A spontaneous picnic

Tetsu and I had a surprise outing today after we headed over to Marlene's to pick up some obentos.

Marlene's husband, Kohei, started a service group in his neighborhood that offered a once a month lunch and program for the residents.  A group of neighbors agreed to help out and over the past few years the program has grown despite the pandemic.  In the beginning, the lunches were served eat-in style and there would be a short program or talk of interest, but once the pandemic hit, the eat-in lunches were replaced by obento (lunch boxes).  The cost is minimal and the city sponsors the rest of the costs and all the shopping, cooking, and promotion is done by Kohei's group of about 12 volunteers.  What started out as 40 lunches, grew to 60, and this month there were 115 orders for obento!  

Marlene and Mrs. Waki... remember, she is the friend that "helped" me make a dress to wear to Takumi's wedding.  Which I've NEVER worn yet!!!

It is just Tetsu and my good fortune that Marlene asks us each month if we want obentos even though we don't live in the neighborhood...  We have been long time friends with quite a few people in the volunteer group and so they lovingly include us in the neighborhood family.

The day was for a change, warm and beautiful and so Tetsu and I decided to enjoy our obento outside somewhere and as we were near a shrine at the top of a hill/mountain overlooking the town, we drove up the road and parked near some benches.

The city of Utsunomiya and suburbs.

Oh the wonderful aroma that hit us when we opened the car doors!  Along the side of the mountain was a whole grove of Japanese Wintersweet, also known as Japanese Allspice (Roubai) and there were clouds of yellow all around the benches!  It was heavenly!

Today's obento included simmered miso mackeral, a slice of sweet omelette, seaweed and cucumber vinegar salad, sweet red beans, simmered seaweed and vegetables, rice and a sour plum.  Coffee and Japanese milk gelatin was also included!  

It was absolutely delicious!!!

After lunch Tetsu and I wandered around the small grove of trees trying to take photos.  

As we hadn't planned for this trip, neither of us had our "real" cameras with us but we did our best with our cell phones. 

Right near the allspice grove was the entrance to the shrine with a large torii gate and then flags leading up the mountain stairway.  I have climbed up to the shrine itself in past years but this time I had to be satisfied with just peering up the gay stairway.  

Hopefully someday I'll be able to handle those stairs going up the mountain again. 

As Tetsu points out, I am rather a homebody, never really wanting to go out and do things, but once there, (wherever "there" is that he's taken me to) I always have a great time and today's spontaneous outing was a real day, (week, month) brightener!   

It was a great day with delicious food and beautiful sights!

 

Plaid-ish Quilt finished!

I finally have a finish in the quilting department to show!  I've been working on the Plaid-ish Quilt by Kitchen Table Quilting since November of last year.  The Kitchen Table Quilt website has some very nice free patterns  (this one) as well as some beautiful patterns for purchase.

I didn't get a very good picture of my finished quilt just because it has been too cold to try and tack it up outside (besides the fact that I'm not going to walk too far to find a good place.)  Maybe later this spring.  Anyway, here it is laid out on our twin beds that are pushed together.  The pattern makes for a good single bed quilt so it doesn't really fit on the beds in my bedroom. 

Isn't this a great stash buster!?!  There is another quilt on the website that is called Plaid-ish 2 using lighter value scraps, and looking into my scrap bin it looks like they could be used that way too.  But anyway, here is the finished Plaid-ish Quilt, hand quilted quite densly in a plaidish pattern as well as stitch-in-the-ditch.  I used three different colors of thread and it took me two months to quilt.

Not a very exciting backing but it was an old bedsheet that I reused.

And I even got the label on so I can consider this done!  

Other sewing in my house has been from a website I found called On Williams Street and it is a quilt as you go block pattern.  I decided that this might be a good quilt (well, maybe I'm not going to make the whole quilt) for M-san to start practicing her machine quilting as she is always experimenting but asks me for me examples.  Together M-san and I have already made 6 blocks, 3 for each of us, and I guess when we get tired of making blocks we will start quilting and then call it finished when we're satisfied.  These are our first blocks in three different colors (and we've started making our fourth block in greens).

I've made a head start on quilting the first block and as the On Williams Street website has a very nice Youtube quilting tutorial each month to follow, I just quilted as suggested.  I'm using variegated thread whereas the teacher in the Youtube video uses white.  M-san says she'd prefer to use white.

And this is my finished block.  M-san hasn't started quilting hers yet...

My hands have been busy in February... I knitted up a neck warmer for Tetsu too.  What should my next project be?

