I've been struggling with changing my blog's template all day long...
Today, I didn't do anything with my home works, cleaning, laundry, washing dishes...from morning till night, nothing!
Well, my daughters are old enough to do everything of households so I let them do something, and I have been sitting in fron to of my PC and serched the way I could change my blog looking nicer.
I tried some templates but they didn't work...error messages appeared and I did't know how I should do...
I want to use some 3column layout templates, but I can't.I don't know why they don't work well, I can't understand why other Bloggers can do but I can't do...

I know some tags and codes about html and css, so I thought maybe I could edit sourse directly.But I couldn't find upload some pictures for background or titleback,only I can do is uploading automatically.

Please help me if you know something about that!

Maybe you know, Feb.24th is the Spay Day International.
Our cat rescue group also attended this canpaign, and did a small event.



We passed out fliers to people at the JR Hikone station and MinamiHikone station.
Because it was on Sunday, there were not so many people walked by.
But it was "The Cat's Day" in Japan , though we didn't know, some people thought it was a Cat's Day Event! ;-P





A Newspaper writer came and meet us, hearing how spay/neuter is necessary for pets, for thier health and welfare.





This is me that in a cat suits!
I have been looking forward to this day because I could wear the cat costume.
I was veeerrry happy to wear it.



These are our members.Now we are very small but next year, we want to gather more volunteers and make this event bigger, so that spay/neuter would be spread in our district.

It was very warm last week, but it suddenly returned to winter again.
We had snow from yesterday, and it's very cold now...

Yesterday, an old guy died.He had been sick for more than 5years, and he used to say, "I won't be long."
But he was alive for 5years, since he was first said to be critical condition.

He was very scary when he was young, we used to be careful not to make him angry.Some people around hated him and some respected.
But he had got entirely soft guy for last 5years.

I went to his funeral and I saw nobody crying.It may be because he had been sick for a long time, but maybe there are some other reasons.
Japanese provreb says "All's well that ends well", was his end well?
I think he was happy anyway, and his last day ended well though it was snowing and very cold.

I remember the funeral of my husband's aunt.It was spring and very fine day with full of cherry blossams.Very beautiful day it was...I thought what a happy ending she could meet, with all family, friends, relatives who loved her.
I sometimes imagine how my ending would be...?
Anyway,I have to live toward the Last Day!

This year, it's very warm, we have a really strangely warm winter.
Today the gale is blowing from early in the morning.We have such gale every year of this season called "HARU ICHIBAN" that means "the first spring wind", it often occurs with spring storm or spring thunder, which tell us the end of the winter.
But it came toooo earlier now.It's almost one month earlier than usual!

By the way, today is the St.Valentine's day.In Japan, this day is for girls to ask out boys whom they like with some chocolates.Maybe it's strange for Americans or Europians that only girls present boys something on this day.
Actually, this culture was made by chocolate companies.Japanese girls used to be very shy and they couldn't ask boys out, so some companies made a campaign in '60s, "Tell your love with chocolates on this day of year,it's the Valentine's Day!"

When I was a student girl, I was too shy to give chocolates to a boy I liked secretly.I could talk with him like I were a boy, but I couldn't act like a girl.

But now, girls are not so shy as before or they look like stronger than boys!
I think girls don't think the Valentine's Day as special day for asking out, because they can do that whenever they want.
Recentely, they exchange handmade chocolates or cookies each other, among girl friends.They call it "TOMO CHOCO (TOMO means a friend)", so Valentine's Day is now for girls to confirm their friendship! It's strange,anyway.


