しーまブログ 2024年09月14日
台風１３号
今，９月７日（土）
--時間は１６時すぎ
台風はかなり奄美に接近してるようですが・・・
今のところ，時折強風が吹くくらいです。
今から夜にかけて上陸する感じです。
英語教室はやっていますが・・お休みの生徒さんが多いです。
来てくれる生徒さんと「風強くなるかぁ？」などと会話しながら
ぼちぼちレッスンをやってます。
教室からみた空は雲が深く垂れこめています。
☆ ☆ ☆
無料体験実施中です。
英語に興味のある方は是非一度
いらしてください。
イギリスの伝統的な方法で
英語を基礎から教えます。
ムーン英会話教室
奄美市浦上４２－７（西平商会向かい）
0997-52-7775
090-6039-6828
--時間は１６時すぎ
台風はかなり奄美に接近してるようですが・・・
今のところ，時折強風が吹くくらいです。
今から夜にかけて上陸する感じです。
英語教室はやっていますが・・お休みの生徒さんが多いです。
来てくれる生徒さんと「風強くなるかぁ？」などと会話しながら
ぼちぼちレッスンをやってます。
教室からみた空は雲が深く垂れこめています。
☆ ☆ ☆
無料体験実施中です。
英語に興味のある方は是非一度
いらしてください。
イギリスの伝統的な方法で
英語を基礎から教えます。
ムーン英会話教室
奄美市浦上４２－７（西平商会向かい）
0997-52-7775
090-6039-6828
2017年05月17日
お久ぶりです
なんと、７７日間もご無沙汰でした。（ブログが教えてくれました）
お久しぶりです。
奄美の五月も半ばを過ぎ、しのぎやすくなった？
と思いきや、昨日は寒くて暖かいものが恋しくなるほど。
このように、寒暖の差が激しいと体調くずしてしまいそう。
くれぐれも、気をつけましょう。
☆ ☆ ☆
さて、今日久しぶりに笠利に行ってきました。（ＰＴＡでした）
帰り、窓から見える空の雲がとっても不思議でした。
まるで、ドラゴンのような。
ね、不思議でしょう？
思わず、車内から”パチィ”。
思えば４月、５月と忙しい日々、このようにゆっくり空を見てなかったのかな？
竜郷湾をぐるっとドライブしながら、やっぱり奄美の自然はきれいだな～と思う私でした。
みなさん、もうすぐ奄美の夏がやってきますよ。
私も、一息ついたのでちょっぴり、ブログ頑張っちゃいます！！
☆ ☆ ☆
ムーン英会話教室も６月まで入会金無料
のキャンペーン実施中です。
英語に興味のある方は、一度無料体験に
来てみませんか？
子供さん～大人の方までＯＫです。
お待ちしています。
ムーン英会話教室
奄美市鳩浜長180
0997-52-7775/090-6039-6828
☆ ☆ ☆
2016年01月11日
桜ロード
１月1日は、数えるほどの桜が
今日は、満開に近い桜ロードの1本の木。
毎年、この頃になると、道並みに
見事な桜の花々を、楽しませてくれる
「桜ロード」（自称）
芦花部～秋名までの間に何十本もの桜の木は
圧巻。
でも、毎年つぼみをつけ始めるのは、同じ木らしい。
不思議だね。
今日は天気がはっきりしなかったけど、
何人かの方が写真に収める姿も。
この桜ロードに満開の花が見えるのももうすぐ。
楽しみです。
同じ桜でも、同じ人間でも
自分らしく、堂々と自分しか咲かせられない華を咲かせたいものです。
大好きな、東郷明子さんの歌が聞こえるようでした。
☆ ☆ ☆
ムーン英会話教室
今年も奄美の方たちに
英語で貢献できたらと思います。
頑張ります。
奄美市鳩浜町180
0997-52-7775
090-6039-6828（ムーンゆかり）
今日は、満開に近い桜ロードの1本の木。
毎年、この頃になると、道並みに
見事な桜の花々を、楽しませてくれる
「桜ロード」（自称）
芦花部～秋名までの間に何十本もの桜の木は
圧巻。
でも、毎年つぼみをつけ始めるのは、同じ木らしい。
不思議だね。
今日は天気がはっきりしなかったけど、
何人かの方が写真に収める姿も。
この桜ロードに満開の花が見えるのももうすぐ。
楽しみです。
同じ桜でも、同じ人間でも
自分らしく、堂々と自分しか咲かせられない華を咲かせたいものです。
大好きな、東郷明子さんの歌が聞こえるようでした。
☆ ☆ ☆
ムーン英会話教室
今年も奄美の方たちに
英語で貢献できたらと思います。
頑張ります。
奄美市鳩浜町180
0997-52-7775
090-6039-6828（ムーンゆかり）
2014年05月01日
見ました!!サンプリンセス・・BIG
奄美大島に寄港した、サンプリンセス号見ました？
これは帰りの様子ですが、バミューダ船籍のこの船に、数千人のお客様
が乗って、奄美によってくださいました。
私も、焼酎試飲コナーでお手伝いさせていただきました。
日本人の方、ロシア、アメリカ、イギリス、韓国の方など
沢山の方がきました。
異国間感の感じられる、楽しい時間でした。
次は、９日に、再度、サンプリンセス号がきます。
沢山の、奄美の人にも楽しんでほしいです。
英語を、喋ってみるには・・最高のチャンス！！
これは帰りの様子ですが、バミューダ船籍のこの船に、数千人のお客様
が乗って、奄美によってくださいました。
私も、焼酎試飲コナーでお手伝いさせていただきました。
日本人の方、ロシア、アメリカ、イギリス、韓国の方など
沢山の方がきました。
異国間感の感じられる、楽しい時間でした。
次は、９日に、再度、サンプリンセス号がきます。
沢山の、奄美の人にも楽しんでほしいです。
英語を、喋ってみるには・・最高のチャンス！！
2013年05月29日
直したい！！
耕運機、再稼働目指し、３０年間まったく動いてない耕運機
に立ち向かう・・・リチャード！！
いまやっと、エンジン部分を組み合わせ、ハンドルも自家製で
作りました。
しかし、エンジンはそう簡単にはスタートしません。
なんとか、煙突からは白い煙が。
しかし、これは燃えてない証拠。軽油がかよってないらしい。
３０年眠ってたんだもんね。動いたらすごいよね！！
昨日今日と頑張って回しますが・・・まだまだ
動いて、耕運機として、動いたら奇跡だよね
2012年09月07日
Hmmm!
Well, loads has been happening, but I haven't written in this blog for ages.
Trouble is, once I stop writing for a while it becomes harder to start writing again.
One reason I don't feel much inclination to write is because the things I want to write about are somewhat unpopular topics. Also, because this is in English, I don't suppose anyone much can understand enough of what I write about to gauge what I am trying to convey.
I use difficult English because in my mind the messages I make are for those who can understand. I suppose this means really that the only people who can understand what I write about are my remaining family in England, a (very) few foreigners here in Japan, and perhaps one or two people living here in Amami.
