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.
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.
But now I can see the moon from my window.
It seems that some of my (ex-)students have visited this blog today. I know this because the numbers of viewers are displayed by country.
The rain stopped before noon. So, in the afternoon, I walked to a supermarket for shopping. I bought fishes and pork for suppers of today and tomorrow. When I got back, I planted sprouts of onion in the field. Planting by hand took time more than I thought, I didn’t have time to practice piano before cooking supper.
My life is tranquil these days.
Please look at the houses behind. They are the same as the photo above.
By the way, I found there were many persimmon fruits on the tree in my garden. In every year so far, all the persimmons have fallen down before ripening. But this time I can see them a lot. So, I wish that some, or a few of persimmons could survive until it becoming orange color in November.
I used only salt for taste, didn’t use any seasoning nor spices. This is the way Japanese grill fishes. We eat grilled fishes with natural taste. And I made notches on the fishes so that gas fire effectively can heat the fish meat.
Now my supper is ready.
Severe summer heat continues. Since I don’t have my vehicle, I have to walk to a supermarket. Go-and-back is a little less than two miles. I don’t walk this distance in the middle of the day. So, these days, I go shopping right after my supper in the evening.
Tonight, I found some horse mackerels were remaining in the refrigerated shelf of the supermarket. They were fresh fishes for Sashimi (raw fish). But the time was already past 7:30 p.m. There were not many customers in the store. It was highly likely that no customers would buy them until the closing time at 8:30 p.m. If it’s a small shop, those fishes would turn to be grilled fishes and appear on the shelves next day. But because it’s a supermarket, I thought they would be disposed as a waste after the store closed in one hour. I didn’t want them to be wasted. I bought one package in which two horse mackerels were packed.
When I got to my house, I quickly started processing. Now the main dishes of tomorrow supper have already decided. I hope that storing one day in the refrigerator could make the taste of fish meat better.
Amid the heat of 35 Celsius, I walked more than 30 minutes. I had an appointment with a telecommunication company at 10a.m. Like other rural area, the shopping district is always located in remote area from the old town. All the customers are supposed to come by own vehicles to a shopping mall. So, people like me without a car have difficulties to buy a thing or get services which other people can get. I am a minority, and people having a car are majority in this society.
I bought a Samsung’s Galaxy. When I said this on the video call, my older sister seemed to laugh at me. Actually, I don’t understand why she looks down Samsung products. I just bought what a store clerk recommended me and I thought it had enough performance.
When I got out of the store, the sunshine had become even stronger such that I could worry about heat stroke and damage on my skin. It would have taken another thirty minutes for way back to the JR station. I walked, but stopped frequently under the shades. I called my mother using the mobile phone that I had just bought, to say I could not get back home by noon. She told me not to hurry to come home, rather, to take a rest somewhere in the town.
So, I got into a Rahmen restaurant near the railway station. And ate “Vegetable Rahmen” of 880JPY there. Other than me, there was an old man in the restaurant, drinking alcohol in the middle of the day. It was around 12:30 on week day. But there were only two customers in the restaurant. I could hear only sound of cooking and voices from TV. It was very quiet. Clearly it showed to me the declining of a local town in Japan.
Today I went to Niigata because I wanted my ID photo. Actually, I had tried to take my photo by myself with my digital camera. But it was so difficult to make my photo a good one with right lighting, straight direction of face, and good color contrast. I wasted more than two hours yesterday and I gave up the idea to take my photo by myself. So today, I went to a photo studio in Niigata. The studio told me to wait for 30 minutes for processing my photo.
The outside, under the summer sunshine, was too hot. But I walked to Bandai area of the downtown Niigata. An idea came to my mind and that was to go to the observatory in the nearby tall building. There is a 20-story building which is also an office of the famous local newspaper company. I remembered that there was an observatory at the top of the building. I thought it was good to kill thirty minutes.
There is a tall building in the photo above. That building also has an observatory. I have been there several times. The observatory has a good view from south-west to north. But you cannot get good view from North east to south.
