How to Keep Our Motivation

How to Keep Our Motivation

Hi there! How are you doing? I am glad that I can update my blog again!!

Today I want to write about how to keep our motivation. I think everybody has experienced to set up some goals. When you do this, I am sure you have lots of motivation. However, after a while, you figure out that the goal is more difficult than your imaginaion and start losing motivation. It happens to everyone.

To avoid losing motivation, I like setting up small goals. Every time I achieve the small goals, I can feel accomplished and fulfilled. The feelings are good for me to keep motivation.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, I finshed reading a book which has around 1000 pages in English. When I started reading books in English, I had set up the book called ” The Pillars of the Earth ” as one of my small goals. I started reading some kid’s books like “Magic Tree House series” for the first time in English. Since I am a grown up, I couldn’t enjoy reading such books at all. Every time, when I almost gave up to improve my reading skills in English, I imagined the 1000 page book in my mind. It took eight years to achive the small goal, but I finaly did it!

After finishing to read the 1000 page book, I could feel more confidence to read something in English. I think I have improved my reading speed as well. I think before the 1000 page book, I had set up much smaller goals to read as well. When you conquer something, you can gain more confidence and this brings you more motivation. When you achive more difficult goals, your motivation increases.

I want to set up “Gone With The Wind” as my next small goal. The book has over 1000 pages and is a classic. I am weak at reading classics in English. So, it will bring big confidence when I finish reading this! I hope this blog post sounds useful to you to improve yourself.

Thank you for reading my blog post. See you around in two weeks!

-Yumi

Keep Going Is Very Important!

Hello there! How have you been so far?

It’s been a while since I posted my latest blog entry. I am sorry for the delay again. I had been in Italy to make my dreams come true! I will write about my studying abroad in Italy on my other blog later. Please check it out if you are interested in what I did.

Today I should say I want to show off what I did a bit because I have been writing journal entries in English almost every day for ten years! I started writing something in English on the 15th of November in 2008 on Lang-8 (It is a langauge site, mainly to improve our writing skills.). Since I was in Italy this month, I couldn’t check out the date.  Today I posted my 3138th journal entry!!! Woo Hoo!

Of course, it was not easy at all. First, I started learning conversational English to study abroad in the States to take many porcelain painting classes. I don’t count how many classes I had taken, but I had kept going back to the States every year for eight years. I sometimes stayed there for six months! ( I can’t stay there straightly for 6 months, so, I stayed there for two months, went back to Japan and stayed there for two months again, went back and stayed there for another two months.) I really do appraciate my husband and daughter who have supported me a lot to make my dreams come true! I also do appreciate my American friends who have supported me to let me stay at their houses or teach me English!! Thanks to them I have learned American culture which relates to their language a lot.

I think writing in another langauge helps our reading skills a lot. In ten years, I can come to read more advance books in English. I have read 310 books in English and am still reading 8 books now. I also think writing skills helps our thinking skills. While keeping to write something in English, I think I have improved to think something what I want to say in English. It really helped my conversational skills. I can respond English immediatly, write something in English immediatly and I don’t translate what I want to say or write in English from Japanses at all. I read books in English without translating Japanese as well. You know, conveasations are going through so fast and if you can’t catch up with them, you don’t understand what people are talking about. You have to understand the conversations right now in their langauge without translation. I think writing journal entries helped to improve my such skills a lot.

I know my written English is not perfect enough. So, I would love to keep writing something to improve them more in English! Even so, I am happy that I could achieve one of my goals that I have set up when I started learning conversational English.

Via learning conversational English, I feel like I have learned life lessons. We can’t build something one day. If we want to complete something, it will take a long time. So, every time I feel like I almost give something up that I really want to complete, I try to say this to myself. I could achieve some goals in English, so I can do anything I want to do!! I think English gave me lots of self-confidence.

