Category Archives: blog

The Flowers In My Garden

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I took pictures of the flowers in my garden. 　 It seems that it’s trendy to take a picture with a stuffed toy, so I tried it. How do they look? Is it trendy in your country too?

ハイビスカス
The flower coming out from the flower
花2

花

すいか
Baby watermelon
ハイビスカス2
Hibiscus
とうもろこし
Baby corn
メロン
The seeds I threw after eating melon sprout.
花3

 

 

 

The Liebster Award

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Happy New Year!   I hope you have a great year!

At the end of the last year, when I struggled to write a blog in English,  a comment came in from a Canadian man known as “angrygaijin”.   He said “I nominate you for a Liebster Award”  I replied, “What-  Liebster? not Lobster?”   Reading it over quickly,  it was written about some rules and works.    What kind of game?  I complained him that he gave me an extra work during the busy year-end.  hahaha   Now I understand his favor behind the award.  Thank you very much, angrygaijin (*^_^*)

Then, several days later, I received another award from Sharifah.   She  nominated me for The Versatile Blogger Award.   Wow,  again!  I can’t believe it!  Thank you so much,  Sharifah.   My efforts at writing in English have been well rewarded.   I’ll nominate bloggers for these awards in two posts.

Let’s begin with The Liebster Award.

leibster-blog-award

The Liebster Award is given by bloggers to other bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. The award comes with rules and requires some work.

How does Liebster work?

  •  You are not allowed to nominate the blog who nominated your blog.
  • When you receive the award, you must post 11 random facts about yourself.  (why 11?)
  • Paste the award picture into your blog.
  • Answer the questions posed by the blogger who awarded you.
  • Pass the award onto 11 other blogs (while making sure that you notify the blogger that you nominated them).
  • Write up 11 NEW questions directed towards your nominees.  (11 again!)

I think I should introduce Angrygaijin to you.   He is a Canadian living in Japan.    He writes his blogs in English  Cameron Ohara  and Japanese 外人Blog.

Here are 11 random facts about myself:

  1.  I don’t like alcohol except wines and cocktails.
  2.  I like coffee.
  3.  I don’t like milk.  But I like milk with coffee or cocoa.
  4.  I don’t like raw tomato.  But I like cooked tomato.
  5.  I never get bored in my life.
  6.  I need to drive everyday.
  7.  My car is light blue.
  8.  I have an allergy to pollens.   I have a hard time every March.
  9.  I lived in America for one year.
  10.  I lived in Tokyo for ten years.
  11.  I want to live somewhere abroad in the future.

Here are angrygaijin’s 11 questions answered:

  1.  Have you ever been to Japan?    I live in Japan.
  2.  If yes, how long?  If no, what do you like best about Japan, if anything.    Pretty long
  3.  What languages can you speak?  Japanese: pretty good    English: learning   Korean and Chinese: greeting level
  4.  Have you been to Canada?  If yes, what was your favourite place?    My family has stayed in Vancouver only for several days.   Stanley park.
  5.  If anything, what do you like about Canada? (Please don’t say “Maple Syrup!”)  Speaking of Canada,  NATURE.  Bear, deer and Jastin Beaver (I’m not a fan of him)
  6.  Where you are in the world right now, who was there before you?  Think wayeeee back.    Foxes, raccoons, rabbits… no human
  7.  What upsets you?  What really makes you boil?     Attitudes of my husband and children
  8.  Does your family originate in the place you now live in?     I grew up here.  My husband is from Nagano.
  9.  If you are a blogger, why are you blogging?     Guard against senile dementia.  Mental exercise.
  10.  If you could rename yourself, what name would you change to?    I’ve never thought about it even though I don’t like my name.   I have a policy not to think nonsense. 
  11.  What was your first impression of me?    First impression: interesting   Second impression : versatile   Third impression: what a nice guy! (He nominated me )

And NOW for the main event:

Only half a year has passed since I started my blog.  I was occupied with writing and I couldn’t afford to read other blogs enough.  I’d like to improve my English and read blogs more this year.  In no particular order I nominate the following bloggers including three Japanese.   Most Japanese don’t know this award.   I’d like to spread it in Japan.

  1.  hibiscus rosa noor
  2.  cupcakesakura
  3.  wewanttotellyousomething
  4.  Susie
  5.  tukusigal
  6.  Sharifah
  7.  Jovana
  8. It’s only P!
  9. Ultramarine
  10.  EkaterinaYoghurt
  11.  AdakoMg

Here are my questions for my nominees:  (please correct my grammatical mistakes on your blog if any

  1. What is your New Year’s resolution?
  2.  What time do you go to bed?
  3. What foods do you like?
  4. Which celebrities do you like?
  5.  When is your happy time in your life?
  6. What is your favorite color to wear?
  7. Do you collect anything?
  8. What kind of music do you like?
  9. If you were given USD 10,000 and had to spend in a few days, what would you spend for?  (convert your country’s currency calculator )
  10. What do you think of your blog?
  11. What do you think of my blog?
 
I look forward to nominees’ answers (^^)/~

Happy Yuan is My New Name

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I recently noticed something.   When I do a google search for my username “happyuan,”  the terrifying sentences appear at the bottom of the page.(In Japan, google’s address is google.co.jp, not com.  The sentences are Japanese.  So I don’t know the same situation in overseas)

To response to a complaint we received under the US Digital millennium Copyright Act., we have removed 19 results from this page.  If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removals at ChillingEffects.org.

What!  What’s going on???  And I clicked to check the reason of removal.  The next words appeared.

