days to remember

 It didn’t snow the whole day, but tonight we found it snowed even more! Still it’s not considering heavy snow — just light snow.  It’s enough to cover the cars etc, but not the ground. It melt once it comes in contact with the ground.

Again we were thrilled to see the snow scene~

It’s extremely soft~ You can compress it at super high percentage, and it’s still soft! The feeling of the contact with the snow is beyond description. It’s different from the blended ice we have for our drinks, it’s much softer.

With the limited snowflakes collected from our corridor, I just compress into an out-of-shape snowman. :p

No no no… I didn’t taste the snow. I’m having sore throat at the moment. I don’t want it to get worse! Currently waiting for a better weather to have our short trip to Kyoto and perhaps Osaka.

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According to the weather forecast, it should be snowing a little last night. I was waiting and waiting, popping my head out of the window several times but there’s no sign of snow.

Waking up this morning, I leaned against the window pad and searching for any sign of snow — NO. Haiz, perhaps it’s not cold enough to snow.  While I gave up on having snow, Alvin called me, telling me it’s snowing. I thought he’s pulling my leg, as I still didn’t notice any sign of snow. He insisted there’s snow, and after staring out of the windows for few moments, there is!

It really snowed! Wow~ I’m so excited! Though the snowing is a very light one, you don’t really notice it, but it actually did snowed~! It snowed just like the snowing effect we put in our blog — what you can see at this moment — flying in every direction! But it snowed at a much higher speed of course. This is exciting for people like us who had never seen snow before.

First few attempts of the photos are not obvious as too little snow. Then after a while it started to snow more! 

But most of the time the snow would met once touching ground. It’s just light snow ma..

I was trying to collect some — but it’s melting in my hands so quickly! After some time I decided not to play anymore — my hands are freezing~

It SNOWed! It Snowed! OOOOooooooohhhh~

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It’s Christmas~ We decided to attend mass at the St. Julie’s Church, which is much nearer. In fact, we are used to go to this church already. But since it’s not a holiday, I guess most of the parishioners were not able to attend the mass. There were only about 20++ all together.

Well, photographing fever would of course spread to the church… The nativity set up in advent.

The altar — splendid huh~

Taken when the third candle was lit on. They do not lit the candle before Gospel but before mass oh..

I like this little angel.

I didn’t mean to put my head in the photo… :p

The confession room — Thank God we were able to make our confession before mass during Christmas! Father Jerri (still not sure of the spelling of his name), the priest from Indonesia was celebrating mass, so we were able to grab the chance to have reconciliation with God after all these while.

Another building attached to the church, I think it’s the convent. This is St. Julie Billiart statue. At first I thought she’s Mother Mary. :p

Awesome candle — but I don’t know why is it 200? Anyone can tell me? Father?

I was surprised by Sister Ino Ue who asked me to do the second reading… Gosh, I’m truly honoured. It’s Christmas Mass! Thank God I’ve gone for confession already. It’s been months I’ve not been doing any reading in mass.. A bit nervous. But I guess not many can understand English, anyway. :p 

Father Jerri I asked him whether he knows Father Chris, since he’s now stationed in the cathedral and Fr Chris stayed there before. But he had been staying at the cathedral for one year plus only so he didn’t meet up with Fr. Chris then.

During offertory I was asked by another sister (I don’t know her name yet) to offer the collection. They don’t offer the bread and wine together with the collection. I don’t know if it’s due to the lack of parishioners, but I’m really happy that day.

Noticed baby Jesus in manger when I did the offertory, so took photos after mass.

A simple gathering after mass — some yummy delicacies as well as coffee and tea.

On the right is Sister Ino Ue who asked me to do the reading, there’s 6 sisters all together staying at the convent beside the church. They can speak English but not so fluent, except for Sister Saki Mura who taught English before. Only one of the sisters is younger while all the others are at least at their 50s or 60s. Hmm… But I never plan to become a sister. Hehe… Should have taken photos with them.

There’s this parishioner, Kazuda san who’s trying hard to have conversation with us, though she can speak very limited English. It’s very funny to see her waving her hands and lots of gestures trying to make us unerstand her. In the end Father Jerri did the translation for us. Haha.. She said though we can’t communicate effectively but our hearts are connected.

Each time I attend mass there I just love to look at this baby, and he (I guess that’s a baby boy) is definitely fond by all the others. At the moment he’s on Father Jerri’s lap. I often amazed at the rosy cheeks that almost can be found on all Japanese children. They look so chubby, so adorable and make people feel like biting at their apple cheeks.

