On the spring theme; a matchbox label from Japan with cherry blossoms! LS have found her stamps, I have my matchbox labels in my storage. What were you collecting as a kid? Or now? I still have all my grandma´s buttons too. It´s a bit like a candybox to me! Or all the embroidery threads....mmm.
A great article about guerilla gardening in Tokyo, including planting broccoli outside major banks... It is also about design, food politics, and life philosophy, in the words of David Duval Smith.
Interesting article in The New York Times about a car designed to run on steam, but never did, the Paxton Phoenix from 1960.
A new delicious monkey species have been reported on by the satirical magazine The Onion (funny!)
I am steaming after I discovered that someone stole my ATM card number and the pin too (how?) and have been taking out over $1700 dollars from my bank account. The bank tells me I will get the money back. Why are some people so MEAN?
Apropos mean, they have started to steal human hair from salons. What is next - cutting of a long braid or ponytail from someone's head in the subway?
In case you missed it, all three nuclear reactors in Fukushima have had nuclear meltdowns and are leaking radioactive water into the ocean. The Japanese say a total shutdown will be done in 6-9 months (which is questionable if it is even doable). Let's hope for no more tsunamis or big earthquakes between now and then...
Poor world, too much is happening to it and us right now - tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding Missisippis, tornados, rain and drought....
I found a link to
I Sverige: Ifall du vill hjälpa, SMS:a AKUT JAPAN till 72900 för att skänka 100 kronor till Röda korset.
In US: In case you want to help people in Japan, here is a link to the Red Cross.
We got daylight savings time here in the US yesterday, but that is not the only time that has changed during last week. During the horrific earthquake in Japan, which led to the equally horrific tsunami, this also happened:
"NASA scientists calculated that the redistribution of mass by the earthquake might have shortened the day by a couple of millionths of a second and tilted the Earth’s axis slightly." (link to NY Times story)
Nature is powerful, indeed.
Today, 26 jan 2011, one of many Japanese volcanos had an explosive eruption, which is still ongoing. Amateur video of Kirishima here and here on youtube.
This mountain has been closed for hikers since the SO2-level has been high, according to a Flickr comment of a photo of the eruption, shown here.
More info on the Eruptions blog by Eric Klemetti
On the narrow road - journey into a lost Japan, by Lesley Downer
This was not a fast book to read, but a book that takes its time. Lesley Downer, a Japan scholar from Britain, sets out to trace the steps of the famous 17th century Japanese poet Basho and his companion of their trip to the North of Japan, through mountains and distant valleys. Basho, famous for his haiku's, wrote in detail about his trip and also wrote many haikus at the places they stayed during their 5-month long walking trip. Lesley quotes some of these in her book when she visits (or tries to, some are gone) the same places as they did. Away from the coastal cities concrete, neon, and traffic, she is looking for a lost Japan, a country that might have some similarity to how Japan was in the 1600s, rural, peaceful, and undisturbed by the stressful, modern world.. She does find it, but it is endangered and not much left of it.
Her detailed writing gives you a fantastic introduction to Japanese medieval history, literature and haiku, and also the current and past traditions of 'regular' people. She doesn't avoid talking about fear of foreigners, her own tiredness and embarrassments, and highlights the great people she meets by coincidence during her trip, which isn't as long as Basho's in time, and not all by foot. She uses trains, buses, and hitchhikes, and walks where is is possible, mostly in the mountains. I know very little about Japan, and I think this book taught be at least five times more than I knew. Densely written at time, it is a lovely book, a book for contemplation and reading 2-3 pages at the time. Highly recommended to anybody that loves biographical stories, foreign countries, history, and literature.
This is actually the inside of a lunch box, a bento box from Japan, and you can eat all the contents. Some amazing kitchen artist (and mom, maybe) have made this just to it can be eaten a few hours later for lunch. Like that fish for the cat. Isn't it amazing? I would never have time for things like this, but I like looking at them. There are more bento box photos here.
Once in a while you read a book that is wonderful in a very unusual way. A book that is challenging in its way of dealing with life's big stories as well as the little things of everyday life, a book that makes you think philosophical thoughts that would otherwise not have crossed your mind, a book that keeps on living in your head after you close the last page after hours of smiles, sadness, fun, and internal laughter. This is a book like that.
If I ever have to restrict my fiction library to only 10 books, this will be one of them. I think I can read this book many times over and over and love it every time, and it would also be different every time. It is like layers you peel of the onion, you see more and more of what is inside and get a deeper meaning.
