Happy Whisky with Chocolat

Well, on this post I think the title says it all! Yes the whisky was very happy with the chocolat and so were we to taste it! Suntory Whisky—nothing else like it to warm you up on a cold day!

Continental Breakfast, Anyone?

When we were in Tokyo we stayed at a businessman's hotel that included a continental breakfast. Consisting of dry dinner rolls sealed in plastic, they were not very tasty.


Matt found a much better use for his roll. Can you guess what he did with them? Ah, yes--his poor tired feet hurt so much that all he could think of were pillows of bread to walk on.


A photo of the sorry-looking rolls at the end of a very long day!

J-Sign

If you ever get to Japan, one thing you will notice are the signs that may have lost a little something in the translation. Some of them are a funny mix of English and will just make you smile. This sign comes complete with a fun diagram.

"You tossed your cigarette out the window. You looked like you were fleeing the scene of a crime. RUNS AWAY - VICTIM - WITNESS" Below this dire warning against littering is the slogan for Japan Rail: "Meet your delight"

NOTE:
I appreciate your comments, but I am now closing comments on this post. For some reason, I am getting 2-3 spam comments every day on this one and it is driving me nuts!

I've been framed!

After 6 years I finally decided to hang some photos on the wall. I thought I would share the ones I added to a triple 4x6 frame in my bathroom. I thought they might add a little color and beauty to my life as I get ready for work in the morning.

The first photo was taken in Osaka, Japan. It is the plum orchard next to Osaka Castle. I remember how haunting and beautiful the blossoms smelled that day. I wish I could bottle the elusive scent of the plum blossoms to remind me of the loveliness in the world.


This was taken at Man Mo temple in Hong Kong. I love the repetition of pattern and color here and the photo soothes me and reminds me of a lovely day of sightseeing.


This fragile beauty is a hibiscus blossom from Tahiti. I love how delicate and serene this singular flower is. It reminds me to enjoy the beauty around me and to be at peace in the moment.



I hope you enjoyed this small break in your day and the world photo tour I have given you! Enjoy a beautiful day.

Japan Day 3 - Tokyo and Yuzawaya Crafts Store

I checked back in my archives and can you believe it's been since May when I last wrote about Japan! If you need to catch up, you can click on the Japan label at the bottom and read all the posts. So here we are again; now we are in Tokyo.

One of the things I was dying to do is see the eight-story crafts store I had heard about from my online friends. I grew up crafting and have tried so many different things. My favorite now is papercrafting, but I also love sewing, embroidery, beads, crochet and many more things. Can you tell how exciting this store would be for me? I was so excited to find out that Japanese people love stamping and paper too!

Johnny and Matt were such good sports. After we checked into the hotel (we got a good deal on a Japanese business hotel instead of a pricey tourist hotel) Johnny looked up the store and got directions. We didn't get there until late, so we didn't have tons of time to shop. The store was pretty small and it only had four floors, so I was pretty disappointed. I looked around at the stamps and fabric and got a couple of things. Then we left, feeling a little let down.

Or at least we tried to leave, because when we did we realized that it was an eight BUILDING complex and each store and floor had its own specialty. There was a floor with beads, one with dolls, one with bears and I can't even remember what else! There was canvas and pencils and art supplies and calligraphy and oh so many other things! I felt like a child at Christmas. We were exhausted and hungry and it was time for the stores to close so we finally left.

We never got a chance to go back there, but we went to a smaller one-store version in Kobe where I got some beautiful modern kimono fabric for my mom.

All digital layout items from Ashalee Wall at Oscraps.com. Fonts are Ireland and Industrial 736BT. Text reads: "Imagine my excitement about the eight-story crafts store I heard about in Tokyo. I thought about it for weeks before our trip. Imagine my disappointment when we got there and found only four small floors. I enjoyed shopping and looking at the stamps and fabric, but on the way out we saw the sign. Imagine my delight when I found out that it was not eight stories, but eight whole buildings! I could have stayed there all night, but the store was closing. I hope I can make it back there someday for a real shopping spree! "

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.

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!

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.

Finished Product!

Whew! I finally had time to scan my photos and finish my layout! I started on this intending to use photos of my great-grandfather holding two of his grandkids; my mom and her cousin. But when I went through the photos, I could only find one of the photos.

