'Dojyo Sukui Manjyu' is the name of a Cake

They seem like toys or something, but they aren't.
Those are sweets with bean paste inside.
Most people living in Shimane, my hometown, know those cakes.

My Hometown Matsue

My company gives a special five-day-holiday to every employee who have been working for 5, 15, 25, 35 or 45 years.
Since I had been working for 15 years this year, I was entitled to get the holiday.
So, I had a short trip to my hometown Matsue last week.

On A Rainy Day In Matsue City

I have never spent days in Matsue, about 90 minutes from Tokyo by air, in April since almost thirty years ago.

I usualy go back to my hometown Matsue in summer. Flowers in my family’s garden in April were quite diffret from those in summer. In the same way, it’s always sunny and hot in summer, on the contrary, I had both a rainy day and sunny days last time.

Plants and flowers viewing at my family’s home in a rainy day were new to me, so they were very attractive to me.

I took pictures in my family’s garden using a cellphone-built-in camera. I think quality of pictures taken with a cell phone becomes far better than a few years ago.

Don't you think so?



I'll Be Back to My Office Tomorrow.

It took exactly one month to resume work.
General affairs division and administration division members have been restoring our offices with help of general construction companies since several days after the earthquake on March 11th.
Most of rubbles were cleared and the infrastructure such as electricity and water was almost back, according to the email from my boss. So, all engineers including me are allowed to go back to our offices tomorrow.
I feel half happy and half worried about stepping in the same building from which we barely escaped at the day of the disaster; we still have aftershocks everyday in my city.
But, sooner of later, we should confront it. That is tomorrow.

By the way, using this long days off, I went back to my hometown Shimane prefecture for a couple of days. I met my mother, my brother and my sister there. I enjoyed earthquake-free short holidays.

I show you some pictures taken near my mother’s house using a cell-phone-built-in-camera.

I've Come Back From Shimane, My Hometown.

I had spent Obon holiday season in my hometown Matsue city, Shimane prefecture for ten days and just came back the day before yesterday by airplane.
I met my mother, my brother and my sister-in-law living in Matsue city.

Obon is a Buddhist festival to recognize ancestral spirits in Japan.
It is believed these spirits return to their families during the period.

We invited a monk to the house and asked him to recite a religious sutra for ancestral spirits.

Before my father passing away, we had never invited a monk for Obon ceremony, nor had we been such a religious family at all.

During this Obon season, I took a ten-day-off from my office, adding a five-day-paid-holiday to my company’s predetermined five-day-Obon-holiday for every employees.

I stayed there so long that I could have really been relaxed.

Left: my mother, Center: my sister-in-law, Right: my brother

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‘Dance Of Dragon’

On our way to my hometown Matsue city, we stopped over Yokokawa Service Area for taking a short rest.
 I found a guy who was making sweets in front of the people there and selling them.

‘Dance Of Dragon’ is the name of the sweets.

The way of making the sweets seemed like a way of making noodles in China.

Chinese make hand-pulled noodles using a flexible dough that can be stretched easily.
The dough is stretched until it looks like a long, thick rope.
The rope is folded in half, and stretched back to its original length, again and again.

The man in Yokokawa SA used special dough with honey and made fibers far thinner than Chinese noodles. Then, the man wrap up a variety of ground nuts with the honey taste fibers.

Are you asking they were delicious?


Sure, they were. I had never tasted like them before.

Golden Week in Shimane

I went to my hometown Shimane prefecture during the Golden Week and stayed there on May 2 and May 3.

Golden week: the period from April 29th to May 5th when there are four national holidays in Japan.

My mother, my brother and my sister-in-law live together in Matsue, a capital city of Shimane prefecture.

Shimane is located about 1,000 km southwest of Utsunomiya.

During this Golden week season, it becomes very hard to take air tickets, so I drove all-night-long my car to the town, to be exact, it took us seventeen hours.

It’s really tough to drive so long hours but we had a very meaningful moment together with family members.

Flowers and a butterfly in the garden of my mother’s house.↓

My Hometown Matsue

I uploaded a new video on YouTube. I made the video spending my spare time for about one week. I like it. Please take a look. (^^)

My Summer Holidays End Today

My company CANON offers employees summer holidays from August 8 to August 16 this year. It’s the last day of my holidays today.

I went to my hometown Shimane prefecture on August 10 and stayed 6 days at my mother’s house and came back here in Utsunomiya yesterday.

I enjoyed every minute meeting my 84-year-old mother, my brothers, my sister-in-law and relatives.
My mother living with my brother and sister-in-law has a garden next to her house. My mother loves growing flowers and vegetables in the garden.

When I was living in Shimane, I did not care much about living creatures in the garden.
But now, I live in the 4th flour of a condominium, when I go back to Shimane, looking at those living creatures is always great fun to me.

