JapanLive - Little Stories from Japan

Lisa, 3 months old (October 2018) Lisa's mother   Lisa is born in July 2018, together with 4 other sisters/brothers. The mother was hiding them immediately after the birth and I didn't see them for about 6 weeks. It was very hot this year and I already thought they were dead. But after the staggering heat was over, mama cat brought out her new kids. It was clearly visible that this time there were lots of troubles, only one of them was fully healthy and all of the others had eye problems - especially Lisa. The photos below show how she looked end of August/beginning of September. I quickly found out that she was fully blind. And therefore never had enough food to eat. I started feeding her with food and water. When I visited the place to feed the other cats there, she always came to get her meal and I also realized that she liked to be caressed. I grew fond of her and last week I decided that it was time to act. I brought her to the ve...

  Kawazu Cherry trees at the Kawamura Museum in Sakura LINK .  Yesterday (March 30), they were in full bloom. Together with the blue skies, beautiful.  

You can find many folding instructions for square boxes - I also published one - see here . Rectangular ones are somewhat more seldom to find. I needed one, so I made a simple one by myself. I will show you what I did. Please try and improve it. Paper: When I digitized my books, I cut off the spine so I could use an automatic scanner for scanning the text pages. Usually, I kept the first and last paper pages which often are coloured and/or have some design. They also are a little bit heavier than the normal paper of the books. For making the box below I used such a page. Plan: I want to make a box, 14 cm long, 2 cm wide and 2 cm high. I need the box and a cover for it: so 2 boxes, the first one with the dimensions above and the second one, the cover box, a bit larger with 14.5 cm long and 2.5 cm wide. From a paper sheet, I cut 2 sheets with the following dimensions (box length + 4 times box height). For my boxes, I need one paper with the size of 22cm*6cm and the second on...

So you decided to learn Japanese? Good idea. May I give you some small tips and tricks over the next few weeks? They are not really ordered but important nevertheless. The best is you subscribe to this blog or you come back sometimes and click on the tag link " Learning Japanese ". Writing Kanji needs a lot of training. You need to write, write, write. You must learn the order in which a Kanji is written and you must develop a feeling what looks good and what doesn't. So again my recommendation: "you need to write, write, write". Kanji can contain many strokes - really many - up to more than 30 even. Admittedly, the higher the number, the less they are in use - but still, you will have to learn to write Kanji with 20 strokes or more. If you write with a really broad pen, you cannot write Kanjis which are clear and which show distinguishable strokes. So you better choose a pen which writes (extra)fine lines. Personally, I like to use fountain pens. And for...