Human Touch

Well, the past couple of days have been cool. Although things are still kind of busy, I am getting used to it. The great thing is that my grandma is now helping me out with making tea and preparing breakfast as well as often watering the plants, so that is a BIG help!

Today, I took my grandma to a hospital where she had her eyes checked up.
She told me that she was seeing a relative that has been hospitalized for her large intestine problem, so after I dropped her off, I took off taking care of some errands and also picked up a half dozen melon pan for the patient that my grandma was visiting.

Melon pan is a sweet snack bread where there is a sweet crust on top. Quite similar to the coconut bun we have in N. America (can be sold at some bakery shops at any China Town). When I was a little girl, it was seen in a bakery shop selling with other bread, but now that the melon pan has gotten quite popular, there is a stand where they sell only melon pan and do business just fine.

So after that, I returned to the hospital where I had to park the car underground taking out the parking ticket when entering the lot. Yes, this was my first experience parking in a tight parking space, so I was a little nervous, but I handled it okay. LOL

I went to see my grandma at a meeting spot inside the hospital, and went to see the relative on the 4 th floor. I was shocked to see the great change in this patient. I recognized who I was visiting, but a greenish yellow tone of her skin, an uncoｍbed wig covering her head and unchanged facial expression totally shocked me.

"Wow, is she really all right? "
That was my first thought.
The nurse kindly took her in a whirlchair to the meeting room, where we could have a brief talk.
My grandma chatted a little telling her to nibble down the bread, if she can to get better.
Then we were to leave, so I sat beside her and hold her hands, and told her "Keep hanging there. You will be all right. You will get better. Just take it easy, and take your time. But keep your positive thoughts with you".

All of a sudden the face that kept looking down while talked by my grandma raised and looked directly into my eyes. She did not say anything, but her eyes said something to me. "Thank you for believing in me". That is what I felt she was trying to tell me. I felt emotionally moved that I could not say anything back to her for a moment, but padded her back and told her that we would come and visit soon.

This experience made me realize how important human touch is.
Does not matter, how ill the person is, how unattractive the person may appear to be (haven't taken a shower for a while)...all of us need a human touch to keep us feel sane, I think.

I wish that more of us take the time/courage to share a human touch with those in needs, especially people with ached hearts, cause a simple touch can give so much power and positive energy to them.

:) Peace

My new journal link: Blogger

So to ease my HTML work on the index page that appear to expand weekly and to organize my journal section of my homepage a little bit, I decided to use the blogger.com service for my blog entry. I forwarded all of my past entries here, but did so in such a speedy manner that there may be some linking errors. In that case, please kindly notify me by emailing Email me

Thanks!

All your base are belong to us!

All right. This blog belongs to me, so I get to write ANYTHING I want. This is a web space where I freely express anything that I have in my mind for my personal sake afterall, so I shall not care what sort of context to put it here. But well. I am reluctant to write something negative-minded. Cause Why do I bother writing something negative where I could possibly try to perceive the same thing positively?! Anyway, I need to write my feelings honestly just like I do here in my entry today. I am freeeking tired. LOL

Well, my parents took off to Canada where they will be helping my little bright sister move from East to West. I thought that I would be looking after the house alone. Well, there are quite a bit of work to take care of our property.

Water the plants, vegetables, flowers in the morning. Feed Ka-ko-chan, give water and tea to the shrines/buddha we have in the house. Then eat breakfast. Later on the day, feed the carp fish and our dog, Brian, water some mushroom logs, plants and flowers again after the down. Vaccuming the customer's rooms and kitchen, picking up some grass on the garden, doing the laundry, as well as cooking meals. And I want to go to the gym as well as spend a bit of time to prepare myself to return Canada (poor Kumi needs a job and a home in Toronto). So yeah, 24 hrs in a day does not appear to be at all sufficient at this moment. I guess I just need to chill a little and be easy on me, by forwarding some un-urgent work to take care of at a later time, but I do not feel good putting things on the side, when I know that it is awaiting for me to take care of.

Especially cleaning!! It makes me feel as though some spiders and bugs will crowl up on me, if I sat here in the living room and kept mouching on some senbe, chugging on some green tea and watching sumo on TV, instead of vaccuming off every dust that I can see on the wood floor (sorry, the sumo season is now over, so that is a lie).

Anyway, yesterday and today were mad busy. I am exhausted. So yes, I shall get into bed now that the clock is reaching 1:30am. But I need to let out what happened today to get a good nite's sleep and have a fresh wonderful day tomorrow.

I took my grandma to a hospital where she was getting some injections on her knees, as she now often has a bit of pain when she walks. Then she said that she knew the location of the store where we get bags of rice from, so with her offer to instruct me which direction to drive, we hit on the road following the direction given by my grandma. We usually have the bags of rice delivered to us, but having only 5 Kg of brown rice this time, I thought it would be an okay idea to actually drive to the store this time now that I am the gangster of the road.