... Not forgetting of course that my ineptness with a camera means it is probably uninteresting to just read about a project I happen to be doing.
I always feel guilty when I make something or repair something because I am certain some people will be interested, but if I don't take pics then it's largely pointless to just describe in words what I am doing.
For example, I had a need for a spot-welder because I needed to repair my son's glasses. It took me a week to make the welder, and when I eventually had the courage to stop testing it with bits of metal I have and try to weld the glasses, the glasses' frame instantly vaporised, and I had to repair them a different way.
I made the spot welder out of microwave oven transformers and a whole load of stuff I had knocking about. I cut the secondary windings off and threaded about three turns of very thick wire where the fine windings used to be, so I had about 3V at a few hundred amps. One transformer wasn't enough to give a decent weld so I wired-up two transformers and connected them in-phase, and in parallel, and fed the output to some improvised brass electrodes. Well , maybe it's late, but I can take some pics and show you how I made my spot welder. If I am lucky, I can get my wife to upload the pics and put them into a format I can upload here. I hesitate because my wife is usually too busy and I just give up. Of course I could learn to upload the pics, but I can't read the (Japanese) instructions for doing this, and I need someone to teach me.
This is just a diary entry. I'm hoping that my writing this particular entry will encourage me to start writing regularly here again. Loads of interesting things have been happening, so I'm not short of things to write about.
I apologise for not writing here lately.
Trouble is, once I stop writing for a while it becomes harder to start writing again.
One reason I don't feel much inclination to write is because the things I want to write about are somewhat unpopular topics. Also, because this is in English, I don't suppose anyone much can understand enough of what I write about to gauge what I am trying to convey.
I use difficult English because in my mind the messages I make are for those who can understand. I suppose this means really that the only people who can understand what I write about are my remaining family in England, a (very) few foreigners here in Japan, and perhaps one or two people living here in Amami.
... Not forgetting of course that my ineptness with a camera means it is probably uninteresting to just read about a project I happen to be doing.
I always feel guilty when I make something or repair something because I am certain some people will be interested, but if I don't take pics then it's largely pointless to just describe in words what I am doing.
For example, I had a need for a spot-welder because I needed to repair my son's glasses. It took me a week to make the welder, and when I eventually had the courage to stop testing it with bits of metal I have and try to weld the glasses, the glasses' frame instantly vaporised, and I had to repair them a different way.
