What's New in January and February, 1998
"Hatsumoude" at Hadano and Matsue
"Hatsumoude" means "The 1st going to Shrine on January 1". This year, the family spend new year holidays separately because of Takeshi's special lessons in "Juku"(Private supplementary school), Junko and Takeshi in Hadano City(In Japanese) where Junko was brought up and her parents live, Toru and Haruka in Matsue City where Toru was brought up and his parents live. On January 1 1998, Junko and Takeshi did "Hatsumoude" to Ohyama-Aburi shrine on Mt.Ohyama with Junko's parents. And they saw the first sunrise of the year(Left). Many peoples climbed up to see the sunrise(Right). They pray their health and success of this year.
Toru, Haruka and Toru's parents did "Hatsumoude" to Kumano-Taisha(Left:Taisha means the biggest shrine in the area) and Kamosu-Jinja(Right:Jinja means shrine). Kamosu-Jinja is a national treasure and has misterious beauty. These photos were taken by Toru. They also pray their health and success of the year.
New "netizen" (Junko) and URL of Homepage changed
Haruka bought a SEGA SATURN in Matsue, which is a game machine like SONY's Play Station. This mashine was enhanced to be a net terminal by adding a MODEM and a Keyboard by Toru. Junko started to use this enhanced machine and bacame a "netizen". Her e-mail address is takeharu2@asahi-net.email.ne.jp. According to Junko became a netizen, she had a memory space to open homepage which was fortunately larger than Toru had, so that they decided to change their URL from Toru's to Junko's.
New assignment to move to USA(Toru)
Toru was assigned to be a research staff manager and moved from Document Engineering Lab. to Research Planning and Innovation on February 21. It is a preparation to go to FX Palo Alto Laboratory Inc. in Palo Alto CA as a research staff. He will leave Japan around May and spend 3 years in USA. Junko, Takeshi and Haruka will leave Japan in this year too.
Jazz Guitar(Toru)
Toru loves not only classic musics but also jazz musics. He goes to jazz spots twice or three times a year with his friends. On January 22, he enjoyed the play of Kazumi Watanabe Trio at a live house named "Satin Doll" in Roppongi town, Tokyo. Kazumi Watanabe is number 1 jazz guitarist in Japan and they enjoyed his fluent guitar much.