We met this lady, Leticia, from Philipine. She was superbly happy to see us, neighbour ma. She kept telling us about her mother who’s half a Japanese and half a Philipino, as her grandfather (who is a Japanese) went to Philipino in 1920s or 1930s. She’s been travelling between Japan and Philipine these years.

She was just so excited that we have Malaysians, Philipino and Indonesians (Father Jerri) met together in the church. We actually left the church together and before we went on different way, I get to snap a photo with her. Very easy going and adorable lady. I’m pretty sure we’d meet again.

more photos on the church and also Kagamiyama Park, please visit

http://www.evland.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=16011&extra=&page=2

and click on next page for more.

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Have been listening to this ”Our Father” ( or Millenium Prayer). I think this is the a real touching one… especially when the little boy came out.. I was holding tears in my eyes~ 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1cG-4YSyhQ 

 If you want the mp3 of it, get from me personally.

And below is the funniest ”Our Father” to me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIwxtzJuDw

Actually it’s very lively, good one.

For me, I still miss the one we have in St. Anne’s Chapel. Forever in my heart…

Used to be a faster version which I preferred, and taken before I left CSSUPM. The resolution and sound effect was quite poor with my camera. But hey, that’s my memory.

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This year’s Christmas is for sure gonna be different from any other years. Though we didn’t have a White Christmas, but we had an enjoyable and memorable Christmas Eve.

It’s not pucblic holiday in Japan for Christmas, but everyone seems to be celebrating Christmas in Japan — not for Jesus Christ but for Santa Clause and Snow Man. 23rd Dec is the birthday of Japan’s Emporer, and it’s a Sunday; so they have holiday on 24th instead. Funato san invited us to her place for Christmas Eve dinner.

It’s a very nice and tasty one, we get to make our very own sushi where you can decide what you want to have in your sushi. There’s vege, egg (the tamago we usually have in sushi restaurant), also crab stick, preserved radish and cucumber — the usual ingredient we put in our sushi.

Then there’s also chicken and beef, raw fish, and cuttlefish for you to add in. Yummy~ These photos are taken after we are so full.. Still quite some left. Oh ya, I’ve been forgetting this for few times — like we have ”cheers” or ”yamseng”, Japanese also have ”gan bai” before start eating.

Then my camera was grabbed by Haru, Funato’s youngest son. He tried to take photos with it. As I turned off the flash and he can’t control it well, all the photos are out of focus… This is the best of those he took. Artistic? Keke… Reminds me of Leanne, my niece who is going to be 3 years old. She also likes to take photos — she took endless photos once she had the chance to grasp a camera.

Funato san’s eldest son — Kazu. A very smart and handsome boy. Quite mature and well mannered compare to other 5 years old kids. He can speak a little English, though he seems to dislike English.  

After dinner we had this clam soup — the first time I try soup purely cooked with clam.  

Then they had unwrapping present session — we bought them Lego as Christmas present. They were real excited and immediately started playing. This set of Lego is more suitable for Kazu, he’s already building a car and trying to build house too.

Haru is still way too young for this but also figuring something out of the pieces.    

We swept the Lego back to it’s container after the parents had done the cleaning up (pretty embarrassing as we didn’t help and played with the boys instead  :oops: ) and it’s amazing that the boys would obediently helped in tidy up. Normally when kids got their new toys they would not stop playing with it. Maybe they were equally excited for what’s next to come.

Now who’s birthday is it? This is a very popular way of Christmas celebration in Japan. There’s just lots and lots of Christmas cakes in every supermarket. Almost every family would buy one for Christmas though they do not know or have no intention of celebrating Jesus’ birthday. Funato san said when she went to pick up the pre-ordered cake the bakery was jam packed with people waiting for their Christmas cakes!    

We sang birthday song, almost mentioning everyone and also Jesus Christ. Like Leanne, the two kids also love to sing birthday song and birthday cakes. Though both of them love the toppings of cakes, they wouldn’t fight over it. Again I think Kazu is very disciplined at his age.

They even had mini party poppers after blew off the candles. It’s pretty to have the stripes of colourful papers hanging from the lamps. Together with the cake we also have this mixed fruits as dessert. Beside it that’s the mini party popper which were emptied.

We had some moments of peace as kids went off  continuing their Lego in living room which is jus next to the dining table. We had a good time chit chatting and culture exchanging. Funato san’s husband, Koichi san is also a very easy going person, and jokes a lot. He got more excited after drinking some sake and white wine and beer. Hehe..   

