California Vacation - Day 6 - Sunday - San Diego

We are off to the San Diego Zoo. We stop and have breakfast in Old Town, San Diego and oh, do I love the breakfast margaritas at the Coyote Cafe! Luckily for us, Manami likes Mexican food since it's our favorite! We walk around town for a bit and do some window shopping. Manami buys a little Mexican baby dress for a souvenir.

After that, it's time for the zoo. The zoo is hot and crowded, but we all love to see the animals. We skipped the pandas because it was way too crowded and they just saw pandas in the Osaka Zoo. We watch the hippos, polar bears and primates. We saw one of the tigers, but he was pretty hidden. I love the aviary, and it was nice and cool there, so we made sure to enjoy that! At the very end, we got to see some of the mounted police and Manami was very impressed with them!

Layout is made with papers are from Ashalee Wall's Dark Solids kit and swirls are from her brown stamps kit (colorized) available at Oscraps. Fonts are Follies LET, Formal Script, and Eras Medium ITC.

California Vacation - Day 5 - Saturday- Shopping

Woo hoo! It's Saturday and a 3-day weekend for me! We had breakfast at Champagne's cafe at South Coast Plaza's Crystal Court and then do a little shopping. Manami especially liked the Illuminations store with all the beautiful candles!

When we were done, we went to the Mitsuwa Japanese market. We had so much fun looking at all the stuff and asking Manami questions. She got some supplies and staples to make her adjustment to American life a little easier.

After Mitsuwa, we went back to Fashion Island to look around and Manami wanted to buy a couple of things, and then it was off to see the movie Ratatouille. We loved the movie, but the last minute of the film was cut off because of a fire alarm! At least they gave us free re-entry passes and Manami got to see some of our handsome American Firefighters!

We also needed to pick up some things at Target so we stopped by there on the way home. Johnny picked up some clothes and a hat because he has such trouble finding his sizes in Japan.

California Vacation - Day 4 - Friday - Ramen

Sigh! It's Friday already! My work week is over. Our guests are suffering from jet-lag and all the rich foods, so we decide to go to a local Ramen House. It's called Shin Sen Gumi and one half of the restaurant is for ramen and the other half is yaki-tori, or Japanese BBQ. Oh, yummy! Sorry, no pictures today--I guess I should have brought my camera!

California Vacation - Day 3 - Thursday - Fashion Island and home

While I was working everyone went to Fashion Island to shop with Suzy and the kids. Lucky them--it was a beautiful day! They ended up eating at Ruby's on the pier in Huntington Beach--a local landmark! Here's a photo I took a couple of years ago of Ruby's!

California Vacation - Day 2 - Rainforest Cafe & Groceries~

I had to work on Wednesday, but we all met for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe in South Coast Plaza. I just love going to that place to see all the tropical fish and their Disneyland atmosphere is fun too! We met Shaun and Rhett and had such a fun time. I almost always get the Buffalo Chicken Salad and this time was no exception! You can see a picture of Johnny with a huge chimichanga--he's gone 3 years with hardly any Mexican food, can you imagine!? We all split the Volcano for dessert--a huge brownie sundae with a sparkler on top. We all yell Volcano-ooh! as it comes out!

After I get home from work, we decide to barbeque at home. Matt is the best grill master and makes such tasty chicken. After dinner we walk to the grocery store. Manami has never seen an American grocery store and the cereal aisle makes her gasp out loud! The produce section is another fun thing. We spend time guessing the price of different items and weighing watermelons and things to see how much they cost here vs. Japan. We spent almost 2 hours in the store looking at each item. I never knew grocery shopping could be so fun!

California Vacation - Day 1

Johnny and Manami land at LAX at around 3:00 in the afternoon, where Matt is there to pick them up. They get home and rest until I get home from work at 6. Then we are off to Huntington Beach Pier. We got to walk around for a minute and then we ate a fabulous dinner at Chimayo's, right on the beach! Afterwards, we had coffee with Nicky (Matt's brother) and went to Matt's sister's house to say "hi".

Where has the time gone!?

