Last Sunday, we went to an Italian restaurant near our flat. The pasta and desert were good but I think the organic vegetable salad with liver pate was the best. It was nice to bite raw radish! There are only 5 tables and a few seats near the counter. Nice and cozy.

This is a washing up liquid bottle. It is probably early 70's, since then it had been used for a long time in my husband' home, until I saw it! Maybe I was clamouring too much, and his mum kindly gave it to me (I was just his girlfriend at that time)! HAKAWERK, the maker of this bottle still have a product called travallor. But it looks different. It seems like all-purpose household cleaner was inside. The colour, shape and the feeling of a material, everything is just perfect, it is a great plastic product from the good old time. I want to use this in our kitchen for a long time.

The Mayor of Kita-kyusyu city invited staffs' suggestions for the 'happy topic', and he chose about 20 ideas out of 600 yesterday. One of the ideas is make an actual size of Gundam robot, and let it walk in a town (the news is in Japanese only). It is meant to appeal that the city is a robotics advanced city. I simulated that 18m high' Gundam is in front of Kokura station in Kita-kyusyu city. ... too dangerous? It is unlikely to be realized but I hope it happens!

I've been looking for a nice kettle since last Summer but none of the kettles strike my heart yet. We have been using a tiny milk pot to boil water more than a year. We used to have a cordless electric one from Bodum in London. I drink only 2 cups of coffee these days but I used to drink 5-6 cups of tea a day, so that this quick heating kettle was very useful. But I'm looking for a normal kettle because there are no space for it in the kitchen, and I want to make barley tea in a kettle in Summer.

These days I use our landline phone to talk to our parents only. And almost all calls in a day time are from telemarketing. They try to sell different things, facial care products, a new flat and a gravestone etc. They believe they can get my attention by mentioning that they do a campaign at the moment. Sometimes they slam the receiver down when I tell them that I'm not interested at all, before they start the talk. Annoying! Today's call was about cleaning the kitchen. The regular price is ¥12,000 but ¥2,000 for today. Suspiciously cheap! Of course I refused the offer.

C went to Shibuya to buy a new game soft, and came home with nice bread. It was DEAN & DELUCA! I was being a zombie from Saturday' party but woke up completely! What a great breakfast + husband!

Last night, we went to a home party at friend' flat. I decided to buy cheesecake from JOHANN which is too famous among the cake lovers, because the host doesn't drink! I was worried about it might be sold out soon, so we left our flat in the early afternoon, went for a walk to Nakameguro. Meguro Ginza shopping street is a normal local shopping street but there were so many people in front of TOKION shop the day before. It was crazy! We decided to have breakfast (it turned out our lunch and dinner) at Organic Cafe. I chose Organic Cafe Sand wich come with nice heavy dark bread. It was very nice but also bit jealous of C' chicken and bacon in Triple Decker Sand!

When we visited our friends in Germany, I fell in love with this bread cut machine in their kitchen. What a low-tech! 6 months later, they brought it for our wedding! It was very difficult to find one in a flea market, and gave us the one they were using! Thank you so much!! I will take good care of it. We don't use it everyday, but when we have guests, I use it to show off its beauty and the function. I can adjust the thickness of slice, and also make it smaller for storage.

I think that was last Spring, I bought fresh basil in a pot from a supermarket for eating. I planted it in a gardening pot. I cut off pieces when it grew too much and put them in water. They root very easily, and I've been trying leave their offsprings (but I kill them very easily too). Today, I realised that it has a cute white flower. But I remember that flowering will cause the leaves to have a bitter taste...

When I eat Udon (wheat flour noodles) at home, frozen Udon is the best for me (except a present from the special district!). Just after a minute of cooking, noodle is perfectly al dente, slightly resistant to the tooth. It won't be like this if I use fresh noodles. Can't fool the frozen food! I always keep some stock in our freezer but I bought more because it was 40% off at the local supermarket yesterday. When I left the cashier, I saw a bargain info for tomorrow. It said 'frozen Udon 50% off'. Doh!

Tomorrow is Daikan. Daikan meant be the coldest period in the year. Yes, it is very cold these days indeed. It would be nice to eat Nabe. We should use our wedding present which is a portable cooking stove at a dinner table AMORFO 2N. What a Beauty! (normal cooking stove is like this)! It reflects senders' good taste! I have to cook well not to be defeated by this stove.

