From Tetsu's phone

Life has been quiet the past two days.  VERY quiet because Tetsu is off in the northern part of Japan while I am staying home with the animals!  This is a first for us!  Usually, I am the on who goes off for the summer (to California) or even away with friends for a day or two while Tetsu holds down the home-front, but the roles have been reversed this week.

(From Tetsu's hotel room I guess...)

The main reason that Tetsu has gone up north is to do some clean-up around our family grave located in Morioka, Japan (where Tetsu grew up and where we met).  We have been talking about getting up to Morioka this whole year, to visit friends, to see to the family grave, but what with Covid and Tetsu's duties as Homeowners' association head, we never found the time.  The trip takes about 6 hours on the expressway and I am not so gung-ho about making the drive.  I also don't much like traveling with Tetsu because we never make PLANS.  It is all about suddenly discovering two or three days are free, taking off with hopes of finding someplace to stay when we get there and not having an itinerary for what to do or see while we are anywhere...  I'm sorry but things need to be arranged like pet care, me taking off from crosswalk etc.  I guess you could say that I'm not a spontaneous type of person...

(His buffet breakfast.  He is sure eating better on his trip than I am!)

So...  As our plans to go to Morioka got pushed farther and farther back, and what with me already taking three days off from crosswalk because of the slipped disc last month and because I basically believe we shouldn't be moving around during this pandemic, I bowed out of this year's trip.  Tetsu doesn't plan to see his friends anyway because of Covid... just do some weeding around the grave, maybe spread some new gravel around the headstone.  

(Our family grave.  We have the low red stone in a Christian part of the cemetery.)

Actually, Tetsu and I both love Morioka.  It is SO beautiful up north and Mt. Iwate looks over the city and the rivers that run through it.  Tetsu would actually like to move back to Morioka now that he is retired BUT it has always been way too cold for me there (the coldest part of mainland Japan) and though spring, summer and fall are beautiful, winter wipes this Southern California girl out!  No thank you!   Tetsu has two or three friends that he would love to see regularly but I think my life there would be pretty lonely...  I have one friend who still lives in the neighboring mountains...  Who knows... Tetsu may be scouting out the possibilities of permanent residence for us up there.  He'd better find someplace warm!!!

(Beautiful Mt. Iwate and the Kitakami River flowing through the city)

Anyway, today's photos were sent to me from Tetsu's iPhone.  He says he has over a hundred photos on his camera already but he sent a smattering of things taken on his phone.   

In the meantime I have been sewing most of my hours of the day, doing some practice lettering, walking John, and eating the same curry rice lunch and dinner for the past three days.  Maybe I'll splurge and go get myself a hamburger this afternoon!

My friends' quilting progress

My own quilting progress isn't much to talk about I'm afraid.  I'm still appliqueing flowers onto strips...  One of these day's I will be able to get started on the flower centers which will be a job in itself as I think I have over 50 flowers appliqued now. 

There was a time when I did only needle turn applique but a few years ago I learned the technique of prepping the pieces beforehand with spray starch and that has worked wonderfully and made for very sharp-edged applique pieces.  I make a freezer paper template (double the paper to make it stronger), then iron the paper onto fabric, cut out the piece with fabric to turn under.  The edges of the piece get starched with a paintbrush (not sprayed on) and then I use a stiletto in my left hand to turn the edges to the paper while ironing with my right hand.  It took practice but I'm pretty dexterous now!

Though not really patchwork, I spent a few days this week collaging another block for the McKenna farm quilt I've been working on al this year.  No sewing started on any of these blocks yet...

 But it is nice to report that my friends are getting some sewing in!  Mrs. N who is actually living in another prefecture during the pandemic, had asked me to help her design some small quilts that she wanted to give her friends.  Mrs. N is known for her love of cats and so cats are what her friends are getting!  The fabric is basically mine (lots of leaders/enders used!) and Mrs. N machine quilted the little quilts and added a bit of whimsy to each to make it seem as if the cats are looking at something. Let's see...  Two cats are looking at falling cherry blossoms, one cat has its eye on a butterfly and one cat is getting ready to bat at some soap bubbles.  I think Mrs. N's friends will be enchanted!

Then I have my friend M-san who finished her quilt of coffee cups!  I had sent M-san home with a coffee cup template and some fabric and suggest she make a few and she came back a couple of weeks later with 30 some coffee cups!  She made a few coasters and a small tapestry and a table center etc, and her finale is this beautiful coffee cup wall hanging!  Isn't that nice and cheery!?  M-san has now started on STARS and we'll see how many she can make before I see her again!  Such gung-ho patchwork apprentices!

Shasta at High Road Quilter, has a quote quilt that she's making and though I haven't (yet) incorporated this quote that she had into a quilt, I did put it into my bullet journal.  