Compared to ten years ago, my goals have changed. I need to learn Italian more than English. I want to make my body better ( I am involved in bulding muscle things. Well, don’t misunderstand me. I am not interested in being a bodybuilder at all, lol. ) . Learning Italian and training muscles are not easy for me at all, but I would love to try them out because I know my life is only once! I hope I will be able to keep writing something in English for another ten years and will post another journal entry about this ten years later!!

Thank you for reading! See you around again in two weeks!

-Yumix

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Is The Reason Why I Have Been Learning Conversational English Part 2

Hello there! How have you been so far? Since here is still really muggy, I am super lazy to do something. I do apologize for the delay.

Today I want to write about something English. A couple of days ago, I finished the Trevor Noah’s book in English. He is a comedian from South Africa and now lives in the States. He is very popular in the States. Since my American friend likes him, while staying at her house, I had seen him a lot on his TV show. Most of the time, understanding jokes in English is tough for me because jokes always relate to their culture references. If you don’t understand the culture, even though you understand what people are talking about, you never ever get why it’s funny.

If you are interested in different culture, I high recommend reading his book. You can figure out there are so many different worlds, society or culture in this world.

Anyway, I bought the e- book for one dollar at Amazon Japan. I figured out it was a bargain. I love reading any kinds of books in English to improve my reading skills. For some reason, Amazon sometimes makes products’ prices down. I was lucky to find the deal  then. Now, it costs around 7 dollars at Amazon Japan. We have the Japanese translation version of his book as well. It costs around 20 dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just don’t understand why it’s so expensive. The book was really good indeed. I enjoyed reading it and it has become one of my favorites. However, Trevor Noah is not popular in Japan AT ALL. How many people know who he is in Japan? Probably the majority of us don’t know him. I am sure nether my husband nor my daughter know of him. If my American friend didn’t introduce him to me, I also wouldn’t know of him at all. I understand it costs to translate into Japanese, but it’s too expensive! E ridicolo!

Now, I am reading Kain and Abel by Jeffery Archer from England in English, and I really really love his books as well. He has become one of my favorite authors to read something in English. I can say the same thing in his book. I bought the Kain and Abel e-book for one dollar at Amazon Japan. Then, I found out it normally costs for 10 dollars. Then, Japanese translation version costs 20 dollars because Japanese version has two separate books for one book. Each book costs 10 dollars.

If you love 20’s culture, I recommend his book as well. Somehow, this book reminds me of Frank Sinatra and his songs. I love people who have strong wills or ambitions and make their dreams come true! This is a someone’s success story that you really can enjoy reading.

If I didn’t handle English. I would have to spent more money to read their books of the Japanese versions. My other favorite British author Ken Follet’s books are the same. I didn’t notice the fact until now. I guess I can say the same thing to buy DVDs at Japanese Amazon. It’s always more expensive to buy DVDs with Japanese subtitles or dubs. So, I always buy import versions that don’t have Japanese subs or dubs at all. They are really cheap.

I can say that when we read original books in English, it’s fun and when we see original movies in English, It’s much fun because we can hear original actors voices! It’s much better than hearing Japanese dubs.

I do want to keep learning conversational English because I can take advantages from these facts!

Thanks for reading my blog post and I will post in two weeks again!

-Yumix

 

 

I Achieved My Goal!

Hello there! How have you been so far? It’s getting extremely muggy here. I hope you all are doing good.

Today I want to be proud of myself! I started writing journal entries every single day in English in November, 2008. I just started learning conversational English then. I simply wanted to improve my writing skills in English.

Today, I wrote my 3000th journal entry in English! It took almost ten years to achieve it, but I did it!!!!!

To think back in ten years, I sometimes couldn’t write journal entries, but I always tried to keep writing. I think writing journal entries in English really helped to improve my reading skills. Now, I can enjoy much more advanced books in English.  This gave me lots of confident that I can do anything I want to do. This definitely motivated me up, and I want to keep doing to achieve my goals. I can feel that I can reach lots of goals if I just keep going. So, I definitely do! You will see what I will achieve even though it will take a long time.

