Hellooooooo February!
That first month of the year really zooms on by, doesn’t it? I am ready to take it slower this month, despite Valentine’s Day baking and wedding dress fittings for my sister are already on the calendar. Hopefully the one extra day of February we have this year will make a difference!
Did I mention I still have not had the time to find a new computer. Although I was leaning toward a MacBook, I’ve just discovered this Dell computer and like that it has an SD card reader. Any thoughts?
This month will finally be the end of the in-house seminar I’ve been partaking in since September, which involves working in teams. I’ve been saying this to everyone but team work is just as difficult as an adult than it was in grade school. Maybe even more so because there are no teachers around to play referee. I am definitely learning the skills of keeping a team together and moving forward. (Whoever said Japanese are ubiquitously known for their teamwork needs to do their research over again!) Well…whatever happens, the big power point presentation to HR is coming up next week. Wish me luck!
What are you up to this month?
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– This katakana font is awesome.
– Learn how to seek & accept help.
– Offensive books need to be read.
– Love the Japanese version of this game!
– This is hypnotizingly beautiful.
– BFFs from kindergarten the best!
– “We don’t all look alike, until we do.”
– This makes me want to go to an onsen immediately!
Kaori Square Feet 
The Monopoly game is great !love the snow pictures too ☺ Hello february !
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Hello Babzy! My sister and I used to play monopoly that would go on for weeks! It's fun, isn't it? I hope you have a fabulous february! 😀
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The top photo is so appropriate for here. The ornamental plum tree out front is in full bloom. And I feel so happy for it. The weather has been in the mid to upper 20ºs (C) these days (can you feel me gloating?).
I love the katakana font. They should put out a book. Because it is used so little (?) I have the most trouble with katakana, versus hiragana. I had a (rare) voice acting gig where they gave me my script in katakana, because I was a foreigner? Huh? After all “katakana is used for foreign words…” I did tell them that hiragana would be better for me, but…
I actually went on a fall-foliage bus tour with a Japanese family in 2008 and we stopped for some minutes at Ginzan. But I agree with you, it would be nice to experience the hot springs. I remember a trail at the back side of town. I have always had a kind of “Where does that go?” mentality but I couldn’t follow my heart. I had to get back to the bus. Bummer.
I have to admit, when I first came to Japan every one looked alike. Same hair color (this was in the late 1980s), same eye color, same race, similar body type. In fact, there were times riding the train when I thought the exact same high-school girls were somehow getting off at different stations because of the identical phrases (たとえば：「かわいいね！」。Here in the States there are different hair colors, textures, skin tones, body types, races… But after a couple months I could see that there were just as many individual differences among Japanese people as there are among Americans. But at one point, I started to see a kind of identi-kit pattern of similar types and attributed that to various daimyo being more successful than others at genetically progineting.
Oh, the question “What surprised you when you first came to Japan?” is a question I have trouble with but I remembered one thing recently when I brewed a cup of chamomile tea. Camomille tea might be kind of a hippy herb tea kind of thing to me. But when I went to Japan for the first time in 1985 and stopped in a tea shop in Nagano Prefecture (I think it was Matsukawa-shi) and ordered some chamomile tea it was brought in a cup and presented in a way that would be appropriate for a decrepit old elegant lady. A cultural difference I was embarrassed about.
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