Okay...  Back to my flower applique!

Just Do It!

This has been a quiet week so far, but those weeks are good too!

The biggest change for me the past couple of weeks was that I went to the pool and "renewed" my year membership there.  I have been a complaining swimmer for nearly 10 years, not really liking the exercise and the time it took each day but grudging admitting that I needed to keep exercising...  When Covid19 hit, the pool was closed for two months and when they reopened in May I wasn't thrilled about going back.  I had rather enjoyed my justifiable vacation from swimming!

I went back to the pool two more times but found the new routine that the pool staff had had to instill rather annoying.  Get your temperature taken when arriving in the lobby, get an ASSIGNED locker (rather than just grabbing one in the area you liked), being watched over by the lifeguards like in a prison camp and being warned about water-walking too close to other pool users and scolded for having any sort of conversation with anyone while in the pool area.  (Also the sauna and mist sauna were closed down but that didn't really affect me as I didn't use the saunas.)  After the pool the bathing facilities were allowing only a limited number of people in the area at a time which meant standing around wet and cold if too many people were using them.  Swimming had never been FUN for me but it became rather an aggravation!  When my membership ran out I didn't bother to renew it and Tetsu continued to go alone just to use the bathing facilities.  He doesn't like doing exercise anymore than I do but he loves the deep hot bath.

So I've enjoyed having nearly two extra hours of non-swimming time all these 6 months.  That's 20 minutes to get there, 10 minutes to change and register, 30 minutes of swimming, 20 minutes of bathing and changing, and 20 minutes to get back home.  Think of all I can do at home!  Though probably I really wasn't that time efficient.

HOWEVER!  I also stopped recording my walking steps around this time (my mentality has been "I'm 65.  I don't want to spend my days counting calories and tracking exercise time. Give me a break!") and then two weeks ago I had that slipped disc...  Sigh.  And Tetsu CLAIMED that my lack of swimming was a deciding factor in poor muscle tone leading to the sudden week of incapacitation.  

"OKAY!  I'LL GO BACK TO THE POOL!"

Despite the fact that I may be heading to the States in the near future I decided I needed to commit myself to this exercise that I really don't much like.  Well, we all have to occasionally do things we don't like.  Get over it.  

I was welcomed back by many of my former pool acquaintances who have stayed steady at the pool all these months but of course there are quite a few people that like me have faded away when their membership ran out.  The lifeguards aren't quite as control minded as they were in May and some chatting is allowed though the saunas still are not open.  Most of the regulars advise staying away from the pool on the weekends when out-of-towners and non-regulars usually come (and it is more crowded with families) so that will be our strategy from now on.  And because I am back swimming, Tetsu has returned to the pool area to water-walk so he is getting more exercise again.

 

The right place and the right time

Yesterday morning turned out to be rather exhausting...

I went to the crosswalk as usual but on my way back home I noticed an elderly woman coming in my direction but she crossed the street back and forth a couple of times before she got to me.  Was she looking for a house?  Was she lost?  She was carrying a bag from the convenience store, and the only one in the direction she was coming from was a long way off.  At any rate, when she started into the street again I waved her back onto the sidewalk and said good morning as I approached.  I tried to make conversation with her asking her where she was headed and where she was coming from but she didn't seem inclined to give any information and headed into the street again.  A VERY DANGEROUS STREET with an upcoming narrow blind bend.  I decided to accompany her back towards the school asking if I could carry her bag for her as she'd begun to start wailing about how she was so tired.  When I asked her name or questioned her more she got very defensive and told me to just leave her alone.  She sat down in the sidewalk a couple of times and started crying.  Something was not right... 

I called Tetsu on my phone and asked him to come in the car as I was walking towards the school again with an elderly Obaachan, but the Obaachan got very upset at me for calling someone and kept waving me away and telling me to her leave her alone.  I tried distracting her by telling her about my job at the school but she didn't seem to know there was a school nearby...  By that time Tetsu arrived and I thought, "Good.  He has experience dealing with the elderly...  He can figure out if this lady needs help." 

But the lady wouldn't talk with Tetsu and ran out into the street into a path of a car as I dragged her back by her sweater which infuriated her even more.  She stomped off yelling at us to leave her alone.  Instead I followed her while Tetsu called the police.  

Oh, was she upset with me!  She peered at the name-tag I have hanging around my neck and screamed.  

"Your name is Tanya Watanabe!  I'm going to remember that!  I'm going to tell the police that you are bothering me!"

Well, that was good.  Now we both wanted the police.

