Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival

Cherry Blossom and Japanese Culture Festival was held last month. I went to take video of my friend's Koto performance on April 19th. I took video of Japanese traditional Dancing and music performance. A month later, I organized my video and I posted three YouTube Videos. I have more opportunities to listen Japanese traditional music now than when I lived in Japan.

Romantic places to go in Whidbey Island

I spent a romantic evening at Whidbey Island with my husband this weekend for my birthday. He took me for a drink to captain Whidbey Inn which is very old Bed and Breakfast Inn. A lady who manages the Inn and is a bartender greeted us and showed us inside the inn. Although the building is over 100 years old, it is kept nicely. It would be an interesting experience staying in this Inn and waking up in the morning.
The lady told us Inn’s restaurant will be open for a dinner soon and there is live-music on Sundays. We will come back the Inn to listen to my husband favorite Celtic music soon. After we had a glass of red wine and listen to the conversation of the bartender and a couple of our age who have lived in the area, we left the Inn.
My husband then took me to a French restaurant ‘Oysteratcher’ located in downtown Coupeville. Their website shows delicious food they serve. The restaurant was small enough that we could hear other customers’ discussing enthusiastically interesting topics. I was excited going a nice restaurant serves delicious food since I rarely go out to eat. I wrote my experience dining at Oystercather in Yelp.
If someone wants to visit Coupeville, Whidbey Island with a special person, these two places were good places to go in addition to other places in the area.

Happy New Year.

My husband and I went see New Years Eve fireworks at Space Needle.

Happy holidays from Snowy Seattle.

Unusual heavy snow in Seattle

Seattleites have experienced freezing snow days. Because it was very rare occasion, I took video and posted YouTube. The bridge shown on the video is Interstate 90.

Thanksgiving

My family and neighbor family across my house had Thanksgiving dinner together. I cooked some food and the neighbor cooked others. It’s nice to celebrate holidays with others.
I don’t think of any similar celebration in Japan. Japanese people view full moon in fall for moon festival. The moon is called harvest moon. People put Japanese pampas grass and rice cake offerings by the window. According to http://www.sci-museum.kita.osaka.jp/~kazu/index.phtml, this custom was originated from China and because it is the harvest season of taro-roots and people in China have taro for the moon festival day, the origin of the moon festival started in order to celebrate harvest of taro. Thanks are probably given the god of nature not to people.
It is nice to give thanks to others and share meals. I think people in America generally have a big heart and generous. Homeless or poor people can find some place to eat free. I read and hear stories that some restaurants offer Thanksgiving dinner to homeless people, and that volunteer collect free food for needy families. I have never heard homeless people in Japan can go some place to eat free.
We should always be thankful to food which we eat, people who grew, and to share meals with other people. But we don’t. Thanksgiving Day is the good occasion to remind me of this.

My experience on the day of 2008 presidential elections

On Nov.4 2008, the presidential Election Day, I worked at a poll place near my house. It was rainy dark morning before sun rise, I walked to the location. About 6:00am, I started setting up private booth, posting signs, and etc with other poll worker which consisted of 3 high school girls, 3 African American ladies, 3 white ladies(2 workers and a inspector), two Asians(a young Chinese speaker and me). There were 3 more workers than the previous elections.

At 6:30am, one man entered the place wanting to vote. It was a half hour early to open the poll. So he had to wait until 7:00am. As soon as we opened the door at 7:00am, voters flooded into the place. This is my forth time to work at this location. Before this election, we had only few voters showed up. At this one, the lines of voters were long early in the morning. I heard bad traffic was caused by voters driving toward to the poll place. Many people said that this is their first time to vote. They were not only 18 years old new voters but older voters. Many families came to vote together.
I have never seen observers here on the previous elections although my husband told me there were always some observers at his voting place. At this time, there were three observers there. Two of them were there from early in the morning until the poll closed. One even took notes how many voters voted the location and how many incident reports were recorded.
There was a person who took photos. 7 private booths were occupied and voters filled their ballot on the extra tables.
After 6:30pm, only few voters came. It was almost 8:00pm. One of fellow workers took a short break and saw her text message learning that Obama won the election. I saw fireworks when I was collecting VOTE signs. There were 8 times or more voters in this poll came to vote than the previous elections. I could read one or two chapters of my book while I was waiting for voters the previous elections. I had merely enough time to say hello to some acquaintances at this time. We were lucky to have done all closing process smoothly and head home around 10:00pm. It was the long busy day.
The next election, people will mail their ballot and there will be no more poll places in Seattle. I love being a poll worker to be a part of the election process. I miss meeting and working with fellow poll workers and greeting my neighbors. I am grateful to be here to experience these all excitements of America.