Money

So... What's new today? 

Yesterday I ran errands...  went to the bank and the post office...  did the things that have to be done at the end of the month.

At the post office I sent off my August log for my crosswalk duty job.

"It was hot today.  No school.  Walked the neighborhood but no children out."

Twenty some days of similar logging.  Yes, even when we are on summer vacation the crosswalk guards are expected to write in their logs... we get paid for summer duty, children or not.

As for end of the month banking, in Japan we don't get involved with writing checks but I will deposit money for the next month's expenses.  Japanese banks have never developed a check writing system and I suppose even in the States that may be becoming obsolete with credit and debit cards.   Most of our Japanese bills are paid directly through the bank, and at the end of the month I only hand over cash to the newspaper man who comes to collect.  Everything else, water, gas, electricity, phone, cell phone, insurance and whatever comes out of the bank.

Since getting this iPhone I have tried to keep track of my own expenses with a spending app but as I've never been very good at adding and subtracting I'm not sure if I'm economizing or spending hodge podge or spending more than I have.  You would think with an app I'd be able to track my habits but I tend to get bogged down in the dates and inputting data...

Some of my friends seem to be able to live completely off of their credit cards, for EVERYTHING even paying their water bills.  They tell me that they are earning mileage points but I don't think I'm up to that level of organization yet.  And some of my friends also seem to just flash their Smart Phones at train turnstiles, convenience stores and even vending machines to get what they want but I'm not at that stage either... 

Last month I had a problem with my American bank account because my bank card expired and the new one didn't get to me.  (Maybe lost in my mother's house?)  I had Takumi trying to help me and Marcy too, but in the end I had to make numerous international phone calls to get everything straightened out.  Here I am sitting on the phone as the minutes tick by and I listen to background music and instructions about pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 if I want to...  I just want to talk with someone!  It took me four international calls over two weeks before I was able to use my bank card again!  The phone bill is surely going to mess up my spending app again.

As an aside...  Did you know that Japanese currency is always crisp and new?  The banks go through cash regularly and weed out any wrinkled bills.  When paying anyone, for example, my students will always pay me in cash, it is considered good manners to pay with a freshly minted bill enclosed in an envelope and people will go to the bank to exchange oldish (like one fold) bills for newly minted ones.

And Japanese banknotes have a watermark that can only be seen when the bill is held up to the light.  Sort of interesting...

Here we are in a new month and I have my spending app and my bank books and my wallet synchronized again... 
 

Zone 5 Living room

I get a whole three days in Zone 5 of Flylady's organization system.  And Zone 5 is the Living room.  You would think that with most of the life's actions going on in the living room that it would have a full week devoted to it but the logic is that people are going to have to move things back to their normal places anyway when they are in the living room or the family is going to have to do a daily cleaning of the space anyway if visitors come by, so the area only gets the left-over days at the end of the month...

It is true that I vacuum regularly and wipe down the coffee table etc. and try to straighten up my sewing table before I go to bed but I didn't get around to washing the windows (oh forget the curtains this month!) until just now.  These are the last photos of my window views this month.  I think I never did get around to washing the Japanese room windows and my sewing room windows but basically you have seen all the views from all the directions that my windows give me. 

The living room bay window looks out on the yard, one where Tetsu put in a brick patio when we first moved into the house.  We have a table and chairs for just the two of us when we occasionally eat breakfast outside, and a parasol that has to be taken down regularly during this typhoon season.  The next door neighbor's car park is right on the other side of the wire fence... but we don't really come face to face with him too often as he also has the two storage huts there.  Not a fantastic view but we are used to it.

The living room also has a glass door that leads directly to this porch and it has the same view...  If I swivel a bit there is my neighbor's house and our cars sit directly in front of the neighbor's bathroom windows.  So we look at his huts and he looks at our cars.  Give and take.  (And he has to look at the neighbor's on the other side's bathroom windows too!  At least we've got a forest!)

