We have uncomfortable warm winter in the end of this year.
Of course it's easier for us to clean the house and prepare for the New Year Day when it is warm, but it is also very odd.
Today, we made "Mochi", maybe rice cake in English.
Mochi is necessary for the New Year Day, and we usually make it on 30th December.

First, we steam the particular rice for Mochi, then put it in the pounding machine.
And, we shape it like ball after pounded.

When my husband's parents were alive, we used to pound Mochi with a mortar and a pestle.
Now we use the particular machine instead of those equipments.
After making Mochi, I started to cook Osechi, the New Year dishes, it took half day to finish all.
I have not finished cleaning the house, but I got a little tired..!

Time passes very fast, even it seems to me years pass faster and faster recently.Maybe it's because I'm getting older.
It's been just one year since I started this blog.
I started my blog for my English study, but has my English improved more than before? I don't know...

Today, it was the last day of our job in this year.
We did a big cleaning of our office as every year.

And it was surprising but the social affair of our office treated us the gorgeous lunch!

This year, our job started with food poisoning and ended up with Infulenza.I was called on the 2nd of New Year Day, though it's our holiday, to investigate food poisoning incident.
I hope we would stay at home in the New Year Days without any emergency call!

It seems to be the Christmas Eve today.
"Seems to be" means that I don't celebrate this day, because I'm not a christian.
Here in Japan, most of people think Christmas is a festival or an event only for kids and young people, which doesn't have religious meanings at all.
In my family, I used to have decorated the Christmas tree and prepared presents, cakes, and special dinner for my daughters.
But now they have grown up and they aren't pleased such events so much, so I haven't prepared any Christmas stuffs for these years.
Adding that,my elder daughter got ful today unfortunately.
But anyway, there's no doubt that the Christmas is the special day, I wish peace, joy, and happiness may be with all of you!

It is the payday today, and it means today is the hamburger's day.
We bought the big hamburgers with coworkers and ate at the office.

Now I look back my everyday lunch.
I usually bring lunch box to my office, that I pack leftovers etc. into the box in the morning.It looks like almost same everyday...

Sometimes I buy lunch at the convenient store.
Curry and rice, pasta, riceball, ODEN, or so.

Some of my coworkers buy lunch box from the catering services.
I rarelly go out to eat at restaurants, mainly because to save money!

We had the first snow in this winter.
In our region, only a little snow covered on the ground, but they have much more snow in the northern part of our prefecture.
I saw the mountains on the other side of the lake all covered with snow, though I didn't see the last weekend.

I came to trap some cats for TNR here, at the lake side.
It's cold outside but I found 4 or 5 cats and kittens there.
Some cats came near but others ran away as soon as they saw me.
I set traps and hide for a while, soon trapped 2 cats, which were rather friendly ones.

I saw some cats under the cabin, but I waited more than 1 hour, no cats appeared again, so I had to give up today.

Last time I trapped 4 cats and kittens here, and released after spaying/neutering.
I thought there remained 2 adult cats and 4 kittens, but I saw new other 3 cats today!
I wonder how many cats are abandoned here...

This is a place where many fishermen come around and give fish to cats, and some people likely to come here only to feed cats.
Now our group is planning to do something to stop cats abandoned here quickly and TNR for all cats here, with more comfortable spaces for them.

I got a phone call from a woman who wants to do TNR by herself, she wanted to ask how to do, so I met her last Sunday.
She is a nun, but she doesn't live in the temple.
She has rescued many kittens she picked up around her house.
Now she has 3 cats in her house and feeds 4 outside cats,of course all spayed/neutered except for young kittens.

These are her cats.
The ginger one, named Magu, was said by the vet "She has FEV, so she can't live more than 6months." when she picked up.

She felt very sorry and decided, "I'll give her everything she wants if she would die soon", but she has been alive for 7years and thanks to her dedicated care, now becomes very fat like a hot water bag!

The 2nd cat, also female, was accepted from a pet shop.

She wasn't sold and the pet shop owner was looking for an adopter,then came to the woman's house.
She is mild hearted and always try to mediate quarrel of other cats.

The 3rd cat, named Riku, is only male.His siblings were all adopted but only he was remained, so she decided to keep him.

Maybe because he is only male, he often picks on Magu.

The woman said "Everyday I say 'DAISUKI(I love you very much)' to them.I think it's very important."
I think those cats are very friendly and lovely, so I love them, too!

I am on the way to the office from the job of checking restaurants.
I found the very big, round and beautiful moon aaove the mountain.
Then I looked back and found very beautiful sunset.(I m very sorry my poor camera can't catch the scene well)
It was warm day even though it's Descember.
Now in the end of the day, and I have to hurry back to finish my documents, maybe left on my desk while I was out!

In Tokyo, I went to watch a movie after the meeting, which name was "Dog, Cat, and Human".
This movie shows the current situations about dogs and cats in Japan.

The movie starts from the scene that an old woman visited the director and asked him to film the movie about the situations around dogs and cats, animal control and animal welfare in Japan.
She had worked with rescue of stray and abandoned cats for more than 40 years, but she was old and she knew she wouldn't continue that work, so she decided to appeal people about poor dogs and cats here by making a movie.
Then, the director started the work, but he had not been interested in animals ever before and he didn't have any ideas about the problem of dogs and cats, so it took 4 years to research and make the film.

