My co-workers and I went to a Japanese restaurant and ate expensive lunch than usual...

At first, the appetizer was served. It was marinated fish.

 

Then, the main lunch box with SOBA noodle came.
There were four boxes and SASHIMI, TEMPURA, boiled fish and vegitables, SUSHI in them.

And the last was dessert, a pudding with strawberry and black beans.
All of them tasted very good and we all satisfied.
We had a little bit gorgeous time!

My job started from Jan. 4th, as every year.
Our New Year's Holidays begin from Dec.28th to Jan.3rd, but this year 4th is Monday, so we have to work on full weekdays from Monday after a week of holidays.

It's on Wednesday yet...it seems to be veeeery long this week...

By the way, I found a funny news today.
"Tama", maybe the most famous cat in Japan who works as a stationmaster at the local railway station, became an executive at the railway company!

The original news is here.

Actually "Tama" is a popular name of cat here in Japan.
In the animation "Sazaesan", heroine's family has a white cat named "Tama".

Our cat is "Tamasaburo", named after the famous KABUKI actor, but we also wanted to include "tama" in his name.
But we call him "Sabu", not "Tama".
He won't work at all unlike another "Tama", he sleeps in front of the stove all day long!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

Higanbana(Equinox Flower or spider lily) is one of the well-known autumn flowers.It dutifully blooms in the term of HIGAN, a week around the Autumnal Equinox Day.
HIGAN means "the other shore", or in Buddhism, nirvana.It is a week around spring and autumn Equinox Day.
In this period, we often go to our ancestor's grave as we do in OBON vacations.
Higanbana is a very vivid red flower, but isn't loved by people so much.
Maybe because that red color reminds us fire, so I hear some people say your house would be on fire, if you bring Higanbana to your house.
Another reason is, Higanbana is often seen near graves, and red color associates blood.
But I love Higanbana, it looks like very cute!

It's very rare but I'm alone at home today.
Though it is Saturday, My husband are at work, my daughters are at school, and my parents are going for shopping or so.
Actually, today I planned to bring some stray cats to a vet for spay/neuter, but I had to cancel suddenly because we failed to catch them.
So, now I have no schedule.I did the laundry, cleaned the house, then I started to organize a lot of paper I had collected for my job or study.
I threw away two full of bags in which I put old magazines and paper.

I ate lunch alone, that was all leftovers of last night's dinner.

Now I remember that I have some jobs to have done quickly, because I have been a little busy and I'm behind the schedule, but I don't feel like doing anything...
Oh, my cat is napping.
Can I take a nap with him?

I found some interesting picture books at veterimary hospital.
I love to read picture books when I was waiting for my turn.
This time I found 2 English books, though it was very rare.
One was "Cosset Your Cats".

The book said that we must cosset and pumper our cats, because cats are worth to do so.

Second is "The Truth About Cats".

This book says that cat came from another planet! Wonderful!

The third was a Japanese book, which named How To Keep Cats Properly.
I was given a copy of this page.

The author says, we have to take care of weak, injured, stray, not so cute cats at our home.But as to healthy cats, we should ask them polite way to stay at our home, and have to serve them.
That is the proper way to get along with our luxuary, noble, honorable cats!

Today, I met a man who would help our NPO near Kyoto station.
After meeting, I went around to see autumn in Kyoto city with my daughter, who is going to cram school near the Kyoto station.
First we went to Nashinoki(tree of pear) shrine to see the flower of HAGI(I don't know English name).It blooms in the middle of September, but still they weren't full.
At this shrine, people put small pieces of papers to HAGI trees, on which they write HAIKU.
Then we went to Kyoto Gyoen. It was very comfortable to walk along the path in the trees.