Yesterday I was on Facetime with Marcy and she wanted a tour of our house to show her brother who was visiting so I wandered through the house with my iPhone held high and gave a tour.  Marcy was enthralled with the greenery we can see from all our windows and I was rather proud of our views.

Slinging sludge

We have a thrice a year commitment to clean the gutters on our street.  All the way down the street!!!  And because we are next to the forest the open gutters fill with dirt and leaves and stones which have to be lifted out and discarded on the empty lots along the street itself.  The vines and weeds grow over and into the gutters, the messy smelly sludge is bug and worm filled.  Cleaning gutters is the dreaded job of the season and depending on the season, the job is either tolerable or worse.  When it is our turn, this job is Tetsu's job and he goes out with special tools and labors away for a couple hours.  I think I managed to pay Takumi well for doing the job a couple of times when Tetsu was out of commission and I'm thinking that one of these days I might offer to pay Yuma-kun when Tetsu and I are too decrepit to do the job ourselves.

So, it was our turn again BUT... this month Tetsu has been having back aches and knee pains and I didn't see how he was going to get the gutter cleaning job done.  He claimed he would take it in spurts on Saturday and Sunday but Saturday morning after he'd gone to work I donned long sleeves and pants and doused myself with bug spray and went out to do the dreaded job alone.  In the pouring down rain!!!

My neighbors thought I was crazy but what has to be done has to be done and I spent two hours slinging sludge.  A neighbor came by with his dog in a raincoat and commiserated with me (he has his own street to do on a regular basis).  Another neighbor came out and stood over me with an umbrella for a few minutes but as I was already soaked through and through she was really only giving me moral support.  She left and came back later with a pear to reward me for my hard work.

I could actually say that the job gave me some satisfaction and a couple hours later the backed up gutter water was running clear again, the weeds and vines had been trimmed back and the road had been swept clean.  And if nothing else I had stayed cool from being soaked through rather than fainting from a heat stroke.

I came home, took a shower, put on something feminine and painted my nails to prove to myself that I was more than I sludge slinger.  Tetsu was very surprised and happy when he came home and found that I'd done the dreaded job for him and I got taken out to a fancy sushi lunch and he bought me a dress!  Not that I really want to do that job again.  Tetsu has three months to get his back into shape...

Nothing to show with that story but I have finished my mother's fabric post card for this month.  I will get it off to her today.

Miscellaneous August

I guess this will be a miscellaneous post today.  What do I have left over in my photo files?

I have continued to make somewhat healthy obentos for Tetsu every day.  And because August I didn't have crosswalk duty there was a little more time in the mornings to stop and take a picture. Most of those are made up of something leftover from the dinner the night before, an egg is some form and usually a Japanese pickle or two.  I remember reading a book where the writer said that when she was a little girl her school principal went around at lunch time and made sure that all the children had something from the land (meat or vegetables) and something from the sea (fish or sea weed) in their obento boxes everyday.  I try hard to pay attention to that rule when making my obentos.  They are also supposed to be colorful but I don't know how well I did in that department.  Notice that we are still not eating rice!

We were hit by a typhoon last week and a lot of the chestnut trees lost their chestnuts.  These are still small and green and they look very cute here and there in the yard and on the streets.

Walking along the roads we came across.... a pumpkin.  A lone pumpkin not anywhere near a field or house.  Well, that's unusual...

Not so!  A day or so later, Choco and I came across another lone pumpkin! This one was hanging over the sidewalk!  For your information, pumpkins do not grown on trees so I thought this pumpkin deserved a photo too.  It came from the farmer's field that is on a level higher than the sidewalk...

I don't know if this is funny or not...  I enjoy seeing articles occasionally from the Japan Times in English.  I don't subscribe but for some reason a random article comes to my News page app.  (I must have listed the Japan Times as something to follow...)  I enjoy a weekly column called Overheard and there are short anecdotes about something someone has heard (in Japanese or English) in passing.  I find a lot of them quite humorous.  Overheard.  Actually I'd overheard Tetsu and his mother talking a few weeks ago and thought my mother-in-law's comment rather funny... and maybe a sign of the times too.  So...  I submitted it to the Japan Times and it was run in this week's column!  I don't know what that title Voting with one's feet is supposed to mean... I didn't title it.  I just thought it so typical of my mother-in-law to dryly comment about how she couldn't even get herself to a doctor and why would she want to go to vote.  And I also thought that this is probably a reflection on life in Japan these days with the growing population of the aged.  The elderly can't get out and about to even hope to make a difference in the politics that rule their fates on social and service issues...  So is the above humorous or bittersweet?

