Broadleaves and conifers

Broadleaves are easy to collect, we just need to use a broom. But conifers are different. Especailly if it's a gravel garden like our place, conifers get inbetween small stones. Brooms don't work good there, we need to use bloewrs which are like big hair-dryers.

Hayaokidori website

Not rain fall

Larch tree leaves fall down the trees and ride the wind when it's windy. It looks as if it rains. You can see this only at this time of the year.

Hayaokidori website

Green soybeans

Green soybeans. We Japanese often boil them and spread salt and call them "Edamame". Edamame is good with beer. When you get in a beer house or a beer hall whatever in Japan, you often find people order this edamame thing a lot.

But a lot of people don't know the fact that this is soybean! Because we use different words for "green" soybean and "dried" soybean. Edamame is a word for "green" soybean but we call "dried" soybean Daizu. No relational sounds at all. So if they don't see the process how green soybeans are dried to be "dried" soybeans ( Daizu ), they usually don't know the green soybeans and dried soybeans are same stuff. Maybe this misunderstandings does not happen among English speaking people because they use "soybean" for both.

A bunch of soybeans are getting dried little by little.

Completely dried , some "Daizu" show up.

Hayaokidori website

Cold rain

Haven't updated my blog for a while, being too lazy :(

It has been raining here in Hakuba for a couple of days, it snows at the upper ski slopes as you see. Stay tuned!!

Hayaokidori website

English names

There are many difficult linkages for me to learn abbreviations for English names.

Abbreviations -- Original names
Mary --- Elizabeth
Bob --- Robert
Dick --- Richard

I can find the Bob and Dick in my dictionary but can not find the Mary part. Actually I've learned it from an American guest the other day. I felt this earth almost went round the opposite when he told it to me! :o

I asked him"How can I notice Mary = Elizabeth!? "
He just laughed and said " No idea, some people just say that way".


If it's Eliza, it's easy and no problem. If it's Beth, still okay but..... why Mary! Grrr

There are some other interesting combinations around. Jay is for Jason, Jim is for James. When J for Jim is replaced into T ( Tim ), it's for Timothy.
Chris could be both for Christopher and Christine, Christina.
Steph could be Steve and Stephanie.

I know English is complicated because it's not my mother tongue. Wonder this kind of things are not tough for English speaking people or not ....

Hayaokidori website

First snow and autumn foliage

A distant view of the symbolic Hakuba 3 mountains with the first snow. Please click the picture to see the thumbnail!






I took those autumn foliage pictures early in the morning today when I walked around. They look clearer early in the morning. Please click each picture to see the thumbnails, so beautiful.

Hayaokidori website.

Harvested sweet potatoes 2007

Have to take them out very gently or they break in two.






All potatoes we harvested this year. The green things are sweet potato runners. When people in the generation survived the WW2 find this sweet potato runners, they cook them telling younger generations that they ate them at that time because not enough things around to eat - especially in big cities where not enough farms were around.


A dish of fried sweet potato runners. Nothing special in taste, but I guess even this kind of things must have been very important thing to fill stomaches if there were not enough things to eat. Lately people seem to have better opinions for it becuase they have much dietary fiber.



Daikon - the Japanese raddish. What should I cook with it for tonight?

Hayaokidori website