きれいな緑です!!


テニスコートからの帰り道緑が際立ってきれいに目に飛び込んできたので思わずシャッターを押しました。木々の緑ときれいに手入れされた芝生の緑 微妙に色合いが違う緑が広がり深呼吸したくなる景色です。立ち止まってゆっくり大きく深呼吸しました。

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Torii Taketugu and Norie from Hokkaido

They brought Ichiro and Reiko's gift from Hokkaido.

Thank for the gift, Ichro san and Reiko-san.

They played tennis with us and enjoyed it. He plays pretty good.

HW is just around the corner.



It is HW tomorrow. Esther made a mask for HW and showed us how it looks like. It is good enough to let people be scared.

From Candy

I have missed everyone on the Tennis court. I cracked ribs, while moving, very hurt to laugh, better at breathing! I AM GOING TO TRY TO PLAY IN A WEEK, I just have to be careful, I think I can do it, I just cannot rotate my body too much, I will let you know when I can come.
Love, Candy

きれいな空


朝日が出てきて鮮やかな空の色になって来ました。テニスコートから水族館方向に目をやると椰子の木が揃いその向こうに鮮やかな空の色が広がっています。そんな青い空にその時限りの白い雲が思い思いの模様を描いてくれます。そんな風景をのんびり見ながらテニスコートで時間を過ごす良いですね。

Friday, October 29, 2010

Albert & Ben : We are same age.


Albert is Chinese but was born in Indonesia.
He has lived in Huston Texas 35 years more. He is brother-in-law of Joseph.

ご存知 Moe


現在は、息子さん達がいるカリフォルニアに移り住んでいますがハワイに戻って来たい一心で飛んで来て10日から2週間位滞在しています。ハワイに来るといつものように7時過ぎコーヒーとグレープを片手にNo2テニスコートへ現れます。9時頃までその日のプレーヤーと楽しく過ごしています。

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Charles News

A Deflated City

While the effects are felt across Japan’s economy, they are more apparent in regions like Osaka, the third-largest city, than in relatively prosperous Tokyo. In this proudly commercial city, merchants have gone to extremes to coax shell-shocked shoppers into spending again. But this often takes the shape of price wars that end up only feeding Japan’s deflationary spiral.

There are vending machines that sell canned drinks for 10 yen, or 12 cents; restaurants with 50-yen beer; apartments with the first month’s rent of just 100 yen, about $1.22. Even marriage ceremonies are on sale, with discount wedding halls offering weddings for $600 — less than a tenth of what ceremonies typically cost here just a decade ago.

On Senbayashi, an Osaka shopping street, merchants recently held a 100-yen day, offering much of their merchandise for that price. Even then, they said, the results were disappointing.

“It’s like Japanese have even lost the desire to look good,” said Akiko Oka, 63, who works part time in a small apparel shop, a job she has held since her own clothing store went bankrupt in 2002.

This loss of vigor is sometimes felt in unusual places. Kitashinchi is Osaka’s premier entertainment district, a three-centuries-old playground where the night is filled with neon signs and hostesses in tight dresses, where just taking a seat at a top club can cost $500.

But in the past 15 years, the number of fashionable clubs and lounges has shrunk to 480 from 1,200, replaced by discount bars and chain restaurants. Bartenders say the clientele these days is too cost-conscious to show the studied disregard for money that was long considered the height of refinement.

“A special culture might be vanishing,” said Takao Oda, who mixes perfectly crafted cocktails behind the glittering gold countertop at his Bar Oda.

After years of complacency, Japan appears to be waking up to its problems, as seen last year when disgruntled voters ended the virtual postwar monopoly on power of the Liberal Democratic Party. However, for many Japanese, it may be too late. Japan has already created an entire generation of young people who say they have given up on believing that they can ever enjoy the job stability or rising living standards that were once considered a birthright here.