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.

Kamosu Jinjya in Matsue

Hi guys, I've uploaded my favorite pictures on this site again. I took those pics in Matsue during my trip from Oct. 17 to Oct. 23. No need to say about the beautiful lake, the castle and the quadricentennial drum festivals, there are wonderful old shrines and temples in Matsue.
Pictures of Kamosu Jinjya(Shrine) follow,

Kamosu Jinjya(Shrine) is about half an hour bike ride away from my family’s home. I went there on sunny Thursday. There were few tourists. I walked in the site of the shrine alone. They were holding an autumnal harvest rite.
Kamosu Jinjya is written ‘神魂神社’ in Japanese.
The meaning of Japanese charactors ‘神魂神社’ is ‘the Spirits of God Shrine.’
---神 :God, ---魂 :spirits, ---神社:shrine
Isn’t it cool?

Drum Festival in Matsue, Japan

Staying in My Hometown Shimane

I took a week off and came back to my hometown Matsue city, Shimane prefecture last Wednesday. I'm staying in the house in which my mother, my brother and my sister live. It's the top season for autumn festivals here in Matsue. I bought a bike right after arriving at Matuse station. I rode the bike, went many places and took a lot of pictures of the festivals last five days.
To my regret, I haven't brought back a data connector between a camera and a PC, so I can't upload those pictures now.
I'll go back to Tochigi tomorrow and show you them on the blog in a week or two.

How do I spend this summer?

I made it a rule to take a week off and go back to my hometown Shimane with my family members from the end of July to early August. But, I gave up doing so this year. Because, I took already two weeks off last April for traveling in the States and my elder daughter is busy to study for a high school entrance exam. She goes to a cram school twice a week. But, during summer vacation of her school, she goes five times a week.
I love spending summer season in Shimane very much but I can’t do this year. I should decide an alternative way to spend this summer… Maybe, it’ll be a camping or swimming in Tochigi.

Today is the day of upper house election. After voting, I went to company’s tennis court with Rina who was my younger daughter. Though she joined an athletic club in her junior high, she is still practicing tennis at neighbor tennis school once a week. I rarely play tennis with her. Maybe, last time I played with her was more than a year ago. We had a good time and I think it could be a good practice for her today.

A Trip Back to Shimane-ken

I went back to Shimane-ken to attend my late father’s second year anniversary. I left Haneda airport on Saturday for Izumo airport. It took one hour and fifteen minutes by air. I stayed at my mother’s home for two nights then I came back to Utsunomiya on Monday night.

My brother asked a monk to do religious ceremonies same as the last year. One was held in the temple and the other was held in front of my late father’s tomb in the cemetery. My brothers, mother, sister-in-law and relatives, about twenty people in all, attended the ceremony. You can see the Matsue castle on the background of the above picture.

  After the ceremony, we went to wonderful Japanese restaurant to have dinner together. The restaurant was such a nice place that it had beautiful paintings, an old SAMURAI armor and various antique displays. It seemed a museum. Every food was cooked elaborately and displayed on each dish beautifully. The foods seemed like artwork too. Needless to say, all foods were delicious.

   The restaurant made one seat vacant, even foods were placed. Do you know why? This seat was for my late father’s. My brother saw me off at the airport. Lake Shinji was very beautiful as usual seeing from the car and also from the plane.

  

Veeeeery hot day. Sunflowers look up the sky.

My weeklong trip in western Japan was over. The sunflowers were looking up the sky in the garden of my parent's house in Shimane prefecture.
Flowers, vegetables and insects were almost as vivid as they had been a year ago.

The only difference is my father. He was not there this summer. He had passed away of pneumonia last year.

Even he was bedridden and hardly spoke, I felt comfortable staying beside him and looking him while I was there.

Roads, buildings and even shapes of rivers have changed. The sunflowers don't care the changes growing higher and higher.

Omikuji in Yaegaki Shrine, in Matsue City

Omikuji is a traditional form of Japanese fortune telling in which a person's fortune is written on piece of folded paper and is typically sold at Shinto Shrines.

Yaegaki shrine’s Omikuji is quite unique. It is a flat piece of paper not folded. You buy the Omikuji and bring it to Kagaminoike pond in the forest near the shrine.

Then put the Omikuji with a coin on the surface of the pond. At the same time putting the Omikuji, fortune message appears on it.

It’s said that the sooner the Omikuji sinks in the pond, the sooner you will marry.
I found a Omikuji site, it follows
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http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~EB3Y-KKTK/omikuji/omikuji.html

Hot Dry Summer Is Comming.

Hot summer is just around the corner. I can't wait for a hot dry summer vacation season.

Every summer, I take a week off and go back to Matsue city in Shimane prefecture where I was born.

Dragonflies, flowers, beautiful sea and fish are waiting for me.
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