bringing nature inside

Well 2009 is already more than half over! Time sure is flying by! I guess that is a sign of my old age... or I am having a lot of fun. Maybe both. ;)

Anyway, I did this おしょか (oshoka) a few weeks ago:

My 先生 (teacher) told me that I should remember to keep the flower high above the leaves because that's how it grows in the wild. Since I had never seen this flower (agapansus) before so I just followed her instructions. But I had no idea what it looked like naturally.

But today while I was walking around my neighborhood (in the hot, humid, beautiful weather) I saw this:

I don't know if you can tell but it's the same plant! I was really excited to see it growing naturally. Who knew the leaves were so crazy looking at the bottom! But now I understand about the flower being high above the leaves!

culture mash/clash?

Country line dancers wearing cowboy hats, boots, yukata, fishnet stockings, and feather boas. The women were also wearing crazy eye makeup and feather eyelashes.

new haircut!

Hope International helps build wells to provide clean water in countries like Ethiopia and Cambodia. They are having a "Hope at Hilton" week to help raise money. I participated in the charity cut by getting a haircut and donating 2000yen. You can participate by bidding in the online auction. http://www.hope-auction.com/auction/

Here's some fun photobooth pics of my new 'do:


...yes, I know I'm a dork. haha.

ikebana update

I did the following two arrangements on the same day. The first one is moribana, and the second one is freestyle... I forget what it's called in Japanese.


The next one has cherry blossom branches on the outer part of the arrangement. I had the most trouble with this one, and in the end I wasn't really happy with it.
But after taking it home and looking at it for a few days, I started to like it more. Then when the flowers started blooming it was really pretty to look at!

This last one I did this week. It took a long time to think of what to do with the flowers and how to cut them, but in the end I was happy with it. I think this was my favorite so far.
I wish you could see them in person though... it's hard to capture the 3D-ness in a picture.

vernal equinox

Friday was a holiday to celebrate the spring equinox. Kyoko was kind enough to invite me to her house (or maybe I invited myself?)... and we spent the day bowling, taking purikura, going to a sand dune, touching the pacific ocean, and looking for four-leaf clovers in a park. As you can see, we each found one!

picture by kyoko

in my neighborhood

oh these are the things in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood... oh these are the things in my neighborhood, the things that I found today....

Hotel BS

Happiness Part I


Domi Super Center (which has a 100yen shop, supermarket and a secondhand shop!)

If you couldn't tell, I was most excited about the Domi Supercenter.

it's all about the triangles

I started learning Ikebana with a couple of other gals from church today. Sorry the picture isn't the greatest quality... my camera isn't charged at the moment so I used iphoto and held my computer to take the picture. So it's kind of blurry.



This is also the recreated arrangement... First we do it in class, then Mimi, my teacher, fixes it (it's amazing what a little turn/twist/bend can do), and then we take a picture and sketch it. After that we take it apart and bring all the materials home to recreate it again (as my dad always says, "practice makes better"). It's kind of nice to have flowers in my room.

(on a side note: I think Japan is making me more girly.)

peanuts

The cutest Woodstock ever.

charlie brown, snoopy, woodstock, sally

This was drawn today for me by my friend, Emily (4 years old). :)

Children's letters to God

My friend lent me a book that has letters written to God by children with Japanese translations to help me practice my Japanese. Here are a few of my favorites:

Dear God, When you wrote the bible you made up all the words and spelled them the way you like. That is great. Most of the time I do it like that, but I am not doing so good. Ron

Dear God, Do Plastic flowers make you mad? I would be if I made the real ones. Lucy

Dear God, I didn't think orange went very good with purple until I saw the sunset you made on Tue. That was cooL. Eugene

post office, money orders, kanji

As an update to my money order adventures, I would like to report that I was able to cash it (with NO fees/charges) at the post office bank! (in Japan the post office is also a bank) The exchange rate is horrible right now though. But it wasn't that difficult to do....since I asked my Japanese coworker to come with me. We had to pick a number, then wait... and wait... then talk to the clerk... then wait while he searched the manual... then talk to him again... then my coworker had to write a bunch of kanji on the back of the money order... then we waited again... and then I got my money! The whole thing took about an hour.

I asked my coworker what she had to write on the money order and she told me that there's some law that says it had to be written and she basically wrote that we agree with the law that says we have to write down what it says in the manual. She asked the clerk why we had to write it, and he didn't know why but it needed to be done. So my coworker and I were wondering why they would make such a law because if foreigners wanted to cash a money order on their own (without any knowledge of Japanese), they wouldn't be able to. She said that the kanji used is even too advanced for jr high school students and the lower grades of high school.

bank service charges

Today I went to the bank to try to deposit an international money order. But after the teller patiently explained to me using hand motions, pictures, and an electronic Japanese-English dictionary that after the bank service charges I would be getting about 1% of the original amount back I decided not to deposit it. Depending on the service charge of the foreign bank I could have even owed money had I decided to deposit it. That's just ridiculous.

grocery shopping in japan

Sorry for the lack of updates!! (and I don't even have pictures for this one)

I wanted to share that I saw the busiest supermarket I have ever seen today. I think (I'm not exactly sure since I don't understand Japanese that well) that there was some kind of sale at the supermarket today. I believe that if you have a certain type of credit card you could get 5% off your purchase. And there were also other sales going on at the same time. So the place was PACKED. The lines went from the registers all the way to the back of the store, and then people were squeezing in between the lines to do their shopping. They were also giving out balloons to the kids (nice mylar ones), handing out samples of food and other products and there was some kind of blue animal/alien character you could take pictures with.

There were also specials where you stuff a small plastic bag full of certain products for a flat price. I saw people stuffing yogurt drinks in one part of the store and nori in another part. I wasn't sure if I could get the flat rate without the certain credit card but I thought I'd try anyway (because it looked like fun...haha). I managed to stuff about 35 yogurt drinks (they look like yakult) into the small plastic bag... but I think some people probably got over 40 in it. One lady stuffed 3 bags to take home, so I guess it was a good price. I was able to get the flat rate without the credit card and it was 198yen for the bag.