Some ways to live cool

Last time, I wrote that there are other ways to live cool in order to survive the hot and humid summer, but I'm happy to introduce some of them this time.

Most Japanese are likely to feel cool when they look at the flag above.  The Chinese character drawn in red in the middle means "ice" and the one in blue in the bottom represents "wave".  The tiny green objects drawn near the Chinese character represent  a lot of birds flying over the sea.   The wave and houndstooth designs are drawn as a symbol of coolness for Kimono, cotton kimono for summer, and pottery as well.

Morning groly and golden fish in the picture below are also popular design to represent the summer, and they are used for various things dating back to the olden times.

Now, I'll also introduce popular food in the summer. 

First one is shaved ice!  I introduced the flag of the ice earlier, and if you see this flag hung in front of a restaurant, that means you can eat a bowl of shaved ice as in the photo below. Right? You will probably understand it's becoming cool when you see the "ice" flag.

The shaved ice of this photo has combination of toppings; adzuki beans (we call this Anko) with sweetened condenced milk on top, powdered green tea sauce (Maccha sauce), and white bolls made of rice powder.  However, it used to be simpler in the past; there is no topping but only with the sauce of strawberry, melon, and lemon.

They really help you to feel cool, but please be careful not to eat a mouthful of it, or your head gets pounding!

Next one is Soumen, white Japanse noodles made of wheet flour. This is a common dish in the summer.  They are served cold and eaten with Tsuyu, kind of a light seasoning soy sauce. We dip the Soumen into the sauce.  I often make this dish for lunch.  They go down well even when there is no appetite.

The last one is eel (Unagi).  It has been eaten by Midsummer Day of the Ox (Doyo) for a long time...

It is said that Doyo is the name for the special period that separates each four season from the next; which came from the ancient Chinese five elements idea.  In the very hot dog days of summer, we eat nutritious eel, which has been thought as good for our health in the summer.

It is very tasty and makes me feel healthy for sure, but recently, it is no longer readily available.

This Monday was the Ox of the dog day and we were able to eat eel for the first time in a long time, and I've got the energy to update the blog.

Make it cool!

I really agree with making it as simple as Val says.

Year by year, too many things have gathered in rooms. Too many thoughts have been accumulated in minds. Most of them are not indispensable. They just end up sufforcating us. A simpler life gives us space in which a nice breeze can go through.

It's the height of summer right now. You know, Japanese summer is incredibly hot and humid. So we need to contrive some ways to live cool and comfortably to survive the summer. Making the room simple is surely one of them!  Sitting in a simple, clean room and setting a wind chime at the window, it can make you feel a bit cooler. The room full of things won't be very successful.

Space is a crucial point to survive the terrible summer.

Come to think of it, cutting thick plants before the midsummer is my every year task.  After cutting the plants, I plant some blue-colored flowers and cool looking foliage.  Visually, it helps to feel cool.

(By the way, morning glory, bell-shaped flowers, is very popular in Japan as summer flowers.  They open their flowers in the morning and give us their lovely refreshing smiles. We call it Asagao and write in Kanji as "morning face")

Shaping our daily lives comfortably is associated with our blog's main idea, right?

There are many more ways to tell you, but  it would become very long, so I will write them another time.

I hope you all enjoy your summer!

Make it simple

There are tons of things I'd like to tell, say or explain on this blog.

Yet I am wrestling with time and issues and errands and...

You see what I mean... but today, I'd like to share

What these past months have prompted me to do:

Aiming at what is simple.

There are tons of things I am glad I have done,

Tons of things I wouldn't change,

Yet there is one thing, for sure,

That needs improvement with me.

I am a perfectionist, and I wouldn't like

To give up completely on that.

Still, my craving for making things better,

Nicer, my need to improve, beautify,

Sometimes pushes me to do the opposite.

Sometimes I just do too much.

This is me, this is what I am,

And I love it.

I love doing far more things than what I am supposed to do.

But yes, sometimes, it is too much,

Or too complicated,

Or too many things at the same time too.

And even if I get a kick out of it,

Sometimes it leaves me

Bitter, reproachful, or exhausted.

As I mentioned before, I've had a hard time recently.

And the spring months that usually are the sweetest,

Turned out to be the worst.

Yet, I learned a little more about myself,

About my life and the way I lead it.

In my passion for doing well

I forget that you can never control everything,

You can't make everything beautiful or great,

You have to accept to do less,

Accept to say 'No, I can't',

You must let go, let flow,

Stop worrying about what's meaningless.

