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.
There were a little chilly autumn days recently. I thought the mountain Iide might have got snow on the top. As I expected, I found that there was snow on Wednesday 28th.
These sparrows had been somewhere for one month or so. It was the season that there were a plenty of rice grains in paddy fields. They liked rice better than bird seeds that I give them. But now the season has changed, they have com back to my garden.
A ginkgo tree has not become yellow enough. It would be still earlier to be the best color.
Another yellow thing in autumn is this introduced species from north America. You can see this flower anywhere in Japan at this time of season.
A river and the mountain Sugana-dake. Soon the leaves will be yellow and red on the mountains.
The spring semester was over. Summer break has started. But there is no time for me to take a rest. I have already started preparation for the next semester. Since the day before yesterday, I have been scanning the pictures on textbook so that I can use them on PPT slides. Since today is not rainy (though it’s dark), I took a walk in the afternoon.
Bridge for Farmers’ Vehicles
Mountains whose heights were about 1000 meter were seen from the bridge.
View from the Bridge
A farmer and her husband were working to harvest onions.
Farmers are Working Hard on the Ground
Oh, by the way, this wordpress writing system is quite inconvenient. It is hard for me to operate. Now I regret starting writing this post. This is terrible.
Growing Rice in the Paddy Fields
I can see five peaks of Gozu Mountain. “Gozu” uses two Chinese Characters for “Five” and “Heads”.
Mountain Gozu behind the Paddy Fields
It is a kind of agony just to write sentences and insert images. I hope someone will change and enhance to make it easy to write and post a blog.
The board is saying “Let us make the river clean”, “You will be punished if throwing trashes and/or dirty matters in the river area”.
Unclear Board saying not to throw garbage
Flowers I saw on the way to the river
I am just wondering how other wordpress users feel about this very poor operability of writing system. I would like to say “This is a torture”.
The new writing system of wordpress has made difficult to write and edit a post. It seems a HTML geek is proud of building an automatic function to form “DIV” commands. But it is almost painful to me. I want someone to get the old simple writing system back.
By the way, I asked a neighbor to cultivate the land and grow vegetable so that the garden would not be an abandoned bush. On Monday the person was cutting weed for us but he mistakenly cut the lily that I planted several years ago (Because the lily was among the weed). He brought that lily to my house with some apology. My mom put it in a brown glass bottle of a cheap “energy drink”. Since the bud of lily was still young, we didn’t expect the lily would be able to bloom. To our surprise, the lily flower opened in the following day.
Lily “Lollipop” in the bottle of Lipovitan D
I bought bulbs of lily “Lolipop” several years ago in DIY shop “Komeri”. The bulbs were discounted because they were apparently unsold long time. I thought, if it were going to be a waste, I would buy and plant them in the garden. After that, Lollipop had been in bloom every year even though I didn’t take care of them. The neighbor didn’t cut them all, so some are still left on the ground.
Lily “Lolipop” on the Ground
Yesterday my mom went outside around the noon to get her lunch. It was so hot, so she gave up staying outside, just buying a lunch box, and then came back home. She told me to look at her lunch box that costed only 330 Japanese Yen. She wanted to show that there were a lot of things in a cheap lunch box that would be equivalent to three USD. But I have to say, I don’t think it is good to eat those cheap processed food. It should be bad for health.
330 Yen Lunch Box (=3USD)
Green beans that I planted are growing in the garden although it will take more than a month or so from now until the harvest.
Young Green Beans are Growing on the Ground
I found the gooseberry was turning to be red. Taste? of course anything from the garden is always sour. I have already confirmed it by the most reddest goose berry fruit.
Fruits of Gooseberry Now Turning to be Red
And this morning I found that flowers of hollyhock started blooming.
Rare Color of Hollyhock Flower
Uh,… I wasted my one hour to make this post. The blog that people hardly view is called “an isolated island on the continent” in Japanese. Mine is also like that.
A fruit of silverberry (goumi) has turned to be red. Actually there were only three fruits on the silverberry tree. This is one of them.
I have already taken this one. Only two goumi(s) remain on the tree now. They are still green.
I don’t know whether this silverberry is edible or not. As was obvious for the case of strawberry, nothing from my garden can be sweet. They are always sour so that you would like to jump up when you put them in your mouth.
I left the silverberry like this on the table. Soon I found that this small tiny red fruit had disappeared. I asked my mom where the silverberry had gone. She answered that she offered it to the deceased my father. And then I saw this small red thing was put in front of my dad’s photo.
Flower of cucumber has already had the young cucumber .
This is a flower of egg plant.
This is a flower of pumpkin. If it was a female flower, it would be a pumpkin. But you know, the flowers are almost always male flowers. A female flower is very rare. There is no easy thing in this world.
This yellow flowers are not of pumpkin but zucchini.
These vegetables were not that I planted. Since I am very busy in days and nights for the online teaching things, I asked a neighbor to cultivate and grow vegetables in my family’s garden. I should be thankful to him.
But there is a one vegetable that I planted.
