Dondoyaki2014

I took this picture last November, so it has become terrible color now.

These are called "Kankoro mochi". They are rice cakes with mashed sweet potatoes. The green one is a mugwort flavored. The center is plain sweet potato flavored. The purple is purple sweet potato flavored. It was my first time to eat them. They are a little too sweet.

Although, we hadn't have much snow this year, it snowed a lot on new year's day. So, we had to shovel the snow.

A Happy New Year!

These cute candies are characterized "Shichifukujin". Shichifukujin means the seven  gods of Good Fortune. We got these candies from our temple. Last year was not my year, so I hope the seven gods might give some god fortune!

Both two of my old computers had got old and worked so slowly. Also,  the operation systems were windows XP. XP's support  well end by April 7th. Therefore, I bought a new one beginning of the new year. Since I am a technophobia, it will take time to get used using this.  This laptop computer is thinner than old ones.

This is a kamidana, or a shinto home shrine. The center ornament is called shimekazari for a new year.  We will take this out from the  kamidana, and bring it to a shinto shrine to burn.

Artichoke seeds

I grew an artichoke plant in the past two years. It didn't come up last spring, I think it had died during the winter. I couldn't find artichoke plants this year, but I found artichoke seeds on the internet the other day. I bought a package of the seeds, I will grow them next year. I hope they will grow well. The seed company gave me flower seeds as a gift.

myoga

I bought 3 myoga plants this year. They didn't grow well, so I only got two myogas. I wonder if other countries' poeple eat them?