In short you can also

Make it simple.

I have learnt, again, that too much and too many

Can lead you to be unfocused.

I have realized, too, that

Everything we choose to do

Not only on a philosophical level

But in our daily lives, on a practical level,

Every little thing we do has a consequence. 

Time spent on one thing will not be spent on another,

Therefore it is important not to do everything all the time

And at the same time,

But to choose and focus.

This has meant for me, in the past weeks, less time

Spent on laundry, work and errands,

And more time spent lingering and chilling out

With my beloved kids.

As the photos hint at, I've been blessed

With a little week end near the Atlantic ocean.

And the occean always does this trick on me:

It is huge, it is vast, it is strong,

Yet inspires freedom and simplicity.

And that's the trick,

Simple is Beauty!

Letting out

I am very sorry to hear that May was so bad for Val.  I really hope June has been the opposite for her.

My daughter has been also in a stressful situation at work, as a new employee, and it seems to have started to affect her health.  The other day, we went to a bedrock bath, which are popular in Japan now, to detox, and talked a lot so that she could let all her stress out.  She told me she felt that she had lost her genuine self due to extreme stress.  She was urged to solve her problems but it seemed to me as if she ended up wallowing in her stress.  It is hard to solve all the problems she has at once, but I believe that being able to let out her feelings may have been of some help for her to recuperate her positive energy and deal with her difficulties.

Breathing starts from exhaling.  If you breathe out as much as you can, you will breathe in a lot of new fresh air.  Letting it out gets rid of all the bad things, then you will be able to let new, good things in, just like Val says in her post, "Bad brings out good".

It is quite heartbreaking for me to see my daughter suffering from stress, but every time she experiences hardship, I see her growing stronger.  Hardships might be the seeds that grow into beautiful flowers.  As a mother, what I can do is limited; just puring out my love energy and praying for her is all I can do.  As can Val.

Lots of love to Val and you all.

Dodging the bullets

I've been away for quite a while, haven't I?
Reading with delight Sachi's gracious posts, and feeling a little apart from it all.
Truth is, May has been..ahem, atrocious. In many ways.
I hadn't been through so much stress for ages, and stress is no stranger to me.
Then the sunlight hit again. Then health and radiant days came back again.
And in the midst of it all, I've been witness these last days to a number of casual,  mean events.
I've been reminded that although Man is given the beautiful gift of life - LIFE! - he too often, too readily uses this magnificent gift for petty crusades, low arguments, meaningless fights.
I've been witness these last days to cowardly revenge, linguistic integrism (hello, anti-English crowds, what a fight you're having here!), wrong accusations, small country town gossip, racism and rejection of someone different. And this is an open-ended list...
And it all boils down to such a loss of time.
Such carelessness for that gift we were all given.
To such negativity.
Turning petty details into fights. Cajoling revenge like a newborn.
Attacking the weakest. Teaming with the strongest, often happening to be the dumbest.
Enjoying to annoy, avoiding to help, focusing on antagonism.
Refusing to breathe, refusing to understand, refusing to let go, refusing to be kind, refusing to listen.
But Valerie, this doesn't sound like you!? Usually, not.
But May was bad, and bad brings out good.
And seeing what good I have, what good I may not have always been aware of, I see what good is spoiled.
How Man is too often daft. What a mess he makes of so many beautiful things.
What a waste. What a shame. How violent.
And it feels like all these little petty events I've been witness to surround us like bullets.
Being dragged into fights, having to speak up to defend rights, feels like dodging bullets.
I've been dodging a few bullets. I've had to shoot a few. And I dislike this.so.much!
Except flying to the rescue of the oppressed. That, I love :)
But at least I'm thinking that this blog's idea - enhancing, praising, favouring beauty and peace - wasn't such a bad idea. Wasn't it?
Love to all of you folks.

Butterfly

Whenever I see butterflies, I remember all the butterfulies 

that spent their whole lives in my tiny garden 

until they fluttered away in to the blue sky.

They had a really big appetite during their caterpillar stage

and it seemed to me that they looked so hard to find places to spend their pupa stage.

One day after a long, long pupa stage, 

they emerged as beautiful butterflies and fluttered away, up into the blue sky.

It was an absolutely amazing scene.

Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillars　

Swallowtail Butterfly 

Watching and praying

(These are my posts in which I wrote about them.)

Looking at butterflies fluttering in the air,

resting for a moment on flowers,

or consuming nectar from flowers,

I feel a warm, loving affection.