Life is short, everyone! Stop wasting time to spend time for stupid things!! I hope everybody is having a fruitful day!

See you here soon again!!

-Yumi

See you soon here again!!

 

This Is One of The Reasons That I Want To Learn Another Language

Hello there! Really long time no see! I am very sorry for the delay. I had been very busy with painting, traveling around the States and so on. Now, I finally have settled my life normal and started blogging again. I will update my other art blog soon as well.

Today I want to write about my thing a bit.

A couple of days ago, I finished reading a book which was originally written in Spanish. I read the English version of the book. Since my first language is Japanese, of course, I don’t think I could understand the book perfectly. However, I felt the book was one of the bests which I have ever read in my entire life. It was my first time to feel the way when I read English books.  You might be curious which book I read. You can see the book title and read some reviews here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1232.The_Shadow_of_the_Wind, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2051256._?ac=1&from_search=true, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15827788?ac=1&from_search=true

 

After reading it, I bought the Japanese translation version. Right now I am reading the same book in Japanese. While reading, I can’t stop thinking that I wish I could read Spanish! If I could handle it, I did enjoyed reading the original one. I am very curious which translation version is better than the other one between English and Japanese.  I can compare between the English translation version vs the Japanese one. I will write the review after I finish reading the Japanese one on Goodsread. You will be able to read my review there then. I think it’s an interesting way to learn another languages. I want to read two versions of the same books from now on when I find interests in the book.

I am learning both conversational English and Italian, and I am thinking that I want to start learning Spanish after I improve my Italian. One of the goals for my Spanish will be to read my favorite Spanish authors books in Spanish.

I think it’s endless to learn another languages. When I started learning conversational English, I never ever thought I would study Italian. Now, I started thinking studying Spanish. Life never makes me feel bored. I am feeling like I am rowing a small boat to find a land named a goal in the ocean called adventures. I still don’t find any goals yet, but I am enjoying rowing my boat.  I can say that another languages definitely have open my horizons.

Thank you for reading my blog post.  I will update my blog constantly again. Stay tuned!

Imaginary Friend

Hello there! How have you been so far? I am still busy with homework from my painting school. My teacher makes me upset a lot with the assignments because she doesn’t like anything I design. Well, it’s life, right?

Anyway, today I want to write about imaginary friends. A couple of days ago, I finished reading a book in English. The book is for children and written about the protagonist’s imaginary friend. This made me remind me of my imaginary friend when I was three years old.

Have you had an imaginary friend when you were a kid? Yes, I had. When I was three years old, my parents bought their own house, and we moved to the place. I had some friends in my previous place, but I had no friends in the new place. I have a younger sister, but I was an only child then. After moving, I started following my mom because I was scared to be alone where I was not familiar. She sometimes told me that stop following her, but I had never quit it.

One day, my parents bought me a swing. I was playing with it with my favorite teddy bear in our small yard. I thought if I could have a human company, it would be great. Then, a boy showed up from the gate of our back yard. He looked much older than me. I thought it was a bit weird that somebody showed up from the way, but I was glad to see the boy. He asked me if he could join me. I said yes, and we enjoyed playing together. I asked him where he lived, he told me four doors down. When my mom called me from our house, I told him that I would be right back. When I went back, he was not there. Since I didn’t ask his name, I couldn’t call him.

My mom asked me who I was playing because she heard my talking voice. I told her that I met a boy, and he and I were playing with the new swing. She seemed to be happy to hear that. After that, I med two boys, one lived in our next door who was one year older than me, and the other one lived in two doors down who was same age as me in our neighborhood. I made friends with them, and I forgot the boy whom I played with the swing.

