Kotatsu - fireplace with a coverlet

November 17, 2005

It was really cold for autumn yesterday. We decided to take out a KOTATSU - a fireplace with a coverlet last night.

It's truly warm for us. :-) Winter season is coming soon. What a short autumn.....
Anyway, winter is the busiest season at my work. I'll have to work 12 hours or more a day. But I'll continue to learn English if I have to work more hard. It means getting old for me to quit studying English.
By the way, I had a lot of Japanese hot sake last night. It's the best way to spend such a cold night.:-) How do you spend at cold nights ?

My brother is going....

November 16, 2005

Today my brother who's working at our factory together is going to Nagoya on business. He left home at 4:30 so that he have a business meeting around 9 am with a likely buyer. He isn't really a early bird(morning person) like me. :-) I'm worried about his driving.
If he succeeded at the meeting, we could get stable benefits every month. I hope he can success for sure. On the other hand, we will have to work more hard every day.(ToT) We didn't have enough purchase on last busy season, therefore we lost a big business chance then. But we have enough it on this season, we manufacture a lot ! GO FOR IT !!! My brother !!!!

I don't understand why my wife ask me...

November 16, 2005

My wife often ask me to get home until 6 pm on every Saturday. I usually take English lessons on Saturday. I sometimes get home over 6 pm after them. She wants to have dinner with our children on Saturday, she said. I'm not able to have it with them on every weekdays because I'm so busy at work nowadays. I have to work 10 or 12 hours a day these days.
However, I can get home until a quarter after six on Saturday and can have dinner as soon as I get home. How come she adheres to 6 o'clock sharp ? Why doesn't she wait just 15 minutes ? I don't understand why she is stubborn like that. On the other hand, she often say to me I'm selfish because I leave home around ten to take English lessons and never get home until 6:15 pm on every Saturday. :-p

Please correct my English. :-)

SNS - Myspace or Friendster ?

November 14, 2005

I often use "mixi" that is the most popular SNS in Japan. (SNS stands for "Social Networking Service".)
The users can find people who likes the same stuff on SNS.

So, I'd like to make some more chances to meet nice guys on the Net. And now, I decided to try to use SNS in the US such as , Myspace or Friendster.

Actually, I don't know which is better now. However I've heard Myspace is the most famous SNS in the US, I don't know the detail until I've tried it myself.

Oriental Zodiac

November 13, 2005

I took some English lessons with two other students yesterday morning. We learned the vocabulary of traits, such as rude, generous, optimistic, pessimistic and a lot more.
On the textbook the trait of the person sort of depends on the year that the person was born. Do you know "Oriental Zodiac" ? It's called "12 signs of the Chinese zodiac", too.

The teacher asked us "What's your Chinese sign ?"
I replied "I'm the year of the Rabbit."
Another student replied "So am I."
The other student replied "Wow ! Me, too !"

All of the students have the same sign ! What a coincidence !
1/12 x 1/12 x 1/12 = 1/1728 !!!!!
The teacher is very surprised at the situation ! :-)

I'm 42 years old, another student is 30, and the other student is 18...
Uhm.... I'm the oldest student. (ToT)

Elementary school students came.

November 10, 2005

Some fifth grade elementary school students who attend the school close to our factory visited us today to research the local industries as one of their social studies.
Some students came to our factory at the same time of last year, too.

Our factory is a kind of recycling factories. I guess it's not interesting for them because it sort of looks like unspectacular work. I explained to them what we manufacture and what the use of our products is. However, I couldn't use any difficult technical words in the explanation of course. It's difficult for me to explain to them about our job without technical words - such as "business secret". I remembered I used to be a computer system engineer. It was important to give presentations with words which our customers understand easily.

On the other hand, I felt fresh in the explanation to them because there's exactly no such situations in my ordinary days. I'm happy they could study something in my explanation.
After that, I taught them our factory's web site address and e-mail address and said to them, "Please send me e-mail if you want to ask me about our factory." They replied, "Yes, thank you." And now... I'm waiting for their e-mail. :-)

Blood donation

November 9, 2005

I'm forgetting to donate my blood....
Blood donations makes me feel relaxed. I occasionally go out for a blood donation, about once in three months. It's sort of my volunteer activity.
After doing it, I always feel comfortable. I'd guess it makes my blood circulation better. I usually feel stiff neck, but I never feel it after I donated my blood.
On the other hand, I can check on my health condition after doing it because I get the result of my blood test. My English teacher said to me... That sounds like "combine(join together)". In Japanese common saying, it's "Isseki Nicyou" - getting two birds with one stone. :-)
Wow ! the teacher knows Japanese common sayings so much !

A nice bar

November 6, 2005

I went out for a drink last night after I quarreled with my wife. That's no problem. Quarreling with each other is a method to release our stress. :-p

There were some foreigners in the bar. They all are native English speakers. What a nice bar ! I tried to speak to them and have a chat. We arm-wrestled each other. I had a terrific night ! :D
An American girl was a little drunk. I'm worried if she got home without any problems.

By the way, a man said to me after looking at my arm muscles, "Nice guns!". But I've heard the slang word "gun" has a bad meaning.... I was confused a little.

Kaitenzushi (revolving conveyor-belt sushi restaurant)

November 4, 2005

I went to a revolving conveyor-belt sushi restaurant last night to reward my eldest son for his performance at the 31-legged race which was held last month.

We had a good time and had a lot of sushi !

Kaitenzushi means "revolving conveyor-belt sushi restaurant" in Japanese. It's a kind of sushi bars and was invented in Japan, of course.
Almost all Kaitenzushi bars are cheaper than usual sushi bars. :D
Take a look at the following picture.



The number of plates we took is 53 including 16 I had. My wife and my children took 37 plates of sushi. That sounds eating too much, doesn't it ?
However, I used to have over 20 plates of sushi on my own when I was young. :-p

I've changed.

November 3, 2005

I've changed the blog service which I usually post in Japanese.
I've been using the Yahoo! Japan blog service until now. But it's mostly heavy to access. Almost all of the visitors can't access smoothly and sometimes some errors occurred when I posted new articles on it.

I decided to change my usual blog posted in Japanese a few days ago, and researched some blog services in Japan. In the result, I've changed it to the Seesaa blog service.
The Seesaa blog service is a little heavy, however not as heavy as the Yahoo!. In addition, we can customize the design of the style sheet and use almost all of the HTML tags. The capacity of the files we can upload is 2 gigabytes, and there is no limit on posting articles. The specification is the same as Yahoo!.

I tried to use many functions of the Seesaa last night, of course changed the style sheet of my new blog a little bit. Well, I'm lack of sleep today. :D
I'm going to try to post some articles with some pictures tonight or tomorrow. I never tried it yesterday.