And here I am one morning with my Shisha (Okinawan gargoyles) at my sides.  That is Mi on the left of the photo and Chip on the right and they don't like each other but with me in the middle they have come to a truce. 

Zone 4 Bedroom and Bathroom

Ｉ'm glad that video came through yesterday.  I never know if something is going to work on this blog or how to do something new.

I have been in Zone 4 of my house this week which is the bedroom and the upstairs bathroom and hallway.  So that is four window views to show today.

Up until three years ago Tetsu and I slept on the floor on futon but I decided in my old age I wanted to stop hefting myself from the floor every morning (and middle of the night for a bathroom trip) and we put twin beds in the small room.  This meant that I no longer had any place to spread out a quilt for basting (I could push the futon aside or air them on the veranda rails while I basted) but that is the only thing I miss about not sleeping on the floor anymore.

The bay window looks to the west and has a direct view of the forest.  This is lovely most of the time though the birds do wake us up early in the morning (or the frogs keep us up at night).  But when we have a typhoon we tend to sleep elsewhere... on the living room sofa or on Leiya's old bed, as I can imagine trees from the forest being blown over and crashing through this window.

The sliding glass door faces south and has a narrow veranda which connects with Takumi's old room.  As you can see, the forest is right there within an arm's reach... and three other houses along our street.  We are all pretty close together but have a nice view and in the summer the houses are shaded by the forest.

The hallway contains a book case and a cat box.  The window looks out onto the same view as the bedroom's bay window.

The small bathroom holds just a toilet and looks to the north (if anyone bothered to look) and out onto the neighborhood storage hut.

Hmm.  I hate to leave you with a picture of our toilet!  So here is our countryside again.  Yesterday I took Choco out for her walk around 4:00 when it was still hot but rain clouds were heading toward us and there were occasional spots of shade.  At this time of year Choco and I get stuck out in the rain regularly!

Science Museum

Hmm...  I don't know how this is going to work but I have now tried to download a video from an interesting children's museum that Tetsu and I visited this weekend.

Tetsu planned our day...  We went to church and then had lunch at some little cafe that specialized in vegetables from the chef's grandmother's vegetable garden.  It was delicious!  Lots of steamed vegetables with different sauces to dip them.

 After that we headed for a scarecrow festival near a sunflower field but it was much too hot to enjoy the scarecrows and we practically ran past them to get to some shade.

I liked the simplicity of this one!  A stuffed Nemo in a butterfly net!

The sunflowers were beautiful but much too hot to go exploring through the field in a sunflower maze.  Passed up that opportunity...

And then to this museum that Tetsu had heard about that was having a special science event.  When it said it was a children's museum THAT IS WHAT IT WAS!  And we were the only people there without any children.  And to get to the event one had to pay admission to the play park/museum which had indoor jungle gyms and wading pools and ball pits etc.  Heaven for little children but Tetsu and I wondered what we'd wandered into.  And then there was ANOTHER admission fee for the sciency part which was discouraging but what are Tetsu and I going to do at a ball pit by ourselves...

The sciency event was for CHILDREN which we were still without but we watched hopscotch trails which changed as children hopped and Japanese character language walls that changed images as children touched the walls.  There was a large ball pit that had something to do with music and light...  AND a lot of coloring tables set out with crayons and fish shapes.  Well...  I guess we should sit down and color.  We've come this far.

