at 32 sec is Shino sighting.

３２秒のところに俺が居た。

Welcome to our value customer

This online boutique is dedicates to Mommies that love malay traditional “BAJU KURUNG” and japanese traditional “YUKATA” for your cute little girl.

Our fabrics are imported cottons and selected designed only ( Pick by myself! ). Very exclusive, comfortable and more important its cute!

Enjoy Shopping!

 Ambrynaa

Known for its distinctive crinkled, crepe-like texture, Awa Shijira-ori* is a cotton fabric ideal for making summertime yukata. The texture, similar to seersucker, does not stick to the skin in Japan’s hot, humid summers, and the openness of the weave allows for good airflow.

Originating in the Tokushima Prefecture during the Meiji era (1868-1889), it is believed that the Awa Shijira-ori’s unique texture was discovered by accident when cloth was left out in the rain, then dried in the sun. As the fabric shrank, it developed an uneven texture of puckers, known as shibo. This shrinkage was caused by different tension between the warp threads, similar to how chirimen is made.

From Traditional Crafts of Japan, Volume 1, Textiles:

Basically, a set of yarns with a tight tension is alternated with one [that has] fewer yarns and less tension. The latter set of yarns will be drawn up by the tighter set when the cloth is finished, thus producing a crepe texture. Maintaining this imbalance in tension when dressing the loom in an essential element in the creation of a shijira cloth having textural interest.

To give a general overview, however, the important manufacturing processes may be listed as follows: reeling, scouring, dyeing and rinsing, sizing, drying, twisting of the yarn; warping of the yard and dressing of the loom; weaving; removal of the cloth from the loom; crepeing, sizing and drying, measuring, and finally rolling the cloth onto one tan (eleven meters, the length needed to make one kimono) bolt.

Awa denotes the ancient name for the Tokushima Prefecture. This area has long been known for indigo cultivation, and Awa Shijira-ori is most often dyed with indigo. This image from issue # 3 of Kimono Hime shows mechanized looms, dye vats and reels of indigo-dyed cotton thread drying in the sun.

By the end of the 19th century, production was around two million bolts of fabric a year. Today only four family factories produce several thousand bolts annually of this interesting textile. I will be listing some yardage of the fabric at the top later today.

*Ori means “to weave” in Japanese (as used in shibori and origami it means “to fold”).

Blue Yukata - Japan Design Edition

Detail

Berbahan katun jepang yang nyaman dipakai karena sejuk. Yukata ini juga kental dengan desain jepangnya yang tidak biasa. Yukata ini akan terlihat berbeda mengingat desain yukata yang umumnya adalah bunga-bungaan.

Berbahan semipolyster yang tidak mudah kusut, yukata ini membuat anda terlihat anggun ketika dipakai. Warna putihnya tidak mudah pudar dan juga nyaman digunakan.

So, my hun is finally back and look what he had brought along~

Yeah! This lovely Yukata~
I just love the colour, the pattern, the flowers *_* ~
I always wanted to have one and now one of my biggest wish came true!

But seriously…I’ve never thought it’s sooo damn difficult to put this damn thing on
I forgot how much time I spend on figureing out how this actually works and honestly spoken…I still haven’t master it yet…Holy crap!

Still I think it’s soo beautiful!

That’s what the back looks like~ OMG! I’m soooo in love with that biiiig ribbon-thingie!

I bet you’re jealous, right?

~Now I’m preparing to go to Hong Kong! I’m sooo excited wondering how it will be!~

It’s very cold in the laboratory with my colleague who one of them keeps yapping and singing just to make things heat up. Anyway, time for another wallpaper of the week and I pick this picture for you guys who got bunny girl fetish. Today is the day of transcript score of Swiss German University students being handed over and I could see the nervous face of the students who are waiting for their transcript score. I gave one of my students an F for the score though since he didn’t submit the final project to me (It can’t be helped I guess).

Location: Rokkenjima
Currently listening to: Jimang – la divina tragedia ~Makyoku~
Mood: busy



Another bunch of fanlisting who I opened or adopted since the last update ♥

APPROVALS

Actors

Actresses

Fashion/Beauty >> Clothing & Shoes

ADOPTIONS ♥

Anime/Manga: Songs

from Aya ♥

Animation >> Alice in Wonderland

from Sophie ♥

Fashion/Beauty >> Accessories

from Manda ♥

This fanlistings have also been added to the My fanlistings page. Plus, the KIM list has been updated accordingly, and also with the new requests. If you submitted a contact form or sent in an e-mail and you don’t see your name listed there, please contact me again

A few minutes after nine on Thursday morning the students start to trickle in and the lobby soon echoes with their excited clucking. For many of them, I’ve been told, my lesson is the high point of their week, an unsettling thought if ever there was one.

Babysitting is provided, so many of the young housewives come with their children. Sleeping infants are strapped tightly like papooses to their mothers’ backs. The more bashful of the toddlers fret unless their mothers carry them in their arms, while the naughtier children bolt in with the subtlety of thunder and stir up a perfect storm of mischief.

