Luka's November pictures

Pictures...  Sorry, none yet from Takumi and my brother's family...  I asked them to take pictures but I haven't heard back from anyone.  Takumi did say that their first Thanksgiving was a great success.

But I do have pictures I've collected this month of Luka so I'll overload this blog post with those today.

I'm not sure if Luka's outfit started as a Halloween costume or not but Leiya said she bought it specifically so that he can stay warm throughout the winter season.  The only problem is that when he wears it people think he is a girl...

Leiya's family made a surprise visit to Tony's mother and delighted her with a weekend with Luka.  I think they got together with relatives and also made a visit to an aquarium (where this photo was taken.)

I guess the fish were interesting for everybody.

Luka has become very good at climbing and walking and is even attempting jumping now!

He loves dried leaves and appreciates the sound they make fore than the beauty of the colors.

The family has done some hiking when the weather holds.  Luka loves the outdoors so what they're going to do during the cold winter, I don't know.

Leiya and her happy family.

Thankful!

Wow!  A week has gone by with no blogging!  It doesn't seem like much is getting done but let's see what is in my photos file...

Last Friday, M-san and I went off to a coffee shop instead of doing any patchwork.  M-san is "slow-stitching" a practice that seems to be what hand-quilting is all about anyway but I suggested that as she likes handwork more than machine stitching, M-san should spend some time just adding stitches to her latest piece and not worry about when it actually gets done.  The more stitches the better!  

The coffee shop we went to is one where the owner serves "Deco-latte", Decoration latte, and I wanted to show M-san.  The barista makes 3-dimensional lattes and it is almost like a show...  The cafe is all set up so that the customers can watch him making creations on the flat screens mounted on the walls.

I asked the barista to make a 3-D latte of John.  He works from a picture in my phone.  First some foam...

Then a nose drawn with chocolate sauce.

Some ears and fur...

M-san asked to have a genie in her cup...

It was a fun way to enjoy a rather dear cup of coffee!

Yesterday we went to Marlene's and Kohei's to celebrate Thanksgiving American style.  Almost every year three families (sometimes more) gather together at Marlene's house (she's the only one who has a large oven) and have turkey and all the trimmings.  Of course there were the years when all the children participated and her house was overrun.  This year it was just 6 of us.  We chatted and ate and ate and chatted and enjoyed each other so much!

Marlene made the turkey (bought at Costco), stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, pumpkin and corn.  

Keiko-san made the pumpkin pie and apple pie.  

I contributed the salad, green bean casserole, persimmon bread and strawberries.  Look at these special strawberries!  Takumi's former classmate visited us a couple of days ago and brought us red strawberries and even white strawberries from his farm!

Actually all the vegetables this year were supplied from Kohei's vegetable garden!  Corn, pumpkin, cucumbers for pickles, green beans.  Well done Kohei!  All the more to be thankful for!  

I was also thankful to get more Luka pictures from Leiya and Tony and to hear from Takumi and Julieta who were hosting Thanksgiving dinner at their new house and had invited my brother's family.  Everyone is healthy and happy!  Thank You, Lord!!

Japanese lesson and a recipe

Not much new on the computer front.  I'm approaching it with my head-in-the-sand attitude.  Work out what I can, ignore the rest.

How about a short Japanese lesson?

The other day I made some persimmon bread.  In Japanese, kaki is the word for persimmon.  This is the time of year for persimmons and farmers who have trees have an overabundance.  There seems to be two types of persimmons... the stringent ones that get sweet as they are dried, and the persimmons that are already sweet right off the tree and can be pealed and eaten like an apple.  With the stringent ones, they can be forced to sweetness or hung out in the cold air to dry and become sweet or they can just sit in a bowl in my kitchen until they are overripe and mushy.  

In my house, when persimmons get to the mushy stage they are either tossed out or made into persimmon bread.  The pulp is spooned out dripping, I squish through it for seeds and then I mix it all up with sugar and eggs and oil and cinnamon and flour and bake it all.  It is delicious.

I made up a batch of persimmon bread and gave a couple loaves away to neighbors and took a couple loaves over to Marlene (it's her recipe) and kept a couple loaves to enjoy at home.  Last Friday when M-san came over to do some patchwork together I served her some persimmon bread.  She is always very appreciative of the cookies that I occasionally bake and she seemed to be enjoying the persimmon bread as I described to her how I made it.  

M-san and I mostly speak to each other in English although I do throw in a few Japanese words now and then when I think she might not know a word...  I guess it gets confusing to know what language I'm actually speaking...