What was neat about the coloring section was the huge wall that had fish swimming around like a room size aquarium.  And once a picture was colored it could be taken to the girl who fed the image into a computer/scanner and suddenly your picture joined all the other hundreds of fish and swam in the aquarium!!!  They really swam!  The fish didn't just slide across the screen.  And they reacted to a child touching the wall (all the fish swarmed to the spot) or dashed away when a computerized shark or sting ray swam by.  It was very exciting and children were screaming and parents were trying to take iPhone photos of their child's fish.  And that is why I have a video to show.  I joined the parents chasing down fish...  So what if I didn't have a child or grandchild with me!  So here is Tetsu's sea horse with our names contributed (he added mine as an afterthought) for science.

And here is a video I tried to take.  Can you see my sea turtle?  It has the Hawaiian quilt pattern on its back.

Maybe that didn't work...  Hmm.  The video doesn't seem to show in Blogger's preview.  Oh well.  HERE is a picture of my Hawaiian sea turtle. and take my word for it, it was SWIMMING!

Corn and Soy Beans and Sunflowers and Pigeons

More scenery photos from both my and Tetsu's camera.  I went out early one morning with Choco leaving Tetsu still sleeping and we walked for about 40 minutes taking pictures of the sun rich scenery.  Far in the distance whom should we spot but Tetsu, who had woken up alone, taken a different route and come out looking for us.  He too had his camera with him.  Clear day?  Early morning hours?  A good chance for some nice photos!  We think alike.

Whether this is a good photo or not I'm not sure.  I find the red spots and rays of sunlight interesting and it has something to do with the aperture settings, but maybe a better camera would do away with the red spots...  Or maybe they are supposed to be there...

We went past some chive farm hot houses.  In a month the hot houses will be filled with little white flowers.  And pungent too!

Japan is really green in this season.  I took this photo to show how the typhoons cause the rice in the fields to fall over in waves.  It makes it a bit more difficult to harvest the rice but I think the tractors have some gadget that pulls the rice to standing position again before cutting.

A simple wildflower welcoming the sun.

A sunflower facing the wrong way.

"Hey Mack!  The sun is THIS way!"

From Tetsu's camera, he liked the symmetry of the circles of the moon in the sky and the road roller.

The corn is growing tall!

 This was a special favorite of Tetsu's.  Corn is "cute".

The soy bean fields set in rows around streams and forest.

We both watched a flock of homing pigeons happily soaring over the countryside.  And talked to the farmer who raises them.  He says he has about 30 pigeons and sends them up to the island of Hokkaido which is across the Tsugaru Straits, for speed competitions.  It will take a fast pigeon about 24 hours to cover the distance of nearly 600 miles but most of his pigeons get home within two days.

Together, Choco, Tetsu and I walked past farmers' gardens and headed back home.

"Good Kitty!"

I have just spent the last hour giving my three indoor cats a bath...  And we all came through it without any scratches or bites!

I think only Mi has ever had a bath before.  Last year she was getting bald in spots and licking all the time and when I took her to the vets he said it was probably psychological but might be caused by itchiness.  I was surprised that Mi might be under stress because she gets along with all the other cats in the house and cuddles with all of them.  She wants to visit the two cat house cats and gets extra human love because of her cute mannerisms.  My vet suggested that she was trying to cover all these bases and get along with everybody and so she might be stressed out.  On the other hand, it didn't hurt to give her a bath though the instructions on the medicated pet shampoo bottle said to keep the pet in the soapy water 10 minutes.  IMPOSSIBLE!!!

I don't know if the shampoo worked because the season changed and I forgot about Mi's licking all the time and when I looked again her bald patches had grown back.

Whether the cats are at fault or the moldiness in the house or the bugs in the forest, Tetsu and I have been itching again this season (it is a pretty common seasonal problem for us each year).  We fumigated our bedroom and I treat the sheets daily with some herb spray but occasionally we will still have an itchy spot or two.  (And we deal with mosquitoes and chiggers when we are outside too and can't remember where the last itch came from.)  Choco is treated with flea and tick medication and I've not SEEN any bugs in our house... so the next step was washing the cats.

Which I did.