Although the kids–obvious benefactors of grandparental largesse–are dolled up in pricey outfits, wearing vivid t-shirts with kôan-like sayings, such as “happiness is eating a potato”, the mothers are awfully dowdy. Many of them are the “good wives” of bureaucrats or professors from the prestigious national university, meaning their husbands, like the samurai of the past, have all the status one could hope for, but none of the income. Though only in their mid-thirties, they look and act much older. Their limited experience in society, however, has them carry on like Catholic high school girls.

Once they’ve settled into their seats, the old soft-shoe routine begins.

*

I didn’t have much time last week to prepare for today’s lesson on account that I got stinking drunk at Umie the night before. I ended up oversleeping in the morning, and, only by the grace of God, managed to scramble into the office–unshaven, half-dressed and reeking of whiskey–two minutes shy of getting sacked.

Believe me, this is not the way I’d like things to be, but I couldn’t help myself what with Reina away on business. There was little else to do but the drink to distract me from the depressing fact that, as my twenty-seventh birthday approaches, I am doing absolutely nothing with my life. After two months in Fukuoka, I am not an inch closer to where I want to be and as lonely as ever and am depressed as hell about it.

Having alarmingly little time to prepare my lesson, I blindly pulled Philip Roth’s Professor of Desire off my bookshelf as I sprinted out the door of my apartment. It is only by the grace of God that I didn’t puke the contents of my entire digestive system from my tonsils to sphincter on the way. After punching in–that is, after having Yumi punch me in because my hands were shaking too much–I ran off several copies of the book’s final chapter, then passed them out at the end of the lesson.

Hungover as I was, I could not be bothered with going into the finer points of the novel, so I summarized briefly how the protagonist, David, had come to his decision to marry Claire because, in his words, she was enough. After years of seeking more, more, and yet still more, he came to settle for someone who was enough. I then asked them to read through the passage at home and recall why they had themselves accepted their own husband’s proposal. For an assignment I had pulled right out of my hairy arse, I must say it wasn’t bad at all.

*

After an animated discussion about David’s decision and what they think it means, it’s the women’s turn to tell me their own stories.

“He was on his way to marry another woman, but she changed her mind at the last moment,” Hiroko begins with a laugh. A garrulous, cheerful woman in her mid fifties, Hiroko’s a silly materfamilias of sorts for this bunch. “He was a friend of the family’s, my uncle’s friend, and I’d known him since I was a child, so . . . Well, when he came back to our village he asked me to marry him, instead.”

“And?”

“And, I said yes,” she replies with a light-hearted cackle.

I laugh, too, out of disbelief. I find it utterly incomprehensible at times how some people are able to get through life rather happily without putting any thought into it. Is it all a matter of attitude? Am I asking too much out of life? Should I just be content with what I have, that is, with enough?

Eriko speaks next. “I was taking sailing lessons and . . . “

“Sailing lessons?”

“Yes, and my husband was the instructor. One day out of the blue he said ‘I will marry you.’ I wasn’t even interested in him and . . . and, hadn’t even thought about marrying anyone, let alone him. But, but he asked, so . . . I talked to my parents about it, they agreed and the next thing I knew we were married.”

I’m too flabbergasted to respond. I just blink and gesture for Fumiko to go next.

“I met my husband by omiai,” she says. “My mother knew his mother and arranged for us to meet and we decided to get married.”

“You mean, several months down the road, right? After you had dated for a while, right?”

“No, no. We decided that day.”

“That day?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re happily married?”

She just giggles.

*

Mie showed up at my apartment in the evening. She wore a tight pair of denim hot pants and a red halter-top that threatened to burst open and release those wonderfully breasts of hers.

She looked gorgeous.

After kicking off her sandals at the genkan she stepped into my kitchen, dropped a canvas bag on the floor, and pulling out a large bottle of sake said, “Let’s drink!”

Mie always brought in so much warmth and brightness with her, there wasn’t anywhere else in the world I wanted to be but in that ugly small kitchen of my miserable apartment because that’s where she was.

I popped my head out of the kitchen window and hollered for Ben to come over and help us with the bottle of sake. More than happy to oblige, he hopped over with one shoe on, the other in his hand, a bag of Calbee potato chips in his clinched teeth. The three of us sat on the old tatami mats of my living room taking turns pouring cups of sake for each other. The lighter the bottle became, the louder our laughter. It was one of the best nights of my life. Every night with Mie was.

The next morning, Mie, Ben and I packed ourselves into her Ford Escort and departed for the hot spring resort of Beppu, several hours’ drive to the east in Ôita Prefecture. After a full day of sightseeing, which included a tour of the “hells” of Beppu, and both Ben and my first experience in a Japanese hot spring, we checked into a ryokan, where we had dinner and sake served to us in our room.

We must have still been drunk from the previous night because it didn’t take long before the three of us were at it again. Bill tied the obi from the yukata around his head, and stuck chopsticks up his nose making us laugh as if it were the funniest thing in the world. And it was. Really.

Later in the evening, once we had literally drunk the hotel dry of nama sake, Mie and I took a bath together. She was drunk and sentimental, the way she often became after a binge like that.