"So, to make persimmon bread, kaki-pan, you let the persimmons get all mushy and then you mix the mushy stuff up with everything else."

M-san stopped chewing and looked at me strangely.

"Um...  Yeah, well, the pulp is spoonable when it gets overripe.  You know, all mushy..."

M-san grimaced.

"Mushy...  what is the word?"  

M-san swallowed her mouthful and gulped.  "Mushi?  Like an insect?"

"Insect?  What do you mean?  OHHHHH!!!"

A mushi in Japanese is an insect, a bug.

"NO!!!  Not an insect!  Mushy, like... like... like mashed, like soupy!"

I spent awhile explaining and M-san went back to eating her persimmon bread relieved that I hadn't been using persimmons with insects inside them!!!

Marlene's Persimmon Bread 

6/22/95

1 cup raisins

1/2 cup brandy or hot water (soak the raisins)

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 cups kaki pulp  (persimmon pulp)

1 cup oil

4 eggs

4 cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ginger

1 cup walnuts

Stir together sugar, kaki and oil.  Add eggs.

Add dry ingredients.  Add raisins, brandy and walnuts.

Pour into 4 buttered and floured loaf pans.

Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees.

 

Computer woes again

I had (am having) a frustrating week because of computer woes again...

One morning last week, in my gmail box, there was an email from a well known computer security company telling me that my computer security had been renewed to the price of a couple hundred dollars and that if I wasn't interested in renewing and wanted my money refunded, then to call them at a 1-800 number.

This was somewhat fishy as I didn't recall using this computer security company for my most recent computer and actually had been advised by Takumi to stop paying for outside security as the newest computer that he had bought me had a good security function.  But maybe in the past I'd used this company...?  I wasn't sure but I did know that I didn't want the update at what I considered a high price.  But I also know that 1-800 numbers don't work from Japan and I'd have to pay for an international call. 

So I contacted Takumi to get his opinion...  and he offered to contact the company and see what the issue was.  Long story short...  It was a scam.  He said when he questioned whoever he got on the phone they were very rude and finally hung up on him...  His advice was to ignore the gmail and not do anything more... EXCEPT maybe change my gmail address and migrate services as it had been breached somehow and the scammers now had it...

AGGH!!!! 

I immediately let up a scream and expressed my doubts that I would be able to do all that needed to be done...  My son answered 

"You will need to list all services that you use, login to each service, and input your new email address.  It's kind of cleansing and fun."

Takumi's idea of cleansing and fun is so far from what I would consider cleansing and fun, we don't even speak the same language!!!

This process, which is only partially done, has stressed me out completely and the first day had me exhausted and in tears.  I still have not figured out how to replace my old gmail address with my new one on this blog... or on YouTube or on Google Photos or anything else that requires Google accounts...  It is scary how much I rely on Google!  

SO!  Some of my blog friends may have realized that I have a new gmail address, but some of you have not...  I'm just saying.  If you know how to change things in your contacts or gmail or whatever, please do so.  If you don't, and I don't blame you a bit, I am now working with TWO gmail addresses and TWO pin numbers and TWO passwords and getting completely confused.  Hopefully messages will still get through to me via the old gmail address... which I realize completely negates the purpose of avoiding the scammers...

Question to anyone who understands computers.  If I POST my new gmail address right here on this blog, like in photo form, is that going to cause me major problems?  Like I know enough not to post a credit card number but what about gmail address?  I think blog friends can actually email me at the correct address as I have changed my Blogger profile but I've been debating posting it here or is that just asking for trouble?    

I'm trying...
      

The last day in Morioka

Besides cleaning up our family gravesite, another purpose of our trip was to attend a memorial service at our home church for people who have passed away over the years.   

Each year a service is held and pictures of past members are arranged and introduced.  

Our two month old daughter's photo is in the top row.  There were so many photos of people we remember...  It was always an older church and now we know more people on the altar than we know sitting in the pews!

From there we went to a florist and picked out some flowers and then went back to the grave and washed the stone with a scrub brush and a toothbrush!  

Tetsu was very satisfied when we were done and he wishes that we could visit monthly rather than just once a year...

The cemetery is a public one, owned by the city rather than affiliated with a Buddhist temple.  On this side of the hill is the Christian section and across the way in the area with denser grave stones are the different sects of Buddhist graves.

We are way up at the top of the hill which has a nice view of the city but is quite a chore to climb up to.

