カテゴリー: Photograph

Shiso seeds pickled in soy sauce

Shiso is a plant that is often used in Japanese food. We like its color and flavor. There are two types with purple and green leaves. I don’t grow them, but purple and green Shiso are in my garden as weeds. Today, I picked up some seeds and pickled them with soy sauce.

Green Shiso, it’s just a weed in my garden

Shiso Seeds with stems. It is easy to take them off from the stem using your fingers.

I poured Soy sauce into the Bottle

Soy sauce is too much. But I can use this extra soy sauce for seasoning of other food

By the way, the following is an episode when my grandma on father’s side died. She was a mother of five sons. After the funeral, people shared her relics. To do that, sons’ wives took what they wanted in the order from the first son, second, third, fourth, and fifth. My father was the third son. When my mother’s turn came, the first son’s wife and the second son’s wife had already taken valuable relics. Only “Shiso seeds pickled in soy sauce” remained there. So, my mother took it. I don’t know what the fourth and fifth wives got, but anyway, shiso seeds are not valuable stuff at all.

I confirmed this episode at the supper tonight. My mother said that she has a different personality from the first and second sons’ wives, so she didn’t care at all.

Today I made it. I will wait two or three days to make the taste better. Surely I will eat it putting on a white and hot rice.

40-Minute Walk under Cloudy Sky in Sunday Afternoon

The Left Peak is 1012 meter and the Right Peak is 1293 meter in Altitude

A Path on the River Bank

The Machine was left on the Ground, Probably because of Weekend

Gun-Hunting is Prohibited in this Area by Niigata Prefecture

Muddy Water in the River. Rainy days has continued Recently.

Rice Fields and Gozu Mountains

A Rice Field whose Rice has already been Harvested.

A view from the Bridge.

I made Three Bottles of Apple Jam using “Kougyoku” that I got in my Garden

An apple “Kougyoku” is a little sour. The apples are suitable to be processed with heat, rather than eating fresh. Since I had put three of them in refrigerator, I made jam in the early evening today.

There are many ways to make apple jam. Today I made it by grating the apples. Apple peels are rich in pectin, so, I wanted to use those peels in the jam.

Many cooking recipes on the web say that sugar must be 50 percent of weight. But I am not sure about this 50%; Is it 50% of weight of fruits, or 50% of the entire weight of jam? Anyway, I don’t have a cooking scale, so, I just put a lot of sugar in the pan by intuition. I think the sugar must be 50% of the weight of the jam in order to keep the jam longer.

Though I forgot to take a picture, I did “boiling disinfection”. I closed the lids of bottle loosely, put the bottles in a big pan, boiled water in the pan with gas fire, and then closed the lids tightly by my hands with gloves.

I got three bottles. I will use them for toast of my breakfast from tomorrow morning. It will save some cost of living.

Some have been harvested, some haven’t in the Rice Fields of Niigata, Northern part of JAPAN.

Though I showed you the same kind of photo recently,

Rice was already harvested in some rice fields

Beyond the Railway is a Residential Area.

I think they are a rare kind of sunflowers

Head-down; It seems Rice Grains are heavy for the Stem

Today’s highest temperature was 31 Celsius degrees. It was still hot. But since tomorrow, the highest temperature will be below 30 Celsius, according to the weather forecast. Will it be the end of summer? I hope so. This summer was an extraordinary hot one. I have been feeling very bad through this summer because of the heat. I hope I will be able to be more active in this fall.

桃李の月餅、五個入りです。

Nothing has to do with rice fields in Niigata, but I found a photo that I took just one year ago, on September 17, 2024. It’s “MOONCAKE”. I bought it in the supermarket in the campus.

Learning how to teach after quitting the job as a teacher

Today, in the morning, I worked in my field. When it comes to growing vegetables in this autumn season, there is not much thing remaining. But I still have one thing to do. That is to plant onion’s seedlings and garlic’s bulbs. In order to plant them, I need to make one more ridge in the field. It will be five meter long; three meters for onions and two meters for garlic. What is tough is to get rid of roots of weeds from the place for the ridge and furrow. Since the place had been untouched for two years, now weeds’ roots in the ground are like spaghetti.