I ended up following behind her quite a ways and she turned off onto a narrow path going through the fields.  Tetsu had gotten out of his car and told me to keep following the lady and he would wave down and direct the policeman when he got there.  But partway through the field the lady sat down on the bank and just mumbled and cried and I stayed quite a distance away from her with my back turned waiting to see if she was going any further.

Finally the policeman arrived and he took over but he couldn't get any more information out of the Obaachan either.  She either didn't know or didn't want to tell anyone her name or where she lived.  Tetsu went off to a nearby facility to see if one of their elderly had "escaped" but he came back saying they weren't missing anyone at the facility.  The lady was crying and moaning by this time and still wouldn't talk to the policeman and so he finally called for a backup and pretty soon we had a bigger police car and two more policemen.  This did not make the lady happy.  And then a couple from a nearby house came out to see if they could help and when the wife said she was a nurse at a convalescent home, she took over talking to the lady and reassuring her (and surreptitiously checking the back tab of the lady's sweater to see if there was a name.  Nope none.)  The Obaachan was getting more and more excited and hauled off and hit the nurse in the face a couple of time (no harm done) and finally the three policemen decided they'd have to forcibly put the lady in the police car.  They made sure though that we four witnesses were aware that they'd warned the Obaachan a number of times and that no abuse was being involved.  It took 5 people to carry the screaming, kicking lady and get her situated in the police car and finally an hour and a half after all this had started we all disbanded.

This morning the local policeman reported to me that the Obaachan was from the neighborhood near the school and she might even have been able to have gotten home by herself...  Which made me question my decision to have called Tetsu, to follow her despite her curses and telling me to leave her alone...

On the other hand, the policeman pointed out that she obviously had SOME dementia issues and some mental issues too with her anger, her refusal to give anyone her name, her violence and emotional outbursts and the way the whole situation got out of hand when it could have been easily averted if she'd just let anyone know her name...  And as she had been wandering back and forth into the street then yes, I had been correct to worry about her and call someone about her safety.  That made me feel better and I hate to think how I'd have felt if she'd been hit by a car if I'd done nothing... 

It is a fact that the aged population is ever increasing in Japan...  Since I started blogging Tetsu and I have "helped" three elderly people... The energy involved, the questioning of my decision process, the heart pounding reaction to all the cursing and screaming...  I was exhausted by the time we got home...  I'm sure the lady was pretty exhausted too... 

Random news

First thing this morning on my iPhone came the group chat message that my niece has gotten engaged!

 

Kiana's long-time boyfriend proposed to her on Halloween and she sent us a pictures of her dressed as a witch or a vampire or something (gory make-up) taken just after the proposal!  Kiana and Justin have been dating for a few years and last year after Leiya's wedding, we were able to get to know Justin better while traveling to Indiana and Niagara Falls with my brother's family and Justin (who had already been considered part of the family).  

As I told Kiana this morning when I wished her our congratulations, Year 2020 was crummy in general but for the Watanabe and Logan families it has been a great year!  One pregnancy announced (Leiya and Tony), one Covid wedding celebrated (Takumi and Julieta) and now an engagement to celebrate (Kiana and Justin)!  We are counting our blessings!

As for what is going on in quiet Nikko, Japan...  I finished knitting Tetsu's Christmas vest with yarn left over.  We won't know if it fits him until he tries it on on Christmas but it is done and I may play around with the left over yarn and make something for myself.  This year the vest was made from an old vest I must have knitted up years ago and I unraveled that and then added left-over yarn from last year (but had to buy one more skein of that).  I also used left-over cream yarn to make the stripes.  That labor of love can be struck from my to-do list!

I am still making flowers for my applique quilt and need to think about what the next step might be for the alternating strips.  Probably something using the leader/enders I have piling up again!  The applique project was good for my back ailments and I was glad I'd prepped quite a lot of flower petals ahead of time.  (It took a week for my back to stop twinging but I think I'm back to almost normal...)

I wanted to show some pictures from a photo booklet that I ordered last week.  I'd been in touch with my friend Noriko-san who has been a quilting buddy for years even though she lives quite far away and we only get to see each other once a year or so.  Noriko-san and I started machine piecing and quilting 30 years ago and from there she has become an accomplished patchwork teacher, has been published in major Japanese quilting magazines and has a quilt exhibition once a year.  

She considers the Stained Glass technique as her life work and she does a lot of Christian themes and depicts Japanese churches in this style.  However, her most recent exhibition was about the sights of Abiko, the city where she lives, and she made 15 quilts showing some of the most memorable places and buildings and scenery.

Noriko-san said she would send me the postcard booklet that she had made for the exhibit but I went ahead and bought one (to give to Mrs. Furui who was part of our threesome those 30 years ago).  Isn't her work beautiful!  I love the thought that she puts into the borders for these.