I planted some seeds of green beans. Seeds were sold by 200 JPY (tax exclusive) that was approximately equivalent to 2 dollars. The seeds were imported to Japan from the country where the authority used teargas to disperse the peaceful demonstrations in order to do a photo op in front of a church to show a man holding a book that he had actually never read at all (probably).
But anyway, it is not that big issue, I mean, where the seeds came from. Because they have germinated safely on the land of Japan. If I can harvest green beans, I will boil them just a little, dip into mayonnaise, and then eat them in hot summer night with chilled beer. I am looking forward to doing so.
This is to show you how to take care of your tomato in this time around.
You need to cut off the buds of branch so that the main stem can grow. The orange circle in the photograph shows a bud coming from between the main stem and a leaf. It should be removed.
This photograph shows, by a blue circle, that an unnecessary branch has been cut off. In this time of season, you need to check this very frequently like almost everyday. If you leave those branches to grow, your tomato will be terrible and chaotic with many stems and branches such that you want to start singing “Welcome to the jungle!”. Cut them off, or you will get small size tomato.
Nothing has to do with the black bird, but you know, the new writing system of wordpress is not easy to use. Do I need to got used to this? I am not sure how I can insert HTML code by hand?
And the response of the system is a little slow.
I want the old writing system to back. This is quite difficult to handle.
I forgot to attach this photo onto the initial version of this post.
Okay this is today’s photo that was taken in the garden.
Many of strawberry was already eaten by ants.
Taste? It was just sour. The quality was not that good,, you know, not as good as strawberry on the shelves of grocery store. But strawberry is strawberry.
Uh…, it is quite difficult to continue to write. Let me stop writing. It seems that it will take a time for me to be acquainted to the new system. To be old sometimes means that it would be difficult to learn a new thing.
I have been just in home and doing online teaching things for so long. The only chance for me to go outside world is to take a walk or go to nearby supermarket. Last Sunday, I wanted to do both, but I forgot a face mask. So I just took a walk and went back to my house without going shopping. Today, too, I wanted to take a walk and go shopping.
Before leaving home, I took photos of green fruits in the garden.
This is a Silver berry that is one of three hanging. I don’t think this will be good to eat. It will probably be ornamental accessory in the room.
I reduced the number of apple “Kougyoku”. Only three remain hanging on the tree because the tree is too small to grow many apples.
Peaches are becoming bigger and bigger. When it comes to reduce the number, I actually reduced too many for peach trees. But it would be okay because the number is not an issue for gardening in a small places. Anyway I left home for a walk after taking these photos.
Flowers on road side.
While I was taking photos, a farmer lady talked to me, saying I should take a good picture of Mountain Yahiko.
So this is Mountain Yahiko. I would like to erase the utility poles and electric cables.
Flowers just by the asphalt pavement.
This is a kind of ornamental flowers, however, it still looks like a wild plant. Many people don’t think this is ornamental. But actually I like these kind of natural plants rather than plants that got too much improvement.
Many people don’t like them. But they are also doing their best to survive.
Taking pictures by my digital camera, and then I went to a supermarket. I looked at people’s faces. And I realized that I forgot to bring a face mask. I thought I should get out of there. But I wanted to buy some food for my supper. I continued shopping with talking by myself “Sumimasen (I am sorry)”, but in that situation, it would have been better not to speak anything if I don’t put a mask on my face.
I taught two classes today. I was so exhausted that I couldn’t go outside for a walk today. I just pulled weeds in the garden a little while after the afternoon class.
These photos were taken yesterday. I think things around here look beautiful probably because this place is where I was born and raised. When I was young I just thought about get out of my hometown. But things and I myself had changed from those years. I live here now because of corona virus pandemic. I cannot go back to my university right now, so I am doing online teaching on the internet. I will leave here for my job when things get better. I don’t know my future, but if it’s possible, I want to come back here when I retire from the job.
I got clear sky near the end of May in Niigata. I don’t have any online Japanese class on Thursday. No class and fine weather mean that I need to take a walk.
Two mountains behind are Mt. Yahiko and Mt. Kakuda. Roughly Mt.Yahiko is 600 meter and Mt.Kakuda is 400 meter in height.
Believe me. I am not a railway geek.
Fill the rice field with fresh water! It makes me feel good to see water is splashing and streaming.
By the way, Niigata is a land of paddy rice. So wheat growing is very rare.
Mt.Sugana-dake, a local train, and black bird. The sharp peak is impressive, but it is not the peak of Mt. Sugana-dake. I guess, not-sharp, a gentle peak in right is the real peak of the mountain.
This is a kind of magic by telephoto lens.
White flowers of clover. This time I didn’t forget to bring a face mask. So I could go to a nearby supermarket to buy some food for my supper.
Today is May 27, Wednesday. I have done a listening class for the first grade in the morning. Actually, I didn’t sleep on a bed yesterday. Since I had been preparing for the class through the night, I slept on the hard tatami mat just for a several hours. If I felt good during the day, I would like to work in the garden to take a care of vegetables that the neighbor planted for me. But I didn’t feel well today. And it started raining in the afternoon. I wanted to take a walk and go shopping, but because of rain, I decided to stay home. The state of emergency has already been lifted here, so it is no problem to go outside now, but still I need to put a face mask when I go to shopping.
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 