“Why you, Peador?” she asked burying her face in my chest. “Why do I feel this way for you? I’ve never felt this way about any other foreigner before. Why you?” Then, she began to cry. I held her in my arms and kissed the tears as they fell down her cheek. It only made her cry more.

I gently raised her chin so I could look into those tear-filled eyes of hers and spoke what had been warming my heart that whole day.

“I love you, Mie-chan. It’s been so long since I loved someone. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“Why do you love Mie-chan?”

“Why? Why? Why do you ask why? Can’t you see it in my smile whenever we’re together? Can’t you read it in my letters? Can’t you feel it when I kiss you? Mie-chan, I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you.”

Two days later and back at my apartment in Kitakyushu, Mie first suggested what had already been on my mind: that I move to Fukuoka the following spring and live with her.

“I want to move now,” I replied hugging her. It was then that I decided: Mie-chan would be the one I would marry.

__________________________________________________________________

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved.

Lantern at Sensoji

Asakusa is one of the must see places in Tokyo.  For any resident, however, it’s a place to avoid, unless you live in the area.  It’s a typical tourist location.  There is really only one thing to do in the area, but it can take up to half a day to complete it.  Asakusa itself is one of the oldest entertainment districts in Tokyo, and one of the oldest neighbourhoods.  If you take the Shitamachi bus line from Tokyo Station, you will essentially be travelling in the oldest areas of Tokyo once you reach Ueno.  You can see some of the oldest houses in the area if you know where to look.  You can also enjoy the beautiful Sensoji temple or shopping for very kitsch souvenirs.  Be aware that this being a tourist trap, you may want to keep a closer eye on your wallets and purses.  It can get very busy, which can bring out the pickpockets.  Do note that this is still Japan, so the chances of a pickpocket are still extremely low.

Kaminarimon

The best thing to do when arriving in Asakusa is to get there early, say 9 or 10am and head straight for Sensoji.  Head to exit 1 from the Ginza line and A4 from the Asakusa line.  From here, you can head straight to Kaminarimon, or Kaminari Gate.  This is the main entrance to Sensoji, and Nakamise Shopping Arcade.  This gate will be very busy and any pictures are sure to include other tourists.  This spot is also popular for hiring rickshaws.  Prices can vary and they are all eager to take you around the streets for a private tour.  Prices start at 5000 Yen for one person, for 30 minutes, 8000 Yen for two people, all the way up to 30,000 Yen for over 2 hours.  These people can be very colourful, but do your best to find someone who can speak English, at least a little, so that you can understand the history of the area better.  The gate itself is fairly large and lit up at night.  There are four large statues located within the gate.  The two facing the street are Shinto gods, while the opposing two are Buddhist gods.  While these are not the most fascinating statues in Japan, they are the easiest to access and it provides a taste of what you can see in other areas of Japan.

Rickshaw Driver

Once past the gate, you will be within the Nakamise Shopping Arcade area.  This area is where tourists tend to buy everything.  You can get things from key chains, head bands that say “Japan” with the rising sun logo, and even yukatas.  While you may think you are buying a kimono, do note that you are more than likely buying a basic yukata.  There are a few shops selling these clothes and they can be very beautiful.  It may not have a traditional print, but for most tourists, it’s still very popular.  You may even get a small deal if you buy a few of them as gifts.  If you are looking for real kimono, you would be looking at spending at least 100,000 Yen for a very basic one.  About half way up the street, there is a small branch leading to Shin-nakamise Shopping Arcade.  This one offers a more modern style shopping and it feels like you are in a smaller Japanese city.  There are shoe shops, drug stores, and various restaurants and snack shops.  It’s worth a quick romp, but do note that things probably won’t open until 10am.  Towards the end of Nakamise, there are lots of food shops selling Dorayaki, a pancake like sandwich with sweet red bean paste inside, and senbe, a Japanese rice cracker.  These places aren’t the cheapest, but they are very good and made fresh.  I’d suggest buying some if you want to try traditional Japanese junk food.

View Larger Map

Asakusa Information:

Asakusa (Japan Guide):  http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3004.html
Asakusa (Wikipedia):  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asakusa
Asakusa (Wikitravel):  http://wikitravel.org/en/Tokyo/Asakusa
Asakusa (English):  http://www.asakusa-e.com/index_e.html
Asakusa (Japanese):  http://www.asakusa-e.com/index.html
Rickshaw Information (Japanese):  http://www.jidaiya.biz/kanko-j.html
Tokyo Shitamachi Bus:  http://www.kotsu.metro.tokyo.jp/english/bus_guide.html

Note:  This is part I of a two part series.