Oh, my! It's been over a month since I last posted--I swear I'm the worst blogger ever! We've been busy with tons of things, including getting ready for our visitors. Matt's cousin and his fiance', Manami, are here for a month from Osaka, Japan. These are the same people we went to Japan to visit two years ago! We've had tons of fun so far, so I'm going to interrupt my Japan vacation memories with some notes from our California vacation! I hope you enjoy the little slice of life from Southern California. Manami has never been to the US before, so everything is new and exciting.

Shinkansen to Tokyo

Well, after Nara, we staggered to the train station in the cold. When we got back to Osaka, we tumbled into bed so we could rest up for our big trip to Tokyo! I was so excited to be able to ride the Japanese Bullet Trains. They travel at 300 KPH and are sleek and beautiful works of art. Below is the scrapbook page I made and the journaling is below if you want to read the story of our mishap.


Our second day in Japan we got up early to get to Tokyo on Japan’s famous Shinkansen; the Bullet Trains that travel at up to 186 MPH. We waited for our train at the wrong station. We were supposed to be at Shin-Osaka Station, but we were at Osaka Station. When we realized our mistake we rushed to the other station, only to get there right as the Shinkansen left! So we had to give up our reservations for the comfy non-smoking car and run as fast as we could to catch the Nozomi Shinkansen bound for Tokyo. When we got into the car it was filled with smokers and the haze was so thick that Matt said it looked like “Mordor!” I was so tired from jetlag and our previous day’s adventures that I immediately burst into tears at the thought of spending three hours standing in that smoke-filled gloom with my asthma. Luckily, Johnny was able to get us regular seats in a non-smoking car as soon as we reached the next station. And even more exciting was our upgrade to Nozomi instead of regular Shinkansen, which only took two and a half hours to arrive in Tokyo. Nozomi is a wonderful way to travel!

(digital papers from Christine Smith at http://www.theDigiChick.com )

Fire Ceremony Video

Here's a short video we took of the fire ceremony with my camera!



This is a video someone else took that I found on youtube, but the footage is amazing! They must have waited for hours to get that close! It starts off a little slow, but is definitely worth watching!

Fire Ceremony

After we had seen Big Buddha, we walked around the park some and then went over to where there was going to be a special festival that night. It is called "Omizu-tori" which stands for "Water-Drawing Ceremony". I have no clue why they call it anything to do with water, because it is all about fire! (I apologize in advance for my blurry photos--it was the best I could get with my point-and-shoot. If you click on a photo you can see a larger version)

We had to wait a couple of hours for the ceremony to start so we chatted with a man who was standing next to us. He had spent some years in South America and spoke some Spanish, so we communicated partly in broken English, Spanish, and Japanese. It was fun to interact with the locals and he had some interesting stories to tell.

It was so very cold there and it was snowing agin! We got some hot drinks from a vending machine to keep warm. They sell hot coffe and chocolate in cans from the machines there. We bought a couple extra to put in our pockets, too! I was shivering and just about to freeze to death, but we really wanted to see the ceremony so we stayed!

The ceremony is a purification ritual and anyone who is touched by the ash or embers is especially lucky. This ritual is said to purify a person for the whole year. (anyone who knows about this ceremony, please correct me if I make any mistakes). Look carefully at the covered walkway to the left of the tree in the top photo. That is where the ceremony began with participants carrying huge, flaming torches up the stairs. I don't know how they got the torches up there without burning down the wooden structure, but since they've done it for centuries, they must be experts!

As soon as it got dark everything started. My giudebook says it's a very solemn occasion, but it really was more of a festival atmosphere. Especially once the fire started, there were so many "oohs!" and "aahs!" that I felt like I was at a Disneyland fireworks show!

What happens is that a torch is carried up the stairs to the second floor of the temple. Then they run the torch along the balcony so everyone can see. When they get to the end, there is already another torch coming. As they carry it they periodically stop and shake the torch so the embers will fly off.

Now I know you're envisioning a small torch like Indianna Jones would carry, but this thing was huge. Big enough that I probably couldn't hold it! And there were times when baseball and melon-sized fireballs would fall to the ground with the embers. It truly was a spectacle.

New look!

Ps--I updated my blog template--the old one kept hiding the text. Maybe this one will do better! Someday I'll actually customize it, but I'm so lazy, ha ha!

