The month of July

We are heading into the end of the month so I'll use this post to recap what all got done (and didn't get done.)

Tetsu's garden has been overabundantly producing cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplant.  His peppers are starting to come in too.  I looked out the window and laughed out loud.

This was just one day's harvest!  He really needs to make a spreadsheet next year so that everything doesn't ripen all at the same time!  (And maybe limit his vegetables to one pot per vegetable...)  I'm still making quantities of cucumber juice and I've started in making tomato sauce.  

Someone offered to send me a recipe for using cucumbers but really, there is such a difference in what ingredients I can get and not get I almost never try to cook completely from American recipes.  Dill pickles?  Well, we can't get dill.  Something that needs turmeric?  Well, that's not easy to find either.  Almost all spices are out though, for example, I can't get garlic powder or ginger power, I can easily get fresh garlic and ginger so I have to do a bit of conversion in my head when using those.  No mustard seed, no celery seed.  Rice vinegar is easy to find.  I'm just saying that though my mother gave me a Betty Crocker recipe book when I got married, it has never been used much...  Mostly for cakes and cookies...

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My dinosaurs all got made and now they are marinating while I think about the next step...  One of the last steps is making 6 panels and once those are all sewn together it will be ready to be basted and quilted.  HOWEVER...  I'm considering quilting each panel separately and then joining them up in the end... OR quilting the upper half of the quilt and then the lower half so that I'll only have one middle seam to connect.  

I'm pretty sure I'm going to machine quilt this and as I'm not much good at overall patterns I'll probably just stitch in the ditch.  The whole quilt seems like the size will give me trouble when quilting, thus my pondering about quilting in sections or halves.

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John has been having some health problems lately... He suddenly was very reluctant to walk though he's never been an eager walker.  He just hung his head with his nose to the ground and looked up with sad eyes and I finally decided it was his neck that was bothering him.  I took him to the vet and it seems he has bone spurs in his neck.  He was given pain killers and we will hope that the problem resolves itself...  

I was also advised not to let John go up or down stairs or even up or down the front step of our entryway, so I managed to convey to him that he was supposed to sidle up to me and I'd pick him up and carry him outside for potty trips.  We have gotten very good at this routine which is a real accomplishment because remember, this is the dog we haven't been able to pet or pick up!  Tetsu's not willing to try a John-carry, but I can pick him up to go outside, pick him up to come back inside, pick him up to go upstairs (he likes to sleep by me while I sew) or pick him up to come back downstairs.  This is very comfortable for John but not so much for my back because he is actually quite a hefty dog!

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Julieta is celebrating a birthday today and I sent her a Pandora charm for her bracelet...  (I sent her the paw charm).  She texted to thank me and showed me a picture of her bracelet now.  I thought it was funny that she had the little red house charm and I have one too...  She said Takumi gave it to her recently and I laughed because Tetsu picked out the same charm for me at Christmas last year.  Father and son are thinking alike!

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Can I show some of my bullet journal pages this month?  

I'm enjoying the last few lessons of the Celtic Knots class I've been taking.

M-san's parent's grow edamame and since she learned that I absolutely love edamame, she brings me a bag each week when she comes because they are in season right now.

This is supposed to be a Daruma and as a little paper mache doll, when you knock him over he bobs back upright again.  I thought the Bible verse was appropriate for him...  Japan is being struck hard by Covid-19 this past week.  The numbers have QUADRUPLED!!!! and are at their worse since the pandemic started.  We are staying close to home and find it all depressing... but we will rise again!

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Can't end the month without pictures of Luka.  

He is getting teeth already and is great at standing up.

Keeping Daddy company while he works.  It must be hot because most of the pictures Leiya sends me Luka is only in a diaper...

Leiya also celebrated a birthday last week.  July is a very busy month for this family!

But he does wear clothes and look!  Luka has shoes now too! 

Tokyo Olympics

My husband is deep into the Olympics but I'm afraid even at the best of times I'm not much interested in sports and just hearing the TV makes me uncomfortable.  I think it is the aversion I have to competition in general and the elation of the winner always makes me think of the despair of the loser.  So I supply Tetsu with snacks and then I escape to my sewing room coming down to cook simple meals that get served in front of the TV.