We experience good and bad in our lives, 

and sometimes, it feels both physically and spiritually too tough.

However, one day we come through the hardest times

and eventually, catch the sunshine like those butterflies.

Everything goes round and round.  

We are all connected to each other.

Everything is ONE.

So there is nothing to worry about.

Speaking to flowers

The same flowers as last year are blooming 

at the same place in my tiny garden.

I thought they had died.

So I was delighted when I saw them open their petals and blossom.

It was invisible, but surely there was "life" under the ground.

The flowers are living in "this moment" brightly 

in the warm sunshine,

 swaying in the soft breeze.

*

I had a chance to read an article by the tree doctor, Konami Tsukamoto,

with which I was greatly impressed.

She has poured her love out towards trees and flowers.

She says in the article that she once felt that a tree needing care said to her that

 it didn't want any medical treatment, but wanted to be a part of a natural cycle.

Then she thought it was arrogance to cure the tree.

After that she sincerely went to the tree (dozens of times)

and listened humbly to what she could do for it.

Now the tree bears an abundance of flowers every year in Ashikaga Flower Park.

This Wisteria photo is from Ashikaga Flower Park in Japan. 

 You can read Wisteria Story and see more photos here.

*

 Opening our minds and pouring love, 

 humbly facing it and speaking to it.

It may require a lot of efforts and pain,

but it also teaches us a lot of things

Eventually we recieve ultimate bliss as its response.

  

This may be said for any occasion in our lives, I think:)

"The dandelion has my smile.."

I learn a lot from nature.

Nature shows me everything: 

patience and perseverance, toughness and harshness,

interconnectedness that Val wrote in her post, 

capacity to heal, beautiy and piece..

and wholeness and LOVE.

We have ups and downs in our lives.

But if we truly believe that we are all one, we are wholeness,

whatever may happen, we would be all right;

we would be able to feel peace of mind, I think.

"I have lost my smile,

but don't worry.

The dandelion has it"

"...everything around you is keeping your smile for you.

You don't need to feel isolated. You only have to open yourself

to the support that is all around you, and in you.

Like the friend who saw that her smile was being kept by the dandelion,

you can breathe in awareness, and simle will return."

(from "Peace is Every Step"by Thich Nhat Hanh.)

It is heartening to think that we are all one...

"Peace is every step.

The shining red sun is in my heart.

Each flower smiles with me.

How green, how fresh all that grows.

How cool the wind blows.

Peace is every step."

(also from Peace is Every Step)

We are all children of Mother Nature. 

Maybe we've just come too far away from what we truly are,

and forgotten our innate ability.

Wishing you a beautiful and peaceful day :)

                                                                   Sachi

That yin-yang thing

I am not very yin-yang literate. I mean, I don't know too much about it.
But it has fascinated me for ages, this concept of interconnectedness, the fact that opposites are not really opposites. The fact that we need both.
From the experience I've had so far (very recent experience, and older experience too), I have gathered already that from darkness arises light. I've noticed that bad moments, feelings, worries, tend to enhance so beautifully, so vividly the beauties of our life.

The closer hardship gets, the more me value and cling to what's solid and pretty. To the love in our life. We cry, we fight, but how we savour those little drops of happiness.
It's sometimes called resilience. It's sometimes called seeing the silver lining. Cynics would call it brain-washing or wishful thinking, and people of faith would see God out there. Kelly Hampton hosts a blog I've come to love for her ability to see the good, the beauty. Or to look for it. Today she calls it 'service recovery'.

I share all of this. I dig beauty. I dig the search for it. And I dig how days of ugliness bring me closer to it. There is after all so much light. And it's a shame we so often forget to see it or feel it deep inside, for lack of time and for the sake of endless errands. I believe we should spare a minute everyday to stop, stop everything, breathe and remember. Remember to pick up that light.

A place for grief, a place for grace

And that is how a human life evolves with the harmony and balance it needs,

in-between contrasts and extremities, ups and downs.

Always soaking up beauty.

Today I have a day off, and I am sorting out my photographs.

 

Photography is one of my passions. So is my family. So is true friendship. So is travelling. So is Nature.

So there is a lot to do.

Watching the past photographs, from now back to january, I see moments of sunlight, bathing in the lake, frolicking in the snow, I see grey clouds and dazzling light. I see so much, in such a little time.

I see things lost and things gone, I see the future ahead, wearing the most beautiful smiles possible.

In that very improbable, precarious, transitory place of now, I see beauty.

Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened

I see a place for grief, a place for grace
 

And lots of beauty out there.