So I did this huge make a kimono project last year, actually I made a yukata, but anyway I learned about this old type of dying technique called shibori.  The way in which it is different than regular tye-dye is the pattern is stitched or tied securely on the fabric so no dye can seep into those areas.  It is ridiculously tedious and so amazing to watch shibori masters.  I have a video (in two parts) that may seem dry to begin with but give it a chance and it’s really cool to watch (but it is a rather old video heh):

The way in which I made my yukata was I used massive pvc pipe and warped my fabric around it.  Then I used a string and pull it tightly around and around, the pushed it together and then dyed that.  When it’s done it leaves a unique and claming ripple effect like a river.  It is like the second part of the video…only not as amazing XD.  Then I made an obi and used a potato to print make the pattern onto it.  Here is the final product:

Another cool master kimono maker and dyer was Itchiku Kubota (1917-2003).  I did a project on him last year in my fibers class and he used this amazing old lost technique (about 350 years old from the 14th-16th centuries) called tsujigahana which is soooo complex!  He modifies the technique and makes it his own by using detailed embroidery, elaborate brush painting, sumi ink brush drawings, and gold-leaf application.  His work has a common theme of reverence for nature.  When I saw his work I found it to be one of the most amazing wearable art pieces I had ever seen!  His most famous work is a panorama of 40 kimonos that create a continous moutain landscape that ranges from serene winter scenes to colorful and vivid fall scenes.  Unfortunately Itchiku Kubota could not complete his life long goal of 75 kimonos in the panorama but even still his contributions are amazing and should be in reverence for ever.  Actually his work was on display at the San Diego Museum of Art…but unforunately that was last year until Februrary so I’m not sure where it is now…hmmm.  If you ever want to see his art you have to go to his museum, Itchiku Kubota Art Museum, in Yamanashi, Japan.  If you’re really interested in him look him up on google or a search engine.  Also he had a book come out this year or last year all about his work (I’m considering buying it).

Japanese word/phrase of the day.

Subject はどこですか

Subject wa doko desu ka?

This phrase is asking where something is so if you wanted to ask where the toilet was you would say Otearai (or toire for a more American version) wa doko desu ka?  Asking for the bathroom is always nice so the word of the day is:

お手洗い or トイレ or 便所

Otearai or toire or benjo

“Honored washing place” or from the english work “toilet” or place of convenience/excretment

So otearai is translated directly how I have it, it is more like the actual sink or washroom rather than the toilet.  Otearai is similar to the word bathroom in English which more or less means the actual bathtub and washing space rather than the toilet.  Otherwise there is toire which is the english word in japanese which is why they use katakana rather than hiragana.  This is literally the toilet.  Remember I have the page in the right column with the katakana and hiragana system explained to an extent (mostly just hiragana right now though…).  Also there is the benjo which is not an impolite way to say it but some prefer more elegent terms.  This term is common in Japan.  It is commonly used at public swimming pools, elementary schools, and many public places in general. 

Another fun fact about Japanese toilets is when you go there you must be prepared for a less American style tiolets at times.  There are American toilets that are very high tech called supertoilets with deodorization, seat warmers, bidet washing, and yes even anus washing (yes I know it sounds gross but hey that’s a pretty cool toilet all together XD ).  But be prepared to do a lot of squatting (if your a girl that is XD) because the traditional toilet in Japan is the squat toilet..which I’m not sure I would ever get used to lol.

That’s all for now!  Jyane!

~Mellie

I find myself at Umie again, same barstool up my arse, marinating my liver with the same cheap drinks in the hope that the proper combination of variables, like an allignment of heavenly bodies, will have Nekko-chan rubbing her body against mine and purring once more into my ear, the way she did two weeks ago.

*

With nowhere to go, no one to meet and nothing to do after work last Saturday, I headed straight for home.

A few days earlier while staring out a window at the lovely young OL’s returning home from their offices, I grumbled to myself how nice it would be to not have to work until eight-thirty in the evening, to have a life of sorts that involved dinner at six, dates and loafing in front of the television. Yumi, who overheard me, reported my grievances to the boss, as she so gleefully does, causing me to be summoned to the small classroom for my weekly reprimand.

“I hear you’re dissatisfied with the schedule?” Abazure began.

“Wh-what?”

“If you’re unhappy here, Peador, we can always find someone to replace you.”

After assuring her that I was indeed quite satisfied with my job and the schedule, in particular, she got up and left.

The words dribbled out of me: “Sheesh, what a feckin’ Nazi.”

“What was that, Peador?” Abazure asked stepping nimbly back into the classroom.

“W-what frightfully nasty weather w-w-we’ve been having lately.”

“Yes, well, it’s supposed to clear up this weekend.”

And so it did. On Saturday morning, I could hear the song of the cicada, long and steady, signaling that the rainy season was finally coming a blessed end.

Grumble as I did about not having week nights free, the truth is when the weekends do roll around affording me the chance to get out of the confines of that oppressively bizarre office and stretch my legs, I am, more often than not, at a loss for what to do with myself. It isn’t the work that’s killing my social life, it’s me: I’m committing suicide one bleakly unfulfilled day at a time.

Crawling from mossy darkness beneath the small shrine in front of my apartment building was the bob-tailed stray cat I had found Reina petting that night so many months ago as she waited for me to stagger home.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” I called, stopping the cat in its tracks. I kneeled down and called it again. To my delight, the cat seemed to understand the Mother Tongue and approached, hesitating a few feet away before rubbing his arched back against my leg. I scratched it between his ears, eliciting a happy purr.

