I have a Native American shamanic drum. It is made by elk hide. When I met this drum at the gem show, I fall in love with the sound. It had deep and profound vibrations that I felt somewhat familiar with it.

This morning when I played my drum, it sounded dull. I quickly recognized the reason. It is because I accidentally kept my drum in the box inside the closet. Now I remember my Navajo friend once told me not to keep a Native American drum in the place where it is humid. So, I let my drum dry under the gentle breeze from a ceiling fan. By the end of the day, the drum sounded much better than this morning.

That reminded me of humidity in our house. We are in the midst of monsoon. During the monsoon season, all the doors get tighter and hard to be shut all the way. So, during monsoon season, most of our doors stay being half open.

In Arizona where I live, we have humidity only three months during monsoon season in a year. I enjoy this rainy season. Humidity is good for my skin and hair.

When I think of humid air and dry air, it makes me think of the environmental difference between the place where I had lived and the current place where I live. When I lived in japan, I longed for dry air. Now I live in Arizona, I miss humid air.

From these experiences, I learned I should enjoy whatever I am provided at this moment. I had enjoyed humid air for 40 years, so perhaps, it is time for me to enjoy dry air for the latter half of my life. It might be good to stop missing what we don’t have, but to start appreciating what we have been provided right now.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

My Japanese friend asked me what I wanted to do during my visit in Japan. I have thought about it. Most of the things will be done during my visit. There is one thing that I want to do in japan. It is to receive a palm line reading.

A hand analysis is available in America. I had attended a presentation lecture from a professional hand analysis reader. She is an American woman. She mentioned the western hand analysis and the traditional palm reading are two different things.

According to her, the western hand analyst is based on the scientific research and data. On the other hand, the traditional (possibly Asian) palm line reading is based on hands on; the information and knowledge is passed down from a parent to a child, just like an heirloom. She focused on the accuracy of the western hand analysis.

I personally prefer the Japanese traditional palm line reading. Everybody is different and unique. Even twin sisters or brothers, who have almost same birth place, time, and year along with the growing up environment, have different lives. All in all, we are all unique souls. I don’t think nobody will perfectly fit in the hand analysis textbook.

From this reason, I want to have my palm line reading in the Japanese traditional methods.

At this time, I don’t have anybody whom I can ask for my palm line reading. I wish my grandfather or my aunt were still alive, as they were pretty knowledgeable in many ways including palm line reading.

I let my family spirits take care of this. If I need to receive one, it will naturally be arranged during my visit in Japan.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today I watched the TED talk of Jamie Oliver. He is an English man. I was wondering why he came here in America to teach the importance of changing the current diet to a healthier one.

He answered to my questions in my mind at the ending of his speech. The first reason is that he is a dad and he wants to improve children’s health by improving the diet. And the second reason is that he believes America is the leader of the world. If America changes the long lasted habit in wrong diet, the other countries will follow.

I agree with him. I profoundly believe the real revolution comes from inside to outside.

What does it mean? It means the real revolution does not happen in one day by one leader. Instead, the real revolution comes from people’s mind. As Jamie mentions in his speech, if one person is educated about the healthy cooking with real food and shares it with three other people. Then the three people do the same, and if that continues, it will eventually become a great power to educate the entire country.

It applies to our daily efforts. Our daily effort might be small, but when it accumulates, it will be a great power. Let’s keep on doing whatever we feel it right. And let’s share it with our family and friends. Our daily efforts will never be useless in the long run.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today, my husband wanted to eat at the restaurant. I tried to go with them, but my intuition said no. I didn’t feel like eating at the restaurant. So I asked my husband and daughter to go without me. After they left, I prayed for them so that they could have good time with kind waiter/waitress at the restaurant. After they came back, they told me they didn’t meet anybody rude at the restaurant. I got relieved to hear that.

Why I am writing this? I know it might sound ridiculous to you. But there is a solid reason for me to worry about eating at the restaurant.

I am not a big fan of eating at the restaurant in America. The main reason is on the waiters/waitresses. Based on my personal experiences, I hardly never ever had a great experience from waiters/waitresses at the restaurant in America.

