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...

illustration friday: flawed

i'll take him

illustration friday: climbing

they climbed their summer vacation away

when i was colouring this illustration, i hopped over to COLOURlovers for inspiration. there are so many delicious colour palettes over there and some of the colour combinations just make me smile. it's funny though, how the title of the palette affects the way i see the colours and my illustration if i were to use it. i was looking for something with both warm and cool tones and creepy gnomes looked just lovely. but the title and the comment had me imagine how the tiny rabbits would whip out their knives and demand the boy hand his onigiri over.


a picture speaks a thousand words, but a title does have the power to suggest what thousand words it speaks.

手作り日記

1. my attempt at a tiny happy shoulder bag. all i need is the perfect button, and リラックマ seems to think that miffy's button would look just right on my bag.


2. my attempt at a variation of the 失敗なしハンバーグ. i've tried this recipe before and really liked it because it tasted great and i didn't have to worry about under cooking or burning the meat patty. the original recipe suggests cooking the meat by simmering it in red wine and then adding ketchup and worcester sauce (i used 中濃ソース and it was alright) to make the sauce. but i thought wine is kinda expensive so i decided to use pepsi instead (don't laugh, i tried boiling chicken in coke and then added the same ketchup and 中濃ソース to the mix and it was reaallly good). but! i had to forget the milk and so i replaced the milk and breadcrumb mixture with what i had in the fridge - tofu. so here is my accidental 豆腐ハンバーグ:

it was actually quite good. yum.

peach-coloured crayon

i get distracted easily. how easily? think dory. i started to see it as a problem when i realised i couldn't read beyond of few paragraphs (mmm, sentences?) of a book before putting it down and doing something random that popped up in my mind (ooh shiny!). i often find myself getting back to my dishes at least 5 times and would still not have finished washing them. and it occurred to me that this lack of concentration was probably my main weakness when i sat for my jlpt paper in 2007. while the rest of the paper wasn't so difficult for me, the first long passage in the reading section was a complete train wreck. my heart was palpatating and i was desperately wanting to control-tab.

that's why concentration appeared on my resolution list. and i'm glad to say my kitchen sink has never been emptier. not any shiner though, just emptier. i've also been making myself read for a longer period of time. say a few pages at a time. heh.

i borrowed chihiro iwasaki's ももいろのクレヨン from the library a couple of days ago and since it was a simple illustrated book, i could go through it pretty fast. chihiro iwasaki is a well-loved children's book illustrator and her water colours are soft, wistful and amazingly beautiful. i've always been very drawn to her works, but then again, with most popular artists, most people are. but reading the book - a compilation of her sketches, extracts from her diary and the letters she wrote - and a biography of her life in a magazine that i borrowed at the same time, gave me a little insight into her life. and now, her illustrations are more than just beautiful pictures to me. her words struck a chord with me and i now understand why the characters she drew often had the distant look on their faces.


i especially loved the illustration of a little black cat in the book and knew i couldn't imitate it even if i tried. so i photocopied and pasted it into my journal. it also reminded me of the photograph i wish i took few days ago - of a black cat on a street covered with freshly fallen snow.

the librarian told me there is a chihiro art musuem in tokyo. i suppose i will be making my way back to tokyo again. when spring comes.