I went to the hot stone spa at my gym today. It's not one of those Spa Treatment experiences (I capitalize this because I have a friend who manages one of those kind of spas) where someone puts warm stones and essential oil or something on you for the jolly price of fifty dollars or more. The hot stone spa here is more like a sauna but instead of cedar benches there are long , heated stone beds that you lie on. Somewhere there is some kind of wood called Keyaki which gives the room a nice,...

MasonM wrote about his ghost experience and it reminded me of something that happened to me about 12 years ago. I used to help out a friend at the race track. I'm not a morning person and the very early starts (feeding began at 5 am) were rough on me. I met a guy who trained horses and we dated for a while. One day I was staying at his place. I was really tired and that may have been the cause of what happened. I was looking for my toothbrush and couldn't find it. I was kind of...

Just thought I'd do a quick blog while I'm waiting for a disk to burn so I can finish up this job and finally go to sleep. The cherry blossoms should be coming out with the next week and a half. I'm a little bummed that the trees on my street got chopped back quite a bit because of electrical powerlines. I'm hoping they'll still look good but I have little hope they will look as good as last year. Oh, the disk is done. Goody. Now I can get some sleep.

A couple of years ago I went to this pet store on the top floor of a local department store. Not your best bet to get a pet (ha ha nice channelling of Dr. Suess there) but I was kind of curious about if they just sold pet food or had actual animals. I got to the top floor which was actually the roof and walked across to the little shack-type room. As I walked up to the shanty-shop I was taken aback by the fact that they were tasteless enough to have a fur welcom mat. To me that's pretty...

I wasn't going to do it, but I can feel I am on the cusp of making them even if I don't directly acknowledge that's what I'm doing. Here goes: 1. Lose 6 g. That's probably realistic. At one point in my life I would have been a bit annoyed to weigh that but now I can't be bothered to make the effort to lose more than I really need to. And more importantly, I think those 6 kg are a sign of some lifestyle changes I need to make. I used to love working out and now it doesn't fill me ...

I wish I had a picture of this. I don't. Sunday was colder than it has been for a while. A warm jacket and a scarf made it okay. But my husband gave me a sip of the drink he'd bought from the vending machine on the Yamanote Line platform in Gotanda. Drinking the warm green tea changed the focus of the energy. From standing in the cold, waiting for a train, I suddenly began to enjoy the activity swirling around me on a rainy autumn day in Tokyo.

This was on my list from last year. *dacshunds running (have you ever seen the wiener dog races???? tooo hilarious. Popular breed here now. So jealous) *my chair in my study (I have a great little posture chair but I'm always in the slouchy comfy chair with laptop on lap) *view outside my study (recently there are butterflies living a life and death saga with all the birds) *hubby (he's just so cute when he's not pissing me off! ) *my photo *this chocolate almond croissant...

Of course, I heard all about the crazy frog ringtones when all the frenzy was going on. But crazyfrog never caught on in Japan and if it ever played on the radio here, I still would have never heard about it. Japanese radio drives me crazy because most stations play half a song and then the hosts talk most of the way through it. So okay. I heard about it and couldn't care less. Today I happened to read a book where everyone's cell-phone had the crazy frog ring tone. So now I'm curious...

I saw this parrot one time when I was shopping at a department store. I think it was the pet section of Seibu in Shinjuku. Generally, I find department store pet shops quite depressing. But I really wanted an animal fix. I walked in looked at a few pups and kitties, looked at various and sundry rodents, as well. There was a special area for the birds and I walked in and was quite taken with a beautiful pink and grey parrot. I don't know the English name, it was called something like "...

TAKE WHAT YOU CAN! GIVE NOTHING BACK!!! -Jack Sparrow, Treasure Island I was at Karaoke last night (dang delayed action chu-hai--- an alcoholic drink) and suddenly roared this out. Not due to the chu-hi (that kicked in as I was on the train home), but just out of exuberence. Then it struck me how much I like that phrase and realized I was going to adopt it for a bit. Take it for a test spin on the road of life, if you will. Not that I have any desire to take other people's be...

I swear, try to do something nice... I am going to a wedding in Canada this summer. I want my husband to go as well but I KNOW that he has work and that he is leary about asking for time off. But when I went to buy my ticket today, I enquired about how much his ticket would be. We are not going at the same time. When I found out that there were 10 seats left of the plane around the time he can go and make it to the wedding, I booked a ticket for him to save him a seat and give hi...

I started another blog. I'm going to stay here because I like the forum style and I would miss lots of blogs here. My friend showed me her blog and she can embed video into it and so I joined it. Link This is more for my family because I can upload images straight from the computer. So if any of you were interested in seeing some of my photos, this is where you can find some of them.

I was flushing some toilet paper down the toilet after blowing my nose and my husband was getting ready to floss his teeth. In a grand flourish he began to pull the floss out of the case and finished the movement by losing his grip on the case and we both watched the case of dental floss arc through the air and plop into the toilet already in mid-flush. As it swirled around the bowl, a couple of thoughts floated to the surface of my mind. First, was it really going to go through the pi...

I burnt my toast. I haven't seen it, but I can smell it. Smells very burnt. Why am I not rushing to the kitchen to save it? Hubby was in the same room and he took care of it... after I smelled it burning from another room. I should really watch my toast once I start it. But to me, watching toast is like watching a pot until it boils. Nothing happens for a long time and then suddenly.... action! And though this is definitely not true, I always feels like a watched piece of bread never...