilant with the present and I was happy to have seen her smile.

***NW-S638F Spec.***
Music : MP3, WMA, ATRAC, PCM, AAC, HE-AAC music formats
Video : MPEG-4, H.264 AVC, WMV9 video formats
Picture : JPEG image files
Built-in FM radio
8GB of flash memory
2-inch LCD color screen

Utsunomiya Marathon 2008

Utsunomiya marathon was held in Kiyohara Industrial Park, Utsunomiya city today. I went to the marathon with Rina, my younger daughter. She took part in the race and I was just a spectator.

It’s said about 5,200 people participated in the races. There were half marathon, 10 km, 5 km and 2 km races for both men and women, being divided into their age groups.

Rina won the silver medal in the junior high school women’s race. 75 runners ran 5 km (roughly 3 miles) course. Great job again, Rina!

Unfortunately, it was raining all day long. But, we enjoyed the race and autumn scenery.

Last but not least, thanks all volunteers for the nice management of the races. Volunteers everywhere were great and made the race run smooth and enjoyable.

Ichikai Tennis Tournament

I attended Ichikai Tennis Tournament with my colleague, Mr. Ikeda, today.
Ichikai town is located about 45 minutes' east of Utsunomiya city.
It was my second time to participate in the tournament in the town.
Last time, my doubles partner was Mr. Takahashi and we became semi-finalists. But, this time, we were defeated at the preliminary league.
Luckily, they arranged not only winners’ tournament but also a consolation tournament of the preliminary leagues.
We won the consolation tournament and got a prize.

There is a hot spa next to the tennis courts in Ichikai town. After the tournament, I went to the spa and spent almost one hour being relaxed there.

Culture Day / 17th Wedding Anniversary

Today on November 3rd is a national holiday of Culture Day in Japan and also our 17th wedding anniversary. (^_^)

My wife and I went to Utsunomiya Museum of Art to see paintings and art works.
They are having a special exhibition of Leonard Foujita with whom I’m not familiar in the Museum. My wife seemed to enjoy seeing his paintings very much.

The museum has several paintings of Marc Chagall. Among all of the museum’s collections, I like his painting of “Les amoureux en bleu” or “The blue lovers” the best.

There are a small library and a souvenir shop in the museum. I found a book in which my favorite artist Ishida Tetsuya’s paintings were collected. His paintings are always very impressive. Seeing his works were fun to me.

It was cool and calm day today. I was satisfied with spending today for seeing art works and beautiful scenery around the museum.

Culture day!
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Cosmos Flower Fields in Utsunomiya

I went to Takanezawa Green Park to see cosmos flowers in early morning today. It’s foggy and slightly raining. I think that the top season of full bloom has gone past, but still beautiful enough to worth visiting. I took some pictures there.

Since a part of the flower fields was allocated as free picking area, ten to twenty people were looking for their favorite branches and some were carrying them back.

Don’t you think they are beautiful, do you?

Clear Sky in Igashira Park

There are two tennis-club tournaments in Mohka city annually. Rina, Hiroto, Hikaru, Takeru and I attended the autumn tournament both today and one week ago on Sundays.

It was a very fine day today. I enjoyed playing tennis and seeing autumn scenery around Igashira Park where the tournament was held.

Result of the tournament of our team was not good, but I spent precious time with my club members. I could completely forget about my busy daily work while I was staying the park.

To tell the truth, the project of my work is now on the final phase. We are very busy this October. Some of my colleagues, rather younger workers, had to work today even on Sunday.
After coming back from Igashira Park, I called my colleagues to ask if the work was going well.

Contrary to the result of the tournament, the work of my project seemed to be going well.
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The First YouTuber Friend Comes Home

Chris, one of my YouTub friends came home all the way from Florida, U.S.A. We had dinner with him a week ago on Monday. It was the first time for me to meet YouTuber from foreign country, though I have YouTube friends who used to live in Japan and went back to their own countries.

Chris traveled Japan for two weeks from Sept. 27th to Oct 11th. He was so busy that we couldn’t find a day to meet on weekends.
I rushed back home after work on last Monday, went for picking Chris up to Utsunomiya station then came home several minutes before seven o’clock.

Since I have to get up early the next day for work, he only stayed home for a few hours with us.
Even though time was limited, we had very meaningful time together chatting about his friends, family, work, hometown, travel and so on. Thanks Chris.

Today is the national holiday of Health-Sports Day designated in 1966 to commemorate the opening day of the Tokyo Olympics.
I took a rest whole day today except shopping for our bunny’s food.
To my sad, on my way back home I lost six thousands yen (roughly sixty US dollars) due to my carelessness. I should forget about it soon. Sigh.

Party For My Patent Prize

Second time from four months ago, I had a party at a restaurant called Izakaya Nipponkai to celebrate my patent rewards with my family members.
This time, I was awarded the first prize of the term from January to June in the year of 2008 in the optical division of my company, CANON.

