Fireworks - Past and Present

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to watch the fireworks displays and have wonderful memories of fireworks events. One September I was in Merida, Yucatan at the time of Mexico’s independence holiday. They held a fabulous display and the sky was lit up with pictures of people (maybe dead presidents?) and spectacular colors. 
Many years ago when I was working as a counselor at a summer camp, the campers had gone home over the 4^th of July holiday and there were just a few counselors left at camp.  We went out in the canoes to the middle of Lake Springfield and watched the fireworks show from our boats surrounded by water and the night sky.
As a child, my family had a rustic cabin on a lake where we spent vacations and long weekends. There were always many other families at the lake when we were. Men went out fishing in rowboats with motors early in the morning, children stayed in bathing suits all day, and mothers made everyone stay out of the lake for an hour after eating.  In the evenings, fathers smoked cigarettes as they shot off fireworks from the beach, children played with sparklers as they maintained an arm’s distance from other children with sparklers and kept both feet in the same place, while mothers sat in lawn chairs and yelled at everyone to be careful.

Getting back to the present – Our town’s summer festival ended with a fireworks show.  Ted and I parked the car near our garden space at the edge of town and carried our folding chairs down a little dirt road between two rice fields to watch the show. We have such a good life.

 

 

Monday Morning Star Count

I’m joining in on Jessica’s epp weekly tally (Check it out at Life Under Quilts).  I was inspired by the blue hexagons Helen is working on and pulled out the package of Japanese fabric pieces I bought at the Sapporo quilt show. I’m new at this paper piecing business and not ready to commit to a big project yet, but thought I could try the small sewing pouch on pages 60-63 of Quilting on the Go! The project uses 36 hexagons and so far I have 22. Maybe I’ll have progress to show next week.

Summer Festival Parade

The summer festival in our town is this weekend.  Friday night was the parade, and we were excited to be able to see it. The people in the parade were local people, wearing traditional yukata and summer kimonos, dancing our town's bon-odori dance.  Wouldn’t you be excited about seeing this cultural event?  We arrived at the parade route early and found a good seat on the curb so we wouldn’t miss a thing. 

 

We were asked to have our picture made with people before the parade started and they in turn took photos with our camera.

 

 

Our favorite restaurant, Bombay Blue, was at the festival selling their delicious Indian food.

There was one group of men hanging out and drinking sake, which isn’t unusual here, but the curious thing was that many of them weren’t wearing pants, just the little diaper thing that sumo wrestlers wear, with a Japanese shirt.  I don’t know what that was about.

 

We feel like we belong here, especially when we are out and about and see people we know like we did when we were waiting for the parade to begin.  We also saw our friend Kyoko San, who was in the parade and waved to us as she danced by us.

Besides the dancers of all ages, there were also some characters handing out balloons to the children and packs of tissues to the rest of us.

 

We were invited to join the dancers in the parade, but we opted for staying in our place and watching everyone pass by us.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed our Friday night out.

The USA is Getting Bigger All the Time

I have a hard time putting this project down.  I just want to keep working on it!  It would have been very helpful if I had put in some basting before starting to stitch, but I didn’t think of it.  I’m doing some counting by pins and it’s working but it’s not ideal. I want to make sure I don’t make a counting mistake that makes me have to unstitch.

Ted's Kayak Trip to Lake Shikotsu

Ted and his kayaking class took a two day, one night camping/kayaking trip to Lake Shikotsu in southwestern Hokkaido.  The name of Lake Shikotsu is derived from the Ainu language shikot, meaning big depression or hollow. To the Japanese, this sounded too much like dead bones, (shikotsu), so they attempted to rename it engi, but this name did not stick.  Lake Shikutsu is a caldera lake in Shikotsu-Toya National Park. (A caldera lake is formed from collapses in the earth after volcanic activity.)  Lake Shikotsu is surrounded by three volcanos: Mount Eniwa to the north and Mount Fuppushi and Mount Tarumae to the south. Tarumae ranks among Japan's most active volcanoes and most recently erupted in 1982. The lake has an average depth of 265 metres (869 ft.) and a maximum depth of 363 metres (1,191 ft.), making it the second deepest lake in all of Japan.

I wasn’t on this trip, but after seeing Ted’s photos, I want to go! Here are just a few of the many photos he took.

Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin Complete

So far I’ve been to 46 of the 50 states. I have yet to visit Maine, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. This project is like a geography lesson and I’m seeing all of the states. I see where cities are in relation to each other and how large or small one state is next to the next. The state capitals get red dots and the other cities get black dots.

I’ve completed five more states on this map – Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

 

TAST 73 - Portuguese Stem Stitch

This week’s Take a Stitch Tuesday stitch on Sharon B’s Pintangle blog is the Portuguese Stem Stitch. I tried it out with perle #5 (blue), perle #8 (green), Week’s Dye Works crewel wool (orange), and perle #12 (yellow). It seems like a pretty straight forward stitch, but somehow, mine didn’t come out very even.  I need more practice!

I'm Sorry, We're Out of That

The last few weeks in my University English class, we’ve been practicing using a menu that I found on the internet from a diner in Ohio. The students work in pairs, taking turns being the customer and the waiter. I try to use activities that incorporate speaking, listening, reading, and writing and this one works nicely – they have to read the menu, speak and listen to give and take the order, then the waiter writes the order.  The first day, I limited them to the three breakfast specials on the menu, with choices of how the eggs are cooked, three meat choices, and choice of beverage.  Each week I make changes in the role playing activity to get them to think more about the language they are using. We've expanded the choices of what they can order and added questions like, do you want ketchup with your fries?  Last week, I had the waiters say “I’m sorry, we’re out of that” in response to something the customer ordered, then make an appropriate recommendation for a substitute.  If the waiter tells the customer we are out of bagels, then recommends toast, I consider that appropriate. If the waiter were to recommend bacon in place of a bagel, I would think the waiter doesn’t know what a bagel is. For some reason, they all like saying “I’m sorry, we’re out of that” and think it’s very funny.

This week we worked on comparisons in our lesson, which carried over to the diner.  The customer had to tell the waiter two things she was thinking about and the waiter had to make a recommendation with a reason. Some of their made up dialogs incuded "I don't know if I should order the orange juice or the grapefruit juice" and 'I think you should order the orange juice because it is sweeter" or "should I order the waffle or the hot cakes?" and "I think you should order the waffle because it is more delicious." They did very well in figuring out when to use "more" and when to use the "er" ending.

Here in Japan, the price on the menu is the price the customer pays; you don’t pay tax and tip. The students don’t understand the practice of giving the waiter a tip.  They want to know why you have to pay for the food, then pay to have it served.  One student said she wanted takeout food, instead.

Ted stopped by my class one day and took this photo.  They love to have their picture taken.

Iowa and Minnesota are Complete

I’ve been working on my US map. I’m still working on the same section of the Midwest, but there are so many little details!  I’ve completed Iowa and Minnesota so far.

 

This design is by Susan Ryder.  I googled her name to see if she had done other maps, specifically Japan and found while she had charts of many other countries, I did not find she had done one for Japan. It will probably take me years to finish this map anyway.