“Why don’t you come up to my apartment, huh?” I said.

The cat stiffened, the purring stalled.

“What, you wouldn’t like that?”

The cat looked at me and ever so slightly, yet unmistakably, shook his head “no”.

“Well, I can’t blame you. I’m not all that keen on hanging out at my place, either. Besides, you’re a stray. Move in with me, you’d lose your identity.”

He closed his eyes and nodded.

“You’d lose your freedom, too, I guess. That’s pretty much what it comes down to, doesn’t it: freedom. Out here, you can come and go as you like, drink with the boys, get a pussy so hot she screams all night. Granted, you aren’t really the wild, wandering type now, are you? Always lolling about this shrine here.”

The cat hissed and moved stiffly away from me towards the small shrine.

“I know. I know. It’s the principle.”

He turned slightly to look at me, bowed his head gracefully, and ducked back into the mossy shadows below.

“It’s the principle,” I said to myself. “Or, a deep attachment to those marvelous balls of his. Move into someone’s home and, before you know it, it’s snip-snip and a gay collar around the neck.”

As I stood up, a rapid succession of distant explosions coming from the west echoed heavily off the tall apartment tower walls, silencing the swallows. What the hell was that, I wondered. Turning, I found a group of pretty, young girls dressed in colorful yukata, walking by, their wooden geta scrapping the asphalt with each dainty step.

I asked the girls if there was some kind of matsuri going on, a festival I hadn’t heard about. Being in the doghouse as I have since the break up with Reina and the unfortunate incident with Yumi, I’ve been left out of the loop, considerably, murahachibu‘ed, ostracized from the village as it were, and don’t know what’s going on half of the time.

One of the girls replied that there would be hanabi at Seaside Momochi. Fireworks at the beach. I would love to ask the girls if I could join them, but I just stand in their wake and watch them mince away.

As I have said, I had no plans for the night, no one to meet. It’s a pathetic state of affairs when on a Saturday night all you have to look forward to is the writing of vapid letters, the study of arcane kanji, and the reading of pulp fiction. Sadly, ever since Reina had said sayonara to me, that is pretty much all my weekends have been amounting to. Well, now I had something to do.

Like tributaries flowing towards the sea, thousands of matsuri-goers walked, drove or pedaled down any road or path available. I made my own way in the slowly gathering dusk towards Seaside Momochi via the normally quiet neighborhood of Tohjin Machi which had come alive with a festive entrepreneurial spirit. Food stalls selling beer and other refreshments had been set up and were manned with gravel voiced barkers trying to drum up business. The rows of red lanterns hanging from the eaves of izakaya had been turned on, noren curtains placed above their entrances and the appetizing smell of yakitori was now wafting from the pubs. Most people, however, just kept on moving towards the beach.

Interestingly, this neighborhood was once an enclave of Chinese and foreign residents during the Heian Period (794-1192) over a millennium ago. Besides the name, literally Chinese Town, the only hints that remain of the area’s historical past are the impossibly narrow, barely navigable streets which meander like a warren among modest, tightly packed houses and weather-beaten wooden temples.

As I was squeezing myself down one of these constricted arteries of a road, I noticed that the tarpaulin and scaffolding around one of the larger temples had been taken down, unveiling a garish, vermilion-colored five-storied pagoda. In this post-bubble economy, it seems the only industry thriving is the Business of Death: funeral parlors, Buddhist altar retailers, cemeteries and charnel houses like the one this red eye-sore was supposedly advertising.

I passed through a narrow alley overgrown with ivy and purple morning glories that opened onto the main boulevard running parallel the coast. Traffic in both directions of the thoroughfare had been brought to a standstill, with pedestrians overflowing the banks of the sidewalks and moving between the cars like water through pebbles. It served them right for being silly enough to take their own cars.

A convenience store had recruited a small army of high school girls, dressed in vivid yukata and jinbei, to sell drinks and snacks to passersby. The girls, however, were whipped up into such a frenzy, screaming like banshees at the pedestrians who filed quickly by, that I imagined they were doing more harm than good.

Risking permanent hearing loss, I approached the sirens and scooped out three cans of Kirin Lager from a kiddy pool filled with icy water. Then, having paid an inflated matsuri price, I drifted back into the unstoppable river of sweating bodies. The number of people doing exactly what I was doing amazed me. I would learn the next day that several hundred thousand people had descended upon Momochi that evening. Many of them, stuck in gridlock, would end up watching the fireworks from their cars.

After walking for thirty minutes through the bustling crowd, I found a clearing on the promenade encircling the Dome, and with beer in hand, watched the ninety-minute-long fireworks and laser light show run its impressive course. As good as it was, and it was admittedly far better than anything fireworks display I had ever seen before, the thing that I found most intriguing, though, was the hundreds upon hundreds and hundreds of beautiful young women dressed up like dolls in their colorful yukata. With their dark hair pinned up and lovely necks exposed I was tempted to kiss them them all. I felt like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner: water, water, water, and not a drop to drink. Women, women, women all around me, and not a single one to call my own. What I would have given to have one of them on my arm, fanning me with her uchiwa and helping me laugh away the insufferable loneliness that had accompanied me to my first Japanese fireworks display. All I had to do was reach out and try to speak to one, but I was silenced by a shyness that I wore like sackcloth and ashes.