We were looking at the photos and I was really surprised that they didn’t take any wedding photo, and there’s simply no wedding ceremony at all except a meal together with both families. And they wore so casually that it’s just like any other ordinary dating. This is very unusual for us girls as I thought all girls would want to be the prettiest bride on their wedding. She’s the extraordinary one. But in that one and only photo of them, you can read happiness on their faces. Yup, what’s important is not the ceremony and how good you look on your wedding but how you work on the marriage. I saw simple happiness. 

We had photo session too, taken using their camera. The first few photos turned out to be black and white due to the wrong setting. But it’s nice also lar.

Took quite some photos, some are blur~ But it was fun and we had a great time. There would be more if the memory card didn’t run out of space. Hmm, someone missing in the photo — Maki the cat, who’s 14 years old!

Nevermind, I took a lot of her photos during the visit to Funato san’s place when we book the package to Tokyo. They adopted her from the Animal Rescue House/Animal Shelter (something like that). This lucky cat was brought here by plane~    

She’s big huh. Hmm… I saw Maki’s photos taken by a friend of theirs, truly awesome. Really nice photos. And she was young by then.

We also got Christmas present from the family… Haven’t try the cookies yet; very pretty shopping bag.

Its indeed a great blessing to know them all, and a very pleasant Christmas Eve too. :D

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Many have been asking me this few questions recently…

Is it snowing now?

Have you seen snow?

or

How nice you can have a White Christmas there~

………………………………………

Well, just to let you know, there’s no sign of snowing yet. In fact, it’s been raining quite often. If you have been following my blog from the beginning, I’ve mentioned that the autumn came late this year by two weeks. And Japanese experienced the warmest summer this year with the highest temperature 40 degree Celsius. So I guess this winter is late, too. Another possibility is that it’s a warm winter this year. They had a warm winter last year too. The weather is getting unstable, or you can say crazy. They had little snow last year, but heavy snow a year before that. So, let’s see how’s it going to be for this year.

It should be snowing a little already by this time around, but it didn’t. In fact, the temperature isn’t as low as I thought it should be. I feel like it’s still in autumn, just a bit colder. So, we are not having White Christmas, but a not-yet-White Christmas. I think the global warming effect is becoming more serious by time. Haiz~

The past few days weather was rather bad… Rainy days I mean. The weird thing we found out it that, it’s warmer in rainy days compare to sunny days. What logic is this? Anyone can tell me? We checked in weather forecast also, the temperatures in rainy days are higher than sunny days or cloudy days. It can even go up to 15 degree Celsius.

The day before Christmas, the weather was absolutely good~ Sunny, perfect weather for outing. Hehe.. So we went to Kagamiyama Park (镜山公园), which is about 20 minutes ride from our home. And of course, we took quite some photos again. This time 300+++ photos. Alvin should be uploading the photos soon.. He’s been kinda busy.

We met few residents walking their dogs there. I got the chance to pat this cute doggy (I’m not sure whether this is Chiwawa or not) brought along by an aged uncle who seems to be pretty proud of his obedient pet. And I saw this two Collies! Oohh I just love the two dogs. The doggies also kept looking back at me. How I wish I can hug them~

Stoney took picture of stones of course.

Then Stoney was taken picture together with stone. Haha…

I think I may as well take photos from the back then.. cos —

I’m getting really CHUBBY ~~~ Haiz… Posing with my camera.

I like this one… Innocent.

Jani: I must get a nice picture of this!

The bridge – which I think the water dried up. These are mostly Alvin’s product.

Taken by an old lady who was having a walk with her husband. Lovely couple. The photo would be better if the whole picture would move a bit higher… As the background is trees with plums blooming.

Another picture of both of us in it… Though just the shadow. :p

Most of the photos I took are not presentable. Haiz~ Just a few below that I think pretty nice.

We were surprised to see these flower blooming… at this time? This is just the beginning of winter oh~ This is plum flowers what. I thought it’s only blooming in spring. Anyway, that’s a extra bonus for me. Take it as Christmas present.

These should be the plum flowers before their blossom. Last time we always got this at home. It’s popular especially during Chinese New Year. I like the furry feel of the seed - or whatever you call it. Hmm… Miss home again.

Last piece of maple leave hanging on the branch…

I think this is the seed for the maple tree. It’s high up on the tree or I’ll pick one for remembrance. Hehe..

We should have gone to this park earlier… When the autumn leaves are awesome for photo shooting. Anyway, Now its the botak trees season. I miss autumn.

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