Congratulations to me! Y(^^)Y

Autumn Track and Field Competition

My mother-in-law visited Utsunomiya from Tokyo last Friday to watch my daughter's track and field races.
I took a day off on Friday and went to the Utsnomiya Municipal Track and Field Stadium with her and my wife.
The result was same as the race in last July: Rina was a runner-up and Ms. Kobayashi was the winner in both 800-meter-race and 1,500-meter-race.
Rina finished the race less than one second behind Ms. Kobayashi. It seemed difficult for Rina to beat her.

How can she beat Ms. Kobayashi?
How does Rina train herself?
What's the best practice to beat her?

Does anyone know?

After the competition, elder daughter Emi joined us and we went to Tachibanaya restaurant that was famous for eel’s dishes in Utsunomiya. We had really wonderful dinner there.

Tennis Tournament in Mohka

I participated in a doubles tennis tournament with Mr. Nakagawa even I have been suffering from a terrible backache since two weeks ago. Needless to say, the result of the tournament was very bad. I felt very sorry to Mr. Nakagawa for my bad physical condition. (:<) What was worse, I carelessly forgot to bring my digital camera with me. I have never forgotten bringing my camera to any tennis tournament before. So, I took a few pictures using a cell phone. The quality of the pictures is not good at all.

I brought back a colored leave from the tennis court and took a picture at the balcony of my home not with a cell phone but a digital camera. Autumn is a really artist, isn’t it. (^^)

Autumn Flavor, Delicious Pears

Hot summer is going. It’s cooler this week than that of the last week in Utsunomiya.
Today is a Japanese national holiday of Respect-for-the-Aged Day and the last day of the three-day-holiday.
We should show respects to the aged on this holiday. But I could do nothing to the aged, on the contrary, received presents from my mother living in Shimane.
The presents are autumn flavor, delicious pears.

Except for having given a thanks-call to my mother, I have nothing special to do these holidays. I just walked around nearby park, did web surfing, making a bunny video and uploaded it on YouTube site. If you have time, please watch it.



When our daughters were elementary school girls, we went to many places together to enjoy driving, hiking and sometimes camping in autumn. But, now, they have their own things to do: track and field training at junior high school and drama practicing at senior high school are the things they do on holidays recently.

Kids grow very quickly not only their height and weight but also their mind.
Sometime, parents feel lonely about it.

Annual Tennis Tournament

The first Saturday of September has come yesterday: it's the day of a local tennis tournament in the area of my company. I had asked my colleagues to take part in the annual tournament and five brave colleagues joined my team.
We won the tournament last year but, to our regret, could not this year.
We were defeated at the preliminary league.

They prepared for first league losers to make a consolation tournament.
So, we took part in the consolation tournament. Then we won the tournament. We got no trophy but little prize.
We vowed to win the next year’s tournament.
Anyway, I enjoyed playing tennis very much on wonderful Saturday.
:-)

Rakugo at Utsunomiya Kyowa Univ.

A few weeks ago, I attended open lectures in Utsunomiya Kyowa University and had a lecture of Rakugo with my family.

Rakugo is a Japanese verbal entertainment. A lone storyteller tells a long and complicated comical story.
A Rakugo storyteller who usually remains seated uses words and facial expressions to portray various characters.In the lecture, firstly the teacher whose stage name is Rakki Tei Sanda explained what Rakugo is all about, the history of Rakugo, how to speak Rakugo stories and how to become a good story teller in English.

Then, we students were asked to memorize a short comical story from the text and perform Rakugo in front of the audience.

It was a really tough job, but very interesting. We enjoyed it very much.

Beijing 2008 Olympics

Beijing 2008 Olympic Summer Games have been over.
I really enjoyed watching the games: swimming, judo, wrestling and 100m/200m dash are the most exciting competitions for me.
Japan got fewer medals than those of four years ago in Athens, but their performances moved me very much.
Thanks all the athletes for showing us wonderful games!

Staying in Shimane in Obon Period

We went back to my hometown Shimane prefecture with my family last week in Obon.

Obon is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the deceased spirits of our ancestors.

It is believed that these spirits return to their families during the period.

People return to ancestral family places and clean their ancestors' graves and make offerings of flowers and incense.

I went to my father's grave and made offerings, too.

To tell the truth, meeting with my family living in Shimane is more fun for me than religious ceremonies.

My mother is now 83 years old.
She can't walk easily now but always welcomes our visit. We stayed just three nights there and came back here before the traffic becoming crazy crowded.

I really enjoyed visiting Shimane again.

Burning wood in the pan is called Mukaebi or welcoming fire. It is said that the fire illuminates the way to the home for the ancestors’ spirits.

Leaving Utsunomiya for Shimane

Few hours later from now, I leave Utsunomiya for Shimane where I was born, with my family on summer vacation. We have only five days common holidays this year.
Shimane is about 1,000 km away from Utsunomiya. It’ll become a very hectic travel, but I’m excited to be able to meet my family living in Shimane and visit where I was born.

During the vacation, our bunny rabbit Nobi stays in my daughter’s friend’s home. Nobi wears a flower of morning glory that bloomed in our balcony.

Summer Festival: Miya matsuri

We had Miyamatsuri summer festival in Utsunomiya today and yesterday. I went to the festival with Rina. She holds an apple candy. Apple candies are sold especially in summer festival. To make a candy, they use a whole apple putting candy source on it.
It’s really yummy.