Future Newly Weds at my house;

 (posted; Soba Noodle page) 

*Surprise Surprise*

         ♥The young lady is my retired husband's ex-coworker♥

The small middle aged man and the woman decorated on the cake are the unofficial mascots of two cites in Hyogo-pref. Her favorite characters. We have many local mascots like these in Japan now.

The couple is going to marry next year and her friends in the picture are not planed to attend the ceremony as she'll going to move a bit far place. So her friends prepared to set "surprise cake cut" for them at our house. They brought some things like the Santa costume my husband was wearing and 'the bow tie, hair bow' etc. We were so happy that the couple looked impressed by the thoughts from her friends♡♡♡  Lovely time with Soba lunch and cake :-)　　They approved to post this lovely little event♪

*Extra*

He played this song called 'いい日旅立ち iihi-tabidachi'  ←link for the lyric  This is the popular song used to be sung at the wedding ceremony often; it is an old song almost 40 years ago. I remember hearing repeatedly when mine was getting close:-)

                         Linking this post to, "Our World Tuesday", 

                               Thank you very much for stopping by

                          ps. I'll be freer and promise to be more faithful to you;

Recent cute visiters;

*Summer holiday for the school children started in Japan* 

Recently, we had cute guests who showed us their skills of Electone or electronic organ "エレクトーン 'erekuto-n' ".  First girl is one of my students who is the 4th year of the elementary school. Second girl is the daughter of my husband's ex-colleague, whom my old friend may be familiar with. Yes, she's growing up beautifully♪

           She played the music which she played at the concert and awarded.
Oh, we and my husband's band group members (my husband taped her play) were so amazed at her skill. Almost made us think she is talented for professional in the future♬♬♬  So happy to be able to hear her play.

She showed us the music she played at the recital for children. We love to have these sweet guests :-)  Her mother is the excellent player and my husband enjoys playing saxophone with her keyboard. You'll see them in these pages.

Thank you very much for stopping by;

PS> I wonder which word you would use for this instrument 'Electone' or 'electronic organ'... 

Found the answer from Wikipedia, "Electone is the trademark used for electronic organs" of Musical Instrument Company.

Sweet Guests♡♡♡

(posted; Soba Noodle page) 
We had lovely guests 'who are my husband's ex-lady-colleague and her daughter with her friend'  experiencing making soba "蕎麦打ち；soba-uchi". The girls are second graders of elementary school. Their experiences will be used for their summer homework of 'picture diary'  And I was a bit sad the pictures got reddish due to the light in the room.

Let's start challenging♡♡♡

They enjoyed eating soba made by themselves.
We were happy to see them having eaten whole the plates♪

Great to see them motivated doing English learning cards '英語　カルタ’.
And also they did really good for trying to write their names in Roman Character.
Even though it was their first try☆☆☆

PS> So sorry posting this before visiting you, friends!!! Their mother has face-book page and she kindly had already posted about this in there.  I was busy several things especially cleaning  & weeding for my parents' empty house to prepare for Obon.   Love You Always and promise visiting you soon, xoxo

Music Together♪

Last month, we had guests for 'music together'. My husband's ex-colleague and her daughter. The lovely cute girl had started learning piano and showed us a bit of her talent♡♡♡  Her mother is good at playing piano, my husband loves inviting her and play session with her♬♬♬ (I served 'curry and rice' for lunch, not Soba) Happy she liked it a lot.

Big boy is fiddling with his plastic model

Happy to find time to post; 

I hope you all are having a wonderful new week, my friends♬♬♬

Guests form last Saturday♬♬♬

Last Saturday, we had three soba guests who used to be my husband's ex-colleagues. Actually the two ladies started practicing the guitar and the man seemed rather good at playing and teaching them some chords.  Although as you may know my husband plays the saxophone now, he hasn't played the guitar so long (it was sleeping deep inside the closet; I hope you'll understand what I meant, it's a Japanese idiom p;)

I've already posted many pictures of my guests having soba lunch, so today I wished to show a simple collage of them trying to learn how to play the guitar .     

Title "please sleep in my arms"

I remember my husband played this song with the guitar for me and sang together before and right after we got married.  But he had been too busy for his own hobby. Although he had to wake up early to make soba enough for the lunch and the souvenir doing three rounds, I felt so happy for him  having sweet time with them. 

I love singing songs and I felt really happy when I first found You-tube; seemed like the same feeling when I found the bilingual system on TV.  I don't have to buy CDs and singing along with the play-list really helps me reduce stress p;)  I hope you DO have something similar for yourselves.

We'll have heavy 花散らしの雨 (rain washing off cherry blossoms) and May Storm almost all over Japan.  Mixed Feeling of farewell to the flower and welcome spring. 

Thank you very much for stopping by and hope you will have a wonderful weekend♪ 

Recent Guests of two kinds;

Hi, it has been a really busy week for me with various personal things.

Be that as it may, let me post about two kinds of our guests.  We had  lovely time with these guests♡♡♡   Today, I had extra classes for my students' final term test. I know I still haven't fulfilled my desire visiting you...  

