Do you know Nakayama Kinni-kun?

If you do, do you know his blog?

http://kinnikun.muscle-j.com/

 It's fun to read...for me at least.

Check it out when you want to read something rediculous and funny.

(Fun not guaranteed.)

Mood:  cheeky

Last weekend I went to Tokyo for the Kan-etsu-shiki of Japan Coast Guard.

I was impressed by the dynamic ship and their performances!

Mood:  silly

Last weekend I went to Miyama, Kyoto.

In Miyama, there is a group of old kayabuki houses at the foot of mountains.  It was such a beautiful place as in mukashi-banashi... 

Greens and pinks of sakura, and brown of houses were really prettily blended.

A small stream with beautiful green weeds. :)

 It was about 2.5hrs drive from Takarazuka.

I hope this scenery won't be spoiled forever...

This is the picture of Itami Airport. :) I love this place sooo much!

 Before the terror in NY, ppl could see the planes so closely, but the terrace has been closed since. :( too bad...

Yet, it's still a lovely place to see the planes, do shopping, and have some meals.

Today at a DIY store, I played with somebody's black lablador retreiver...she was reeeeal cute!! I want to have one too...

Dogs are like angels to me, for sure.

Mood:  happy

Last week I went to Tokyo partly for my personal business and mainly for our short family trip. :)

After all the personal business, I visited Mori museum and Shin Kokuritsu museum in Roppongi.

I really enjoyed both of them.

From Mori museum I could look down all over Tokyo city. It was just amazing besides the cloudy weather.

At Shin kokuritsu museum I saw the art pieces of Modiriani.  I didn't like his works much, but after seeing the exhibition, I found that he's done very nice sketches and choices of colors.  :-)

I also met up with my friend who used to work in the same company in Atsugi.  She took me to a fun & nice Turkish restaurant. 

The food was so good and the belly dancer was really gorgeous.   Almost all customers were dragged out to the middle of the floor and compelled to imitate her dance...^^; which was embarassing.. all I could do was just move my body and wish the song to end asap.

Anyway I had a great time with her!

Next day I met up with my family and stayed at Hotel Okura Tokyo, which was such a nice place. Every staff member is so polite and well educated. We were all impressed. :(

At a cafe of the hotel, I found a very very cute pack of marshmallow.

It includes three kinds of marshmallows; raspberry, lime, and passion fruits, all in long swirls!!

You cut it as much as you want to eat it. >v<

See, don't you think it's cute?!?

What was great was not just its looking, but its taste!!

All the three marshmallows taste so good with real fruits puree taste, and you even feel like you're eating a very dense fruits moose!

You can really feel the taste of those fruits.  It's just amazing.

It's not like the marshmallows we have tasted, and a completely different, revolutionary dessert.

I highly recommend you to try one when you come to Hotel Okura Tokyo.

I guarantee your satisfaction. ;)

Mood:  rushed

Ahh I have so many works to do...the deadlines are coming right behind me!

I gotta rush, rush, rush....

 These days, I heal my eyes and mind by feeding sparrows coming to the backyard. I'm not a nerd, by the way!

I feed them cookies (expired), bread no one wants to eat, etc., etc..... by putting them in a small white porcelain plate.

They come to the plate when nobody is around, and greedily eat them, more than pick them as birds are known to do.

They fly away instantly even by a small sound.

They're so coward but very cute.

Since I put food in the plate every single day, they come check the plate every day.

To me, it looks like they like lemon cookies the best...

Mood:  a-ok

The new year has started! Hope everything will go well with me and you all.

 Over the last year and new year (what we call "toshi-koshi"), our family stayed at a hotel in Kobe. We had a very good time, chilling out with no chores... It was a very very cold toshikoshi, but we had a lot of fun.

The hotel was celebrating the new year so nicely. We participated in the celebration by closing the curtains of the room to make the letters of "2008" on the wall of the hotel.

Looks great, huh?

 A few days ago, I went out with my mom to the cafe near the station.  It served such a nice set of lunch!! It included rice (you can choose white rice or brown rice), main dish (choice of meat, fish, or tofu), one "oso-zai" you can choose from a dozens of choices in the glass case, and a cup of soup!

What's good is that it costs only 870yen, and tastes really good!