I worked in the field from 8 to 9:30 am. and then I got shower. From 10, I was watching a DVD that is about teaching Japanese as a second language. Actually, I had brought those DVD with me to the campus during the years I was teaching in a university. Watching the DVD today, I regret that I should have watched while I was teaching in the university. There are a lot of tips for teachers to teach a foreign language. For example, there is a concept of MMC for beginner’s level; the first M is mechanical training, the second M stands for meaningful training, and C for communicative activities. Did I do that? Usually, I didn’t extend my teaching to communicative activities. And there was no clear distinction between mechanical and meaningful trainings in my teaching. I would like to improve my teaching skill, but I don’t see any chance to apply improvements to my teaching in the future. I have already retired from the job as a Japanese teacher.

I had planned to go shopping in the afternoon. But it was hot like 34 Celsius degrees. So, I didn’t go to a supermarket, but continued to watch the DVD about teaching Japanese in the afternoon. I practiced my piano from 4 to 5 pm, cooked a supper from 5, had the supper at 6:30, and then I went shopping. I got back home at 8 pm, and started writing this.

What I Bought Tonight

A Little Excursion to a Town of Next Railway Station

Two-car Local Train on Shin’etsu Line

DIY store is called as “Home Center” in Japan. I just wanted to buy some items in a Home Center in the town next to my village. In this afternoon, I got on a local train.

The Train crossed a River

Tangerine Tree Seedlings

I saw a lot of fruit trees were being sold in a store. Though I went to three stores in the town, I didn’t buy anything. I don’t know why. Something in my mind prevented me from buying commodities. I went back to the station, got on a train, and got to my home at around 3 pm.

Vending machine on a platform of the station

I didn’t buy even one bottle of soft drink.

Sometimes I Receive a Message from my Students.

I bought a new smartphone last month. Before I went to the mobile phone store, I hadn’t known that a google account was necessary for android. So, I had to make another google account in the shop. If I had known this matter, I would have brought ID and password of existing google account of mine. In addition, I installed “LINE” for my mobile phone, which also increased number of Accounts. Now I have so many accounts for emails and SNS. I am not sure if I can handle all of them.

This morning, I found an email in one of my mail boxes. Actually, I haven’t noticed it for several days. I wrote a reply and sent it. If a message comes, I will write a reply. That is okay. But sometimes I also want to send a message from me to my students. In fact, I am not sure they are happy with my message. Some are happy and write a reply to me soon, but some students perhaps are unhappy, think it troublesome, and are reluctant to reply to me. They may feel it difficult to write a reply to a person who is thirty years older than they are. Basically, doing communication is good, but I have to be careful how I communicate with my students; who to send, how often, what to write, and so on.

Some day, most of my students will forget about me. It is okay for me. They will grow up as an adult, and devote to the day-to-day life in new circumstance. As for my side, too, it is impossible to remember all the students I taught. Time flies and memories will be gone. But for now, I think it is not so bad to send messages to my students, while I remember them well. Now I am thinking about writing one message to one student a day. I hope that my message would not be so troublesome for the student.

Group photo at graduation

Rough calculation gives me the following; I taught students of seven grades (in six years). There were about 50 students in a grade. Therefore, approximately I taught 350 students.

I have Harvested Three Apples “Kougyoku” in my Garden

Three Apples before Harvesting

I am not sure, but according to a book, it says the apple Kougyoku is one of varieties which was obtained from the seeds of “Esopus Spitzenburg” of North America.

Today I got three from the tree in my garden. In total I have got four, and that is all for this year. Kougyoku apples are a little sour. So, it is better to cook with heat than to eat fresh one. Now they are in the refrigerator. I am thinking about making them jam.

Two Students sent me Messages on “Teacher’s Day”

I should say, I do not blame my students that only two students sent me messages on the so-called teacher’s day. I am always forgetting about the day until a student says “Today is the teacher’s day”. Anyway, I thank those two students who remember me.

(Let me say the following is not about “teacher’s day”, but about farewell at the end of the last semester. Actually, AI suggestion was confused by the change of the topics. Without mentioning this, a reader would also be confused)

Before I quit the job in July, I asked all the students not to give me any letters or present. It may sound like I was a cold-heart teacher, but the reason was simple. I didn’t have enough time to write a reply in the last days in the Campus. I am a person who always writes a reply to the letter I got. As for presents, it was hard for me to pack them into two suitcases.

But there was one male student who gave me a present that was a small-scale model of “Gandum”. I couldn’t put it into my suitcases. If I had thrown it, I would be really a cold-heart guy.  I put it into a carton box with my books and asked another teacher (of that country) to send me from a post office.

This is also in Japan, now

Since this is the only “Figure” that I have, I don’t know how to display it. But it would be better to take it out from the case, to put them together, and to decorate it.