☆MY BLOG☆僕のブログ☆MON BLOG☆

2008 being the year of the rat here in Japan, I’ve decided to use it for this month’s theme. Traditionally, the rat is supposed to bring material prosperity, which is always more than welcome. I’ve also added a snow Java script, although it hasn’t been snowing that much here in Sendai. But I’m for Montreal, and winter without snow just doesn’t seem right. So there you go, enjoy the snow, and the lucky rodents.

January’s header and wall paper.

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Yep, it’s already November. Here in Miyagi Prefecture, it’s time for “kouyou“, which literally means “red leaves”. The activity simply consists in going to the country side and watch autumn’s colorful leaves. The difference is it’s such a popular activity here in Japan, they give reports about the leaves’ coloration as part of the daily weather forecast on TV. Therefore, this month’s theme is the autumn leaves.

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Here in Miyagi Prefecture, the new rice has just been harvested, and all over the country side, it is tied in bundles left in the rice fields to dry. In Japanese, there are many words for rice, depending in what state it is. The word for rice on a seedhead is called “ine”. Uncooked rice is called “kome”, and cooked rice is called “gohan”. Miyagi Prefecture is famous in Japan for its rice, and especially the “hitomebore” variety, which is my favorite. All over the country side, you can all also see autumn flowers, especially cosmos, which are purple, pink and white here in Japan. So this month’s header shows rice bundles in a field, and this month’s wallpaper shows purple cosmos on a pink background.

September, and this year, it’s going to be a late back to school. Here in Japan the second term usually starts in late August, but this year due to construction work at my school, it will start on Monday. And what a start: we have to move everything back where it belongs in one day, even though it took about a week to put everything away. The good news is a lot of the obsolete stuff has been thrown out, so there won’t be any cumbersome sorting out involved. Anyway, with the excellent summer vacation I’ve had, I’m not really looking forward to wear a suit again. So for this month, my blog’s team will be work, just to exorcise my laziness. Cheers!

June already. Man, is it time flying too fast or is it just me who’s living in slow motion? In any case, an apology is in order for not posting much about myself lately. Apart for my busy schedule, a number of factors have contributed to my procrastinating – which I’ll explain in more detail later. First, my wife and I have been addicted since last december to American TV shows. Not that we got fed up with Japanese TV, we just like to watch whole seasons non-stop. We’ve watched everything (and I mean everything!) from Seinfeld, Lost, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and now we’re halfway through season 5 of 24. Needless to say, watching all the episodes of all these shows proved to be extremely time consuming. We’ve also been blessed with nice weather lately, and we’ve been hiking like crazy – no less than 7 mountains in one month! I’ve also been spending a lot of time obsessively playing with budget and dieting software, and with good results at that. Now that things at work have finally settled down, I hope I can find time to post more. Anyway, as the rainy season starts in late June/early July here in Miyagi, June is usually sunny and more summerlike than summer itself. Therefore sunshine and daisies (the header picture was taken last year right next to my parking space) will be this month’s theme for my blog. Cheers!