仙台 えいごの教室

　

  Look! Who came to my room?

    

   I kind of remember seeing them around recently, like in the last year¹ or two, but recently one of my adult students gave two to me. They are finger cots². You wear them like a thimble³ and they help flip up³ paper quickly because they are not slippery. Are’t they cute? More like funny and cute?

  

  I am the kind of person who can spend hours at a stationary store, so I was really thrilled by this present.

 

  I sometimes hear from foreigners that Japanese stationery⁴ is great — with lots of interesting products like friction⁵ pens, high quality paper notebooks, many pencils and pens with cute designs and lots of other things.

  (Don’t get me wrong⁶. I like the practicality⁷ of foreign stationery, and also I admire⁸ their creativity. — papermate, one of my favorite foreign stationery makers, already had erasable⁹ ball point pens 30 years ago. White out was first created by an American woman worker! Post-it was also created by an American company! They are also good.)

 

  Anyway, I think these are really funny!   
     

 

  … amazingly, today I also bumped into¹⁰ some more Haniwa dolls. I went out to do some weekend shopping. When I popped into¹¹ a home center to see some spring flowers, look what I found!!

 

  They were hiding themselves in the flowers! What a surprise! I think flowers and Haniwa dolls don’t really go together¹², but, I don’t know, somehow they are cute together.

 

  Haniwa dolls in a garden are like the Japanese version of garden gnomes¹³. I wonder if garden gnomes will show up¹⁴ in our gardens someday.