(prepared and posted in a hurry; hoping to see you tomorrow)

*My husband's ex-colleague's two family; 

They were all having fun making plastic model of TV animation character. The boy looked really happy to get it finished. I know some of you remember the mother and the girl. Don't you think the cute little girl is not a baby any more♡♡♡

I was really happy that the kids loved the noodle and enjoyed the time with us. The two girls got along well and played together♬♬♬

*My aunt and two cousins ;Don't we look three sisters in the collage(*^_^*)  They kindly brought me several gifts and cooked dish. I wish Picasa had function of putting frame line on the picture like word; does it have?  My cousin's pretty young daughter seems really interested in Saxophone, she played it today again like the last time♬♬♬PS> I had to join Google+; my picture wasn't uploaded as I used up my free 1 GB capacity of Picasa. And It took me SO long to find joining Google+ would help solve the problem, which frustrated me a bit (^^;)   needed some time to figure out about it. Hope you all are having a wonderful week.

*Our Weekend* and Green Day ♪

(posted; Japanese culture page)
Hello Friends, I am so sorry that I'm not able to visit you. I will from tomorrow after finishing some personal things today.

Last Friday, we left home to the hotel where is about less than 2hours drive to get together with my husband's 99 year old aunt and cousins from Osaka. We were to attend hubby's other cousin's memorial ceremony next day.  We had passed some large rice paddies; we are having in the harvesting season right now. Kind of lovely to have a chance to see these paddies♪ 　Due to　the rice acreage reduction policy, they are drastically reduced. I enjoyed the idyllic scene sitting in the passenger seat. I asked hubby to stop and took some photos.

And then, unexpectedly we found a little corner of the foot bath. I am sorry that it might be hard to see that hubby and the kind stranger putting their feet in the hot spa.

Close to the foot-bath, there were an old little house with thatched roof.  And it happened to be registered as a tangible cultural asset. This house was owned by a vassal to the lord of this area during the Edo-era.  We had two surprising finding during the nice drive.  Even though the family name is the same one with ours,  nothng to do with our family(*^_^*)　

                                            I took a picture of the signboard.

After a couple of fun stopping, we arrived at the hotel;

I hope the Japanese hotel interest you a little. There was a beutiful garden and fancy connecting corridor to  the rooms.

And enjoyed the tasty Japanese style dinner togather with them. Also after dinner hot spa (not the foot bath, haha) was really relaxing. During the drive, I saw some cosmos blooming and wanted to use the flower somewhere in here.

Attending the memorial service the day before, they visited us yesterday (Sunday).

Here is my hubby's sweet 99 year old aunt, who kindly took care of him until we married after he had lost his mother when he was 23 years old.  (his father also died young when my hubby was a child due to weak physical condition serving the war)

His cousins stopped by to our house and we were happy they enjoyed hubby's soba and chatting together.

Thank you very much for stopping by and visiting you soon...

          Linking this post to
                "Our World Tuesday, Week 57"
                            "Green Day" 

For Green Day> I hope it is ok linking the old post(one post behind) and sorry for the friends who gave me the comments already. 

My busy having Guests Week and New PC

My husband's two ex-colleague ladies came and one with her lovely daughter and the other with her future husband; they are marrying this October.  We had nice time together; we saw the little girl last fall and wonderful to see her grown to a little kid and not a baby any more.

Lovely lunch time and also sweet to hear that the cute little girl call hubby "soba-uncle; お蕎麦のおじちゃん", for me "English-aunt; 英語のおばちゃん" ♡♡♡　

We bought a set of cooking pan for the couple as a present of their marriage and also this cutting board. In Japan we normally use these wooden boards. Hubby knows a woodcrafter and I also asked him to buy us a new one♪♪♪   I wonder if you use these things in western countries as well.

And another day, my ex-students who is teaching English to kids at language school in Chiba-pref. came back to her parent's home and kindly stopped by to our house. We used to tell me that she wanted to teach children English. I am quite happy that she accomplished her dream even though it must be tough sometimes. 
  

*New PC

Last Saturday, my new PC arrived and the staff from the Elec-company trying to connect it with internet. Well, the router was old and in a bad shape; he needed to change it (means I had to renew it).  He had to get back to his store and brought a new one. Setting up took him a lot longer than he expected...  I feel so sorry and truly appreciated him for is help.  Oh, you all must know how it is when you have a new one; I have been struggling since then(^^;)   I might have made a call to support-center more than 10 times for several tiny bits of matters that had been changed, p;)  Their remote-service (they assist me watching my screen) really is inevitable for me!  I would't have been able to use PC without their help, how lucky I am that this staff reccomended me the particular company when I first bought PC.

*One sad news

Besides the guests, we had to visit a couple of relatives this week. And one sad thing happened to us. One of our pine tree died and has been cut.  We only have one small sized one left. Our biggest one died many years ago and this time...; hubby looked really sad about this. He had been seeing the leaves changing its color to brown. He rushed away as he couldn't see the worker cutting it.  So sorry with this long post, my friends and thank you for stopping by.  I almost feel kind of guilty that I couldn't contact you so long...   I'll catch you later♬♬♬