A couple of weeks ago, I visited the closest rose garden from my place. It was still a hot and sunny day. This summer was brutal again, and every day in September was rainy, so the roses in my garden

It's getting closer to Halloween, but in Japan it's not so important. We sometimes see Halloween decorations or kids now might go trick-or-treating in their neighborhoods, but at least, my daughter,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my plan to improve English using Knitting. You can read it here. Since I ordered this kit for the project, I was really looking forward to receiving it. Almost

Last month, I attended an exhibit featuring Akira Uno, who is one of the most famous Japanese illustrators. I'd seen his works before, but I didn't know his name until I visited his exhibit. He's

I used to take conversational English lessons at an online school based in the Philippines about twenty years ago. All the teachers are Filipino, and I became friends with some of them. We still keep

Do you like ginger? I do! Every spring and fall, I enjoy making ginger syrup because we can get young ginger. Although you can make syrup from regular ginger, young ginger is much juicier and can

I have two types of roses in my garden: those I grow for their flowers and those I grow for rose hips. Today, I'd like to write about the ones that I've harvested rose hips. I've been taking care of

In Japan, the weather has been getting cooler, and we feel fall has been getting deeper. I'm enjoying the nice weather by knitting, reading, painting, working out, and gardening. When I knit or

Every month, my husband and I go our favorite yakuzen (medicinal food) restaurant in Nara, and we went there again last month as well. We shared the cold noodle dish and the dessert in the pictures

Almost two weeks ago, on a sunny day, my husband and I took our dogs for a walk. I never let them off the leash when I take them for a walk because I can't control them, but my husband often does it.

I've been practicing my weakness for a while. I'm not good at drawing fine lines with a thin, round brush, so I decided to create three plates with fine lines. I finished my first plate, so I'd like

Last month, during Silver Week, I went to a flea market with my daughter and her family. Before forgetting the details, I'd like to write about it today. The market was held at Sitenno-ji on the 21st

Japan has lots of long-established businesses, and today I'd like to share a documentary about one of them in Kyoto. Kon-kan Shouten is a family-run business that was founded 270 years ago and still

Today I went to downtown Osaka for my kintsugi class. On the train, I was sitting across a mother and a daughter, and a son was sitting next to me. The boy looked to be around ten years old, and I

Do you remember my fig tree? I haven't written about it for a while, so you probably don't remember it. My fig tree hadn't changed so much since I wrote about it two years ago. I had been wondering

I've been learning conversational English almost for twenty years. Back then, I started learning it to make one of my dreams come true. I simply wanted to learn American-style porcelain painting in

Yesterday was Thursday in Japan, so I visited my parents as usual. I helped clean their house, did grocery shopping for them, worked in their garden, took them to their medical appointments, and did

It was raining heavily last Sunday, but I went out for my regular painting lesson. I was looking forward to seeing my painting friend from Nara. We enjoyed chatting during the class. After the class,

Today I'd like to write about kawaii (cute) culture in Japan. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to Nara to have lunch at our favorite restaurant. On the way home, there's a cute sweet shop

This year, I've had three opportunities to see ukiyo-e of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and this post is about the third exhibit I attended with my daughter. If you're curious, you can see two of my previous