Someone asked me what the local opinion towards the Olympics is.  From what I get on the news, it sounds like the majority of the Japanese population has been opposed to having it this year (as was Tetsu) but since it is being held, everyone is probably enjoying watching it on TV.  I don't know how much of what I hear is in the international news and what is just Japanese newsworthy but Japan has had a lot of problems with the Olympics right from the start.

I think everyone questioned the sanity of having the Olympics held in Japan in the heat of summer to begin with.  It is hard to breathe, to be outside in the sun for more than a few minutes, the humidity unbearable.  I think Tokyo (and it is called the Tokyo Olympics) was rather upset that it was decided that the marathon event would take place in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, and there was a lot of arguing about that decision...  But it makes sense...  This week there is also a typhoon approaching so whatever is going to be held outdoors may have to be postponed.

Then there was the fiasco with the Olympic Stadium being built and at some point it was discovered that the architect hadn't included a space for the Olympic torch cauldron.  I think that architect was relieved from her post...

(image from the Internet)

Next was the problem of the Tokyo Olympic Logo when the designer was charged with plagiarism.  He also stepped down from the position and another designer came on board (with a very nice design based on a traditional Japanese checkerboard pattern called Ichimatsu moyo).

And then the pandemic hit and EVERYTHING had to be put on hold.  

Tickets had to be refunded, volunteers had to reapply, of course athletes everywhere had to keep their motivation going for another year.

The next problem occurred when the 80 year old chairman of theTokyo Olympics committee made some snide remarks about women and how they always make a meeting long and drawn out.  Well, that sent everyone into a frenzy and he was asked to resign but they had a hard time finding someone else to take the position.  One man agreed but two days later resigned when he was criticized for his support of the first chairman.  Finally Ms. Hashimoto, a 7 times Olympic Athlete (she was a speed skater in the Winter Olympics numerous times and a bicyclist in the Summer Olympics quite a few times also) has taken on the horrendous job of pulling everything together at the last minute.

In spring, Japan was doing a fairly good job of keeping Covid-19 at bay but at the end of June the numbers began climbing again and the government rushed to get it's population vaccinated.  The majority of Japanese want to be vaccinated but red tape delayed things and still less than 25% of the population has been fully vaccinated and most of those are in the over 65 range.  The Delta variation is moving quickly through the un-vaccinated younger generation and the center of the disease rages in Tokyo... where the Olympics are being held.

Japan has tried to keep Covid contained by holding the Olympics without spectators which meant that all the volunteers who had been recruited have again been let off.  The announcement to go without spectators was very late but it wasn't a surprise because the committee was holding off on selling tickets to begin with so maybe the decision had already been made...

As the athletes and their Olympic connections come into Japan, they are under quarantined and not allowed to leave their hotels or their accommodations but of course some people don't like to be restricted.  Foreign media have been found outside their hotels, one athlete escaped from the Olympic Village and disappeared into other parts of the country hoping to start a life in Japan I guess.  Over a hundred people connected with the Olympics have tested positive even before the games started.  

The Opening Ceremonies have had their problems too...  The original choreographer resigned (I can't remember when) and then the next man who took over was accused of sexual misconduct...  Then the night before the Opening Ceremonies the replacement choreographer who had been a comedian in his younger days, was sacked because of his morally distasteful comic performance a few years ago...  The person in charge of the music for the Opening Ceremonies had already resigned last week as he has been accused of bullying also in his younger days...  So who all was in charge of the Opening Ceremonies I have no idea.

I decided (remember I don't like sports anyway) to NOT to watch the Opening Ceremonies in protest of the Olympics being held at all, so I didn't see any of it.  My friend also said she wouldn't watch the Opening Ceremonies though she was looking forward to seeing some of the games as she does want to be supportive of the athletes and they have worked so hard and so long.  I too occasionally drift into the living room (where it is cool) and watch a few minutes of whatever is being televised so I am not completely anti-Olympics.