All three cats were sleeping peacefully in the living room and I got my warm soapy water ready in the laundry sink and scooped up Chip first of all.  She didn't know what hit her and quietly resigned herself to the scrubbing and dousing and and rinsing as I held her front paws.

"Good Kitty!!!"

Next I went for Mi who wasn't happy at all about the process.  She has thicker, longer fur than Chip and she complained more and I was in a good position to be bitten but she forgave me for my treatment and licked my arm as I held her front paws too.  She had to be rinsed quite a bit as her fur held the soap and water.

"Good Kitty!!!"

I was thinking of giving up on shampooing Cleo as he is a male cat, stronger, more opinionated and I hadn't cut his claws in a while.  I was just asking for injury.  But when I put a straggly, sodden Mi down outside the laundry room door, Cleo had come to investigate and so I swooped him up and went back to the laundry sink.  As predicted, Cleo was very unhappy and very vocal about the abuse he was being given.  We wrestled awhile until... flop.  He just gave out!

"Are you okay?"

"Meow.  Mom, if you are planning to kill me I guess I'll let you.  Life isn't worth living anyway."

Cleo succumbed to his bath and did not move or complain again.  A rag doll of a cat.

"Good Kitty!!!"

After wiping him damp dry I let him loose in the hallway too and he creakily made his way up the stairs as if he couldn't believe the indignities he had just suffered.

All three cats are now busy licking themselves dry again, and all of them look like teenagers with spike hair styles.
 

Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go is the new fad all over Japan.

I remember Pokemon from my children's kindergarten and elementary school years.  Pikachu was the popular character on book bags and T-shirts and the children would go along chanting:

"Pikachu kaijyu..."

The chat went on and on and all these little children could go through the whole list of Pokemon monster names without missing a beat.  I was amazed at the long spiel they could memorize while a simple English lesson conversation was beyond them...

When Pokemon gained attention in Japan again (after Pokemon Go was already the big hit in other countries) I wondered what the big attraction was besides maybe a nostalgia for the kindergarten children who have grown to young adults now...  I was surprised to hear that some of my friends had downloaded the app to whet their own curiosity or maybe to play with grandchildren who would be visiting this summer.

Tetsu even asked me if I was going to get Pokemon Go.  He is of the opinion that now that I have this expensive iPhone toy I should make as much use of it as I can so last week I finally downloaded Pokemon Go and went out to check what was so much fun about the game.  Tetsu even joined me once but his enthusiasm waned when he nearly stepped on a dead snake while being engrossed in catching a monster.

"This is for kids!  And it is dangerous!"  (Well, if you happen to step on a snake in our area.  Not many cars or people to run into).

I'm afraid I couldn't figure out how the game goes except for throwing balls and collecting monsters.  Yuma-kun explained about collecting balls at certain ports but I've only found one port within walking distance in this farmland.

My friend Kaoru-san invited me to go Pokemon hunting with her in downtown Utsunomiya this week.  Kaoru-san lives on the 15th floor of a condominium and after lunch at her house we explored the city.

(The view from Kaoru-san's living room window.  The Matugamine Catholic church where Kaoru-san and her husband attend, is right there in the middle of the city.)

 (An interesting view looking straight down from the 15th floor)

Kaoru-san seems to have figured out where ball ports are and I was amazed at the number of people squatting by the bridges and memorial plaques etc who seemed to be waiting for Pokemon.  Though I found it a bit embarrassing to be playing this game out in public at my age, I have to admit there were a lot more Pokemon to catch out there in the narrow alleys and famous buildings and shrines than in my countryside.... (Hmm.  I have a complaint.  Why are there only rat-like and sparrow-like Pokemon near me?)

So I had a fun afternoon wandering around the heat of the city with Kaoru-san holding my elbow or my hand as I caught Pokemon (it seems she too was worried about my safety).

In conclusion:  I probably will not become a Pokemon devotee.  I have no interest in the "gymnasium games" though searching out and collecting the creatures are fun past-times on a walk.  But as noted, there are not many kinds of Pokemon in my countryside.  I captured a snake yesterday... a Pokemon snake.