After the show, I returned to my apartment, alone of course, where I paced my small apartment like a caged tiger. With nothing to do, I reconciled myself with a bottle of Glenfiddich and some individually wrapped, bite-sized chocolate baumkuchen a student had given me as an omiage, a souvenir from a trip she’d just taken to Kobe.

I drank the scotch straight, one warm glass after another, until the alcohol seeped like ether into every cell of my body. Still, the itch remained. Saturday nights weren’t meant to be spent like this, getting mouldy and fat, my sweaty arse stuck to my vinyl sofa.

I took another baumkuchen out of the bag and looked at the wrapping: Like most sweets, it carried a cheery message in English: “You get the feeling that the bluebird of happiness is going to bring a little your way, too.”

Whatever.

Checking the contents of my wallet, I was disheartened to find that I’d only had a few thousand yen left, hardly enough to have a wild time. More alarmingly, it wasn’t even enough to keep my belly full through to payday. In the end, future hunger pangs yielded to the itch, and so with a quick change of clothes, I was out the door and heading to Oyafuko.

I went to the only place that promised me the slim chance of running, if not into my bluebird of happinness, then into someone I knew vaguely enough to consider an acquaintance: Umie. However closely my life may have resembled living death, that weak sense of familiarity between myself and the other patrons of a bar provided me with the modest reassurance that I was still, though tennuously, to be counted among the living.

I entered the bar, no bigger than a shipping container, squeezed past a group of young women on the dance floor, climbed the short flight of steps to the L-shaped counter and planted my arse on a vacant stool. After ordering a Heinneken, I glanced back towards the people dancing or chatting below and recognized a number of fellow barflies. Among them was Kazuko, the butch-dike who had introduced me to this place.

Seeing me, Kazuko hurried noisily up the steps to greet me. “Mistah Oh Really-san. I’m seeing you, berry, berry surplised.”

Kazuko’s two year’s abroad had done wonders: no-one could butcher the Mother Tongue as fluently as this struggling linguist could. Lord only knows how her English had been before the trip.

“I’m surprised to see you too, Kazuko.”

“What doing?”

“What am I doing here?” I waved my bottle of Heinekken.

Not sure why, but Kazuko found this irreversibly funny and burst out laughing, as charming as an asthmatic horse.

“You funny man, Mistah Oh Really-san,” she said with a thwack to my back just as I was taking a swig of beer. Beer dribbled from the corner of my mouth past my chin and down my neck.

I thanked her for that, but the sarcasm was lost on her.

“Nice fatigues,” I said, pointing to the army surplus pants she was wearing.

“Oh, sankyu, sankyu,” she replied happily. She then went on to utter the following barely comprehensible series of words: “Souss irandoh, Okinawa . . . recykuru shoppu. . . I botto“, suggesting to me and the Glenfiddich now running wildly through my system that Kazuko had bought the fatigues at a second hand store on the southern island of Okinawa. Really, if only Kazuko would speak Japanese, things would be so much better. I might find that I enjoyed speaking to this person rather than search for the nearest exit.

Kazuko introduced me to her friend, who had all the femininity of a gym sock Birds of a feather flock together, or so I’ve been told.

The friend, whose name I can’t for the life of me remember, saddled up next to me and proceeded to riddle my patience with the usual bullets: could I eat sushi and natto, could I use chopsticks, could I read Chinese characters, and so on. Once she had exhausted her ammo, the Questions-to-Ask-Gaijin, a welcomed silence fell between us. I considered being an arse, to throw the questions back at her, asking whether she liked hamburgers and hotdogs, or could use a fork and knife, but then I had already wasted enough time entertaining her as is. I might have been lonely, but, good God, I wasn’t that desperate.

I went to the beer cooler, took out a Heinneken, paid the bartender, and returned to my bar stool where Kazuko’s friend was looking through some pamphlets on diving and windsurfing.

“Are you my bluebird of happiness?” I asked.

“Happy? Me? No,” she answered gloomily. “If I had more time, I’d like to take lessons.” She added that she was currently working ten hours a day, often six days a week.

Ten hours a day, six days a week. Christ! I hated working the six days a week that I did, but I was still only putting in a grueling four hours or so a day. I confronted the unique and enviable dilemma each day of having far too much time on my hands. Much more than was good for me, because all I did with that time was stew, and stew, and stew, on my discontent. Being as busy as I had been last year in Kitakyushu was a mixed blessing of sorts. I thought I was going to die like a proper Japanese salariman of karôshi, death from overwork, but I now realize it was the only thing that kept me from dislocating myself from this world.

