A Tennis Court on the Top of a Building

I like playing tennis very much. The place where I play tennis is a little bit strange to people living in a foreign country.

Where is it? I play tennis on the top of a building. It’s not unusual in Japan that tennis courts are on the top of a building. When I lived in Tokyo I also did in the same type of a tennis court.

For it was a very sunny clear day yesterday, I carried my camera with me and took several pictures of the scenery from the tennis court. Mountains in Nikko area were beautifully capped with snow.


Scenery from the tennis court

Members of my tennis club are posing.

Saint Valentine's Day

This year's Saint Valentine's Day fell yesterday on Saturday this year.
Customary, female office workers give chocolates to their colleagues in Japan, but I saw a few workers giving out chocolates in my office on Friday, one day before Valentine's Day.

I guess this year’s sales amount of chocolates decreased a lot due to both an economic downturn and that it’s on Saturday.

My wife Kiyono made a strawberry chocolate cake for me, for herself and for our daughters.

Since younger daughter Rina went to track and field club camp to Ibaraki prefecture yesterday, we three (Kiyono, Emi and I) ate it together.

Never mind, we left a part of it for Rina. It was really delicious.

Emi and Rina are baking chocolate cookies at kitchen now. They are planning to give them to their friends tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Emi goes to girls’ high school, so she does not have boy friends whom she gives them to.














Rina goes to coeducational junior high school.
She is confident to receive lots of returns from her boy friends.
It’s good investment for Rina. lol.

My Birthday

My wife, Kiyono bought a cake to celebrate my 50th birthday on February 6th. I was very happy to have had the wonderful day with my family members. I had a piece of the cake and drunk several cans of beer.

I think a birthday brings different feelings to each generation, teenagers, twenties, thirties …
I think that the older one grows, the more one’s feeling becomes complicated.

I’m planning to give a big birthday present to me and to my family: an oversea trip in this coming March.
I was so busy last year on business that I couldn’t travel abroad.
I haven’t decided the destination yet but I'm quite excited to think of it.

Setsubun or The Day Between Two Seasons

Setsubun literally means "seasonal division" or "the day between two seasons."

But usually the term refers to the spring Setsubun, celebrated yearly on February 3 or 4 as a part of the Spring Festival.

Setsubun was accompanied by a special ritual to cleanse away all the evil and drive away disease-bringing evil spirits for the year to come.

This special ritual is called mamemaki.
Mamemaki is usually performed by the male who was born on the corresponding animal year on the Chinese zodiac, or the male head of the household.

Roasted soybeans are thrown either out the door or at a member of the family wearing an Oni (demon or ogre) mask, while the throwers chant "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!"
The literal meaning of the words is like "Demons out! Luck in!"

The beans are thought to symbolically purify the home by driving away the evil spirits that bring misfortune and bad health with them.

Then, as a part of bringing luck in, we customary eat the same number of soybeans as our age.