HINA festival

HINA festival is on March 3. It is the day to wish for girl's growth and happiness.  Most families, mainly families which have girls, celebrate the day with decorating HINA dolls.
This is my entrance. Main dolls were used to be my mother's. The round dolls were presented by my grand mother. Woody dolls were made by my daughters when they were little. Other paper dolls were presented by nursery school students.

    Today I went to UJIIE town. There many old HINA dolls remain, and the owners show them during this season to attract tourists.
These doll are made about 200 years ago.

 

These dolls are another type. It's called TURUSHI BINA, haning dolls.

 

AND this set is an original in TOCHIGI. TOCHIGI is famous for strawberries, so they are strawberry dolls.

 

 

These are flower dolls, dolls clothes are made by flowers.

 

I had a good day.

Valentine's day has finished

How's your weekend? we had heavy snow again. Yesterday Yuki and our neighbors shoveled up snow, so the road in front of our houses are clear. But lots of snow still has remained so much that it's dangerous to drive .Fortunately it's sunny today, so I hope the snow will melt.

Last week we and my students enjoyed Valentine's week with sweets. Today I put away all decorations for Valentine's day, and put HINA-dolls to celebrate Girls' day in March. Girls' day called HIMATSURI brings spring. So spring is just around the corner.

It means a new school year for me.

 

From spring a few adult students might join us. I made a mind-map to introduce ourselves. Now I'm really interested in showing my ideas on a mind-map.

We had heavy snow this weekend.

This weekend we had heavy snow. Fortunately it was Saturday, so Yuki didn't need to go to work. And he "couldn't" go playing tennis on Saturday, and he "couldn't" go playing golf on Sunday.


It was snowing and windy. We huddled in the room all the day.  We made "hot" curry noodle for lunch..
And we were watching TV, though Yuki was working with his computer.
At night, it was still snowing, but we decided to go out to a nearby small restaurant. It takes about 3minutes there on foot. And it's Yuki's favorite restaurant, and he is familiar with the master. We knew it was open in despite of the bad weather, we expected no one would come there.

So we decided to surprise the master.
==== but it was crowded. Fortunately we got seats. (20 minutes later 4 customers came, but they couldn't get seats.)









Next day it was sunny, but the snow piled up high. So it was time for men.
All  male neighbors went out to shovel the snow. They seldom meet, but on such a snow day it's a valuable opportunity to communicate each other.

Excuse consumption

"Excuse consumption", I knew this word recently , of course in Japanese. I translated this word literally in English.

When you feel conflicted whether you allowed to buy buy a thing or not, you don't like to buy it depending on your mood,  so you make a legitimate reason unconsciously. This way is excuse consumption.
And people who do excuse consumption are more satisfied with things they bought.

Now I'm thinking whether I will take a one-day training workshop or not. It costs 45000 yen. If I attend the workshop I'll be a more skilled teacher, or leader. But I don't know how long I will run this school in the future. For me it might be more useful to attend a health program.
On the other hand sometimes I think that appearing something new is a time when I need it, so I should learn it without hesitating. And at least I'm working. I can afford to pay it (though I go out for lunch or dinner less.)

What do you think of it?

Three anchors

The other day I attended a workshop about coaching. It was really interesting.
The lecture was a woman who was almost as old as I.
She introduced the word "anchor". And she said "to make yourself calm, if you have three anchors, it's easy to do it."
The first anchor is to recall when you worked hard and made it.
The second anchor is to recall when you enjoyed
The third anchor is to recall when you relaxed.
Is it easy for you to recall all situations?

It wasn't easy for me.
The first anchor was easy.
I learned a lot about kid's English method
I made a speech as the head of PTA when I was busy at mother's duties.
I succeeded a project when I worked hard at an electronic company as an engineer.
I studied hard to enter into a university.

How about you?

The second anchor was --- I needed time  for a while to think about.
I enjoy talking  with some  of my friends -- in my mind there are three friends.
How about you?

The third anchor was difficult. So I asked my husband Yuki.
He said " you definitely relax  when you are reading a book "in" the bed".
How about you?

I also asked  Yuki his anchors.
(The other day he went work out) I did 20 squat, it was his first anchor.
I enjoy golfing. it was his second anchor.
And he also asked about his third anchor.
So I said "You completely relax when you watch TV  with a glass of beer while dozing off.
/