 

A quick post about masks

The Covid numbers are finally decreasing in Japan and from next month the government has announced that masks will no longer be mandatory and that we can decide for ourselves whether we want to wear a mask or not.  An early survey though shows that only 6% of Japanese are planning to give up the mask wearing custom though half will consider not wearing masks when outside.

my mask collection

Japan has a tradition of wearing masks in public.  During the flu season, during the winter, during hay fever season, masks can be seen anywhere and used for any reason.  I have friends who are singers and they wear masks year round just to keep their throats warm.  For a long time I felt that masks were a way for people to make themselves invisible and hide their emotions from others.  It really annoyed me to have this wall up between me and someone I was talking to, but my opinion changed during the pandemic.  Japanese are basically considerate people and the custom of wearing a mask is not so much to protect oneself, but good manners for protecting others around you.  I'm not sure which way I'll go next month...

Last Friday I had to attend a seminar in the next town over with a group of traffic crosswalk guards.  We went to the lecture hall in two vans and we were to be met by another crosswalk guard who came in his own car.  The problem was, that once at the lecture hall, we couldn't locate the person who had come separately and in the sea of people, everyone was wearing masks and it was really hard to distinguish who was who under all those masks!  (We finally did meet up.)  

After the lecture, we all walked back to the parking lot and piled into our van.  

"Off we go." said the driver (a city hall clerk.)

"Can you drop me off at Such-and-such station?"

This was NOWHERE near where we were headed back in Nikko and one good look at each other and everyone noticed that the man who wanted to be let off somewhere was NOT part of our group!  He was supposed to be with the van of people headed south, while our van was headed north to Nikko!  Because everyone had been wearing masks no one realized that the man hadn't been part of our original group nor did he realize that he wasn't with the people he was supposed to be with.  Everyone had a good laugh!

Tetsu and I use our homemade masks but we also keep a supply of disposable masks around and as I'd been making some eraser stamps recently, I decided to decorate the masks with a few prints.

Sketching in the hospital waiting room

So, there are good reasons to give up on masks and good reasons to keep wearing them.  During these winter months, a mask does keep my face warm.  That's good.  The sweetshop lady who recently is suffering from facial neuralgia said that being hidden behind the mask allows her to continue working the counter of her shop.  That's another good reason.  And personally I've appreciated masks because it makes it so much easier for me to sketch people wearing masks!!!  I don't have to try and draw half the face.

 

Cold days of February

Another week gone by...  I have to look at my bullet journal and my phone photo album to see if anything was going on...

I am happy to report that yesterday I sewed on the binding to the Plaidish quilt and hopefully in a couple of days that will get sewn on and maybe even a label made.  It has been a long season of hand quilting because I ended up doing much more than I'd planned on.  The most hand quilting I've done in a long time!  Even though I used an Aunt Becky thimble on my left hand, when I take the quilt out of the hoop I just use my fingers and I sure got pricked a lot!

We had a major snowfall this week and it was SO cold!!!  Of course I don't do any of the snow shoveling but Tetsu had a full two days of it... which he seems to enjoy though he is exhausted afterwards.  He believes in staying ahead of the snow even when it is still coming down around him.  I guess he knows since as he always points out he grew up in snow country!

We had construction work being done in front of our house and most days there is a road worker whose sole job is to wave people onto a detour road and to move his red sign when when the trucks come through.  He also waves us in to our driveway when we come home from somewhere.  He takes a rest on the tree stump and even eats his rice balls there.  

We've talked to him quite a lot (I even gave him my piping hot handwarmers after I'd used them at the crosswalk) and he says he is 80 years old and ready for retirment!  I guess so!  All day standing out in the cold!  I'm done in after an hour at the crosswalk!

I splurged and bought myself an apron that I've had my eye on.  It says something when a "splurge" is so ulitarian but I really liked this apron because it is asymetrical and had this pretty Japanese pattern.  My thinking is that with a new apron I might be inspired to do more housework or cooking.

I keep joining Skillshare classes and I took a class with Barbara Luel on painting rooms in a house.  Though the class finished with three rooms of your choice, I am continuing the project until I get tired of it.  

My front door ready for Valentine's Day.

The entryway which got a bit too confusing while painting it.

The kitchen.

The dining room.

The livingroom.

The former Japanese room.

Oh my gosh!  Can you believe I even painted the bathroom!  Bathrooms in Japan consist of a toilet room, a tub room, and a sink and laundry room, so I squeezed all three rooms onto one page.

Today is Valentine's Day and so I went out and bought Tetsu chocolate, coffee, a cute cat coffee sweetener and nuts.  Valentine's Day in Japan is strictly from women to men...  In March there will be a reciprocal day called White Day when the men buy things for women.

And at the crosswalk today a little girl handed me some homemade chocolate cookies.  "For the traffic guard lady."

A long way to write "there is nothing to write about"

Tetsu and I are hard pressed to say what we do with our days...  We have our morning schedule that has changed some these past few months....  We get up at 5:45 and I put in my contacts, and feed two cats who eat downstairs and then pass Tetsu a container to feed the cats upstairs (saving me an extra trip of going up and down the stairs.  It used to be my job to feed both upstairs and downstairs eating cats).

