daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
I took a snapshot this afternoon and when I put it into Adobe Lightroom, I hovered the mouse cursor over a preset by mistake and the sky turned a pale blue. It reminded me of a summer evening so I decided to keep it. I miss summer!
One of the bonuses of New Year’s osechi is that eventually you can put most of the dishes into a pot and make a nice curry. The lotus, carrots, chicken, and mushrooms makes for a delicious Japanese curry. It’s awesome!
I hope you had a nice day. またね〜
In 2021 I started a couple of new habits which I am somewhat proud of.
One of these is studying Japanese with Duolingo. It’s a lot of fun, and I can definitely see progress. In 2022 I will continue with Duolingo, but also make an effort to use my Genki book, Anki flashcards, and WaniKani in order diversify my studying a bit.
A cool thing is that when I go running and am listening to Japanese songs that I’ve had on my playlist for years, I can understand more and more words. And my listening skills have gotten better too in that I am able to isolate words and phrases that I do not know. However, I wish there was a way to make a quick note when I am running with the unknown word or phrase so I can look it up later. I don’t think Siri can do that while my phone is in my running belt. So I try to repeat the word so I can remember to look it up later. Or maybe I should just remember what song it was from? That may be easier… We’ll see! At any rate, it’s a fun and satisfying learning journey.
We had a few people over today to enjoy yummy food, drinks, and also do some calligraphy! It was pretty cool. I didn’t try my hand at it, but Mariko made a really nice piece!
Our friend Peelander Yellow created some cool artwork too:
It was so fun to see everyone and enjoy each other’s company – a really nice start to 2022!
Here’s the osechi that Mariko and her friends made for the new year. They spent two days preparing all the dishes (I helped by providing cocktails) and everything tasted amazing! I love starting out the year with osechi – it’s such a treat!
And we also had ozōni, the traditional soup with mochi. Yummy!
Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとう！