Before I could comment on the woman’s lamentable situation, an explosion of laughter like a tangle of firecrackers going off distracted me. Turning to my left, I discovered an attractive young woman sitting a few people down, between two men in suits. She had a lovely, narrow face with a broad smile, and large friendly eyes, eyelashes like brooms. Adorable and aware of it, she flirted shamelessly with the men at her sides and the narcissistic bartender who had stopped preening himself to lean in toward her.

So much life and energy radiated from her, causing those lucky enough to be near her to cast long shadows. God, how I wanted to be with her rather than sitting with Kazuko’s friend who was giving my already cramped style the Mother of all Charlie horses.

The friend tried her best, but inevitably failed, to draw me into a conversation. She mentioned music, the bands she liked, and, making the common mistake in assuming that having come from America would have favorably biased my tastes in such a way to provide for us a common ground upon which to walk together, asked if I liked this band and that. I replied “No”, or “Not really”, or “You’ve gotta be joking, them??”

Even the most aggressive of women would have packed up her bags and moved on, but this woman was unrelenting. Now that I think about it, Kazuko’s friend must have been even lonelier than me.

As I was grunting my way through another series of questions, I watched the cute girl on the left with the long eye lashes as she dismounted her barstool. To my surprise she was rather short, her shoulders just level with the counter. From the way she had carried herself, drawing in the men’s attention, I had expected her to be as physically imposing as her presence was. The unexpected contrast only aroused me further.

She was wearing a tight-fitting cream-colored crepe dress that revealed the modest, yet soft curves of her slender body. As she made her way towards the restroom at the rear of the bar I must have watched her much like a starving animal kept its eye on its prey.

The two men who had been sitting beside her, stood up, descended the half flight of steps, passed through the crowd of people below and left. When the girl emerged from the restroom I assumed she would leave, as well, but she didn’t. She returned to her place at the counter, and turning towards me and asked over the music where I was from.

“America,” I shouted back, leaning over the bar towards her. “Amerika. Amerika no Oregon Shu.”

“Oregon Shu des’ka?” she asked, then turned to the bartender and asked where Oregon was.

The bartender shrugged, so with elaborate gestures I explained where the mossy state lie in conjunction with sunny California.

We chatted for a while, and boy, what a charming lad Peador can be when properly motivated! The very same questions which Kazuko’s friend had me bored to tears with were now as welcome as a break in the rain. Could I use chopsticks? Why, of course, I could. I picked up the pair of waribashi chopsticks on the counter before me and fumbled clumsily with them, producing another explosion of firecrackers. And could she use a knife and fork, I asked, eliciting more of that cloud scattering laughter.

And, just as I was starting to worry that I might exhaust the limited resources of my poor Japanese, the DJ, God bless him, put The Doors’ “Light My Fire” on the turntable and made the memorable encounter a night I may never forget. So happy I was to hear the song and so full of Glenfiddich and Heinneken that I began crooning along with my old pal Jim.

The girl climbed off her stool and walked over to the cramped DJ booth, and, standing on the very tips of her toes, said something to the DJ.

Looking at her figure from behind, her slim, naked legs below the hem of her dress, her narrow waist and the bare shoulders, I got off my arse and stepped over towards her. “I take it, you like the Doors?”

“I like Doahzu!” she replied with Evangelical zeal.

She asked if I, too, liked The Doahzu, and when I replied that I did, she took my hand and kissed me on the cheek. This was followed by several more questions which when affirmed were rewarded with playful kisses on the cheek, the forehead, the nose, and, before I knew it, on the lips. Needless to say, I quickly grew into the habit of providing “Yeses”, like a dog salivating for Pavlov’s bell. She could have given me the same list of horse shite bands Kazuko’s friend had just given me and I would have leapt up clapping singing the praises of Bon Jovi and Mr. Mister just to get one more kiss.

When the DJ put on the Doors’ Touch me, she miowed like a cat, and scratched playfully my face. “You like Doahzu?” she asked again.

“Of course. I love them!”

“You like me?”

“I do.”

She kissed me softly, slowly on the lips, then asked: “You love me?”

Pulling her into my arms, I whispered into her ear that I did, and returned the kisses. It was no lie. I loved the way she looked, the smell of long dark brown hair, the softness of her lips. She was exactly what the baumkuchen wrapper had promised, with the only exception that instead of a bluebird I’d been visited by a cat.

“Call me Nekko-chan,” she said arching her back and miaowing.

“Nekko-chan.”

“Nyao.”

“Miaow.”

I’ve always found it easy to forget where I am and how much time has passed whenever encapsulated in the cocoon of alcohol and lust. Nekko-chan and I carried on like cats in heat and, if Kazuko hadn’t tapped me on the shoulder to announce that she and her friend were leaving, I would have gleefully fucked the girl right there on the spot against the beer cooler, bottles of Heinekken and Asahi Super Dry rattling away, the flourescent light flickering madly. Reluctantly, I removed my tongue from Nekko-chan’s throat said my good-byes and nice-meeting-yous, but once Kazuko and her friend were out the door, Nekko and I were back it, as shameless as Adam and Eve before the Apple.

