I am back from Japan, have been out of town again to a conference and have gone to Seattle for a week. I just want to say what a delightful time I had in Japan. The friends we have there are wonderful. We only saw them for a few hours as we were out and about on our own but everyone, everywhere was so nice and helpful. My daughter would show someone the name of the city or rail line we were looking for and they would point us in the right direction.
The last day I was there our friends mother who speaks about 5 words of English and I speak 3 words of Japanese (hi, yes, thank you) went shopping for the afternoon together. They have wonderful Department Stores and Malls connected to their train stations. What a great idea. I wish my daughter who lives in Washington D.C. was so lucky. Her form of transportation is the Metro there and shopping is not convenient for her at all.
Back to Japan; my guess is because so many use trains as their transportation it makes sense to take the shopping to the people. My favorite name of a store we shopped at is called, “Three Minutes Happiness”. It is a small variety store with clothes, jewelry, candles, containers (I would have loved some but I had no room), and other fun things. We had Twenty Minutes Happiness in the store.
Thank you to our friends and the wonderful Japanese people for making our trip fun, exciting and memorable. What is one of your most memorable experiences of the summer?
A few years ago I was working in what I called the fish bowl because it was just a large room with half partitions around some of the desks. Every conversation could be heard by everyone else. Every morning I would hear a man complaining about his wife losing her keys and having to look for them and making them late for work every day.
Do you ever feel like your time is not your own? My I suggest an absolute essential item to have? A planner is a must where you can record all of your appointments, to do lists, phone numbers grocery lists and a variety of other things.
School started Monday in my home city and many of you have children who either have or soon will be going off to school. This is my challenge today:
I have to share a funny story. My daughter called the other morning saying she had gotten up early so she could make a cake for a friend who was coming in from London. It was a butter cake recipe and as she read the ingredients; after she had put the flour and liquid in the bowl she realized she didn’t have any eggs.
Nancy Kirk from The 
I am often asked what I do with photos that I have taken. How do I organize them, how do I get them developed? There are so many choices today. Here is one resource I just came upon 
I was walking the other morning and way up the hill from me a man on a bike was peddling back and forth from one side of the road to the other until he came even with his friend who was also on a bike. While the one person was still making progress up the hill the other person had gotten off his bike and was at a standstill.
Have you ever sat down and done an exercise called, Start, Start, Continue. We used to do this once a year where I worked. It was a great time for reflection and forward thinking. At the beginning of the school year even if we don’t have little kiddies it is a good time to do this. (And change your batteries in your smoke detectors).