Well, the store was no where to be found. I drove around here and there, back and forth for probably over 1 hour looking for the shop, but not successful. The traffic was quite busy, so there were not many convenient place to park neither. So I kept on turning the road back to where the store was most likely located, whenever I failed to find it.

My grandma had a map with her, but she complained that her eyes hurt once she realized that we were not successful locating the store, so I tried looking at the map while wating for the signal to change and driving in a hectic traffic.

I kept driving on the street where the store was (according to the map), but the store really was no where to be found. On my third attempt driving in the store's neighborhood, I finally found it. Well, the store was having a construction at the front and on the second floor that its signs were taken off. :(

I parked a car in the parking lot, and went inside the store, and there, I saw the master of the store. This master is always smiley, delivering bags of rice to our house. I know him since I was a little girl, and whenever he came over to our house, he always gave cheerful comments about us, girls in the house and adored us. Well, no reason asked. This gentleman had no child whatsover. So although I loved and still love my dad dearly, whenever the master came over to my house, I felt like treating him like my dad, just to share the love and warmth with him as a girl, you know?

Anyway, I asked for the bag of rice, and asked him how much it cost. He kindly brought the bag to the car and said he already receipt the payment from my dad. How can it be? My dad is in Canada right now. I knew he was making a lie not accepting the payment from me. So I kept on asking, but he just did not accept my money. So I decided to ask my dad and return to the store with the cost again tomorrow, and handed him this banana bread that I baked for him.

I returned to the car where my grandma was waiting, and told her how he did not accept the payment, so I will have to come back again. Then she said: "well, it's because you gave him the banana bread. You should not have given him something like that, when you are buying something from him". :(

I know what my grandma meant. So in fact, I did not hand him the bread until I was to get back on the car. He is a kind of a person who would leave our house without asking for a payment. He always says things like we are too good to him etc. But really, it is him who is extremely generous and down to earth. Who does not want to treat a man with such a great heart with an immense gratitude?

Anyway, my baking the banana bread action was a simple way of expressing my care to him, so it had no negative motives whatsover. But my grandma still said I should not have brought something like that when I was to buy something from him, so I felt a bit hurt. :(

Well, I am going to return to the store with the payment again tomorrow, and make sure he receives it from me. But what would you do in a situation like that where you want to give something to someone you care, and the person end up offering you more than you gave. What kind of manner should I have taken in a situation like this? Do you think that it was my mistake by bringing the baked good on the first place? :(

I find this give and take system often difficult in this country, where we focus a lot on the manner. It sure is a great place to learn how to consider about others though :) Okay. Some funny looking ladies are exercising on TV. It's time for me to go and sleep now. Good nite!

Oh my goodness, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, KA-KO-CHAN?! Ka-ko-chan returns HOME :)

I woke up to my mom screaming really loud with a such an immense joy: "Ka-ko-chan came back now!!"

That's right. The missing Ka-ko-chan came back to our house in the morning. We all gathered at the front of the house to welcome her safe return. It's soo funny how ka-ko-chan recognized our house as her home afterall though. We have absolutely no idea where she disappeared to for a day. But it is really cool that she made it home safely!

My dad immediately offered some fish and Ka-ko pleasantly ate it. My dad brought the cage to where it used to be, and asked Ka-ko-chan to get back inside. Below, you see how Ka-ko-chan going inside the cage. It indeed was a tearful moment afterall. Cause her going back to the cage on her own sort of made us feel as if she acknowledged it as her home although she abandoned us for a day, you know? :) Sweet.

So yeah. Ka-ko came back to our house. How sweet. We are all relieved and happy now :)

After Ka-ko-chan came back, we ate breakfast, and left to visit two temples to visit gravestones of my ancestors. Then we went to check out some clothing at this store, where I found a couple cool tops! Yay. So I took a photo of me wearing one of them. Hehe

I know, the lighting of above photo wasn't good. But oh well.

Deal with it. :) (who cares what I am wearing, you know? hahaha)

Here is a top that I recently finished sewing. Sorry, the lighting is not the bestest, but I did not want to reveal too much of my skin neither. So yeah. :P Notice, the black scarf that I wrapped around my neck is something that I made too.

Hope you like what I made. I will show more work as they are completed. Peace

House Pet, Ka-ko-chan goes MISSING!

When I woke up, my mom told me that Ka-ko-chan went missing 30 minutes after she opened her cage to let her walk around the house. Kako-chan is a crow pet that my dad captured over 1 year ago (for more details, please read the page 4 April 6th & 8th entry. About a month ago, Ka-ko-chan started making noise early from in the morning, so my mom all frustrated with a lack of sleep told my dad to free the crow for good.