That was my long answer to the question about what Japanese think of the Olympics.  The short answer is that there were so many problems the major one being the pandemic, that most people think it should have been postponed again maybe until 2024.  But as it is being held... everyone will enjoy it and hope for the best.

 

Cucumbers and the evening sky

Today is Tetsu's birthday and also the start of the Olympics (I guess they really started yesterday but anyway, they will officially start tomorrow.)  Both children and their families have called to wish him a good day, Tetsu did a bit of yard work before he came in to escape from the heat, and now he is watching the Olympic softball games and enjoying air conditioning.

For his birthday I went out and bought him a yard cart/seat so that he can roll around between the rows of his vegetables or sit while he is doing weeding.  I also made him a couple new masks and instead of birthday cake, I made him some Yogurt Cool, a very refreshing dessert that he loves.  

Speaking of refreshing, I have discovered a way to keep us refreshed and use up Tetsu's cucumbers too!  I am now daily making Cucumber Lime Mint Agua Fresca... which is actually a lemonade with mint and cucumber.  It is lemonade not limeade because I can't easily (or inexpensively) get limes but lemons I can find.

Once we decided that we actually liked this cucumber drink, I have tried a couple different ways to make it.  Using a blender and then separating the pulp from the juice in gauze was successful but a lot of work.  I remembered my poor juicer that I haven't used in awhile and that has made the job a lot easier.  Zap up 5 or 6 cucumbers in the juicer, zap 2 lemons (or limes if you have them), throw in a few sprigs of mint, add a couple of tablespoons of sugar (or to taste),  and dilute the mixture with water and ice.  I suppose you could drink it as is though the lemons are a little strong.  

I was buying mint at the supermarket but on a walk noticed a neighbor had a whole corner of it in their yard.  I was considering if I could go ask the neighbors if I could cut a few sprigs every couple days when Tetsu took the initiative and asked for me and they dug up a whole clump and told him to plant it in his garden!  Hopefully it will catch and I will have an endless supply of mint now!

Great news for me is that today is the last day of school before summer break!  The past four or five days have wiped me out completely just being at the crosswalk for 30 minutes before 8:00 am.  I promised I wasn't going to complain, but I find Japanese summers so hard.  I'm popping ibuprofen and can't figure out if it is the heat, the humidity, the sun, the air conditioning or the direct fan air that is so debilitating but I am practically of no use to anyone this season...  School starts again August 25 and hopefully the hot weather won't last long after that...

We had an amazing sunset a couple of days ago.  Between Tetsu and myself we took so many photos.

The sun had set just between Mt. Nantai and the mountain range next to it and the clouds had formed this circle in the sky. 

As the sun went down, the BEAM of light appeared like it was straight out of a science fiction movie!

Oh my!  The colors in the sky!

This was my vantage point.  I'm sitting in the bay window of our bedroom.

And this is one of the pictures Tetsu took from the ground.  Our own private light show!

 

Sewing room goals

M-san had a productive week this week!  She finished her Irish Chain quilt and she says that she had a wonderful time making it.

This was the quilt that I sort of insisted she make.  I felt that she was getting good at hand piecing and she'd tried paper piecing (that was a sudden leap into advanced technique!) but I wanted her to understand the concept of sewing strips together and then cutting them up to make different blocks.  The Irish Chain pattern is a good one to make a start and though it isn't a very showy quilt, I told her that was what I was going to teach her whether she liked it or not.  M-san was a little hesitant to try a "big" quilt... not very big in my estimate but bigger than other things she made.

I think we spent three weeks, cutting, piecing and then putting a border on and finally we got it basted and M-san took her quilt home to do hand quilting.  She seems to love hand quilting the most of all the steps in making a quilt and she worked on this two weeks and then brought it to add the binding and a label.  She even put some hanging loops on it herself and she said her father was so pleased with her efforts that he suggested putting it up in their entryway.

I asked M-san to send me a picture of it hanging in her house.  Her "Irish" Chain quilt looks so nice in her traditional Japanese house!   We are started on another project now.  This week I've got her doing hand applique.