Instead I found two fabulous photos of my great aunt in about 1950. She lived in Tokyo with her husband who was in the army. She is modeling a kimono! While I would love to see a color picture of this, the sepia-toned and aged photo is so delicate and beautiful looking! I really love these photos and I think they went perfectly with the coloring and round shapes in the background sketch I used.

Once I knew I would use these photos, I just had to use that awesome Kanji brush-stamp that I had in my digital collection. I really love that this is heritage and Japanese at the same time!

Chased Out with a Rake!

I thought I'd share another of our Japan stories to make you smile. It's hard being an obnoxious tourist in a country so different from our own I tried hard to learn some things before we went; I read etiquette books and guide books, but I guess we can't help being American buffoons wherever we go! I apologize to the Japanese people for staring at people on your trains, laughing like hyenas in public places and just being morons while we were in your beautiful, refined country!

Kyoto has many beautiful temples and is a wonderful city to visit. We especially wanted to visit Daisen-In Temple, which has a Zen rock garden that is “designated as the special scenic beauty” and is part of a large complex of temples. There are majestic pine trees and historical buildings along the path that leads between all the different temples. As we walked we were captured by the beauty of it all. We saw a temple where the main gate was closed, but some people were entering through a miniature door where you had to bend over to enter. I smiled at the charming Alice in Wonderland feeling of it all and we happily bowed as we shuffled through. Johnny’s girlfriend and Japanese guide, Manami was with us so we felt like all was well.

There was a tiny garden complete with blooming plum trees and a small cemetery off to the side. I took a photo of the tombstones and Manami was shocked that I would do something so unlucky! Oops—I didn’t know that it was unlucky and I promised not to do it again. Right after that is when disaster struck, proving her point. We strolled out of the cemetery where the other people were praying and decided to look at the serene Zen garden that was there. Daisen-In did not allow photos, so I took a photo of this garden instead. We breathed in the tranquil surroundings oblivious of our transgression.

That’s when he noticed us. The groundskeeper saw us and did not like our presence one bit. He yelled at us in Japanese and Manami tried to apologize. We decided to make a graceful exit, but it was too late. We were clustered around and trying to file through the narrow pathway that led to the miniature door. The man was coming closer and he had a rake. He was madder than hell! He shook his at us rake and shouted as he ran. We trotted faster, trying to reach the sanctuary of the exit before he got to us. He shook his rake over his head. We ran faster and scrambled to get through the door. Finally we had made it to safety. Whew!

Later that day Manami told us that she didn’t think we were supposed to go in there, but since we wanted to go she thought it would be ok. Luckily we all escaped without being “raked!”

FRIED UNDERWEAR!

Well, I decided to start off my blog with an old story from our trip to Japan. We went for 2 weeks in March and stayed most of the time with Matt's cousin, J. in Osaka. I apologize if you've seen this one before--it's an oldie, but (I think) still a goodie!

The bathroom in J's apartment is the size of an airplane bathroom except it has a tiny bathtub attached. Honestly--when I got on the plane to go home there was actually more room to move around in the airplane bathroom! There's hardly any room to move around in the tiny apartment bathroom and it's even hard to sit down to go potty, it's so small--you have to sit kinda sideways because your knees will bump the door! Getting dressed in there is a special challenge. Japanese tubs are normal width, but only half the length of an American tub and they are as tall as your knees. Luckily for me J had a Western-style toilet and not a Japanese-style squatter!

I had all my clean clothes for the day on the floor while I was in the bath because there was just no other place to put them. All my dirty clothes were in the washer. When I got out of the bath, the drain flooded the whole bathroom with about 4" of water! It would've flooded into the apartment, but the way the bathroom is built, there's a 5" lip that you have to step over to get in the room so it held the water in. All the walls and floor of the bathroom are fiberglass like a bathtub, so it didn't ruin anything...

...Except for my clothes. I had placed them on my slippers on the floor before I got in the bath. Everything was sopping wet! With stinky bathwater all over them and black stuff and hair from the drain in everything! I had more clothes I could wear, but no underwear! Those were all in the washer. J. doesn't have a dryer--he just puts clothes on the balcony to dry. It was starting to rain. All my stuff was wet with no way to dry even though the weatherman said it would be sunny.

So the gallant guys decided to rescue me by **frying** my clean, wet underwear! Yup. They put them in a frying pan and dryed them over the stove! It actually worked pretty well, except they got scortched in a couple of places! One place burnt clear-through, so now I have burn marks and a hole in my underwear too! Ha ha--what an adventure!