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Bear Necessities of Life

Musings of Teddy Bear Necessity's Household
to Whom It May Concern
スポンサーサイト

一定期間更新がないため広告を表示しています

Posted by スポンサードリンク
- / / - / -
Seaside Summer Festival
After playing with Ellie on the beach, we went to see the Kainan Shrine Summer Festival in a nearby town. It's a very lively festival with lion dance leading a parade of portable shrines being carried by many town men and women.



The Kainan Shrine has over 1,000 year long history (est. 982 A.D.), and the origin of this summer festival may go back to as early as the 14th century. Nobody knows its true history, but one thing for sure is that it's been the town tradition for a long long time.



One of the pagan gods' being worshipped at this Shrine is Food God. Not only we can be thankful for the abundant food in the area, many chefs dedicate their special cooking knives to this god to thank them for their long and dutiful services. We Japanese take food very seriously, you see.



One type of the abundant food in this area is seafood, particularly maguro (tuna). Here are some samples of maguro dishes in the area: maguro sushis and maguro tempura. Yum!



The sea breeze cools down the temperature significantly. It may be over 90 degrees in Tokyo, but here, the air is cooler, particularly at night. Listening to ocean waves and feeling cool sea breeze, it's a blissful way to spend after-dinner time.
Posted by teddydale
2-legged Musings / 17:11 / comments(0) / trackbacks(0)
Let's go to the beach!
Since we'd never gone to the country without a dog for the last 10 years, we borrowed a friend's Labrador "Ellie" to go to the beach house we rented. Our dog-savvy cats love Ellie because she's very gentle as you can see.



As soon as we arrived, we immediatelly went to the beach to let Ellie swim. Ellie is a water nut as most Labradors are. If there's water, she'll be in it .. even if it's slimy fountain water in the city park. Ellie was ecstatic that she could swim to her heart's content and we were delighted that the water was clean.




We used to do this game with Teddy at Camp Woof all the time. Ellie being a retriever, however, is better at actually bringing back the thrown object. Teddy was more into "chasing" than "retrieving" although she was getting better and better at it as she got older. It's a little bitter-sweet déjà vu, but it's nice to see Ellie playing with delight in her sparkling eyes.



Posted by teddydale
4-Legged Musings / 17:39 / comments(0) / trackbacks(0)
Good bye, Tyler!
Tyler is leaving for Singapore today.  She's such a good girl, we'll miss her dearly.





The daily morning play in the park is a lot of fun when dog friends gather. The blurrier the image, the funner the play is. The routine I probably miss most now that I am dogless.


Posted by teddydale
Movies / 17:16 / comments(0) / trackbacks(0)
What's this?
Do you know what kind of flower this is?

It's the artichoke flower.

Yes, this artichoke. The vegetable we eat is the plant's flower bud, but once it flowers, it's too late to eat it.

Artichokes are not so popular in Japan, but they were introduced to Japan by the 19th Century by Dutch traders. They are ancient vegetables originating in the Mediterranean, and its name appears in historical documents as early back as 77 A.D.

Fore more details (if anyone's interested), this is a good site to check out!


The plant's interesting history and delicious taste aside, its flowers are very pretty to look at, aren't they? Its significant size gives so much presence to the room, too.


Posted by teddydale
2-legged Musings / 17:47 / comments(0) / trackbacks(0)
Sunday on the beach
We rented a beach house (well, the second floor of it). This is the first vacation rental we've ever done!

What lead us to this place was Tyler, really, whose family was the one that rented this place before us. We'd looked into getting a place before, but in US, we had the luxury of Camp Woof (ah, the heaven.. ), and in Tokyo realtors had told us how difficult it was to find a pet-fridnely rental. And when Teddy died, we lost the major reason for wanting a country place to begin with. Without a dog, we just didn't feel the need to get away so much.



Anyway, now that we do have a place to go to, we are very excited about it. In order to show our appreciation, we took Tyler to *HER* beach house one last time before she leaves for Singapore. We walked along the area's rocky shoreline and Tyler ran and ran and even swam in some shallow inlets to cool herself down.



She didn't stray off very far at all and often waited patiently for us to catch up with her. Teddy at Tyler's age (3) was giving me more anxiety with her terrier spirit, so it was delightful to be able to just enjoy the walk without worrying too much about what the dog is getting into all the time.

We did the beach twice in one day and Tyler also played with the landlord's dog, Sakura, to her heart's content. By the night time, the little dog was ... well, dog-tired. It's nice to see a very content dog (read this exhausted dog from playing) sleeping soundly at your feet. A sight we hadn't seen for some time now.



2nd walk in the late afternoon was much more mellow for both two-legged and four-leggeds
Posted by teddydale
4-Legged Musings / 17:48 / comments(0) / trackbacks(0)