On my own sewing front...  well, my goal to make one set of dinosaurs a week only lasted two weeks...  And then the dinosaurs got bigger!  It took me two weeks to get this set of stegosaurus dinosaurs made and the last set is still spread out on my ironing board!

Romantic!

I'm making an update on yesterday's blog post.  I said at the end that Tetsu and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary by going out to a simple sushi place and that there was nothing romantic about the day.  Well, a few minutes ago a delivery man came to our door and Tetsu handed me a package... from Pandora!  He had ordered me TWO charms for my bracelet!!!  How romantic is that?!!!  

I've been a Pandora fan for a few years now and though I'm not much into jewelry, I wear my bracelet 24/7 and love the sparkle and the memories that are connected with it.  A charm bought in this place, a charm to honor an occasion.  In truth, Tetsu doesn't quite understand why I should get excited with a bit of bling that he finds very small and disappointing.  

"They looked much bigger on the Pandora website."

The pink one has lots of hearts and Tetsu says it was labeled "All from my heart" or something like that.  The leaf one he got just because he knows I like leaves and trees and nature!  Isn't he thoughtful?!  I am also quite amazed that he was able to do his shopping online because that is not his forte.  A special act of love!

So my usually unromantic husband pulled off a big one in the end!  I'll have to make him a special dinner tonight!

Another week gone by

I wonder if the blogging world has become less active since the pandemic...  It certainly feels as if all the days blend into each other and there is hardly anything to write about.  This is a shame as we are all living with uncertainty and ought to be finding our time on this earth as precious...  But the days go by hardly marked by anything worth sharing.

(See the low clouds behind the trees there?  They were just rolling in at a great speed last evening.)

We are almost finished with the rainy season in our part of Japan.  It is actually marked by a time and date and someone in the weather bureau will someday soon announce that the rainy season is over.  It doesn't matter that it may continue to rain for days afterwards...  This has something to do with the way the cold fronts of weather move on the weather maps... The past week or so the days start off sunny or at the most cloudy and suddenly in the afternoon the skies will just open up and pour down.  Many parts of Japan have been flooded and there was a major landslide with hundreds of people lost in a resort area near Tokyo.  Lightning flashes, thunder booms, my cats scramble for cover under beds and between blankets, John barks frantically with every clap of thunder.  Tetsu and I run around closing all the windows as the rain comes in practically horizontally and we unplug our computers.  In a couple of hours the clouds will move on and we  are often left with some beautiful sunsets.  And the next day is a repeat of the same climate conditions...  Such is the rainy season in Japan.

With the end of the rainy season, Japan will suddenly be thrown into sweltering, unbearable heat and humidity.  This is the season that in the past I try to miss by heading to California for a month.  In past years I'd already be in hot, DRY California heat but not this year again...  Japan's Covid-19 numbers are increasing again and many of the major cities and more populated prefectures are in emergency mode again...  

AND with THESE situations the Olympics are still planning to begin in less than 10 days!  It is unbelievable to me and talking with friends and watching the TV news, it sounds like most people in Japan are as flabbergasted as I am.  The idea of the Olympics being held in the midst of the Japanese summer seemed a crazy idea to begin with and now with the pandemic still raging throughout the world and the large majority of the Japanese population still unvaccinated, and the rising Corona cases...  WHAT ARE THE POLITICIANS THINKING?!!!  I'm rather surprised that more countries haven't boycotted the whole event but the international athletes are coming in to the country... and some are tested and found positive, people associated with them are being infected...  What a fiasco.  Is this really going to work?  It was decided LAST WEEK that the events would take place without spectators...  so it will be a rather subdued Olympics no matter what...

On a happier note.  Tetsu and I celebrated our 41st anniversary yesterday.  Dinner at a revolving sushi shop (not romantic) and Tetsu bought me a t-shirt!  We hope to make his birthday (on the 22) a combined celebration... 

