From Hirakata-city, Osaka-prefecture, Japan

 Our vegetable garden is fruitful of many vegetables. From right line to the left line,   -eggplant&tomato&small tomato&watermelon&melon   -cucumber&pimento&corn&cabbage   -welsh onion&komatuna (leafy green vegetable)   -green soybeans, sweet potato Now is the summer time and they grow fast and weed is same, so we (always this is my part!) pull out the weed and it is hard job. I always did at the early time of the day because about 9 AM, sun has very strong power and I sweat very much !  eggplant  cucumber from this side, green soybeans and sweet potato   And today, we catched some vegetables, eggplant, pimento, small tomato, tomato !

We went to the exhibition of Ukiyo-e of Utagawa Kuniyoshi. ( map ) Utagawa Kuniyoshi is not so popular compared with Ando Hiroshige, Hokusai, Syaraku but some of his painting is popular (I know some of his unique painting) so this exhibition seemed to be intersting to me. This exhibition is held at Osaka city museum at tennouji and the erea around tennouji-station is recently reconstructed rapidly, so we planed to walk around this erea and ate lunch and afterthat went to the exhibition. We first went to the shop "Abeno and" and had lunch inside this building we then passed through tennouji park to osaka city museum because this museum is located in this park. We can see the tuutenkaku tower over there. this is osaka city museum Afterthat, we went back to the shopping erea and went to the newly-opened shopping center Q's mall. This day, many people were coming there.

At 1-2 march, we went to ise-shima for vacation trip ( map ) , so today we felt a little tired and spending relax time.(my wife&my son is sleeping now and I spent doing computer with linux and writing like this. ) Ise-shima is very good for trip. It is about 200 km from Osaka, so it took about 4 hour to go there by car using highway. We often used nemu no sato hotel because we can use company's coupon at this hotel and furthermore, atmosphere is very good because this hotel and cottage is inside forest and we can spent time by walking, tennis, riding bicycle, fishing, etc, so we sometimes used this hotel ( this is year 2005 trip article ). This time, we can stay there by 9000 yen(about 90 $) with me, wife,son including breakfast using coupon (we have a given number of coupon per year so this time we use 8 coupon so we can use remaining 16 coupon this fiscal year). this is fresh miekatu (fish shop) located at ise-city and we bought luncheon with raw tuna we had l

We found that we had a chance to do vegetable garden at city's garden place, so we applied it. And we were lucky to be able to do vegetable garden. This time, 4 vacant places are provided and 4 family including us applied this, so all members can have vegetable garden. Our garden place is about 6m long and 3.5m wide, but this is enough space for us. Before plowing (24 April) After plowing (30 April, today) For us, it was hard to plow it. We spend two day for plowing and yesterday, we bought vegetable seedlings (eggplant, tomato, watermelon) and seed of japanese radish and it cost about 80 yen(=1$) for one seedling so total cost was about 700-800 yen. And we bought powder of limestone for nutrition (at above picture, we can see white powder which is powder of limestone) And it might be fun for me and wife and especially our son ! Other family did like this (below). We need much time to have like this.

From 11 march,I was very busy. But recently I had a time to relax, so we did the picnic near my house. Now is the time for cherry blossom and felt relax. Recently due to earthquake, luxury seemed to be bad thing, but in such times, feeling relax and enjoying nature is important.

We went to the natinal museum of modern art, kyoto to see the exhibition of Paul Klee . (we often get ticket from newspaper shop) ( map ) miyako messe Kyoto kaikan inside museum The exhibition is very good, and we walked around kyoto-town. heian jinguu The scenary along river from heian-jingu to sijyou is very beautiful. I like there.

Now is Friday night and this week was very hard time for me. I slept about 4 hour per night almost everyday so I felt very sleepy and very tired. Here osaka is not affected this earthquake and tsunami, but we related very close to the area of tokyo and function of tokyo is very damaged by the plan of stopping power supply, so we must check how much effect we are if power supply of tokyo area is stopped. And like this, this week was finished. (and Japan's fiscal year is closed at March, so those two factor is mixed to boost our work!). Next day (sat.), I must go to office so I sleep now and refresh my brain. But compared with people suffered from tsunami and earthquake and refugees from fukushima pref. where atomic power plant is located, we must thank to our happiness.