Bitmoji sticker

While I turn on the lights and get the space heater and heated carpet going, Tetsu makes our bed and gathers the laundry for the day.  Since retiring, he has taken charge of the laundry.  I start making our breakfast while Tetsu takes John for a potty run.  It used to be my job to go out with John in the morning though most mornings Tetsu would join us and we would walk about 20 minutes at the cemetery across the street.  I can no longer get across the street nor walk for any length of time and so John and Tetsu just make a quick trip outside.

Breakfast for years now has been one diced apple, a sliced banana, chopped walnuts, almonds, coconut, raisins and whatever fruit in the freezer.  This morning blueberries and I also had one more kiwi in the fruit bowl.  We add soy yogurt (homemade) because I started being careful about our eating when I did the Whole30 a few years ago.  To my bowl of fruit, nuts and yogurt, I add tumeric powder (anti-inflammatory) and to Tetsu's some granola topping.  Tetsu also makes coffee but he is sad now because since being diagnosed with RA I no longer drink coffee.  It is sort of a made up diet that I've pulled together and have no idea if there is any medical backing to it.

The Japanese sweetshop at the crosswalk

Though I have been a crosswalk guard for 13 years, I used to walk the 15 minutes to the school and back but that went by the wayside from last July and I was driving there for awhile and now Tetsu drives me.  At first he was taking me there and picking me up an hour later, but lately he is parking at the crosswalk and either sweeping snow or leaves, or picking weeds or picking up garbage along the road.  He seems to find some hour long job to do while I stand at the crosswalk.  It is a nice way to start our morning.

My Duolingo streak

Back home we both do our Duolingo study (Tetsu English, I Spanish) and we both have quite a streak of study days.  We are more interested in maintaining our streaks than actually being able to speak the language but it is fun.  I do some online Bible reading, I send out a daily English word to my students who will send me back a sentence using the word.  I'll spend a few minutes correcting sentences from the day before and then sending them back.  I like to send a happy Bitmoji sticker if there is a perfect sentence and that makes it fun and motivates people (hopefully).  I also post some doodle or drawing on my Instagram account and that also forces me to do SOMETHING arty each and every day.  

Colors in my paintbox

By about then it is 10:00 and Tetsu finds something to do outside or on his computer and I will do something arty or do a bit of sewing.  Lunch is at 12:00, mostly left-overs from the night before and Tetsu will take John out again. At around 2:30 or so we will often head to the pool where I swim laps and Tetsu relaxes in the mist sauna (he does not do exercise at the pool saying he gets enough exercise doing yardwork).  Back home I'm usually cooking dinner, Tetsu is doing a final run with John who actually got the least amount of exercise as any of us, and then we watch TV until I go up to play around with my bullet journal and then get ready for bed by fixing up a hot water bottle to put at my feet (which I love but Tetsu doesn't seem to need.)

A somewhat empty February 2023 calendar

This month's tracker page

Again, my bullet journal has changed quite a bit in the past year.  

Last June's tracker page.  Steps on the lower right, circled days when I swam 40 laps

It used to have pages of trackers of how much I swam, how many steps I walked, and a whole section on the chores I would do each month divided into the week that I was going to do them.  Those pages have all been zilched now as Tetsu does most of the housework when he sees fit and my trackers track sad things like if I've had pain on a given day or how my mood has been or if I'm feeling tired and run down.  I am rather upset that I am tracking this type of stuff but then again, it is helpful when I talk to my doctor and tell her when and how I felt and what I might have been doing leading up to any change... I do have a Grateful page that hasn't changed much and I can always find something to be grateful for!

We see Marlene and Kohei a couple of times a month and have dinner together and play cards.

I talk with the 80 year old road worker who has been standing in front of my house for the last week (so cold!) because the road behind us is being torn up.  He brings out his rice balls at noon time and sits on that log stump.  

This weekend was Setsubun, which is a holiday marked by ogres whom families cast out by throwing dried soy beans.  Usually dad wears an ogre mask and runs out of the house while children yell "Out with the ogre!  In with good fortune!"   In recent years, a new custom is to eat a large sushi roll (rice, fish, egg etc, wrapped in seaweed) while facing the good luck direction of the year and not talking.  If you talk then you'll scare good luck away...  This morning I went to the crosswalk and saw all the dried soy beans on the ground in front of the sweet shop so I know the sweet shop children were throwing beans at their father this weekend.  I also found a curious looking little fish head stuck onto a stick by the shop's front door and the principal of the school who came to greet me this morning said it was another way to keep ogres and bad luck at bay.  I came home and had a great time splashing up a Setsubun art page!  It's hard to make a mistake on a mythical figure!

Well, I didn't think I had anything to say and here I have rambled on about nothing.  Thanks for sticking with me!