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.

Today we had the first anniversary after death of my husband's mother.
On Anniversary Day, we hold a Buddhism ceremony.
Relatives gathered and listened to the Buddhist sutra that the priest read.
Then, we had lunch dinner all together.

In our region, as is often seen in the country side, women don't sit and eat lunch in the guest room with men.
Only in case the women's husband couldn't attend the ceremony, they sit in the guest room as the representatives of their family.
The rest of women eat lunch in another room next to the kitchen, because women have to work for cooking or serving.

After lunch dinner, we read Buddhist sutra all together for the deceased.And we share all offerings the relatives brought to front of the Buddhist altar.

That's our Anniversary ceremony.We commemorate the deceased like this and hope her sprit would be peaceful in another world.

We had a big typhoon on the last Wednesday.
We have not experienced such big typhoons for several years in my prefecture.
We had much rain and terribly storm wind through the night.
Next day, the typhoon had passed away but still we had storm wind in the morning, so most of school decided to close all the day.
After typhoon passed away, we usually have a very fine day.
The sky would become clean and blue, without any clouds.
We had a very comfortable day, although strong wind still remained.
There is the Japanese word "Taifu Ikka(台風一過)", in English "After typhoon passed", which means that it becomes fine weather after typhoon went away.
Now autumn has come!

Today, it's the harvest moon.It's supposed to be the most beautiful moon in a year.
We decorate silver grass in the vase, and watch the moon with eating rice dumpling.
But ancient poet said that the most beautiful moon was the 16th night, so we can see the beautiful moon tomorrow, too!