Cucumbers

Japanese love pickles, though unfortunately for me, not dill pickles.  Nevertheless, there are an uncountable number of pickles available depending on where one lives in the country and each prefecture, each town, each FAMILY has their own pickle specialty.  In any authentic Japanese meal pickles will be served and they can be made from daikon, carrots, Chinese cabbage, cabbage, eggplant, cucumber etc. 

I have never been a great pickle maker though I like eating them and appreciate the different types... but this year all that has changed and I am being forced to learn how to make pickles!  The reason is because Tetsu planted 10 cucumber plants (10!!!) and now we have cucumbers coming out our ears!

Not only do we have Tetsu's cucumbers but every so often, a grandmother who walks with her grandchild to school, brings me a bag of 8 to 10 cucumbers from her garden.  I'm afraid I made a great joyous fuss over them the first time and now she regularly brings me cucumbers!  I am NOT going to tell her I no longer need her cucumbers as I have my own but I'll come back from the crosswalk with my bag of cucumbers and meet Tetsu in the driveway, his arms full of 7 or 8 of his own cucumbers!

So I started out making Kimchee pickles.  We like Kimchee and as I had a supermarket container of Kimchee in our refrigerator I just cut up a cucumber and threw it in encouraging it to marinate with its store bought counterparts.  That's what's in the plastic container...  Then I also went out and bought my own Kimchee sauce and cut up some more cucumbers (a couple this time) and some onion and sloshed those all around in the sauce in a ziploc bag.  More marinating going on.

But the cucumbers kept coming.

We were eating sliced cucumbers with mayonnaise and miso which is a summer favorite with Tetsu.

 

And then I got really adventurous and bought some NUKA which is a distinctly Japanese way of making pickles...  NUKA is made up of the bran of rice with salt, seaweed, peppers and whatever else (depending on who is making the NUKA) and when water is added, it makes a moist BED which cucumbers get pushed into and after a day or so they absorb the flavors and become salty.  As the NUKA bed changes flavors because it takes on the flavors of the vegetables, I'm supposed to add my own ingredients like peelings of fruit and more seaweed and I'll get Tanya's special NUKA pickles that no one else can copy.  That's the theory but if you don't mix up the NUKA and add oxygen to it every day it will eventually spoil.  By the way, the mixing is done by hand in order to add the pickle maker's "flavor".

Just the day before yesterday I went out and bought another bottle of some different type of cucumber seasoning (it seems to have vinegar and lemon in it) and Tetsu declares these the most delicious and refreshing (more than his wife-flavored pickles!) so the easiest way to make pickles is probably the tastiest...

I am getting rather tired of eating pickles though Tetsu is persevering and eating more than his share every night...  I think he feels responsible.  One nice thing is that John seems to like cucumbers and whenever I'm cutting off the ends of cucumbers he likes to sit at my feet and get them as treats.  Great!  a non-fattening dog treat and he's helping us to manage the overflow!

I've now got a pickle recipe from Marlene and that will be next on my to-do list this weekend.  The trouble is that there isn't much more one can do with cucumbers than make pickles...  

Except maybe draw them...

 

Elementary school

Twice a year I am asked to join a school evaluation committee that visits the local elementary school (where I'm the crosswalk guard.... that's how I got put on the committee) and observe the classes and talk with the school principal and vice principal.  There were some years when we even had a school lunch with the students and then there was last year when with the pandemic, the evaluation days got cancelled altogether. 

The committee was asked to come in last week and with masks in place we wandered freely through the 6 classrooms of children (one class for each grade.  It is a fairly small school.)

A flower arrangement sits at the entrance to the school.  One of the ladies in my neighborhood, a flower arranging teacher, has made it her responsibility to provide flowers and a sample of her art each and every week that the school is in progress.

The first thing that greets the visitor's eye when entering a Japanese school, are the cubbyholes for shoes.  All students have their own shoe cubbyhole and when in the school building they wear simple rubber soled slip-ons and leave their outdoor shoes in the cubbys.  Of course, when they go out to play the indoor slip-ons are placed in the cubbys after their outdoor shoes are put on.  At the end of the week, the indoor slip-ons get taken home (in special bags) to be washed and brought back again on Monday mornings.  That frond of bamboo there is for Tanabata holiday which is on July 7.  It symbolizes shooting stars.