Yukari Higaki, 24, said the only economic conditions she had ever known were ones in which prices and salaries seemed to be in permanent decline. She saves as much money as she can by buying her clothes at discount stores, making her own lunches and forgoing travel abroad. She said that while her generation still lived comfortably, she and her peers were always in a defensive crouch, ready for the worst.

“We are the survival generation,” said Ms. Higaki, who works part time at a furniture store.

Hisakazu Matsuda, president of Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute, who has written several books on Japanese consumers, has a different name for Japanese in their 20s; he calls them the consumption-haters. He estimates that by the time this generation hits their 60s, their habits of frugality will have cost the Japanese economy $420 billion in lost consumption.

“There is no other generation like this in the world,” Mr. Matsuda said. “These guys think it’s stupid to spend.”

Deflation has also affected businesspeople by forcing them to invent new ways to survive in an economy where prices and profits only go down, not up.

Yoshinori Kaiami was a real estate agent in Osaka, where, like the rest of Japan, land prices have been falling for most of the past 19 years. Mr. Kaiami said business was tough. There were few buyers in a market that was virtually guaranteed to produce losses, and few sellers, because most homeowners were saddled with loans that were worth more than their homes.

Some years ago, he came up with an idea to break the gridlock. He created a company that guides homeowners through an elaborate legal subterfuge in which they erase the original loan by declaring personal bankruptcy, but continue to live in their home by “selling” it to a relative, who takes out a smaller loan to pay its greatly reduced price.

“If we only had inflation again, this sort of business would not be necessary,” said Mr. Kaiami, referring to the rising prices that are the opposite of deflation. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for 20 years for inflation to come back.”

One of his customers was Masato, the small-business owner, who sold his four-bedroom condo to a relative for about $185,000, 15 years after buying it for a bit more than $500,000. He said he was still deliberating about whether to expunge the $110,000 he still owed his bank by declaring personal bankruptcy.

Economists said one reason deflation became self-perpetuating was that it pushed companies and people like Masato to survive by cutting costs and selling what they already owned, instead of buying new goods or investing.

“Deflation destroys the risk-taking that capitalist economies need in order to grow,” said Shumpei Takemori, an economist at Keio University in Tokyo. “Creative destruction is replaced with what is just destructive destruction.”


Steve Lohr contributed reporting from New York.

No1テニスコート

ワイキキから進んでくると最初にこのNo1テニスコートに辿り着きます。現在は、深夜0時から早朝5時まで公園全体クローズのためテニスコートの扉に鍵がかかっています。早朝5時に警官が巡回してきて扉の鍵を開けてくれます。年に数回警官が寝坊して6時を過ぎても鍵が開いてないことがありますがチョット待っていると申し訳なさそうに警官が来て鍵を開けてくれます。

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Joseph came back to the court with his wife and friend's couple from Seattle.


from left : Joseph, his wife Barbara, Bill, Imelda her husband Albert.

素敵なゲーム

Pauline Charles Vs Susan Joan が熱いゲームを早朝から行っています。朝6時30分ゲームが始まって20分位経過したところです。Charles のサーブ・ボールを Susan がリターンミスをしたところですが朝早くから体を動かせる体勢でゲームが出来る素晴らしいですね。こうやって朝の日差しを迎えるのが元気に過ごせる源ですね。

Pauline and Susan

Pauline と Susan がペアを組み平行に中間位置で待っています。二人ともよく動き守備範囲が広く強いボールと緩いボールを打ち分けてくるのでしっかりボールを見ていないとポイントを取られてしまいます。時々思っても見ないところにボールが返ってきてポイントを取られます。早朝からコートに来て楽しいゲームが出来るペアです。

Monday, October 25, 2010

ダブルレインボー

チョッピリのシャワーと朝の日差し ワイキキ側に虹が出る条件が揃いました。チョッピリ上目遣いにワイキキ側に注意していると予想通り虹が現れました。よく見るとダブルレインボーです。テニスコートから見る虹 いつも大きく太い虹がワイキキのホテル郡から海に向かって虹の橋がかかります。虹を見るとうれしくなりますね。