I am troubled about pigeons since we moved to this flat. They love to sit on electric cables in front of our balcony, and jumped to our balcony, leave lots of droppings and feathers. The most annoying thing is they have a party at 7am on our neighbour' balcony. Our neighbour feeds pigeons! They coo a lot, flap their wings loudly and dash themselves against our balcony' wall. What are they doing?! I can't wake up on my own even with an alarm clock in the morning but they wake me up very easily in the early morning. I HATE them!

Our old friends from London are visiting Tokyo, and we went to see them + their baby. It was a bit strange to see them as parents because I haven't seen her being pregnant! I respect that they are very good parents. Their son was very cute, and I tried to carry him. So heavy! His toy was cute too. It's a puzzle that we have to remove worms from a leaf. Made in Germany.

I bought Kina-Choco Kurodaizu in Hokkaido. They are soybean chocolate coated black soybeans. So good! I love soybean flavored chocolate (which is very unusual). I remember that my sister used to like a soybean chocolate coated ice candy when she was a kid. I found other soybean chocolate recently, but I didn't like the rice cake inside. I think soybean chocolate is kind of similar to the peanut taste. I used to love REESE'S pieces too. It's very sweet peanut butter flavored chocolate but a little bit salty. I wonder if I can find it in Japan.

When I was a university student, I had a sketching lesson by the father of my childhood friend. He told me about Boro-ichi (rag market) in Setagaya, I always wanted to go and I finally did it after 10 years! It was great! Apparently there are about 750 stalls and 200,000-250,000 people visit there a day! I understand that this 426 years old market is intangible cultural assets.

I see that WILKINSON' ginger ale is the best one for me, after all. It's very spicy, almost like drinking a pure ginger juice, but very nice to mix with alcohol. I can't buy other brand' ginger ale anymore.

C got a rare present from his friend. It was a smoked sturgeon (mum of caviar). Although I thought it would be like a smoked salmon, it was completely different. The meat was quite firm and fatty (not greasy), maybe because of sturgeon breed in a very cold place. Compared with smoked salmon, it was a meat rather than a fish. The slice was also thicker and smoked more than salmon. I squeezed a lemon on it, grinded black pepper and put on a buttered bread. Delicious.

Yesterday was Coming of Age Day, a bank holiday. I think people who turned to 18 years old can drink alcohol and given the right to vote In England. They become an 'adult' 2 years earlier than us! The ceremonies (with lots of "interesting" speeches) hosted by municipalities are kind of big school reunions I imagine. Recently some people tend to try to show off how cool they are (usually start to fight or drink), and promoters are bit nervous about it. You don't need to open a big bottle (1.8L) of Sake at the ceremony, you will have lots of opportunities to get pissed with your mates from now on! Well, I envy the power of the youth.

Yesterday was 'Dondo yaki' day. New Year's decorations (kadomatsu or shimenawa, etc) and good-luck charms are burned in huge fires. Rice cakes are toasted on the fire and eaten to protect against disease and illness. People burn their first Calligraphy of the New Year, believing that the higher the ashes rise, the more their writing will advance. There was a Dondo yaki ceremony in the park near our place, so I went there with our New Year's decoration. It was my first time to visit this ceremony.

Yesterday, there was a birthday party at Le' Aladdin 'The Arabian Nights' style restaurant in Shinjuku. We had been drinking for more than 7 hours! I guess about 30 people in total came to see her. It was nice to see lots of interesting people. Happy birthday, M!

I couldn't continue my life without a digicame any longer (!), and I made up my mind yesterday. I really loved the camera which I broke the other day, and I even thought about buying a second-hand one on an internet auction. But in the end, I bought a new IXUS 400 (we call it IXY in Japan). It seems that the rumor of a new IXUS is true. The price has started to drop, and I could get it 5,000¥ cheaper than I thought! The new IXUS will come out very very soon, maybe? By the way, some people are very good at negotiating a discount, I want to learn a technique.

Yesterday, I went to the clinic for an annual checkup on the other side of our local station. It was very posh clinic (I wish I had a digicam)! In the waiting room, there were proper sofas for living room! In the toilet, I noticed many hand towels were folded nicely in a basket! When I changed to a checkup costume, they also gave me a clean bathrobe! Is this normal?! The checkup itself was also very professional. But when I left the clinic, the nurse said to me the usual phrase without thinking, "Take good care of yourself!". Thanks, but you didn't mean it, did you?!