Somehow, all the sudden, when I was around seven years old, I remembered him. I asked about him to my mom if a boy lived in four door down. That’s because since then, I had never met him. My mom said that there were no boys there because the house was a dormitory for nurses.  I probably mixed up our next door boy and four door down boy together. However, I thought that boy was much older and taller than them.  He didn’t look like them. I asked the boys how we met. They shared their memories, but they didn’t relate to the swing. Then, they and I visited the house where he told me that he lived in, but we couldn’t find any boy there.

So, what did I see? Did I play with a ghost? I think that was my imaginary friend. I was always lonely without any friends in the new place. My mom was always busy with settling up their house. Then, I created the boy. I don’t know why it was a boy who was much older than me. Does it make sense to you?

In the book the protagonist could see his imaginary friend whenever he wanted. However, in my case I saw him only once. I have never seen him again. Even so, can I call him as my imaginary friend, or he might be a ghost?!

Thank you so much for reading my blog post. I hope I will update my other blog (My Porcelain Painting Blog) in two weeks.

See you around here again in two weeks!

 

-Yumi

 

My Review in 2017

Merry Christmas! How have you been so far? I hope you are having a happy moment with your family.

I took this beautiful Christmas tree photo at The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Osaka when I had dinner there with my family.  I will write about this on my other blog entry some time.

I want to review my year this time, and this is supposed to be the last blog entry for this year. I will update my other blog, my porcelain painting blog at the very end of this year, though. Please visit my other blog then!

At the beginning of this year, I made some new year’s resolutions. I do this every year. I can be proud of myself with two things that I achieved. First, I lost 4.5 kg with exercise. Now, I got back a very flat stomach, and I can wear anything I want, even a bikini, lol! This makes me very happy. Secondly, I finished reading 38 books, 9889 pages in English! This year I focused on reading more advanced and thicker books. I am glad that I can enjoy reading in English now. Beside these, I almost finished my current porcelain painting course. I am going to the final course next year. I am getting closer to my goal!  I started learning Fair Isle techniques in knitting. It was a long time dream for me. I am glad that I finally made this come true.

On the other hand, I feel ashamed with something that I couldn’t achieve. I didn’t study conversational Italian before and went back to Italy. Of course, I couldn’t communicate with people in Italian at all. After I returned to Japan, I started learning conversational Italian. My progress is very slow, but I want to keep going. I wanted to knit something with an English pattern, but I didn’t do this. I wanted to get a higher award from the city art show, but I couldn’t.

Next year I want to get a higher award from the city art show. I want to make a master piece that I can be proud of!!!!  I want to lose at least 3 kg more and build more muscles. I especially want to lose fat around my waist. I want to read more advanced and thicker books in English. I hope I will be able to finish my final course of my porcelain painting school, I mean I want to finish it at the end of March in 2018. I want to learn crochet. I want to knit something with an English pattern. I will keep studying conversational Italian and want to memorize basic stuff. These are more concrete wishes for me, and of course, I want to stay healthy and enjoy my life.

How about your 2017? I hope you could achieve a lot of goals. I think setting up some goals and making lots of efforts to achieve them is the best in our lives. We can feel the meanings of our lives.

I really hope 2018 will be better for all of us! I will keep making efforts to make my dreams come true, and I hope you will do the same!

I hope you all have an amazing New Year. See you around here next year again!

 

-Yumi x

 

 

Cafes in Japan

Hiya! How have you been so far? I am doing great to enjoy my life.

Today, I want to share something interesting with you. You know we have weird cafes, like maid cafes, right? Our cafes are getting more diverse. Now, we have lots of cafes where we can enjoy getting together to share our interests.

Cats cafes where we can touch cats or conversational English cafes where we can speak in English with foreigners or English teachers are more popular. We have more cafes like rabbit cafes where we can touch rabbits. Rabbit cafes are getting popular in Japan as well. I don’t think it’s a clean place to drink something, though, lol.

I have never been to those cafes before, but I had an opportunity to go to a knitting cafe recently.  I have to say that knitting is my hobby. I have found knitting is meditation for me, and that’s why I love knitting. I found a knitting cafe where I can learn Fair Isle technique from Scotland and went there.

