Digital Blog vs Manual Blog

"I started my Blog, please visit !"

This conversation is very new to me.

But my friend has been blogging for 5 years.

I remember my co-worker in 1994, he told me that

he was writing on his website, and I think back,

it was his blog.   It was 16 years ago!

Blogging is popular, am I the one being slow ???

To tell the truth, I started my blog 2007 October,

and it was both in English and Japanese.

But I only wrote twice and gave up.

My excuse is that 

I had 4yrs, 2yrs and 6 month old babies and 

I had no time!

However, inspired by my friend, I gave it a try again.

This time, I am having lots of fun writing!

Then this made me think back about my father, 

he used to do a similar thing with blogging, but more manualy.

Even before I was born.

My father passed away when I was 4 years old by a medical accident,

I don't remember too much about him.

But I think I know him very well, because of a monthly magazine, 

"Coral".

It is not the coral that is in a ocean, but a monthly magazine

between my fathers friends had been issued for many many years.

After he was graduated from University, his Judo team mate

were keeping in touch with each other by writing letters.

Instead of writing letters each other, they decided to send 

letters once a month to an organizer of the year.

The organizer made copies and mailed it to the each team mates.

This magazine's name was

"Coral".

This is a Manual Blogging, isn't it ?!?!

However, my father passed away when he was only 39 years old,

thus he was able to write only about 15years while other team mates

had kept writing until few years ago, and they celebrated

the 500th issue as the last issue.

Why this "Coral" helped me understand about my father?

At the 1 year memorial anniversary of my father's death,

his team mates got together and pulled all of my father's

writing in the "Coral", typed up and publish a book called

"Yosetsu (passing too early)" as a memorial book of him.

The book was too difficult for me to read as I was only 5 years old.

It was still difficult for me as a teenager.

I moved out from my hometown to go to a college in Tokyo,

 and I brought the book with me as a charm. (not for reading,,,)

My father used to do Judo and trained very hard.

When he broke his right arm during the training, he started to

practice the left arm trick, then he became expert of 

the left arm trick of Judo.

This story is written in the book. 

It was very inspiring for me as I was also training very hard in

gymnastics team and almost wanted to escape from the hard training.

But by reading his story, I thought

"I am his daughter, I can do anything!"

Eventually, the age of the father in the book and my actual age

was becoming closer, and I started to be able to read his book 

finally.

The book was always with me as a protection charm.

By the time I came to Canada 1999, the book was wore out, the pages were falling out, so I had to have elastic band around to hold it together.

One day, I was very tired of being a "mom", the moment of break down,

the book was in my sight and started to read.

At the beginning, I thought

"This is a very difficult book.  I will not be able to read again as usual, and I would fall asleep."

But, I could read.

I could understand, finally !

Finally, I was able to understand

what my father wanted to write.

Then I realize that my actual age was already older than my father's age when he wrote his articles.

I was touched....

Finally, I was able to understand why my father's team mate and my mother wanted to take effort to publish this book, because they wanted us (3 daughters) to know what our father was like.

Maybe, in a future, my children will enjoy reading my blog

but not the near future,

Because, 

I just know that when they enjoy reading my blog, 

I won't be in this world.