I picked up the snowboarding photos that I took with a disposable camera. I hadn't asked a shop to develop and print photographs since our wedding. It was a nice feeling to open the bag, actually. All the photos are super bad (no photos of the pension!) but they remind me of the feeling of beautiful powder snow in Niseko... On the first day of our stay, we had the first serious snow of this season in Niseko. Not many people, lots of snow, sooo lucky!!

We say that eating Nanakusa-gayu (rice porridge with seven different kinds of spring herbs) on the seventh day of the first month of year keeps illness away from us (also ease the stomach after New Year's too much drink & food). I bought a handy seven herbs pack from a super market and cocked porridge for breakfast. Apparently, people believed that young herbs' vitality in winter exorcise bad spirit. My father always mention this phrase in front of porridge, 'Seri (dropwort), Nazuna (shepherb's purse), Gogyou (cotton weed), Hakobera (chickweed), Hotokenoza (cotton sow thistle), Suzuna (turnip), Suzushiro (Japanese white radish), these are the seven herbs.' I didn't know that this phrase was in a book called 'kakaishou' which was probably written in 1362. And people started to eat Nanakusa-gayu from Heian period (794-1192). It is an old practice.

The film we went to see on Sunday was The Last Samurai. Too many people said that it was a good film, and I was wondering I might not like it (!) but it was actually quite nice. And if pressed, I would say that the ending was a little bit disappointed. Also it seemed to try to be telling us how the Japanese should be, or the Japanese shouldn't forget traditional Japan somehow. Definitely all 'samurai' actors were very gorgeous even for me as a Japanese. But we can't have the same spirit from the Fujiyama, Tempura, Sushi, Samurai time now...

Last night, I could managed to see HAPPINESS exhibition at Mori Art Museum before seeing a film. It was huge (as a museum in Japan)! Our favorite work was a pile of kind of post-it (that's what I thought) in the Desire area. I don't want to mention what that was. Some people might still go there... It should be a surprise! We spend 2 hours there, but it was not enough time to see everything. We passed through the end of exhibition and a great view from Tokyo City View, had a brisk walk to the cinema in the end. By the way, at Tokyo City View, there was a young man from Tokyo Sky Shot who had to break the silence, kept shouting something like 'Would you like to have a souvenir picture in front of this great view?'. No customers. I know he had a tough time but so did we!

On Christmas day, my mum booked a table for us at a German restaurant in Sapporo (by Japanese people). Would it be same as his parents reserve a table at a Japanese restaurant which is run by German people in Germany?! Oops...! But I didn't need to worry. It was a genuine German restaurant. I think C was very satisfied. My parents were overpowered by a tall beer glass which was about 25cm high and a massive portion of the sautéed pork though. My Schnitzel (beef cutlet) was also dangerously huge (I ate all!). I recommend their sausages, they were good.

This trip to Hokkaido was very good and fun but there was a shocking accident on the first day! I covered C's digicam with snow (that is to say water) and broke it! We really loved the camera... I had no choice but to use my parents' digicam and a disposable camera, so all photographs in Hokkaido are not that good... I was also disappointed that Canon refused to repair our camera (Made in Japan) because we bought it in London! Unfair!! Anyway, I need a new one very soon. I want either SONY T1 or Canon IXY 400. I really love Casio's Gauguin Red and Gogh Yellow but it has only a 'digital zoom' so I don't think I can use it for LDK. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

We came back from Sapporo yesterday evening. I feel quite tired. On the first day of the new year, we started with Otoso (sake flavored with herbs) in the morning, ate Ozoni at breakfast and a bit of mum' Osechi (specially prepared New Year's food) after. I haven't had this proper Japanese style' New Year for a long time. I like it! Today, we woke up late, did our first visit of the year to a temple and a sports gym. I enjoyed mum' Osechi + rice ball for dinner by the side of C eating bread + Parma ham...

Happy New Year! I hope it will be a wonderful year for you! (We got this decoration at the birthday party a few days ago. It's a nice one with a shrimp. Thank you Mrs. L!)