Most happiest occasion of 2010

I am watching "Kouhaku Uta-gassen" with my family now. It is a traditional music TV program which is broadcast on New Year's Eve in Japan.

This year will be over soon. So I would like to take a moment to look back on it.
My most happiest achievement was taking second place in the 'Embedded Technology Software Design Robot Competition' of 2010. You can watch the video of my robot driving on YouTube.





It is the biggest robot competition in all of Japan. More that 1700 people, including software engineers and students, attend it every year.

I have attended it 4 out of 5 years since being a university student. I have learned about software engineering through it.

Next year I don't plan on participating in it. Instead, I want to teach software engineering to younger software engineers and students.

Do you know that 'orugoru' is a foreign loanword?

I visited Hamanako pond with my family yesterday.

My older brother and I live in Aichi prefecture. However, my parents live in Tokushima prefecture, so they came to Nagoya station by bus. Then we went to Hamamatsu station.

We didn't have any reason for visiting Hamanako pond. Just getting together is the most important thing for my parents -- the destination is not so important for us.

We went to the Hamanako Music Box Museum. It's on the northen side of Hamanako pond. It takes 50 min from Hamamatsu station by bus.

Music boxes are known as "orugoru（オルゴール）" in Japanaese. A staff member at the museum said that it is a Japanese-Dutch loanword. Foreign people don't understand "orugoru". So Japanese people have to be aware of that in foreign countries.

We could see quite nice view of Hamanako pond from the top of the museum. A city marathon and bike race will be held at the begining of the next year. I want to enter both of them.