So one day, my dad took Ka-ko-chan in a cage and brought to an area where other crows wonder around to let her go. But Ka-ko-chan who for the first time went outside of the cage did not know how to fly, and only chased after my dad like a little baby, having an attachment to him. In that instant, my dad was emotionally moved and gained a fatherhood feeling for Ka-ko-chan; and thus, my dad declared Ka-ko-chan to be our official part of our family. Since then, we started calling her as "Ka-ko-chan", a very adorable pet of us (we put "chan" in the end of female names to show our love towards them).

Since then, we started letting Ka-ko-chan have her morning and afternoon walk to let her practice how to fly, also to play around with all these tools that my dad placed at the front of our house. Then all of a sudden, her mother, who used to make a frequent tearful visit on Ka-ko-chan started attacking on her. What a bully mother!

So we had to start watching the bully mother and protect Ka-ko chan from this harm. Poor Ka-ko-chan though, cause she would still spare a bit of her food in a corner and place a leaf over it (thinking she has hid the food from others noticing) and keep it until her mother's visit (yes, Ka-ko-chan is such a thoughtful baby). But we had to start watching the bully mother from attacking Ka-ko-chan. We initially thought that it was a response of a wild animal that hated Ka-ko-chan from belonging too much to our human world. Whatever the reasons, we did not want the bully mother attacking our Ka-ko-chan, so we were watching Ka-ko-chan at all times.

Then all of a sudden, Ka-ko-chan went missing! So we were like: "shite, the bully mother finally took Ka-ko-chan away. Maybe she killed Ka-ko-chan and dropped it off in a river or something. Maybe an annoyed neighbor decided to capture Ka-ko-chan (ka-ko still makes some noise in the morning. Definitely less now that she has less stress after we started letting her walk outside of the cage). Or Ka-ko-chan just wanted to run away from us.

Who knows, we went looking around the house for over 1 hour before eating breakfast. But we failed locating her, so we started working for the restaurant. A few hours went by. At noon, we spotted Ka-ko-chan's sibling crow, but no Ka-ko-chan found. We looked around our neighborhood once again, but there was no sign of Ka-ko-chan whatsover. :( We have no idea where she disappeared to, but our family pet, Ka-ko-chan went missing. Maybe she was ready to get back to the world where she truly belongs to. But since she does not know how to fly (her feather is not grown fully yet), we worry how she may survive her life where she could be attacked by her bully mother. Hope Ka-ko-chan is all right. We had such a quiet day having Ka-ko-chan missing. What a tremendous energy Ka-ko-chan had on us afterall. I thought that although she is just a little bird, she indeed has a soul afterall that brightens up our family atmosphere.

It's Official NOW-Toronto, here I come!

I purchased a flight ticket from Tokyo Narita to Toronto today! So now it is official that I am leaving Japan to return to my second home country, Canada (Toronto) on June 20th (and arriving on the same date).

So this means I will need to find a place to live. LOL

Bleh, do you know anyone who may have a cozy place for rent? If so, please email me at kumi@soulmanifesto.net

I am not super picky where to live as long as it is closed to TTC.

Anyhow, I have found a new addiction recently: sewing!

I have been sewing and trying to put together pieces of texitiles into something that we call: clothing. I like the process of putting some creative ideas into a 3-D piece (putting a life into my internal ideas).

So I started this process from the drawing of the pattern, cutting off the paper and placing it on a texitle, cutting the texitile and then sewing the pieces together. Then I would frequently place the sewed pieces on me and seeing on the mirror checking how it will look when its completed.

It's quite fun actually, and although I get frustrated sometime, the magic of making things is wonderful :) Right, I am making excuses not to spend time preparing myself for my return to Canada. LOL

Well, I have no way back now, since I purchased the ticket as of today. I shall get into the business. Rock'n Roll, baby. Here I come :)

Moon

While giving water to my grandma's plants early evening tonite, an excess amount of water spilled from the pots creating this puddle on the porch. and there I saw a reflection of moon on the puddle, and it was so beautiful and soothing to my soul.

I love the moon. I like how the moon emits intimate energy, sometime very mysterius and yet comforting to my eyes. I believe greatly on the effect that the moon clycle has on women's system and moods. I have heard something like below in numerious female related books in the past:


"Human beings are affected by the moon. Women especially are affected by the moon and their menstrual cycle is intimately linked to this celestial body. ... The moon regulates your menstrual cycle; * can trigger ovulation and fertile times; affects your emotions and affects the way people
behave and view the world. Women are connected to the moon by our blood, our hormones and our souls".

Over the past 5 years or so, whenever I see the full moon over the sky, I always gained this feeling that my potential was also reaching to its max, and felt as if I could freely live my life fulfilling my own personal idealism thru actions and be ultimately true to my self. It's also true how many of remarkable events in my life was taken on the full moon days.

According to the moon calender, we will have the full moon on May 23rd, one more week from today. I wonder what kind of mind set I will achieve by then. It will be interesting to track my mood change for a week, so I will plan on updating my inner most true feelings on May 23rd. :)