We shared a brown sugar and coffee cheesecake later (which was so-so).

I'll definitely go there again.  Around the Kotoen station, I have one more favorite restaurant, named "Isala".  It's a Thai restaurant where you can have a real tasty Thai food. I really love there.  Please try if you wanna have delicious Thai cuisine. 

As for Thai restaurant, "Chada Thai" at Hunter zaka, Kobe is really good too!

Yesterday, I went to see the movie "Inochi no tabekata". Honestly, it was a very shocking documentary. There are no lines in this movie, but only the scenes of "processing" cows, pigs, and chickens, or making vegetables are played.  I didn't know how the meat we eat is made... We really should appreciate and think more about what we eat.

It's worth seeing, as a consumer and a human being.

You can save some lives by clicking reliable corporates' banners on this site.

It costs you free and very easy. :)

If you have nothing to do on the net, this can be once of the choices

Mood:  special

Songs of Gospellers always remind me of the days in Boston...cuz my roommate had CDs and we used to listen to them a lot . :)

Anyways, I went to Miyako-jima last week!

It was a very beautiful and peaceful island. Most of the island was covered with sugar cane fields which make the mild sound of wind, and of course the sea around the island was amazingly beautiful in bright blue, dark blue, and tarquois blue colors... it was just stunning and made me wanna stay there for a couple of hours.

When I was driving around the island, I sometimes saw dogs walking freely by him/herself or in a group of 2 to 4...smiling and humming...

Their feet were even skipping and looked so happy and lively. 

There were even goats and horses (they were tied tho) along the roads. They also looked happy.  The goat I saw on the coral rock was looking over the wide ocean smiling . Very cute.

I also enjoyed the cuisine of the island.  I had Miyako-soba twice for lunch. It tastes similar to Yaeyama-soba I had on Ishigaki, but a bit different, I guess.  Miyako-soba was simple but tasty soba. hmm..

I kinda like Yaeyama-soba better though.

Besides, I had yummy lollies as well.  Shoga-to (ginger tasted black sugar) I bought at the supermarket was very good.  A can of rice drink (yeah, it is liquid rice) named MIKI was...a very weird drink. It tastes a bit sweet but feels very heavy, like omo-yu. It's very unique. Seems like works good when you're hungry but don't have any food. 

Needless to say, I visited the famous lighthouse of Miyakojima.  It's a Higashi-hennazaki toudai. I could go up to the top and look down the wide and blue ocean. It was specutacular....

At the shop near the lighthouse, a good grandma gave us a glass of sugarcane juice for free! It was very sweet and yummy. While talking, she gave me a pack of Sa-ta-antagi- (fried sweet) for free as well. It was the most delicious sa-ta-antagi- I have ever had.  You definitely should try it if you have a chance to visit Miyakojima some time. It's sold 100yen/pack.

I also had tasty okinawa dinner. Umi-budo, goya, various champru-, Miyako beef, a-sa, etc. etc.,....

The stalactite cave (sho-nyu-do) I visited was stunning too....  When I walked down the stairs to deep down the ground, there was a dark cave. I walked through the fense gate, then I saw lots of gorgeous stalactite columns growing down from the high celing and up from the ground. Inside the cave was perfectly silent but with the sounds of drops leaking down from the stalactite columns..  On the ground, there were so many awamori bottles ppl put for aging. The stable humidity and temperature inside the cave seem best for aging the spirit.

Every bottle had a msg card, saying "after 5 yrs, we'll come back..." or something like that. :) It was a very nice space.

 The beautiful coral beach, sugarcane fields, spectacular views...I enjoyed them all.  What I regret is that I couldn't dive into the sea.

Definitely I will, next time.  I guess I'm getting addicted to Okinawa...

Mood:  cheeky

Hi. :)

Today I went to Itami Craft Ctr. to participate in the one-day class for making a stool.

I made a small stool (a chair) using red pine woods, screws, and a long paper string.

After assembling the wood parts, I weaved the seat from the paper string, that we usually use for binding newspapers or magazines.

It was a lot harder than I expected! It required lots of power and attention.

But I could finish the work and a cute little stool was made!

As my weaving skill was so poor, it's not that beautifully weaved, but still it's very nice. I wanna try it myself some time again.

I'll put a pic of the stool up here soon...