This was a look down the main hallway of the school.  There are the three classrooms on the left-hand side of the hall (and a library room, and the teacher's room) and on the right hand side of the hall are the windows to the inner garden that doesn't much get used but lets in a lot of light.  Upstairs there is the same layout for the three older grades.  There is also a separate gymnasium connected by a hallway and an outdoor pool that only gets used in the summer.  The sixth graders spent last week hosing down and scrubbing the fairly large pool (not very deep) so that the whole student body can use it throughout July.  Summer vacation will begin July 22, and in my children's day, even during the vacation there were pool days for the different grades with parents signing up for lifeguard duty.  I don't know if there are still pool days during summer vacation anymore...

I poked my head into the music room though there wasn't a music class in progress.  I know the kids all have their own recorders and pianicas but it looks like the music room has a lot of electric keyboards for quite a large group to use.

In the past few years, English is being taught in the elementary schools and the city tries to have a native English speaking teacher visit the school once a week to teach the day's classes.  I noticed all the words tacked up on the walls and stairways steps.  Hopefully the children will absorb some English just by seeing it everyday.

The most drastic change to the school has been the issue of tablets to every student this year.  This was the 5th grade class I think, but even the first graders now have their own tablets.  When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, Japan was NOT ready for online classes.  In this elementary school, one morning everyone was told that Japan was in a state of emergency and that there would be no more school until further notice.  It really caught teachers, students, parents off-guard.  I think school was cancelled for over two months and there wasn't any way to teach the students.  (That time was such a mess as suddenly parents were having to stay home from jobs to be with children who were no longer in school!)  

Japan quickly decided that every child should be issued a tablet and then taught how to use them and also to get the teachers trained in teaching through the tablets so that in case school ever had to close down again, there would be some way to continue distance learning.  Even I could see that not all has been going smoothly because some kids had great computer skills and grasped the concept of passwords and connecting to the school Wi-fi and some had no idea what to do.  Instead of kids coming up to the blackboard to write out answers, or copy things into a notebook, now answers are being typed and "sent" to the teacher's main computer who offers a look to everyone in the class who is supposed to be connected...  

But Wi-fi opens up a whole new can of worms for the schools.  The students take home their tablets every day because the school isn't equipped with enough outlets to recharge all the tablets.  There is the question of who will be responsible if the tablets are lost or broken.  The students are also warned that they are not allowed to use the tablets for playing games or being on social media using their family's Wi-fi but whether that can be monitored or not the principal isn't sure.  The principal was practically holding her head trying to relate all the new programs and issues that need to be addressed before the use of tablets in the classroom and for homework can run smoothly.  It is a new day and age for education in Japan and probably all over the world!
 

Accidental Landscapes

M-san and I have been having a creative two weeks because we both started on an Accidental Landscape project.  

M-san is working hard on her Double Irish Chain quilt that I insisted she make and she is in the finishing stages of hand quilting.  As that was her homework and there really wasn't any reason for her to be coming to my house to sew since she wasn't ready to start something large, it was either take a break until she was at the binding stage of her Irish Chain, or do a smallish project at my house.  We got out my Karen Eckmeier's book of Accidental Landscapes and like the blind leading the blind, we read the directions and decided to experiment together.

Except for the choice of fabric for our skies, we decided to use the same fabrics for our "oceans" and we cut our strips and arranged them as we liked...  Somewhere along the line I pulled out some scraps of lace that I had in my junk drawer and we fashioned some waves for the sea shore.  

 

At another point we decided we needed islands so out came some brown scraps and then I decided I wanted to put in a boat to help with the perspective of the piece and M-san decided she wanted a bright sun and clouds.  

M-san fashioned her clouds out of some decorative yarn that I had in the same junk drawer and I also pulled out some cute fish buttons for her to use. 

The width of our blue strips turned out very different and we also machine quilted our pieces in our own styles.  And finally, the borders got chosen, the little quilts got bound and today we both made labels and called our Accidental Landscapes a success!