Soaking up summer

It's been about a month since my last blog post, so I've been thinking recently that I should write a new post, but I was at something of a loss about what to write about, because although there have been many things going on, they seem more like every day, standard life things, (maybe not so interesting), but then after looking at my photos from the past month, I decided on the theme I could talk about (although it may be interspersed with random things....)

And the theme is...

Speaking of themes, and summer, I also ended being the one to choose the theme song for our summer school this year (unintentionally mind you).  The kids seem to love it, so that's good... 🎶What do you like to do in the summer? In the summer...🎶

So far, this summer has been incredibly HOT, so when I can, I've been spending time at the beach, where I can cool down when I want to...

Feels like 41......

Random insert: recently I've had some little visitors stop by to eat their snacks...(and you can hear the cicadas in the backgound...they're out in full force now!

Also, this year is Kobe's 150th anniversary (it's the same age as Canada!), so there have been all sorts of events going on around the city. (The one I'm looking forward to the most is the fireworks display...although the amount of people will probably be insane).  In the middle of July, there is a national holiday in Japan called Marine Day, and on that long weekend, there was all kinds of interesting events going on in the port areas.  One of the events was that they sailed a lot of big sail boats....

I wasn't there when the sails were up, but saw pictures...there were quite a few boats, and they looked great!

Because it's been so hot, I haven't been walking nearly as much as I was earlier in the year, but I have been able to go out a little bit.  Here's a couple interesting things along the way....

Fancy telephone booth

This was new for me...bottles of wine in a vending machine?!

The night view in Harborland is really nice!

I've also gone to a live or two, although I've been kind of busy so I haven't had as much time as I might want.  Not to mention, one of my usual favorite musicians has been having a rather disappointing attitude recently, which doesn't exactly make a person want to go.  Hopefully that will change soon.

ContEEgo Calm

ヨシダヒロキ

One of the things that I have been busy with (outside of work), is that I started to go back to a Japanese conversation group that I went to with a friend last summer.  I've been back a couple times now and I'm enjoying it, although it is a little bit tiring to go and talk in Japanese for a couple hours straight after a busy day at work.  Actually, the last time I went, after the normal conversation/studying part, most of the people there had dinner together.  It was really nice and it feels like making new friends, which is awesome, but for me, that particular day turned into 4 hours of constant Japanese!

 

Switching gears a little bit...there has been so many delicious things to eat recently!  Being summer, there is of course all manner of fruits to eat, so my little fridge is being stuffed full of all kinds of colorful and wonderful fruits...

And, although it's meant to look like a fruit...

 

 

 Actually, an *AMAZING* cake!

This cake had all kinds of deliciousness mixed together!  The base is a cinnamon sponge cake, that was topped with apple, the piece in the middle was some kind of cookie, and it was topped with a custard whip.  So good! 💕

Also, there's a brand of chocolate chip cookies in Japan that is always coming out with different seasonal flavors of cookies, and recently I came across a peach nectar flavor.  I was intrigued, so I decided to try it out.  The jury is still out on my feelings on this flavor.

 

 I do appreciate the return of the lemon flavor though!

It's not just sweets and fruits though...there's also many drinks that I'm enjoying as well...things like green apple tea, golden kiwi tea, white peach tea...Yummm!

Then, much less common and more difficult to find, I also came across these amazing teas:

 

This one was a combination of chamomile and peppermint.  I enjoy both of those types of tea individually when hot, but I was curious how they would taste in a combined cool version.  Result: refreshingly delicious.  Very good for a hot day.

 

Next was lavender tea.  I don't believe I've ever had any kind of lavender TEA before.  It's interesting.

 

And the final option was green tea mojito flavor.  Since I really like mojito flavored drinks, I figured this one would be a definite win.  Yes.  It was.  I enjoyed it.

I think that's the extent of my randomness for now.  My summer holiday is coming up soon, and as I mentioned earlier, there is a big fireworks event coming up soon, so I may (or not) have other things to write about soon....