There were 10 students plus three teachers there. We all knitted the Fair Isle techniques.

Fair Isle knitting started for fishermen, but they have become more sophisticated.

 

We can see lots of Fair Isle knitting products which the instructors  have placed on the walls. They were so perfect! I was in love with them at first sight.

A student was knitting her sweater with the technique. According to her, it takes 6 months for her to finish one product!! Oh, I need a lot of patience to finish one piece!!!!

The instructors show us lots of traditional patterns and books to make us think we can make these!

Since I am a definitely beginner of this technique, I have nothing to show. I just started learning this technique. My goal is to knit sweaters for all my family! The yarns for the technique come from Shetland, Scotland. Their yarns are very light and warm like cashmere. Since I love conservative, classical and traditional style of fashion a lot, I really really love these knitting patterns!

Cafes where we can learn something is different from schools or clubs. When we learn something in schools or clubs, it’s hard for us to quit after one experience. However, it’s easy for us to quit in cafes. We don’t need to go to the cafes constantly. Whenever we want, we can book the cafes and keep learning. The knitting cafe is open 8 days each month from 10 am to 1:30 pm for students to learn . My plan is to go there once a month to learn. It’s more convenient for us to save time and money. It’s easier for us to start learning something new. Of course, we call these “cafe”, so we order something to drink while we learn.

I had a wonderful time there with knitting people. All of them were very friendly to share their products, ideas and technique.

I think these style of cafes where we can learn something will be more popular in Japan.

Thanks for stopping by my blog entry. I hope I will be able to update my other blog, my porcelain painting blog next week!

I hope you all start a great week! Take care!

-Yumi x

 

 

Let’s Stay Healthy!

Hello there! How have you been? I hope everybody is doing great.

Today I want to write about health. There are lots of things that we can’t buy, like love,  happiness, education, talents and I think health is one of them. Recently, I am very interested in being healthy.

At the begging of this year, my dad had a surgery of colon cancer. He was in the stage one, so, we don’t need to worry about him. Until he got cancer, I had never worried about him. Since I was a kid, he was just like a superman. He has a really good shape, still can run ( even though he is 85 years old), walks 10 km every single day and looks very healthy. I have never doubt he would be able to live until 100 years old. So, when I heard the news from my mom, I was very shocked.

However, his health saved him a lot. He recovered very quickly. My dad never ever looks like 80’s. He looks more than 10 years younger. He still keeps all his teeth.

I thought why he is so young and healthy. Then, I realized that he doesn’t have extra FAT.

Recently, I started adding weight and extra fat because of age. I am one of the women who is in menopausal. I tried to lose weight many times, but it was really difficult for me. One day, I saw an advertisement on TV in the States. I was visiting my American friend then, and it was in May this year. The advertisement was saying that it’s hard for middle ages to lose weight. That’s because their metabolism system is going down, they lose muscles and so on. So, this is the shortest cut for those people to lose weight. It’s very simple, BURN FAT! I thought that’s it! Then, I bought three exercising DVDs. My other American friend helped me to get them.

Since then, my body has changed a lot. After I returned to Japan, I started doing the exercise to follow the direction. At first, I couldn’t catch up with the speed. The exercise was really hard. I sometimes had to look at the video not to move. I sometimes thought I couldn’t do this because I was too old. However, I just don’t like giving up something in the mid way. So, I just kept going. Then, I realized that I was getting better day by day! When I started thinking like that, my body started changing. I started losing FAT and adding muscles.

Three months has passed. I thought I lost lots of weight because I made my clothes’ side down. I could wear my old jeans! I looked much more slim than before. I measured my weight. I so expected how much I lost. When I checked out my weight, I was shocked. Well, I didn’t lose any weight at all. However, I looked totally different from before. What’s happened to me? I looked for about this on the internet and learned a lot.