Though he knew the very sad and poor facts here and there, but he doesn't focus on the poor side, doesn't emphasize the terribly conditions, he only showed the facts in detached tone and he never said who or what was bad.
That's why I liked this movie.

I'm an official worker in charge of animal control in the municipal government.
So I know these situations the movie showed very well, and I know how hard it is to accept dogs and cats only to destroy them like some of the official workers in this movie do.

The reason why I started to help TNR is not only for cats, but also for my job.
I don't want to accept kittens next year, so I catch the cats and bring to the vet clinics 100km from my home almost every week (it's cheaper anyway).

A woman in the movie said in anger "why Japanese people throw away their dogs and cats in the mountains or river sides easily?", but it's because they know the animals will be destroyed when they were brought to the animal control offices, so people choose the chance in a million that they could survive instead of apparently death, though it's quite wrong ideas in fact.
They should know their acts are only to avoid their responsibility and to suffer abandoned animals longer until terrible death, without food, attacked by crows, or hit by car,etc.

I don't know what impressions people who watched this movie had, but if someone wanted to help abandoned cats or spay/neuter their cats after watching the movie, it's great!
Anyway, I believe the situations are getting better a little by little every year.

It has become quite convenient in this world.
10 years ago, I used to search the way to the meeting places with the time tables and route maps, and the Tokyo railway lines are too complicating for me, I used to have a hard time to find the best way to get where the meeting was to be held.
But now, I can find the best way and exact time to get everywhere with my cellular phone.
It shows me several rail ways in a blink and I only choose one of them depending on available time and money.
Today, the educational meeting for the food inspectors around the country is held in Tokyo, so a lot of officials working at the Public Health Centers and dealing with food hygine like me have gathered together.

Nearly 10 colleagues come together from my prefectures.
But this time, the 20th anniversary ceremony of Japanese emperor's coronation was also held, in addition, the USA president was to come, we saw many policemen stand here and there.

At night, we went to a Belgium restaurant with some of my coworkers, which is the kind of that we can never see in our prefecture.
The restaurant was very nice.

We didn't know much about Belgium, but we knew the representative Belgium disses were mussel, fried potato, and waffle.

And there were many kinds of beer, which was not strong and tasted fruity.
Dishes, beer, all delicious!

The number of flu patients are increasing rapidly.
We get a lot of notifications from schools and nursery homes that they decided to close some classes because of many absence with flu.
The children of my coworkers are also affecting.
My daughter also has got sick since yesterday.Though she is not so bad and I don't know if she got flu or not, but I let her absent from school because I heard many of her friends have got flu since last week.
Now I am wearing a mask when I'm at my office.
Our director told us to wear masks when family members were found to be affected with flu not to transmit to visitors.
I don't like to wear the mask.It mist over my glasses, and it makes me hard to breath.

Now I'm coming to the Lake Biwako, which is the biggest lake in Japan, that we, people in the Shiga prefecture are proud of.
It is my job to watch hotels or inns and check the hygine conditions, so now I came to some hotels near the Lake Biwako.
It s fine, rather hot day and very comfortable to drive along the road around the lake.

There are big, old pine trees along the road and the lake shore.
These areas are often used for filming of SAMURAI movies.
I imagine that ancient people might have walked around here and enjoyed the beautiful view!

There is a hamburger shop near our office.
The hamburgers sold there are rather expensive than those of Macdonald.
They are bigger than the Big Mac and the value is around 700 - 800 yen, while the Big Mac costs 400yen.

But we found "the Birthday Hamburger" there, so we chipped in to buy it for our co-worker's birthday present the day before yesterday.



It was veeery big! Bigger than her face!
And the value was 3,200 yen!! Sooo expensive!



We bought 2 for 8 people, and I cut it into 8 pieces.
This is the cross-section.



That was delicious and we were all satisfied.

My mother and I are learning the flower arrangement once a month.
We say "IKEBANA" in Japanese.The verb "Ikeru" means like "to give a life" or so, I think it seems to be a little different from the verb "to arrange".
I usually learn "OSHOUKA", which is the very basic way of arrangement.
Generally we use 2 or 3 kinds of flowers and arrange them in set order.
It looks like these.



It is said that each part of flowers represents the sky, the earth, and the human, but I don't know well.

But this time, I didn't learn the usual work but the free arrangement, lunch boxes.The teacher said that it was the autumn lunch.


My mother made a cute poodle by carnations.


Our teacher prepares very interesting works every time.
This is another student's arrangement.




Very beautiful and amazing!

We had a very fine and comfortable day today.
It was not so hot, not so cold, with only few clouds in the sky.
The air seemed to be very clear like a crystalline.
Why do I have to work in the office such a wonderful day!?

Oh, but the chance had come suddenly and I was able to go out from the office.
A phone call rang and an old woman said that she, her family and her relatives got sick after having the anniversary of the death of her mother and taking lunch dinner at a Japanese restaurant near her house.
I went to her house to interviewed how was their health conditions and what kinds of food they ate, which is the theory of food poisoning investigation.

She and her family lived in a small village.Every house has a hedge and small field, which they grow some vegetables.

Every garden is full of flowers, and some people grow BONSAI, it means small trees in the pots.

The old woman I visited first decorated the guest room with some pictures she painted.

Those are very common views in the country side like here, but probably you can not see in the city areas.
It's not so bad to walk around in the beautiful village and talk with gentle old people.
Fortunately, their conditions were not food poisoning.