I made the spot welder out of microwave oven transformers and a whole load of stuff I had knocking about. I cut the secondary windings off and threaded about three turns of very thick wire where the fine windings used to be, so I had about 3V at a few hundred amps. One transformer wasn't enough to give a decent weld so I wired-up two transformers and connected them in-phase, and in parallel, and fed the output to some improvised brass electrodes. Well , maybe it's late, but I can take some pics and show you how I made my spot welder. If I am lucky, I can get my wife to upload the pics and put them into a format I can upload here. I hesitate because my wife is usually too busy and I just give up. Of course I could learn to upload the pics, but I can't read the (Japanese) instructions for doing this, and I need someone to teach me.
This is just a diary entry. I'm hoping that my writing this particular entry will encourage me to start writing regularly here again. Loads of interesting things have been happening, so I'm not short of things to write about.
I apologise for not writing here lately.
2012年05月20日
Rain, unfortunately.
It is actually cold! I might be feeling cold because I am still wet after riding my bike through the rain. I really want to go to sleep in my warm bed.
Today I heard from a friend that that old dragon, Queen Elizabeth, had "lunch" with monarchs from over 30 countries. That's a lot of countries. Old Lizzie is said to have had this massive "lunch" to celebrate the diamond anniversary of her being the Queen of England. I thought it sounded a bit on the suspicious side, and I wondered what, if any other reason might be at play for this mass gathering of parasites?
So Old Lizzie had her tea and cucumber sandwiches at Windsor, and later on, the grotesque horde shuffled over to Buckingham Palace, with the polo-playing clown called Prince Charles acting as host - for dinner (or left-over sandwiches from their earlier bash at the 'castle').
I was surprised to hear of this huge cluster of royals because there was nary a word in the press about it. The logistics for their transportation must have been a nightmare, but somehow all those extremely wealthy blood-suckers managed to have their 'lunch' without anyone much knowing anything about it until after it was over and they'd gone home. Most interesting I thought.
One reason I thought it was a bit odd was because the Q has only been crowned as Queen of England for 59 years. But my friend told me she was effectively queen since 1952. In my mind was the fact that she didn't have her coronation until 1953, so I thought her term only counted to 59 years - well whatever! I remembered her coronation day because it was the same year that Edmund Hillary scampered up Mt Everest.
So what's going on? Was it really only a luncheon event? I was very curious about what happened at the Palace afterwards when Prince Charles was host. I wondered if all those royals had been called together for a special meeting?
One thing's for sure, and that's that Queen Elizabeth is supposed to earn her keep by providing lots of spectacular events in the media, so this clandestine luncheon appointment with the royals of over 30 countries appears to be a case of the taxpayers failing to get value for money from their odious investment.
And did I say it was cold?
2012年05月14日
Things on my mind
It is wet weather now. It's windy. The wind has blown the cover off the garden-tractor I fixed, which is cluttering up the parking area. I'm planning to write a piece on that tractor, and as soon as I get the pictures uploaded I'll publish it here.
The other side of the parking area has two scooters. One of them, a Honda Dio, is almost finished. One of my hobbies is fixing things, and as I have quite a good relationship with the owner of a bike shop, I get old bikes for free, then I order parts through the shop, and sell them cheaply. I have fixed and sold about a half-dozen scooters now - maybe I should make this a part of my job? Anyway, I want to write at length about the scooters I fix because I'd like to use this site to try to sell them.
It's difficult to get enough scooters to sell. Scooters are very much in demand at the moment. People don't have much money these days, and so cheap (but reliable) scooters are very popular.
If anyone has a scooter that needs fixing inexpensively then you might like to ask me to fix it for you? For example, an old scooter might need a bit of welding on the frame, new tyres, a new muffler, new mirrors, a new seat cover and maybe a few other parts. I can do all that with new parts for around 30,000 yen.
I was hard at work in my garden today. I planted 'nira.' My garden is mostly rocks, so it takes a very long time to dig a trench, then put compost, fertilizer and soil in it. It took me four hours to dig a trench 1.2 metres long, 40cms wide, and 30cms deep. I use a steel bar and a spade to dig the trench, and I mix the new soil with a small hoe ... I managed to break two hoes today. They both need new handles. Two weeks ago I broke the cutting edge off one of the (cheap) hoes, so I welded it back (I'm so cheap).
So I got a lot of exercise today. There's NO DOUBT that trying to make a garden with poor soil is a massive undertaking. Basically all that poor soil needs to be removed and replaced with organic stuff. I've been trying to get some decent vegetables growing in my garden for over a year, and I've moved tons of rocks and shifted tons of soil. I've added all the organic stuff I can find for the past year, and still now only a quarter of my garden has good soil. The rest of the garden is still waiting for me to dig up the lifeless inorganic rock and replace it with rotted vegetation.
As well as planting about a hundred 'nira' seedlings, I and my wife also planted some green peppers, some cucumbers, some 'okura,', some lemon-grass and a few other things. The 35 tomato plants I grew from seed and transplanted into my garden are all looking fine. Last year, an early typhoon killed all my tomato plants, so I hope I'll be lucky this year.