My daughter, a high school student, made 20 handmade chocolate cakes for her team mates of busketball club.She said, "we have to exchange some choco every year on this day, because elders told us it was our rule."
Maybe it sounds very strange for you...but in the sports club in highschool, they usualy carry out the opinions of upper-class students no matter what they are. ;-P



They are the choco cakes she made.They look like good!
I wonder when she would give those chocolates to a boy and ask him out.Now she is NOT interested in boys, NEVER she says.
Is it true? :-(

At the countryside in Japan like here, people usually keep their cats only outside, because when cats come into house, they scratch slide doors made of paper and wood or furniture.
Many of those people only love to feed cats, and they don't have responsibilities for them as owners, of course they never think of spay/nueter them, they often say "I don't want to spay/neuter them because they are not mine.I only give them some food."
Those situations often cause serious problems, you know, 2 or 3 cats soon would increase to 10 or 20 cats.Neighbors would call animal control offices or munincipal government and complain about that, ask officials to take cats away, but our law doesn't allow it, so animal control officials has no way to solve the problem.

I'm one of such official but I can't do anything about that as official, so I'm helping a cat rescue group and promote TNR as a volunteer.I think TNR is only way to solve these problems, but people won't believe in its effects at the beginning...That's also a problem.

Actually I keep my cats only in house and never let them to go out.It's not because it's safer for them, but my husband hate cats go out and come in with maddy foot...So he said to me when I brought the first cat from animal control center,"Don't let him go out.Our house would be muddy!"
Anyway, it's better for cats and I want also my neighbours to keep cats inside...but it's difficult to persuade them to do so, because most of people believe that cats would be happier outside.

What do you think of that? Which is happier for cats to keep outside or inside?

I took the exam of EIKEN test, which is a test for practical English proficiency.
I had passed the Grade Pre-1, it's supposed to inquire a pretty high ability of English...BUT!!
I can't believe I have as much proficiency as "to use English smoothly in dayly life",because I can hear only half of native speaking at natural speed.I guess now I'm as equal as American junior high school students...(Junior school students' English may be more difficult,I guess!)
As to speaking, I can't explain 1/3 of what I want to say...words order of English is quite different from Japanese, so I can write them with slowly thinking, but speaking! It's terrible! I can't distinguish pronunciation of "R" and "L", I can't distinguish some variations of "A" or "O"...

How can I improve my English, especcially conversation?
Is it only practicing?

Today,it was SETSUBUN, the end of winter.Tomorrow is the beginning of spring.
We through beans today to through away eveils and invite happy.
When my father was a child, he used to enjoy this day,he says.All families in his village, they put a seive at porch and sardines sticked with holly trees.
Because, evils(=ONI in Japanese.or to say Devil?) come to their house and find a seive,they start to count holes of seive and can't go into house.In addition,sardine and holly tree have a power to get away evils.

To be honest, I don't like SETSUBUN...because I have to clean up all beans here and there in whole house...But I do it every year, so It's not comfortable if I didn't do that.

After throughing beans, we eat beans as many as our age, then we can live this year without getting diseases!

Last week, I had a very exciting and wonderful experiense...It was TV filming!
I'm helping a TNR volunteer group(it's name is Japan Cat Network, managed by a couple of American) and a British TV company came to their shelter and filmed some cats!

Their main purpose was to reserch about MANEKINEKO(in English, happy cat?) and to film some Japanese Bobtail cats.
First,they thought to film GOTOKU-Ji temple in Tokyo, where the birthplace of MANEKINEKO legend.But the legend of MANEKINEKO in GOTOKI-JI temple is related to our city,Hikone.The lord of Hikone, whose name was Naotaka Ii, was waved by a cat and followed him, then thunder falled down where Ii had stood a few minutes ago. Ii was saved by the cat and it's supposed to be the beginning of MANEKINEKO.

It's also a model of the Hikone city's maskot,"Hikonyan".(see there)


It was my first experiense of seeing TV job, I thought TV filming was a very hard job.But all staffs were very nice people who loved animals very much, especially Joannna Lamley!
To be honest, I didn't know her though she is a big actress in England...but she was very openhearted and friendly, never looked like a posturer.She had a dinner with all of us at a very casual restaurant of OKONOMIYAKI, I never imagined that such a big actress would eat simple food like OKONOMIYAKI!

I don't know when it will be on air, but I hope it would be a nice program!