The cold wave attacked all parts of Japan, accompanied with a sudden drop of the temperature and a large amount of snow.

It didn’t take much time to have snow over your knees in Tsuwano.

It didn’t take much time to have snow over your knees in Tsuwano.

The residents were surprised at the icicles which were over 1m long, saying “we’ve never seen such long icicles for some decades!”

We tried to make ‘snow rabbits’ remembering childhood.

Then, we had a real good time admiring the well-made cute snow rabbits.

We are looking forward to your continued support this year again.

We had real good time on New Year’s holiday, eating, drinking over and over. (So much fun!)

Wish all of you a wonderful year with lots of smile!

At Haruhi-en Tsuwano

we have only half a month to go this year.

we all started working very hard on cleaning up our house.

We are done with decorating Christmas tree for our Christmas party on 24th when Kids come and join us from a nursery school♪♪

we can’t wait☆＾－＾☆

In Japan, there is a custom that in midsummer season, from August 12 to 15 usually, people offer special prayers to their ancestors. It is believed that during this period, their spirits come visit us to spend some peaceful time together. It is the idea of Obon.

So, our residents’ family members who live in faraway places returned home for Obon holiday this year too, and some came visit our Haruhi-en for family reunion. To us, it is always a wonderful, grateful moment to be part of it.

As an Obon event, we made offerings to the spirits, as seen in the photos below. Those are the cucumber thing, eggplant thing, and some sweet rice dumpling in the plate. Generally, the cucumber thing is regarded as a horse for spirits to ride when coming to our world from their plane. Then, the eggplant thing is to carry their gifts for their offspring. But, there are different stories, ways and beliefs about how, depending on families and places they live. As for sweet rice dumpling, for example, someone says, “we use toasted soybean flour.” Other says, “we make tansy leaf rice dumpling.” In Izumo area, bamboo leaf is used instead.

Anyway, there is the regional diversity of the Obon even though we share the same culture, and it is very fascinating!

It seems like every day is a record hot day.
We hope that you all live well in this August season.

Here at Haruhi-en, everybody is doing well without suffering the summer heat.
One of the secrets to keep well is to eat well, I believe(^^)/

We are often given seasonal vegetable by our neighbors, such as tomato, sunny lettuce, green pepper, cucumbers and so on in this season.
We are growing vegetables by ourselves, too and just harvested summer squash, a big one.

Maybe, this heat spell will be only a few more weeks, hopefully.

So, we will stand this heat a little bit more and stay cool by eating good and healthy food!

As is well known, July 7^th is the day for the Star Festival in Japan.

It is a cultural tradition in which if you write a wish on a strip of paper and tie it to a bamboo branch on the day, your wish will then come true. It derives from the legend of the Vega and Altair.

That day, some kids of the children’s center of our community came to see us with their supervisors and had a small Tanabata party together.

Their beautiful smiles radiated glow as if they cleared up rain clouds in the sky.

Dancing and singing, holding hands together♫

Decorated bamboo branches with wish papers and hand-made colorful ornaments for Tanabata!

May our wishes come true…☆ミ

It was so much a joyful time and everybody looked very happy.(^-^)/

We were grateful for their visit and joyful time together.

(Special thanks to our neighbors for the bamboo branch provided by them.)

There was a fitness promotion festival held by our community the other day and we took part in it as participants with our neighbors.

They provided various exercise programs for our enjoyment.

Everybody was enthusiastically doing activities together and the place was filled with joyful excitement.

We tried bilboquet.  Maybe, it is something that makes you nostalgic for those good old days.

Mrs. T was told tips on bilboquet by a local resident and then, she did it beautifully!

For lunch, we ate vegetable curry, which was cooked by members of local ladies group. It was full of vegetable and very delicious(^^)/

In the afternoon, we enjoyed playing ball throwing game. The staff workers accompanied our residents tried to throw as many balls as possible into a basket, and managed to put only one ball in the basket. But, the kids members in our team played it very well, so, our team won a game. Marvelous!

We are now looking forward to next year’s festival.

We are so blessed and grateful, always.
Thank you all.

Even though it was a drizzling and cloudy day, we all got excited when seeing the beautiful scenery of Hydrangea flowers in the car.

“Wow, this is so pretty!”

“Magnificent!”

“I’m gonna bring along my son here next time.”

They looked completely captivated by the pretty Hydrangea flowers.

“Feeling so good!”, took a deep breath.

Not only Hydrangea, we encountered….

Mrs. M: “Oh, is this a dog?.. It looks too big for a dog… It looks like a cow. ”

Mrs. T: “It is eating so much!”

The cow was just eating grass. She was watching it in amusement.

I think that we can enjoy the Hydrangea season for a while and hope that we can visit some other sites during this wonderful season.

Cute guests from Tadachi Jidou-kan (pre-elementary school) brought us their homemade tea leaves.

They sung a song written about tea pickers cheerfully to encouraged our residents.

“Thank you for coming!”, “Come and see us again!”

They were all smiles even after seeing them off, saying “How cute they are!”

Thank you very much for visiting us!