Whenever I was in the middle of important conversation with my friends, they came to our table interrupting our conversation and asked if everything was okay. Then, whenever we needed their assistance, they were gone somewhere. When I asked for assistance to other waiter/waitress, they always responded “I would look for him/her for you.” According to American friends, waiters/waitresses have their own territory to earn tips, so the customers are not supposed to ask other waiter/waitress. And we ended up for waiting our waiter/waitress for a bill for a long time.

Here is my recent experience. My friend invited me to the restaurant. I was reluctant at eating at the restaurant, but I wanted to be social. I simply wanted to have a good time with her. So I accepted her invitation.

Right after I started eating, I found a white long hair in my egg. It was obvious that the hair came into my food when the cook was cooking the food. I didn’t want to lose my friend’s appetite while she was eating. So I didn’t say anything. I just stopped eating my food.

After my friend finished eating, I mentioned that to my friend. She strongly suggested that I should report our waitress about that for them. My friend called the waitress, and I told the truth. The waitress raised her voice and nudged me why I did not tell her right away. The waitress never apologized to me. She said it might have come from the cook who prepared this food. She said she would tell it to her (the restaurant owner or the cook, I don’t know). As you can imagine, the waitress never came back to our table, nor the restaurant owner or the cook. I didn’t get any apologies from anybody.

This story didn’t end here. I have one more thing to share with you. At the payment, my friend wanted to treat me, so I respectfully accepted her offer. I took a look of the amount on the bill. She added 30% tip from the total amount. I was stunned. I didn’t understand why she gave such a big amount of tip to the rude waitress. 

Some days later, I mentioned it to another American friends. According to them, normally people don’t want to show themselves as stingy in tipping, so they leave a big portion of tips no matter what their servers do. And, since tipping is an American custom that has continued for many years, they have to follow regardless of their likes or dislikes.

I have seen some news about the no-tipping movement. I am glad to know at least there are some more people who feel the same way as I do. I hope they will change the tipping system eventually. Until then, I will avoid eating at the resultant in America as much as I can. It is not a big deal for me. Eating food equals to in-taking energy. I would like to intake good energy from what I eat. 

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

I watched the documentary film “Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock (2017)”. The streaming is available on Netflix, and the DVD is available through their website. It describes The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s NODAPL Movement against the U.S. government’s plan to construct an oil pipeline through their land. 

I could not watch it without shedding lots of tears. Every time when I see Lakota people’s peaceful warriors in Youtube video, news, or films, my past life memory kicks into me. The vision is so vivid accompanied with strong feeling.

I went through lots of tough experiences in this lifetime, and luckily enough, most of my traumatic events on this lifetime are already healed. How do I know if I am already healed from a certain tough event? I judge it if I can laugh about it or not. If I can treat the certain event as a past event and laugh about it as if I were an observer, I know I am healed from it. I am done leaning from it.

However, the traumatic event that I went through the life born as a Lakota woman, even though it was one of my many past lives, it never disappears from my soul. It was so tough and so big to let it go.

Perhaps, my tears are the signs to motivate me to do something. My current desire is to go to Lakota land and reunite with my family souls. I feel my soul tribes are living there. Once I reunite with them and start living my true life mission, I might stop shedding tears.

In order to make that happen, all I need to do is patiently wait. I know the best timing and best method will naturally come to me in the future, when everything gets ready. I fully trust it will happen eventually, in a natural way.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

As far as I know, Japanese society values in working as a group. It is understandable when you think about our ancestor’s life style. Japanese ancestors made their living from farming, so that they needed to cooperate one another to produce crops.

In Japanese culture, whenever you spend time alone, people will think of you as a lonely person or a sad person without friends. Or they even label you as a weird person. At least, I had been treated like that.

I belonged to a play troop since I was three years old to ten years old. When I became an adult, I had an opportunity to see my teacher at the play troop again. The teacher told me that I was a very weird and peculiar child. I asked her the reason why. She simply answered to me “because you were always happy even when you were alone.”

In that sense, I am in the midst of luxurious life right now, simply because I have my own alone time daily and regularly.

Once in a while I heard old people saying that they feel lost after they retire from work and raising children. I honestly cannot understand. Because for me, I have a long wish list to do in my free time. I never get bored in my free time. I am actually lacking the time for that.

The truth is though, I appear being alone physically, but I am always surrounded by my family spirits. That way, I am never alone. 

