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This morning, I put
This morning, I put pencil to sketchbook for the first time in months. It’s been almost a year since the last time I actively sat down to draw something. Too much time away from art ruins my eye-hand coordination! Of course, I didn’t stray far from my beloved computer. Is it ironic or prophetic that…
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Valentine’s Day store window
Valentine’s Day store window display at Mono Comme Ca, Harajuku. Dogs with oversized noses, based on in a series of popular photographs, sniff at a huge pile of chocolates. The dogs are wearing Mono Comme Ca T-shirts and the pile contains plenty of Mono Comme Ca’s own Valentine’s Day creation, the thin striped packages at…
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Note to self: being
Note to self: being organized is worth the pain of getting there. I’ve enjoyed reliving many experiences by organizing my slides and photos. It is taking lots longer than I’d expected, but the results are fantastic. I can find all the images from my trips and photo expeditions quickly now. I hope I can keep…
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Before we move, I
Before we move, I need to reduce the volume of stuff we own. Of course, we’re having a sale of miscellaneous household furnishings but I’m also trying to pare down my professional life by organising my slides and clippings. At the moment, my clippings are a huge stack of magazines where my work was published.…
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Ah, Spring! We’ve just
Ah, Spring! We’ve just entered the new season and even though the weather hasn’t budged a bit from “chilly and grey” I know it will soon. The annual parade of flowering trees has begun. It culminates in the cherries blossoming in early April. The plum trees bloom first. For me, that is the true mark…
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The meat department in
The meat department in Japanese supermarkets offers a dazzling array of cuts because standard butchering techniques are unlike American ones. Chicken thighs are deboned. Beef is cut into extremely thin slices rather than roasts. Food is bite sized when it’s served. But this begs a question. Which came first, the cuts of meat or Japanese…
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Absinthe is a green
Absinthe is a green liquor made of wormwood and anise. It was originally a medicinal tonic, but gained popularlity in the Belle Epoque first among French soldiers, then artists and writers, and finally among the general populace across Europe. It was so popular that it was eventually banned because its active ingredient, thujone (from the…
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Today is 2-2-2. I’m
Today is 2-2-2. I’m delighted to be living at the turn of a century because I’ll be able to revel on dates like this for the next 10 years. And it’s even better in Japan. In the Japanese tradition, the year is noted by the length of the emperor’s reign. 2002 is is Heisei 14.…
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After living here for
After living here for four years, I think I know Tokyo pretty well. It’s vast, but I try to get around to see it. Yet when I met my friend MJ for lunch yesterday, it was in a completely new part of town for me. Bakuro-yokoyama is a quiet area with a mix of high-rise…
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Last night in Japanese
Last night in Japanese class, we encountered an example sentence that Tod & I agreed made us uncomfortable. We were practicing with “teki,” a suffix that’s equivalent to -ish or -like. For each sentence using Nihonteki (Japan-ish or Japanese), we had to describe the qualities of the thing. For example, “This is a Japanese house.”…
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