Before checking into our hotel we stopped at the city park to take pictures of the autumn leaves.

The park is made on the ruins of the old castle grounds.  There is no longer a castle but the huge stone foundations are still there.

The leaves were at their peak!

I found a heart in the knot of a tree!

There was one section of the castle ruins that was being renovated and the stones had been removed and laid out for accurate reconstruction later.

You can see how each huge stone was hand hewn and the present workers have numbered them and placed them so that they can be fitted again like a puzzle when the earth work is done.  There was a sign on the fence that said that this stone was 1.7 tons in weight!

When all is finished, the foundation will be "as good as old".

Children hanging leaves along a wire.

More steps and foundation.

We actually had dinner this night with our friends from the night before who had called to say they would meet us someplace in order to spend a bit more time together.

The next morning we had another big breakfast (we ate way too much on this trip and for the most part rode for hours in a car so we didn't work off much of it...) and then met another friend at a coffee shop before heading back to Nikko.  

I used to work with Nobuko-san when I first came to Japan 44 years ago!  By the way, Shohei Otani, the big major league baseball player from Japan, went to this high school in this very countryside part of Japan.  Tetsu was very excited to be able to take a picture of the high school!  

Weeding!

Okay.  Time for some work!

We try to make this trip to Morioka annually just so that we can visit our family grave and clean it up a bit and decorate it with flowers.  This act of love is more important to Tetsu than it is to me but I'm happy to visit and spend some quiet time.  Our daughter, who passed away at two months old 39 years ago is there and three or four years back we had Tetsu's mother's ashes interred there also.  

Last autumn, Tetsu made the trip to Morioka by himself as Corona was beginning to spread throughout Japan and I didn't want to go traveling and we felt that visiting with old friends should be avoided.  Tetsu took advantage of the time in Morioka alone getting the gravesite cleaned up, meaning moving the stone and taking out the surrounding gravel and putting in bricks etc.  He spent about four days doing work on the grave and going back and forth from the local Home Center.  He was looking forward to showing me this year the results of his hard work of LAST YEAR.

YIKES!!!  This is NOT what Tetsu had expected!!!!!  A year's absence had turned the family grave into a weed infested plot and Tetsu's gravel and brick work could hardly be seen!  He was SO disappointed!!!

Actually, the gravesite was one of the worse ones in the cemetery, none of the others being taken over by weeds like ours and Tetsu reasons that maybe his hard work of digging up all the gravel and dirt underneath that had originally been packed down, just stirred up the ground and made for a fertile weed growing area.  Okay!  Let's get to it!!!

We had brought trowels and buckets and rags and gloves and we got to work on weeding.  At least the weather was nice!  Four hours later (that means 8 man hours between the two of us!) we had that grave area looking pretty good.  We were expected at Tetsu's friend's house so we left the family plot as is and made plans to come back the next day with water for washing it.

At our good friends' house, 5 of us chatted and ate and chatted and ate for another 4 hours until we said goodbye til next year and Tetsu and I headed for our hotel...  We were grimy from our earlier weeding so we really appreciated the deep hot public bath at the hotel!

Resort stay

Even though it had been a long day, starting at 3:30 AM, our driving still wasn't over.  

We said good-bye to Aomori and were sent off with a bit of a rainbow.

We headed back to Iwate prefecture, to a ski resort area (that of course doesn't have skiing yet) and we arrived after dark at our hotel.  We enjoyed a smorgasbord style dinner (so much good food!) and an absolutely wonderful outdoor bath!

The next morning we opened our curtains to the slopes of Hachimantai where in a month or so the mountains would be covered in snow and skiers.  

Before breakfast Tetsu and I headed out to explore the resort area...

Besides the ski slopes, there seemed to be a camping area.

...and numerous different types of lodging.

But even in this beautiful season, it is probably too cold to do any camping and because of Covid, though we saw quite a lot of people in the dining room, the hotel was far from capacity.

From photos in the lobby, it looked like the resort also offers "glamping" and there were numerous wooden platforms for the hotel's luxurious tents to be erected during the "glamping" season.

There also seemed to be a section in the woods with dinosaurs, though the dinosaurs were all wrapped up for the winter.  It must be a fun place for families to explore in the spring and summer.

Rolling hills...  no people...

We really enjoyed taking pictures of the beautiful area.

We ate too much food again at the smorgasbord breakfast and then were ready to head to the city of Morioka, our main reason for traveling to this part of Japan.