Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning
I am a native Japanese speaker who used to teach Japanese in a university somewhere on this planet. Currently I don't work but stayed in my house in Northern part of JAPAN. I hope that you could enjoy reading my posts and know what life in Japan is like.
Since the tree is by the road that many junior high school students come and go in the morning and evening, I am expecting that a student may be stealing it without my permission. That happened last year. But this year, it’s still hanging on the tree.
If it happened, am I going to make a phone call to the teachers’ office in the junior high school? No, I won’t do it. I don’t mind, it’s okay by me.
Every time I buy, cook, and eat “Burikama” that is part just behind of gills of yellowtail, I always think the same thing; I will not buy it again but buy ordinary slices of body meat which doesn’t contain a lot of thick bones. Because Burikama contains a lot of bones, it is difficult and even dangerous for my mother to eat by picking up pieces of meat between bones.
Next time I buy yellowtail, I am going to cook “Buri-Daikon” which is a famous winter menu.
I wanted to get on local trains to go to Kanto region. Because using local trains costs only a half of bullet trains (Shinkan-sen). But influenza is now prevailing these days. If I got on local trains for many hours, it could increase the chance to be exposed to flu virus. Perhaps I may transmit influenza to my mother after I get back to my house. This is the reason why I got on Shinkansen to go to Kanto Region near Tokyo.
Tickets of Shinkansen are expensive. In order to save money, I usually get on a car for non-reserved seats. Such a non-reserved seats are on the several cars on Tokyo side. Of those non-reserved cars, I like to get on the top car.
Since the Jo’etsu Shinkansen runs thorough snowy areas, there are water sprinklers all along the railways in Niigata area. By melting snow on the rails by water, Shinkansen doesn’t get delayed even in winter.
This time of year, almost of the time the sky is cloudy and dark in Niigata side.
While Niigata is under dark clouds, people in Kanto region enjoy clear sky.
And I saw Mountain Fuji through the window in the following morning.
It was certainly a peaceful day.
That’s it for today, because I’m not good at writing a post on smartphone.
The last time I visited there was seven years ago. Yesterday I went to Niigata and took a lunch in an Indian/Nepali Restaurant in Furumachi. I ate “A lunch set” that was curry, naan, salad, and plain lassi.
The curry was a little much. As I was eating, I came to think that dipping wouldn’t consume all of it. So, I used chop-sticks and ate a piece of Naan by submerging it entirely into curry. I thought, if you would eat two Naans, the amount of curry fit them. It was 1080JPY, but my stomach became quite full.
I went to the town of Niigata today. Getting off a local train at JR Niigata station, and then I got on a bus to go to Furumachi, where used to be the center of commercial area of Niigata. What I found in Furumachi was that the underground shopping street had already closed. In 2018 to 2019, I was living closed to there and visited and walked there every day. It seemed to me that closure was a matter of time because few people were going there and obviously shops couldn’t make much money.
Niigata is an area where motorization is developed thoroughly. Almost of all people move by vehicles. They don’t want to go to the city center, rather like to drive to suburban shopping malls.
We left home at 10a.m. and went to see a dermatologist. My mother has a skin problem on her both ankles to lower knee. She had already finished using medicine of the last time. So I took her to there because she cannot go there herself. When she bought new medicine at pharmacy, it was almost noon. We went to Rahmen restaurant to have a lunch. I ate a “Hot Miso Rahmen” as shown in the photo.
I won’t write a long post tonight, because I am going to write a music score using “Sibelius” from now. I need to learn how to use that software.
Today was a cold day. Temperature was barely plus in Celsius. But I have been working in my garden most of the day.
I have done two tasks; making the support of persimmon “KOYO(tm)” more rigid, and pruning of several plum trees. The support for the persimmon tree is of course a measure for snow so that the branches will not break by the weight of snow. But not only for that, I aimed at growing each branch longer as I intended. This autumn, I could get only 29 of persimmons. I want more. So, I added longer support bars along branches, trimming short unnecessary branches, and buried fertilizer around the trunk.
As for the plum trees, they have grown too much high such that I cannot reach by my hand. I cut the long and tall branches. There are four plum trees and two prune trees in my garden. What I want most with those trees is to harvest from the tree of “Soldum”. For me, other three plums are just pollination trees so that the Soldum can have fruits. The plum Soldum was introduced from North America to Japan in early twenties century. Its appearance is actually not so great; sometimes it looks green. But inside is very beautiful red violet color. Since I planted the Soldum tree ten years ago, I have wanted to get fruits. But so far, I have got almost none. It is kind like: every year it gets less flower and less fruits, falling onto the ground before ripening, and then I get none. I think I need to learn better pruning, better fertilizer, and how to pollinate properly.
Although I worked outside today, I didn’t take a picture. The photo below is bottles of lemon jam and red-radish pickles. I made the lemon jam yesterday.
