warabi

Yesterday it was a nice day in between rainy wet days.
I had been waiting for a day like this to explore the wood nearby my house.
It is only five minutes driving distance to get there, and now it must be very beautiful with blue bell flowers. I hoped to see the beautiful blue carpet in the wood.

I had another purpose to go there, that was picking ferns called "warabi" in Japanese. These ferns are edible ones, and taste great with grated ginger and soy sauce. One of my friends told me that she found loads of "warabi" kind of ferns there. Although she was not sure about the spieces, it is worth to try!

So, I went to the wood and picked lots and lots of warabi with my sons.

When I was busy picking them, I saw a biology teacher of my school.

She was very skeptical at my comment on the warabi that we Japanese eat them.


"I know some ferns are edible but I don't know if these are or not."
she said.

She is not just a biologist but a specialist of botany.
She should know about plants more, shouldn't she??

But... who cares?

I know what warabi is.
I am not a specialist, but I can at least try.

and... tried them after they are cooked.




Fortunately they were the right kind of ferns, real warabi!!




My husband, who is a German, was not very sure about them, telling me,
"we are poor, but we are not as poor as eating ferns from wood."
"we are not goats."
(goats eat everything!)


All right,
it is ok.

I don't mind.

They taste good.
That is the most important thing for me.

And I have missed this taste for seven years!!




So..., now I know they are real, and I must go back there again to pick more!!


I must let the biology teacher eat them!!!
hahaha


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blue bell forest

Blue bells are common flower in England.
They grow wild in the forest, spreading and covering the ground with the blue little flowers.

When I talked about the flower "blue bells" to my friends in Japan, some of them didn't know the flower. I realized that blue bells are not so common in Japan.

To show the image of the flower to my friends, I searched good photos over the Internet.

And what I found is..... THIS !!!



OMG!!!
Isn't it gorgeous??



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flowers

Needless to say, spring is the most beautiful season in England.
(Let's not discuss about WHEN is the spring. British sense of spring is a bit off from our Japanese sense.)

After long long grey winter, so many colourful flowers bloom at once.
The flowers must have been waiting for this time of the year as well as humans.

I walked around the campus and took some photos of flowers.










Hope you enjoy looking at the pics.


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flying penguin

I had a dream about flying penguin several years ago.

I normally have very vague memory of my dreams when I wake up. It is almost impossible to trace the plot of my dreams. I rarely remember even just one scene. But the dream of flying penguin was surprisingly clear. I can still remember the picture of the flying fat penguin. It flew so fast and straight just like a jet air plane. :D


My husband sent this video to me last night.
He knows my flying penguin dream and always teases me about it.




Wow I knew there were penguins that can actually fly!!



Isn't it amazing?




hahahaha...




Cheers for BBC!!


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bath time

For me, bath time is the best reading time.
Just relax in the warm water, and read a book is one of the happiest time.

Probably I am too busy mentally to read a book anywhere else.
Bath room is the only room without a computer, a phone, or other attractive tools.

These tools are necessary in my life and my work, although it is the fact that they sometimes kill my time.

I just shut down the computer now, and go to the bathroom, disconnect myself from the media/internet.

Just sink myself into the world of traditional way of expression, language.




I will continue reading Steiner's "Study of Man."

I just started reading this again the other day. I have not read this since I left the Rudolf Steiner College.

But needless to say, this is one of the greatest book about Steiner education. Worth to read many times and each time gives some discoveries in me.


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private

I have some blogs that are open to many people.
There are quite a few readers visiting every day.
Since I made links those blogs to my business web site, I now feel those blogs are rather "public" blog where it is not appropriate to publish my private feeling.

Unlike those blogs, this English blog "inner light" is quite private one.
Since I have not made a lot of connection through this blog within blogger or blog ranking communities, I feel like I can write what I feel more freely in this blog than in other blog.


Thanks for the language barrier, there are only a few Japanese friends visiting here.

I think I can make use of this blog as a space to express my private feeling.


Then, the next question comes up.
"Why do I need to have a blog to express my private feeling? This blog is still in a public space where anybody can visit."

That is very true.


I guess I just like to write something.
Also I like to communicate to somebody who might be interested in my feeling.

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drawing lines

What is the difference between Waldorf education and non-Waldorf?

For me the definition is very clear, but the difficulties of understanding Anthroposophy may make the definition of the education unclear.


I see many people, especially parents, misunderstand Waldorf education.
Some believe that using natural material or doing crafts are just simply Waldorf...

It is not...



Sorry I am talking to myself on this post....

5th birthday

Tomorrow my first son will turn to five.
It is hard to believe that I have already been a mother for five years.
It seems to me very short time when I look back the last five years although each moment I face to the children are not always easy and I felt the time for them to grow was so long..... Do you know what I mean?


As a part of anniversary, I collected some photos on my Japanese blog "Kayo in England". I am sure you will enjoy seeing the growth of the boy on the photos.

See you on the blog.

absence

Again, it has been a long absence...

I have been busy again, preparing for my business, building several web sites, and also starting new job at a Japanese school.

Our nearest Japanese school started high school which they haven't had before, and I became their first high school class teacher. I teach Japanese, including classics, and of course mathematics, which is my speciality.


First I was hesitant to accept the fact that I have to teach Japanese. When I was in Japan, I have taught Japanese to elementary to high school level. But now I feel I have been losing my language sense as a Japanese during my long absence from Japanese language environment... You know, I have been away from my country, Japan for seven years. I visited Japan only once since 2002. That was fairly short visit that I had only five nights in Japan...

So I felt I needed to brush up my Japanese language sense to teach high school students. But I also thought it would be good opportunity to recover my mother tongue skill.

It is not just about the language, but the culture. I have adjusted myself to the Western culture through my life in English speaking countries, but at the same time I had to cut off some Japanese customs and culture from my life. These traditions still live deep in me, but I need to consciously bring them forward to teach the language, after living in totally different society for several years.


So I really think it is a good chance to remember my identity as a Japanese.



And it is ALWAYS fun to learn/study something new or fresh.

It may sound strange for you that I said Japanese as something new/fresh. But I really feel so. The proper formal language that appears on the Japanese text book is not the everyday casual language which you read on the web or bestseller books. I read some books which are hard to understand sometimes, but it is hard because of the contents. The language itself is not very sophisticated nor beautiful. The language on the text book is proper, and more beautiful than those I usually read.

So I enjoy reading Japanese text books and also enjoy teaching Japanese as a high school subject.