Near to my garden I am planning to build a home for my son's turtles. The turtles were about 4cm long when we bought the turtles for my eldest son, and now they are about 20cms long. There are four turtles. At first the turtles were OK in a modified aquarium. It was a 60cm fish tank, and I fitted it with a heater, a heat lamp, a place to sit above the water, and a water pump to recycle and clean the water. That tank was OK for a year and a half, but they grew too big. Then I made a bigger home for them using the top of a discarded 'kotatsu.' I made a hole in the centre and put a 40cm plastic bowl there for them to swim in, and I made a cover with a hinged door so it could be accessed. A 20W fluorescent light meant the turtle's home could be maintained when it was dark. But unfortunately even that home is too small now.
Now there is a 70cm aluminium bowl set into the ground near my garden. As soon as I get some materials, I'm going to build a new home for them around that bowl. This time it needs to be a permanent location outside because they are too big for a practically-portable home. I'll make a small waterfall and build a small hill inside a fenced-off enclosure, and I'll fit some kind of removable lid. I hope I can make the waterfall run off solar power.
I thought of using lots of rocks insulated from the ground, so that in the early morning, the dew will condense on the rocks and provide a small, but reliable source of water to keep the turtles' bowl filled.
Every few weeks I cut the grass around our apartment building. Then I rake it all up and put it all in a pile so it can become compost. Wow! Such hard work! Of course I could buy some good soil, but it is expensive and I can't afford it.
Why am I feeling listless tonight? Maybe not enough sleep? I suppose I've got all the jobs I planned to get done today finished, so I should be feeling satisfied. Over time, if I am not careful, I can get quite messy with my jobs. Sometimes I have two or three jobs being done at the same time, and so my bench becomes cluttered. Then sometimes I manage to have a pile of tools on the kitchen table. If I don't do a big clean-up then it is possible for me to become stuck. Then I am forced to do a blitz and clean everything up. It takes me only an hour or so, and I feel a lot better when the place is tidy and I know where all my tools are.
I always feel bad because I am unable to get my photos up on this blog. The reason is my own laziness, because I still haven't learnt the Japanese instructions of a lot of the programmes on this computer. This blog is all Japanese of course, and I can understand just enough to post a simple entry - such as this one. My wife is very busy these days, and I keep forgetting to ask her to upload my photos for me.
How many people can understand what I write here? I expect the number must be very small - that's why I want to put lots of pictures up, because a picture is worth a thousand words, and the language is not so much of a problem if you can see the issue being written about.
For a while now I've been thinking about making a diary here. It's a big undertaking if I decide to do it, because for a diary to be useful, it should be regularly updated, and really ought to have a new page every day - or every few days at the most.
I decided to write this piece because I am trying to push myself to make the effort to make this blog more alive. My conscience nags me because I don't update enough.
Well - it's late, and I should go about the place and just make sure everything's done, then I'll head for bed. Before I sleep I'll be planning tomorrow's activities. I must get that scooter done. The scooter is in the kitchen at the moment because I haven't as yet put the plastic cover on it, and if it sits outside in the rain, water will get all over the engine and all the bits the plastic cover conceals.
The wind is gusting - it's rattling the loose parts on this old building. Tomorrow we are set for a day of rain, and that's good because of the plants I put in today. It's not so good as far as my getting the scooter finished though.
One more thing I am doing now, is I've got a friend's lead/acid battery hooked-up to one of my homemade pulse-chargers. The battery was severely sulphated, and by pulsing a high current with a sharp leading edge to the spike it is possible to remove the hardened sulphates. Yesterday when I began pulsing the battery, my hydrometer registered the electrolyte was virtually water. The float indicated the battery was off the scale. The meter I use indicates a green band when the electrolyte's specific gravity is good, a yellow band if it is a little weak, and a wide red band indicating the battery is unfit for service. All six cells were beyond registering on even the red band.
Now, after a little over 24 hours, all the cells are inside the yellow area, and a few cells are almost in the green area. The electrolyte should be sulphuric acid and water of a concentration of 36%. The specific gravity should be at least 1,265. Many people have heard of desulphating systems, and some pay a lot of money for such devices in the shops. But as far as I can tell, all the shop-bought units are practicably ineffective. I have compared a friend's pulse-charger bought from Nishimuta, and it is useless. It is, however, quite satisfactory as a regular charger.
I spent five years making and experimenting with circuits until I found what worked, and now I'm pretty confident I can get any sulphated battery back into service. My neighbours use batteries I have desulphated with my machines, as do quite a few of my relatives. All the batteries I use are ones I've desulphated after they were scrapped. I think my Honda Cub's battery must be over 20 years old now - that's the oldest one I've got.