The story is both simple and complex. A young girl lives in an apartment building with many rich families in Paris and she is highly intellectual but has decided that life is not worth living, since what most people focus on is superficiality and banal things (especially her older sister is like this).
On the first floor of the building is the concierge, an older widowed woman that towards the rest of the world just tries to act like the normal boring, uneducated housekeeper people expect, but in secret she reads philosophy at the library, listens to classic music, and loves Japanese movies. But the keeps up the appearances not to disturb the set ways in the building.
Then one day a Japanese man moves in, and things are suddenly different. He changes the lives of both the suicidal girl and the concierge, and I won't tell you how, for that you will have to read the book. But I can tell you that is is extremely critical of the people that 'have it all', and gives justice to the people in the world that really think and care about life regardless of class, income, and age.
Excerpts:
"Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant. " [about the concierge]
As far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering. [says the 12-year old Paloma]
Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment? [about drinking tea, among other things]
The language in the book is so beautiful that you want to underline sentences here and there and make comments in the margin all the time. It is not just a story about people, the book is about how we live life, how we look at life, how we look at objects, art, music, ourselves, our inefficiencies, our fears, and our loves. I loved this book. And still, I think I only really understood about half of what was in it, so I am looking forward to read it again.
That is what these japanese lady beetles were doing in a glass in our house. We had a beetle invasion due to the sunny weather, so we gathered them up in a glass and let them have a pool party before they were let outside.
So, if don't have green fingers, a lot of money, and suffer from a lack of time, but still want a bonsai, here is the perfect book for you. The art of the bonsai potato. The kit contains everything you need except the potatoes, which I assume means just the pot. You can grow the potato even without water, at least for the first week, until it shrivels up and turn into a wrinkly ex-potato.
The photo of the plant of the cover looks a bit alien, like something from Mars or The Triffids. Would you want one of these in your window?
OK provided the photo. Great find, OK!
I love Japanese and Chinese gardens. Maybe it is that they follow so strict rules, or maybe it is the combination of strict and whimsical. In Vancouver I visited the Nitobe Memorial Garden, which is designed by a famous Japanese landscape architect. It is not big, and it is located on the University of British Columbia campus. But, as we say in Swedish: 'liten, men naggande god" ("small, but superb"), that is exactly how it is. Here are some photos for your enjoyment.
When LA saw this he said: "Wow, that is the combination of my two favorite things in the world, sushi and LEGO!" This is great stuff. (thanks PP for the link to more)
On the what appears to be the highest point in Philadelphia, with a wonderful view over the city, is the magnificent building of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My friend KV and I went there for the first time last week, and we were both pleasantly surprised. Not only is the building gorgeous with its columns and mosaics (see below), but the contents inside are great. I like this museum better than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but I am not really sure why. 
In the Modern Art wing, a giant electric (wooden) plug is hanging from the ceiling, ready to drop on the one that dares to walk under. Seeing such an everyday object at such a scale and in the 'wrong' material was interesting. I don't remember who made it and I forgot to write it down. They also have a wonderful collection of Shaker furniture, which made me want to read more about their history and legacy.
A Japanese teahouse had been painstakingly recreated. The visitors have to crawl through the little side door after walking over a little court yard with rocks and gravel.
Even steam trains are present for PP, here is one going over a bridge in France in a painting by Claude Monet. There were lots of impressionists, and many wonderful paintings by Renoir, Monet, Manet, Pissaro, and a new favorite, Maximilien Luce, a master of pointillism.
And this is not a painting at all, but the view to the west from the Museum, over the Schuylkill River and the restored Fairmount Water Works. It includes a restaurant and an interpretive center, and is housed in the old water treatment plant of the city. There used to be steam engines here that pumped up the water to a reservoir up the hill to where the Art Museum is now, and then the water was distributed throughout the city. It was the first city-wide water distribution systems in the US. The balloon in the distance is attached to the Philadelphia Zoo, and the boat houses are for rowing clubs.
I just had to share this - apparently there is a mom in Japan that has a blog showing off the bento lunch boxes she is making each day (for her husband or child I assume) - all are different. She takes photos and blog about the food, all in Japanese. Go to her blog, click on Sept 2007 on the top, and you will see some amazing food. Yummy! This is real edible art.
"Are you honkin' at me? Huh?"
