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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