Big Buddha Complex

Well, when I last left off we were still on day one of our trip to Japan. We were in Nara and I was arguing with the guys about big buddha. I swore the one we were looking at was terribly big and there's no way there would be a bigger buddha! Well was I ever wrong!

As we walked up the path of the complex I could tell it was something special. There were lots more people up there for one thing. And the entry gate was huge! It was guarded by a couple of forebooding wooden statues.

Then we saw the building; which was enormous. We knew then that this was a really special place.


Todai-Ji is the world's largest wooden structure, according to the guidebook.




Temple Entrance





Big Buddha Himself. Notice the top of everyone's heads--Buddha is about seven feet higher than us. He's a 53-foot bronze Buddha. Daibutsu is the largest Bronze statue in the world and is 1,200 years old. It was really dark inside and it was snowing outside so there wasn't much sun to help with this photo. Sorry it's blurry.



Here's one of the guardians behind Buddha.





I'm not quite sure what this represents--it is a statue in front of the entrance. If anyone knows--please share!



Thanks to the person who took a photo of the three of us--Matt, Lianna & Johnny!

another quick preview

Aren't these digital torn paper guys adorable!? No, I can't take credit for making these, just for putting them together! DeDe Smith (Designs by DeDe)is the artist over at DigiScrapShak.com. But you can see what I did with them on April 2nd and the ScrapQuick Grand Opening!

Sneak Peek!

Here's a little hint at what I've been working on!
ScrapQuick.com

New Postal Rates woes!

I hope to continue our Japanese travels this week, but I had to post something new I just found out about. They are discontinuing the small global priority envelope (around $5) and now there will only be the large envie (around $11). I use the small ones to send packages to my friends overseas and I'm so sad they will be going away!

Here's the information online:
http://www.usps.com/ratecase/simplified_international_rates.htm

You can write them using the contact us button on the left.
http://www.prc.gov/

Below is the letter I wrote them:

I just heard you are eliminating the small international priority envelope with the new rates in May. I am so sorry to hear this because I love to use them for swapping cards with my overseas friends.

You may not be aware but there is an artistic community all over the world that makes hand-crafted cards and Artist Trading Cards. We support the USPS in these days of email and electronic communications by mailing our cards to each other frequently.

I am involved in monthly swaps to my pals in Canada, UK and Netherlands and it gives us great pleasure to mail groups of cards to each other to spread joy and learn new ideas and techniques. It fosters a great feeling of the world-community between us.

If our mailing option is now that we have to use the large priority to mail our packages, this will double the cost and I'm sure it will curtail our swaps and may people will be limited to US only swaps. We will swap less and spread less joy.

I'm very sad about your new policy.

Stampu

Here's a short interlude before we get to Big Buddha Temple!

If you ever go to Japan, make sure you get a souvenir book called shuensu for Japanese stamping or "stampu". If you go to certain tourist spots, you can use a rubber stamp and pad to stamp an image in your book; much like we collect pressed pennies here. The plain stamp-it-yourself images are free, but if you are in a temple or shrine you can donate 300 yen (about $3) to get a special calligraphy done. They are beautiful and each place is different. I ended up with 13 of the fancy ones and 2 books because we all had so much fun with it.

It is truly an art and it's fascinating to watch them do this. First someone (usually an assistant) will stamp some special images in red ink and then sometimes put the date in Kanji. Then the calligrapher will add special characters using black ink and a brush. I will post some photos below of some of my pages.


This is the first book I bought in Nara. The cover is handmade red paper with a corded binding at the top.

This book I bought in Kyoto at Daisen-In Zen Garden. The cover is brocade fabric and it opens (from right to left, Japanese style) in accordian format.


This is a page from the garden used as blotter paper. Sometimes they would use fancy blotter paper like this one, or some places would be a scrap of something used just to soak up the extra ink. At one place they gave me a newspaper scrap from an OB/Gyn clinic! Some places would use fine sand to blot the ink.

Here is a fancy Calligraphy page from Kofukuji Temple.


This fancy page is from Daisen-In Temple Garden.



This fancy calligraphy looks a little different from the others. The lady at the counter took my yen and then put the stamp and the date. And then she was pointing behind us. I thought she was pointing at the shrines that the stampu was for, but she was trying to tell us to go to the priest over there. So this is a half-done stampu, ha ha!


