Siminamiのプチ冒険日記

Hanami Party(2010/4/4)

I went to a hanami party in Ukima park, Itabashi ward, on 4th April.
It's a school event and A lot of students, teachers and stuffs of the school took part in it.

Cherry blossom trees in the park were bloomed about 80-90 percents out of a hundred percents, but the weather was cloudy and a little chilly.
We all were freezed and told 'it's cold today.' all the time.

I bought a large size of pizza for lunch at Pizza hat before I got to the park. I shared my pizza and 16 pieces of it were gone soon.

There was a photo contest. We brought a favorite photo each other. We asked other people if you can show me your photo and then answered some questions "When/Where was it taken?" in English. At last we voted and decided the Most Valuable Photography(M.V.P. in short). A young woman, who took an beautiful aurora in Finland, got the grandprix.

A short story

I borrowed a magazine, whose name is Hiragana Times, from Naomi. today, let me introduce a short story which was written in it.


The theme was 'My Embarrassing Language Mistake.' and the title of the story was 'Why did she leave the coffee shop?'


John was from Australia and he entered a coffee shop in Tokyo. All the tables were full. So, he asked a friendly looking woman if he could sit on the free seat at her desk. He said to her in Japanese 'さわってもいいですか？'

She was surprised and then stood up and left the coffee shop, without finishing her coffee. He didnt understand what happeend.


Japanese author gave him an advise. 'John, you are lucky she didnt call the police. You should have said 'すわってもいいですか？' instead of 'さわって' It means that you asked if it would be ok to touch her.

I think it's tough work to study Japanese for foreigners.

A short story

I'm reading a book of English conversation during my commutes. Popular idioms and key expressions are introduced in it.

It says that a flow of a chat has some patterns in an actual scene. When someone ask you a frequently asked question, it's ok that you should respond to it with a regular expression. And there are a lot of useful words and phrases that express what you want to say. The goal of the book is to say 'goodbye, Mr. Silence.'

Let me introduse an example...(To be continued.)

"OK" hand gesture

Everyone knows the "OK" hand gesture, don't they?

In English conversation class, I learned that it means you'd like your change in coins instead of bills, if you go shopping in Japan.
I didn't know that, so I actually did that hand gesture in shopping stores.

I payed ten thousand yen for some comics on a book store and tried the gesture in front of a staff.
but she ignored me. I thought she didn't notice my action because she was so shy that she didn't look at me at all.

Next I bought DVD of 'Red Cliff Part II' on a discount storeand payed a five thousand bill with a point card.
And I smiled at the staff. but she didn't give me my change in coins.
I thought she misunderstood I agreed to save my points in my point card.

I guess I lost twice of two.

Moving My house

My family have already decided moved our home soon.
We've been cleaning the whole house to get ready for a movement.

when I was cleaning my own room, I found a lot of magazines, comics and reference books. There were dust on the top of them.
I also throw CDROMs of Windows95 away as soon as I found them.
it's too much trouble to take unnecessary goods to a new moving spot, So I put them into a trash box.

At last there were four packs of garbages in my room at that day.
I was so tired. I thought it's a tough job.