What I learned is that all my fat changed into muscles. Muscles are three times heavier than fat, and smaller than fat. That’s why I look slimmer than before even though I didn’t lose any weight. I can wear my old jeans or whatever. My waist, tights, arms got lots of muscles and became much smaller. I figured out this is the real meaning of LOSING WEIGHT! Since muscles burn more calories than fat, I will lose my weight gradually.

Before doing exercising, I had never thought burning fat is the key to lose weight. I had believed that it’s the shortest cut for us not to eat. That’s a wrong way to do. If you want to keep a better shape, MOVE, BURN FAT and BUILT MUSCLES! I can say that don’t give up because of your age. All we can do something to burn fat. There are so many ways to burn fat. Search it what you can do. Once you built muscles, it’s easy for you to lose weight, to keep a better shape, to stay healthy. I also want to say that exercising is good for our mental. I feel better, younger, more motivate, more positive and can enjoy myself more.

I highly recommend such you who are spending so much time for playing video games or internet surfing to exercise.

I want to keep my new shape as long as I can. So, I keep exercising, burning fat and keeping muscles. I have known this brings me more happiness!!

Thanks for reading my blog post. See you around in two weeks! I hope you are having a good weekend/week!

-Yumi X

You can see my before after photos.

Me before exercising

Me after exercising

Tosa Dog

Today I want to write about the biggest dogs in Japan. They are a family of Mastiff.

I have a female three year-old black Labrador Retriever, Coco, and a Tosa Dog is her male friend. I have known about Tosa dogｓ, but until Coco has made friends with the male Tosa Dog, Gun, I have never seen a Tosa dog in person before. I think this is really cool that Coco has a Tosa friend! They are a definitely rare sort.  Japanese people prefer tiny dogs like toy poodles.

When I saw Gun for the first time with Coco, I was very scared and avoided to follow his way.  Coco is very powerful, and I thought I might not control her when she got excited to see Gun.  Gun’s owner realized that I was afraid of him, and he approached us. We made friends then.

When I touched Gun, I was so nervous even though the owner told me that Gun was well controlled and never bit me. I still remember the feelings very well. Gun has a huge head. I have heard Gun killed a Boxer two years ago when they fought. I am happy that Coco and Gun made good friends.

In Japan, if people want to own Toｓa dogs, they need a permission from a Police department. That’s because they are very dangerous dogs. We have heard about news that the dogs kill their owners or family members. They are fighting dogs in the Shikoku area. The Gun’s owner loves big dogs, especially Tosa Dogs. Gun is his eighth dog. According to him, since he got older, he retired Dog fights. He was used to doing the business. I am glad Gun is not a fighting dog. I can’t support all kind of animal fights. The owner has another dog, a female Mastiff, named Sakura. She is much bigger than Gun! He sometimes takes two of them together for a walk. I can’t believe how he can control two extremely huge dogs together. Sakura is one and a half years old and much more energetic than Gun.

Gun is three years old too and very skinny. Coco is much energetic than Gun. Although I really want to take some photos of Gun with Coco, I have to apologize that there is no photos of them. I walk in the evening, and plus they are very playful. It’s hard for me to take their photos in dark, but when I take some, I will update them.

I know big dogs’ life spam is always shorter than small dogs’. Gun’s owner said Tosa’s life spam is around 8 years. I really hope Coco and Gun can hang out as long as they can.

If you want to get more information about Tosa, you can get it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosa_(dog)

The word, Tosa means an old term of one of prefectures, Kouchi Ken in the Sikoku area. The Tosa Dogs are originally from there. In the Edo period, dog fights were one of the entertaining events for Shoguns.

We still have dog fights, and the champions wear these kinds of costumes to show off.

These costumes are very similar as Yokozuna, the champions of Sumo wrestlers.

It’s getting cooler in Japan, and I am very happy with this comfy weather. I will see you around in two weeks!

Have a lovely week or weekend!

-Yumi x