Here is a free stamp from Himeji, I believe. One is from the train station and one is from the castle. The first free one I did, Matt kept telling me how to stamp it. "Make sure it's well inked" "Make sure you press hard and firm" that sort of thing. So finally in frustration, I said "Matt, I'm a professional stamper, I *know* how to do this!" Well, you can guess what happened next—it was the worst stamped image I ever made!


This final stamp is from Miyajima. There is a beautiful temple multi-complex there where you visit 6 different stations and stamp a piece of the image at each. When you are done it makes a picture. You can see how well this "professional" stamper matched up the images, ha ha!

Nara - Little Buddha

In the park are some sacred deer. Vendors sell wafers to feed them. Man, those deer are feisty! I thought they were going to eat me! They were head-butting me and trying to get the last bite. When all the wafers were gone, they tried to eat my jacket. I had to high-tail it outta there or risk being eaten alive. For the rest of the trip we kept calling them "goats" because they ate anything and were so rude, just like a goat!

Right after the deer, it started snowing. Here's a picture of the famous five-story pagoda. Yes, I know you can't see it for all the snow, but it's famous. Some people were surprised that it snowed there, so here's proof. And to this poor California girl, it was almost more than I could stand!

Here's Matt outside of the Little Buddha Shrine. I really loved the design of the banner. The next photo shows a detail of the deer logo. They are so graceful and pretty in a logo, ha ha!


hmmmm...Which way is the big buddha? Are you guys sure this isn't it? This one looks really big to me--I think your map is wrong. I'll be really mad if we walk all the way over there and I was right. This buddha looks really big! I'm telling you... this is a big buddha!

Day 2 - Nara

I love this photo of the dried fruit vendor. We got some mangoes and they were yummy!
The red banners were on the steps up to the complex of Kofukuji Temple.

Kofukuji Buddhist Temple was founded in 669, but it burned down in 1717 and had to be rebuilt. There is a big bell in front of the temple with a long rope. The architecture and colors of this temple were beautiful!
All scrapbook papers and elements are from Christine Smith from her Fall Festival kit at TheDigiChick.com. Font is Donny's Hand.

Japan - Day 2 - Nara

Here's the first plumb blossoms that we saw on our walk to the train station. The bottom quote was on a sign in Nara. It says "Plumb blossoms never complain of the cold in this cold season." It's such a lovely sentiment, but as you will see later, I am no plum blossom, ha ha!

Virtual Vacation - Day One!

Hi! Well, I decided it would be fun and also a great way for me to remember if I posted my last vacation details on my blog. So here is Japan, 2005; Day One! I'll do my best to post regularly so I can finish this some day, LOL! We were in Japan for 14 days, so there's lots to tell.

Day one was spent travelling. I think the flight was 11 hours from San Francisco to Osaka. We landed in the evening at Kansai Airport, arriving exhausted but excited. I remember telling Johnny beforehand that there was no need to meet us; that we could make it to his apartment on our own. Once I realized how overwhelming Japan is, I was so thankful to have him go everywhere with us!

Even though in my car, I had studied some Japanese language tapes for a couple months before the trip, I only knew a few useful phrases such as "where's the bathroom?" and such. And of course, I can't read any Japanese characters. Luckily, Johnny can read some basic Kanji and Hiragana and has no problem reading Katagana or Romanji (of course!).

Johnny met us and then we grabbed a bite at an airport kiosk—chicken katsu with curry. Curry and chicken cutlet are very popular there and it was so tasty after being on the plane for so long. After that we headed back to his apartment. It took at least 3 train changes and well over an hour—running up and down platforms and across the stations to get home, since the airport is outside of town and Johnny lives on the opposite side of town. We lugged my huge suitcase and everything behind us the whole way. [Matt calls it the "steamer trunk" and I really did use everything I packed, so I'm glad I had it!] Everything was an exhausted, jet-lagged blur.

After we got home we showered and tumbled into bed. [Matt said when he saw how tiny Johnny's apartment was he was ready to leave and find a hotel for my sake, but I was game to try it so he stayed.] The next day we were going to see the ancient capital city of Nara.