Hi, Welcome to my blog　:)

May 5 is Children's Day, when families celebrate the healthy growth and happiness of children.
Last weekend, I went to the shopping center to buy "Kabuto" with my family. Kabuto is the traditional Japanese Samurai Helmet.
In the shopping center, there were many kind of items. There is a wide range of prices, ranging from $500 to $5,000.


We were exhausted afterafter looking around several shops here and therewhile cradling my eight-month baby in my arm.

Finally we decided to see the kabuto pictured below. This is the kabuto of "Uesugi Kenshin". He is one of the samurai I respect. He lived an interesting lifethat is why he is extremely popular in Japan.







The picture below shows the Koinobori. My wife's parents bought it for us. It is a wonderful!
The large Carp is the father and the middle is the mother. The smaller Carp(s) are the children:D　(Unfortunately, there were no mother carps yet before. But these days, we have red carps which we regard as mother. )

"Hanami" is the japanese traditional custom of the enjoying the viewing flower. In this case, "flower" means cherry blossoms("Sakura").

The other day, I and my wife went to hanami with our baby(8 month baby). This event is his first experience.

We enjoyed sitting on the bench, eating wife's homemade dish, drinking tea and talking. We are lucky enough to get good weather that day. It is very short time for beautiful Sakura(two or three weeks in spring).

These pictures were taken in the neighborhood of our home. We love this town :)







Hanami at night is called "yozakura".

"SASIMI"(Fresh slices) of a squid.



I like a squid dish, and often buy it in a supermarket, then i cook it. Some people may say that it seems difficult to cook, but actually it is not. It costs 1.78$ or 158Yen (for every 1$(US) = 88.42Yen). I cut it into chunks then boils it. I eat it using mayonnaise with "Shichimi" which is a mixture of red pepper and other spices. We often use the red pepper mayonnaise in this way.

These days, I eat "SASIMI" too. "SASIMI" is a sliced raw fish. It is very delicious if you partner it with "wasabi sauce" - soy sauce with japanese horse radish. SASIMI is a low calorie diet and and it is also good for our health:) We need technique in order to use a squid as sliced raw fish. Especially, it is difficult to strip the skin. I heard on a television before that there is a technique which strips the skin well. if a squid is attached to vinegar several minutes, the skin can be stripped easily.

As other means, in a supermarket, they also cook this dish and you may ask them for help for free.



When eating a squid in the row, we must be cautious of a parasite. Especially when we cook by ourselves, let's often confirm whether there is any parasite.



I ate a squid with good appetite also today.

I visited my graduating university the other day for the recruitment activity. After I graduated, the university relocated so that I didn't go to this campus.


Since it was fine, I took the coffee break on the bench. This tumbler(D) is the Fukuoka(My Home Town) limitation:)!
I was surprised to see the boards bringing from the old building and having attached it to a wall(C).


It went to the famous ramen store night. Ramen is the famous Japanese noodle.


This is "KAE-DAMA"(C).

The other day, I obtained the HP server(1U) from my boss:D. First I install Win2008R2 in the machine, and creating some virtual machines. There are many things to study.

Spec
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl145/index.html


Since this AMD processor(B) does not support virtual technology(AMD-V), I cannot use Hyper-V on this server. Now I am interested in IPMI(C).


I often see the 1U servers at office, but when put it on my house, I was surprised at the splendid size! My boss adviced me that if I turn on a power supply of the server, I might not sleep well because of the noise. However there is no problem:). Because I installed the server in the room different from our bedroom. The noise of FANs is an "inside" grade of a ventilation fan.


If a setup finishes, after that, I can set up by a client PC(E). I have this note PC yielded from a friend last year. I got two SATA HDD for server and notePC. Even if it unites two, it is below 10,000 yen. It becomes cheap. The price becomes cheap before.
I checked the power consumption of this server. After the power supply injection was 150 [W] grades in the idle state, although FAN carried out full rotation and went up to about 400 [W]. It was 2.78 [kWh] in 19 hours. If we assume 20 yen/kWh, it turned out that it is about 50 - 60 yen in 24 hours per day.

We enjoyed Christmas leisurely at home today.

From several weeks before, I and a wife were making the plan at Christmas in order to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We thought that something was missing other than fried chicken, we have bought in various foods in the supermarket. Although it seems little luxury, I think that it has saved money compared with dining out.


Our baby still drank only milk so that he doesn't eat meal together. But he seemed to be satisfactory to be hugged by the mother :)

We were very much satisfied with supper. Since we ate too much, we(I and my wife) took the stomach medicine:D

Jelly of a salad and Roast beef


Potato salad(Handmade of a wife) and Kentucky Fried Chicken


Foie gras terrine

I finished writing a New Year's card today.


If a New Year's card will be posted by December 25(Christmas), these cards will reach them on the New Year's Day(January 1, 2010). Every year, I used to be busy on Christmas since I am going to finish writing a New Year's card by this day.

I wrote about 40 New Year's cards this year.


Photograph and an address are automatically printed using a printer, so they are not serious. However, a handwritten comment requires time and effort. It took about 3 hours until it finished writing a comments!

It will finish soon this year. Did what should be done by the end of this year finish?

I hope this next year also will be great for you!

"Okuizome" is a japanese ceremony held around the 100th day after the birth to celebrate baby's first (non-milk) meal. Needless to say, he can't eat any food now, so he only pretends to eat.
We held this celemony with me, my wife and her grand-mother. Grand-mother gave us a big red sea bream! It's too big to eat all,  we couldn't eat it all. That night, we cooked sea bream soup for dinner and enjoyed it very much! :D

I took my son(new-born baby) to a shrine with my wife and her mother and my mother about one month after he was born. This is one of the Japanese traditions called "Omiyamairi"(Baby first visit to Shrine). On our way to the shrine, my son was held not by wife but by my mother(mother-in-law) because the mother is not strong enough yet. It was extremely hot this summer in Japan. We worried our baby will burst into tears(go boohoo!), but he didn't. That's our good boy :) 

Recently alcohol-free beer is hot in Japan because a health conscious is becoming more important. There are a wide variety of alcohol-free