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

During I was preparing for my trip to Japan, my daughter found my Japanese driver’s license in my Japanese wallet. She was surprised at the picture because I was younger and skinnier than now. The picture was taken right before I moved to America, so I was about 38 years old.

She wanted to check out my other pictures in my younger days, so I showed her some more. I only had some pictures in my online storage, which were taken after 2006.

While I was showing my old pictures to my daughter, I noticed one thing, which I never noticed before. In every picture, my right eye was always bigger than the left eye.

According to physiognomy, a person whose right eye is bigger than the left is a left brain dominant person. The person uses the left brain often so that he/she tends to be intelligent and successful in their business or career field.

I think it was true. Those days I was single and needed to make money to support my daily life to pay bills. I was not a super successful in my career, but at least, many people had told me that I was a fast and quick learner. So, in a way, I forced myself to look smart to live my life. I used my left brain more than my right brain in order to be logical.

Interesting thing is though, my recent pictures show that my right eye is not bigger than those days. My recent pictures taken after I moved to America (aka, after my marriage) show that my both eyes are balanced out. My right eye is still slightly bigger than the left, but not much. That means nowadays I live my life peacefully. Since I am not in the business field any more, I don’t need to show myself to be smart. I can be myself, which means, I can follow my intuition though my right brain.

I look forward to checking my pictures will be taken 10 years from now on. In the near future, I might have a bigger left eye than the right eye, becoming to be a right brain dominant person.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today was the school start day. There were some students who took the same school bus stop. I haven’t seen them during the summer vacation.

When I saw them again at the school bus stop this morning, I was amazed on how they grew up in these two and half months. Some kids got taller than before. Other kids did not grew in their heights that much, but their demeanor became much more calm and mature than before the summer vacation. Perhaps from other people’s eyes, my daughter has amazingly grown physically and mentally too.

When I was 11 years old, I had the biggest grow spurt in my life. I had grown close to 5 inches (12.5cm) in that year. I was so excited to get taller than my older brother, but unfortunately, my growth in height had stopped right there.

It is fun to observe the growth in children, isn’t it? Their growth is obvious every month and every year.

Once we become adult, our physical growth stops. However, we still keep growing mentally by leaning and experiencing new things until our last day on this lifetime. Our mental growth is not obvious for ourselves, but from other’s eyes, it might be obvious.

There is no need to compete with anybody else. As long as we keep growing matured mentally day by day, I think it is good.   

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

Today, two people informed me of the upcoming local small business fair. I participated this business fair as a vendor last year, but I don’t feel like to participate it this year.

As for my small business, right after its establishment of August 2016, I was fully motivated by my business mentors. I created my homepage and my Facebook business Page. I exposed myself in the small business fair as well as at some opportunities to offer free trial sessions. My interview was featured in the local magazine. And I paid for the business license. I was ready to launch my business.  

However, in this year 2017, I have rarely done anything progressive. I don’t feel any tailwind toward my business. I don’t have any backwind neither.

I have been thinking about giving up my business by discontinuing my business license. When I mentioned it to my family, they encouraged me to hang in there and wait patiently for the tailwind and some new opportunities coming up to me. They told me that it might seem to be no movement at all right now, but still, there should be some progress in my daily life.

By listening to them, I thought I should observe my business for little more duration. Everything, including the environment and situation, and myself and other people, is constantly changing. We should not say “never”, right? The current situation of no tailwind or headwind can be said it is peaceful and stable. I should enjoy this peaceful moment without any pressure or stress. 

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

I went to the state park with my family. We like this state park. It takes only one hour drive, and we always enjoy the beautiful scenery along the way. Especially in this monsoon season, it is filled with healthy green in the mountain and meadow. They were so beautiful. The air smelled fresh and clean.

We arrived around 8 am in the morning. Luckily, there were not so many people yet. Our main purpose was to swim in the lake. We quickly changed into the swim suit and jumped in the lake. The water temperature was not cold at all. I enjoyed the soft touch feeling from natural the water.

After enjoying swimming in the lake, we went for hiking in the surrounding area. We encountered many vivid blue dragonflies and yellow butterflies.

This summer, we needed to cancel a couple of vacation trips due to the extreme heat. So, today’s short trip was the only vacation trip during the summer vacation. I am sure my daughter fully enjoyed this short trip. Not to mention, I also enjoyed the healing energy from the nature.  

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