You see a tall building with sharp triangle roof on top. That building also has an observatory. But the view from there is limited only from north to South. You cannot see the west. That means you cannot enjoy the view of the sea and Sado island on the west. Actually, if you are male, you could see them by going to men’s restroom. I am a man, so I am not sure whether or not female people can see the west through toilet window. If they can’t, I think it is clearly one of sexual discrimination against women because man can get ocean view while women can’t.
Today’s my conclusion is that the best observatory in the downtown Niigata is where I went to today. It is on the 20th floor of the “Mediaship” building in Bandai area. The second best is of Toki Messe. If you want to take a good picture of Shinano River, Toki Messe is better than Mediaship.
Mr. Shinzo Abe was a politician of Japan. And I should say I didn’t like him at all. Anything he did and said was against my belief and political preferences. But I think he should not have died in that way. He was shot dead by a handmade gun about three years ago.
Two weeks ago, I found his photo on an old newspaper dated on July 11, 2019. Since I was going to quit my job and come back Japan, I was cleaning my room. At that time, I had already finished grading my students for the semester and had registered the scores on the university system. In order to leave the residence, I needed to throw many things as much as I could so that I could pack my stuff into two suitcases and one bag.
Old newspaper is sometime useful to wrap a fragile stuff. But there were many newspaper. I just thought throwing them as trash. And then found Mr. Abe’s photo between the pages. At first, I thought I would throw the page with other pages, but I changed my mind. Even though I didn’t like him, I wanted to take his photo back to Japan with me. Just one page of newspaper wouldn’t increase weight of my suitcase; it’s just a few gram. So, I folded the page and put it into one of my suitcases.
Since two suitcases are too heavy to carry by myself from Narita Airport to my house in Niigata, I asked a shipping company “Kuroneko Yamato” to deliver them. I received them three days ago. I opened one, and found Mr. Abe’s photo again.
There is a small field to cultivate vegetables in the back of my house. Since I had been working abroad in these two years, now the field is covered with weeds. I need to pull them out and cultivate soil by my hand in order to plant vegetables in autumn.
Now it’s the end of July, and summer continues in August. When I came back here two days ago, I quickly realized that there had not been rainfall for long. Everything was dried. Probably three weeks or even one month, my area hasn’t got precipitation. Many leaves became yellow, some trees were withered and died.
Another problem is heat. In addition to drying weather, temperature is high in this summer. It gets 35 Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) every day. I don’t think it is good for my health and safety if I work in my field in the middle of scorching heat and under strong sunshine.
So, I got up 4:30 a.m. in this morning, went to my field, pulled weeds, and gave water to trees. When I approached to grape trees and gripped weeds with my hand, I was stung by two bees. I felt sharp pain on my left hand. Luckily enough, my left hand hasn’t got much aching nor red swelling after that.
Anyway, I know I have to work a lot on my field to make it again well managed vegetable field.
My another photo blog “LQ Laoshi’s Photo Gallery”(outside wordpress)
A fig tree is vulnerable to damage by long-horn beetles. Since the trunk of a fig tree is relatively soft, the insects make holes and go into the inside. In that case, the trunk of the tree becomes houses and also food. And then there will be so many holes on the surface and the trunk will have void inside. It quite often results in the death of the fig tree.
If it is in early stage with a little number of holes, injecting insecticide would be one of solutions. However, it means that the injected chemical could go up in the tree and reach to the fruits. So I don’t think injecting insecticide could be a solution as a countermeasure against long-horn beetles in a fig tree.
A practical solution is as follows. You need to accept the damage caused by long-horn beetles on a fig tree. In other words, you admit that a fig tree is short-lived. But it does not mean you need to give up the fruits. What you need to do is renewing your “main” fig tree in relatively short term. You make young trees using a branch and/or shoot that are taken from the existing fig tree. By keeping several young trees as the spares, and planting them every three or four years, you will get the fruits, even though some times the damage happens.
So, this year, I made three young fig trees using the existing fig tree’s shoot.
They were taken from a native Japanese fig tree. So those fruits are not so sweet because the species has not been improved like some western fig trees. But this kind is hardy and can stands for winter cold. Although its sweetness is not perfect, eating fresh is actually good. And a good thing is that I can make a lot of jam (jelly) and compote in autumn.