Child Pornography Complaint

Oh my goodness!!!  According the letter, Google received this complaint in 2007.  Why does this message appear now?  When I started this blog, I didn’t see it.  I wonder if there was another happyuan?  and was the person involved in child pornography?  I decided to change my name.  New name is Happy Yuan.   I just split it in two. lol   I hope problems won’t occur again.

Yuan is Chinese language (I’m Japanese, though)  It’s the same with “yuan” as Chinese currency.  I use this because I like its pronunciation.  When you type “happy yuan” to search, the result includes Happy Yuan Xiao Festival.  It seems New Years Festival.  It sounds good.

What Day Is It Today?

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What day is it today?

Today is my birthday.   Happy Birthday!  Thank you! (double role)

And today is the Investment Day in Japan.  That’s why I like investment?

And today is the anniversary of my favorite singer, Janis Joplin’s death.   I’m glad I have things in common with her.  I believe she lives happily, singing blues in heaven.

And today, I created Happyuan Facebook page.   Hooray!   l upload my selected photos from Pinterest, which I wrote about before.    https://happyuan.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/i-started-pinterest/  I’ve already uploaded several photos.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Happyuan/476873692331627

This page is community site.  Please feel free to post, leave comments and write to me if you have any feedback.   I would appreciate it if you would give a like to the page.

In addition I started Twitter yesterday!    https://twitter.com/happyuanblog    I don’t really know about Twitter yet.

Am I addicted to social networking services?

I Changed My Blog Theme

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I may get bored easily.   I felt like changing something.     The themes WordPress has are not enough.     There might be more if I were able to customize.   I finally found this lovebirds.   How do you like it?   As a profile photo, I decided to use Japanese face mark.   Previous photo,  Kumamon is enough famous already.   He doesn’t need my help to enhance his visibility.  lol  I’d like to spread Japanese face mark from now.   Color is yellow.  Japanese is belong to the yellow race.  However our skin is not yellow like this!

I Started “Pinterest”

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I opened my account at “Pinterest”  Photo sharing service.

http://pinterest.com/

Pinterest began in the United States, so I suppose many Americans have already known it.   But it’s not popular in Japan yet.   It seems that users are mainly women.  It’s very easy to use the sites.   It doesn’t need English skill much.  (good to me^^)   It’s very nice to be able to share Pinterest’s photos with Facebook friends.  Maybe with Twitter too.   I’m not belong to Twitter yet…  In the beginning I thought what was interesting???   But I found it interesting  in browsing through.   I search for nice photos for my collection every day.  What a waste of time!   I also want to upload my photo works some day.  I heard that Japanese on-line shopping company “Rakuten” invested in Pinterest.  Good decision!

http://global.rakuten.com/en/

Social networking services are now very popular throughout the world.  Recently, there seems to be voice posting service too.  But it’s not easy to monetize those services.   Pinterest for free,  this blog for free  internet for free.  What a good age we live in.   According to the newspaper,  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “we don’t provide the service to make money.  we want the social bond of people to  strengthen”   Investors may feel at a loss.  Stock became half price of the first listing.

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/stock-chart

I think people in this modern era seek for spiritual relationship rather than material wealth.  After people are filled with a certain amount of material thing, do they desire for spiritual relationship with people having similar taste on the net?   Not only family and community but friends on the net …   By the way, how do American make so many Facebook friends?  hundreds, thousands friends…

I spend time for  SNS,  even not bringing money.  Especially it takes time to write this blog, translating with a dictionary(This blog is English version of my original one. Look at the personal link)  Why am I doing  these?   I feel the unique world on the internet.  I feel the warmth of people I meet there.    It’s very interesting and it’s fun.   Thank you for reading my blog(*^.^*)   An accounting teacher said only what is written down means existence.   No record means non-existence.   I ‘d like to leave something by writing this blog while I’m alive.

Japanese Culture Emoticon and Gyaru

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Reading blogs written in English, I noticed the difference of emoticon between Japan and other countries.

When I first saw smiley : )  I didn’t understand the meaning. Now I understand I should look it sideways.  It is fun that smiley turns pictogram on WORD. I tried another : (   also changed.  How cute! Is there any other convertible emoticon?

There are  many emoticons  in Japan. Japanese popular emoticons are the followings.

(^^) smiling, (T_T)crying, m(_)m bowing, (@@)surprised, dizzy, (>_<)pain, failure, (- -;) embarrassed.  Can you understand?  My favorite emoticon is (≧∀≦)  I use this in various cases as joy, shy,  embarrassed, but I wonder if this is garbled here….  Various people creat their original emoticon from simple one to complicated one. For example, ” I Love (*v_v)σ ★―You―★”.

The other day I found some blogger who is a British girl uses the same type of emoticon.

http://cupcakesakura.wordpress.com/

She is very cute.  She looks like Japanese gyaru. Gyaru have dyed hair, from dark brown to blonde(she doesn’t need to), decorated nails, and dramatic makeup. There seems to be several kinds of Gyaru.

Hime(princess) Gyaru

Gothloli (gothic & lolita) Gyaru

These gyaru fashion is  popular in young people.

Then I introduced “Tokyo kawaii TV” to her. This TV show focuses on gyaru fashion, a lot of cute goods,etc.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/kawaii/english/index.html

But this TV station seems not to allow it on YouTube.  I couldn’t find it. So I link the different one instead. They are university students.

I think Japanese girls tend to be cute and childish rather than being grown-up or sexy.  That is opposite to the girls in western culture. Am I right?

I’ll introduce not only personal matters but Japanese culture in this blog (^^)/