Helloooooo~
Happy New Year of the Tiger! 
Today, I expected either a very busy Cafe (because of all the ladies who had to wait sooo long to come here), OR, a very quiet Cafe (because everybody needed to take a break from the "hyper time" with children & grandchildren)......
The second version became reality - Jamie from Spain, and Chelsea from England joined today to chat about how they spent the holidays, and to learn a little about the "Tiger", according to the Chinese Zodiac:



By the way, THIS one came in FULL-COLOUR, as a new-year-special, so to speak! 

The first cake for the new year looked like this and answers to the name "Marmalade Cake":



In the English language, berries (strawberries, rasberries etc) when made into a jam, are called "jam". However, when oranges are made into jam, it's called "marmalade". So, there neither is "orange jam", nor strawberry marmalade"!
In German, they're all called "Marmelade"!

My family went to a very local temple about 10 car-minutes from our house to strike the "Jouya-no-kane", called Houju-Ji. We go there every year on new year's eve because the atmosphere is so much like a family, so "local", not crowded at all, and so peaceful. On the afternoon of the 1st, we visited "Ikuta-san", which is so totally the opposite compared to the temple: Commercial, extremely crowded, lively, and noisy - but also nice! 

After eagerly checking the weather report & snow conditions, we made the sudden decision to take a one-night, two-days ski trip to Kannabe - it was EXCELLENT!  Look:



This IS Hyogo-ken! It looks like Zao, or Hokkaido!  We were sooo lucky, because skiing in Hyogo is always a gamble with the weather.

Anyway, I hope the luck stays with me throughout the whole year (and beyond!)!

You can all contribute!

See you soon!

The "Master" (who will turn 42 this year!!!!)

P.S. Jamie spent new year's eve all alone watching DVDs - could you do it?