All these random but good things going on in my life this week!

 

I voted!

Yeah!  I got an email this morning saying that my vote has been counted!

The election was quite a rigamarole for me this time around.  I have always been a California registered voter but I haven't always taken advantage of the voting rights.  The past two presidential elections I asked for a mailing ballot however, and had it sent to Japan.  The last time around I remember never being sure that I'd done it all right nor whether my ballot had been counted, so this time I registered for ballot tracking.

I was sent an automated email back on October 5th I think saying that my ballot had been sent and I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  I repeatedly got emails from the registrar's office reminding me to vote early.  

"Well!  I'd like to but my ballot hasn't arrived!"

Marlene, who is from New York said that her ballot had been sent out on September 18th and it took 10 days to arrive in her mailbox, so I continued waiting.  And Marlene kept checking in with me to see if the ballot had arrived.  Finally, I decided I could wait no longer.  I downloaded a Federal Absentee Write-in Ballot, filled it in, printed it out and then went to Marlene's to see if she thought I'd done it right (and I wasn't sure because I couldn't do it from my phone, the computer wanted me to fill in the blanks typing and when I printed it out it got resized.)

Marlene had never seen the Federal Absentee ballot website either but between the two of us we determined that I HADN"T done it right and I did it all over again at her house, this time printing it out first, filling it in by hand and then figuring out where to send the dang thing (not my county's voting booth site but the county registrar's office).

I sent out my ballot the next day though the Japanese post office gave me doubtful looks.  

"It may take up to a month for this to arrive in the States.  There is no longer Express Mail Service between Japan and America."

"Whatever it takes, get it there as soon as possible.  Write AIR MAIL numerous times in large lettering please!"

I went home and wrote the registrar's office that I thought the date for sending out California ballots to overseas residents was too short.  Especially in this time of Covid-19!  I got an automated reply thanking me for my valued opinion...  Hmmm.  Does anyone care if I vote or not?

In the meantime I've kept my eyes on the mailbox expecting the official mail-in ballot to appear but it never has!  I'm sure glad I gave up early and sent in the Absentee ballot!  Who knows where my ballot has gone?  Maybe it got diverted to my brother's house, though it has successfully made it to Japan before...

Anyway, yesterday another automated email arrived telling me my ballot had arrived and my vote would be counted.  Good because I never got THEIR ballot!

I am DONE with this election!

Last place...

I have more scenery photos, one reason because these were taken before we went to the lake the other day but so many other things were going on that I didn't get them posted, and two, because I've ended up stuck in a chair for the past two days because I slipped a disk while making the bed on Sunday  I feel old and decrepit and I'm completely useless right now!  I'm also mad at myself because I've had to cancel out on the pre-school Halloween event (I'm the witch!) and also two days of crosswalk duty and two classes of English.  Sigh...

Tetsu did take me to the acupuncturist on Monday which maybe or maybe not helps...  You can never be sure with these things.  If I just stayed in bed I'd probably get well in a week and if I go to the acupuncturist it will probably take me 7 days to recover...  I was also so out of it that I couldn't think about taking pictures of my pincushion back ("while you're sticking those needles into me could you please take a picture for me on my phone for my blog?") and thus you'll just have to take my word for it.  10 needles in my back and legs for 30 minutes...  I go back tomorrow for another treatment.

These photos were taken just before that television crew came visiting, maybe on the 17th and we woke up to find snow on the mountain range behind our house (it had all burned off by the time we went up to the lake though).

We just walked through the fields on our usual morning jaunt and enjoyed taking photos and marveling at the beautiful countryside we live in.

The people of Tochigi Prefecture where I live, were horrified earlier this month when the results of some survey was broadcasted on TV and radio and found on newpaper headlines.

"Tochigi Prefecture ranks as the LEAST ATTRACTIVE prefecture in Japan, coming in 47th of Japan's 47 prefectures."

WHAT!!!??! 

Tochigi prefecture is a perfectly lovely prefecture!  What are these people talking about!?

Over the years I've posted pictures of the pottery town of Mashiko, the rock quarry of Oya, the mountain range of Nasu, the Utsunomiya delicacy of gyoza pot-stickers, the shrines and temples of Nikko.  Not to mention the beautiful farmland, the forests, Mt. Nantai, the LAKE!  How can this not be one of the more ATTRACTIVE prefectures in Japan? 

It was rather a blow to the prefecture's population's ego.  

Ah well.  To each his own.  It's true that Tochigi doesn't have ocean or a seaside and that our seafood isn't the greatest but I find so many small beauties as I live out my life here...

On the positive side...  If TOCHIGI prefecture rates last, just think of how wonderful all the rest of Japan is!  Wish you could visit and decide for yourself!