illustration friday: celebrate

my scanner doesn't scan water colours well, but here's my take on 'celebrate', a quiet one though. my idea of celebration doesn't only take place once in a while on special occasions. it's a celebration of ordinary things, of everyday life.

disney sea

i'm not quite the theme park kind of girl, or that was what i thought. disney land was never on my to-go list in japan but when he suggested making a trip to disney sea on his 2連休, i found myself looking forward to it.






times like this i wish i had a point and shoot camera. a staff offered to take a photo of us when she saw us struggling to take an extended-arm type of picture with my bulky dslr. alas, i underestimated her experience of taking photographs for tourists and set the focus on the center. she obviously understood the rule of the third.



and this is where we volunteered to wait for about 40 minutes to scare ourselves silly. the infamous tower of terror. i'm particularly 苦手 at this kind of 'drop' rides and wouldn't do it on my own accord. but he would have dragged me there kicking and screaming and so i wised up and saved the kicking and screaming for later.

and there was this bear i saw hanging out of so many people's arms that day. the logical part of me knew how overpriced this bear is, and i could see what a good marketing tactic it was, to have so many people touting this little bear all around disney sea. but when he offered to buy the bear for me, i just grinned widely and didn't refuse. i couldn't refuse. the bear is lovable and there's something strangely warm about being able to hold a stuffed bear in your arms and roam around the place at the age of 30. just like there's nothing wrong with wearing your underpants on the outside on halloween day. but only on halloween day.

there are some things i would queue for. and there are some things i wouldn't queue for.



the little mermaid area was also quite nice. we saw two couples asking a random staff to take pictures for them while they posed in front of king triton and his friendly dolphins and we thought we would do it too. then a long queue started forming behind us, like the one with the arabian stitch above. gomen ne, random staff.



my favourite part of the day was the gondola ride at night. we were so tired of walking around by then and when we saw that there wasn't much of a queue, we quickly hopped on. i loved the smell of the water. i loved the sound of the ripples as the oars pushed through the water. i even loved how the very cheeky looking theme park staff pretended to be italian (while speaking in japanese), and when he belted a presumably italian tune for us as we passed through the canal, his unexpectedly rich voice echoed in my ears.

we were done with walking around by about 5, tired and cold, but stuck on so that we could see the 25th anniversary fireworks at 8:30. the weather was just right during the day but it got really windy at night. when we finally ran out of things to do and buy, we found a spot that was slightly sheltered from the wind and plopped ourselves down, a little uncertain where the fireworks would be displayed. but it seems that we got the best view after all :)

いい思い出になりました...

and 334 more to go

i really like how this project is turning out. it's great to be able to look at the photographs and sort of recall what had happened that day - a big feat for someone who sometimes can't even remember what she did the day before. there were of course blah days when the last thing i wanted to do was to take photos, but i think even the blah picture represents the blah day quite well. now i just have to make sure those days don't appear so often...