Eiken

The result was delivered and I found out that I had passed the Eiken exam. YAY!
Of course, I’ll embark on Grade1, which is the highest level of Eiken later this year. However, it’s going to take some time to prepare since Grade1 is ridiculously difficult and it requires numerous vocabulary. What I need to do first is to enhance my vocabulary and I decided to subscribe Newsweek. I chose Kindle edition, so every subscription is delivered to my Kindle.

Actually, there is another good news here. My husband finally passed the exam called CCIE(Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) after several attempts. I’m very very happy for him because he spent lots of time on studying for this exam. He strove for CCIE for a long time and his effort was eventually paid off. Congrats!!

3.11

It’s been a year since the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami struck the north-eastern coast in Japan. It triggered a serious nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plants and thousands of people had to evacuate from radioactive disaster. In fact, so many people are still living in temporary houses.

Today, there were memorial services and a minute's silence was observed at 2:46pm at the exact moment the quake hit.
Even though so much has been done to support the people in the Tohoku region, there are obviously a lot of things need to be done.

Ready for Valentine's day

In Japan, Valentine’s day is rather different from other countries' Valentine's day and we have a unique way to celebrate. On Valentine’s day, in many countries, people send/give cards or flowers to not only loved ones, but also friends. On the other hand, in Japan, females are supposed to give chocolates to their boyfriend/husband, even colleagues from work.

I’m not disputing if I advocate this custom here because I’d like to remain neutral.haha In fact, I’m planning to give my husband some chocolates with a gift, which he can use in the office. I simply want to show my appreciation, which is why I just take this opportunity.

The above ID card holder is going to be a gift for my husband.

How about you? How you guys celebrate Valentine’s day?

A book "The Help"

Every time I work out at the gym, I always use varying machines to gain some muscle because muscle will help me burn up fat. The equipments I usually use require both my hands except for an aero-bike. While I’m doing exercise with the aero-bike, I can read a book, which I downloaded on our Kindle the other day. I assume you may wonder why I would read a book at the gym.

The answer is to avoid leaving the gym early because I can’t help myself from feeling that I wanna go home after being at the gym for about 45 minutes.(What a loser...)Which is why I try to make myself stuck in the gym at least two and a half hours by doing different things.

The novel named “The Help” was written by Kathryn Stockett. The story is about colored people from Africa working as maids in white households in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s.
The Help was made into a movie and it’s a huge hit in the US in 2011. Here in Japan, The Help will be released this June and I really look forward to it!!

It’s already Friday. Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

How are you holding up?

Although, it’s already the beginning of spring according to the calendar, I can hardly believe spring is coming to us.
In fact, I think Japan is middle of the coldest season and it was snowing a couple of weeks ago here in Tokyo. Can you believe that snow piled up approx 10cm?
I got excited to see snow as we don’t have it much like this in the past several years.
Having said that, I don’t think I can tolerate this cold weather any more....

Well, I have some announcements aside from snow. I finally joined a gym and I have been trying to work out at the gym 3-4 times a week since then. Surprisingly, I'm rather enjoying exercise than I expected and I kind of look forward to seeing how my body will change after keeping working out for a while. In order to maintain my motivation for the gym, I think I need something to encourage myself. Is that beer or a glass of cold white wine after gym??

Here is my outfit, which I usually wear at the gym.
I need to get some more outfits as I regularly go there.  

One more thing, I had taken an exam called Eiken (実用技能英語検定) the other day and passed the first test. I'm going to take the second speaking test on Sun 19th Feb. I'm gonna have to nail it.

Movie "Blindness"

January is supposed to have lots of new films because film distributors normally release not only domestic movies but also films, produced in other countries like Hollywood. Last weekend I kind of wanted to watch a movie and so did my husband. So, we started with Google to see if there is any interesting movies. Mmmm... “MISSION IMPOSSIBLE”? I don’t think so. “FRIGHT NIGHT”? Maybe not...Well, after checking the relevant sites for about 15 minutes, we finally gave up finding and ended up watching DVD named “Blindness” instead because there were no movies which we were eager to watch at a theater.
“Blindness” is produced in 2008, based on the novel written by Jose Saramago. I think it’s not a bad movie, though it’s rather scary. You’ll see what I meant if you watch it.

A down jacket

Not surprisingly, the temperature drops these days here in Japan and we are in the middle of winter. Since I hate cold weather, I really need something that keeps me warm during winter. Now I guess you’ve made sense of the tittle. Yep! I got the down jacket, although I’m not a big fan of this kind of voluminous jacket. As I believe down jacket makes me look bigger, I’ve been trying to stay away from it. However, I finally found my ideal down jacket, which doesn’t make me look too big.
It’s obvious that I’m intolerant of winter, but people say winter won’t last for good and spring eventually comes!!

I bought this down jacket at PRINTEMPS Ginza, which is very popular among women.

This is how I worn the down jacket with my outfits.