After being under for Lord knows how long, Nekko-chan and I finally broke the surface and inhaled the stale, smoke-filled air of the now half-deserted bar. Most of the customers at the counter had left, the heat of their arses on the bar stools having cooled, and below on the small, dimly lit dance floor there were only a few girls were left jerking mechanically like dashboard hula dolls to the music.

Nekko-chan bought two Coronas, then taking me by the hand led me out of Umie and onto the crowded street. I sat down on the hard corner of a large concrete planter.

Nekko-chan hiked her dress up and, straddling me, revealed thighs so white blue veins shown through the ivory veneer of her skin. I put my hand on her knee, traced the skin up and under the skirt the edge of her panties. Following the line downward with my thumb, I found a few hairs and toyed with them.

She tapped my arm, saying, “Dah-me, dah-me.”

Having been on second base, sucking each others faces dry, for, I checked my watch, nearly an hour, I was eager to round third and steal home.

“Ah, zannen,” I replied. “What a pity.”

“Mah-da, mah-da.”

Not yet? What was that supposed to mean? Not yet, tonight? Not yet, here on the pavement? Not yet in this lifetime?

She asked again me if I loved her.

“I do.”

“Nande?”

“Because, you’re my bluebird of happiness.”

Corny as it was, it was in a way the truth. Thanks to Nekko-chan, I was able to stopped thinking about Mie for once. Kissing her was a far stronger anaesthetic than the alcohol I had been drowning in all these months. Nekko-chan kissed me on the lips and hugged me so tight I almost fell off the planter.

“I love you, too, . . . Namae wa nani datta dakke?”

“Peador.”

“Pay-doh-roo?”

“Hai, Pay-doh-roo.”

“I love you, too, Pay-doh-roo, demo . . . “

“But what?”

She brushed the bangs from my eyes, kissed me tenderly on the nose and said, “We can’t date.”

“Nande?”

“Gaijin dakara.”

“Because I’m a foreigner? Nekko-chan, to me you’re the gaijin.”

I suppose it could have hurt to be told such a thing, but then I knew where she was coming from. Even Mie had worried that people would consider her “yellow cab” for dating a gaijin like me. Besides, I wasn’t really pinning my hopes on Nekko-chan being the Savior. A Pentecostal moment with her naked and screaming in tongues above me, however, would not have been a bad consolation.

But, therein lay the rub. How was I going to whisk Nekko-chan off my lap and into my futon? It may not have been the Bataan Death March back to my apartment, but it was still a hike back, especially for a woman in heels. I didn’t have the money for a cab, let alone for a “rest” at one of the love hotels nearby. And, like most good Japanese girls, even those who drink themselves silly in bars and pick up the first warm gaijin they meet, Nekko-chan, I guessed, probably lived with her parents.

I asked. She did. So, there would be no going back to her rabbit hutch, either. What did you expect?

Still, what with me being mad out of it, and Nekko-chan sloppy with the drink, I was determined to get her back to my miserable little apartment, even if I had to piggy-back the girl the whole damn way.

“Uchi ni konai ka?” I asked. Wanna come back to my place?

“Iya.”

I asked again, but she was firm against it.

Well, that didn’t work, and neither would plying her with more alcohol; Nekko-chan was full as a boot already.

She dropped her beer, the bottle crashing against the pavement and sending glass shards and foam everywhere. As we were standing up to go back into Umie she knocked over a motorcycle. When she stopped abruptly to hug me in front of the bar, she bumped into a scooter, sending it rolling slowly off the curb and toppling into the street. Nah, another drink would have just had her scurrying off to the jakes, genuflecting before the porcelain altar, rather than getting down on her knees before me.

So, we ventured back into Umie, back into the darkness, back to the noise. But, rather than ascend the steps and return to the counter, we remained on the lower level, just off the small dance floor, in a darkened corner which promised to conceal our affections better than the flourescent brightness of the beer cooler had.

Nekko-chan dragged a stool over, and patted the seat. Once I sat down on it, I lifted her light body up, and set her down on my lap. Then, brushing the soft black hair away, I kissed her forehead. I kissed her small nose, her cheeks, her lips, and nibbled at her lovely slender neck.

Blame it, if you like, on the courage of the alcohol that was coursing though my veins, or humor me by accepting that a man could be so enamored of the beauty of the woman in his arms as to blindly stretch the taunt ligaments of propriety until they snapped. Had it been any other night, with any other girl, anywhere else on this whirling merry-go-round of ours, I doubt I would have done what I did that night with Nekko-chan on my lap in a dark corner of Umie. Spreading her legs slightly, I moved my hand tenderly up her leg until I touched her panties.

Women have a way of letting you get within a diving chance of home before they come to their senses and tag you out, ending the game runless. I expected the same from Nekko-chan when my fingers had at last felt the damp warmth waiting for me behind the silk. But, rather than push my hand away, she spread her legs even further. Leaning back, and tilting her lovely face upward, she opened that wonderfully broad mouth of hers and sucked me in. And, such/so that I would not misinterpret the cabbalistic nuances of the female language, she grabbed the family jewels and began buffing away.

Gauche from excitement and drink, I tugged clumisly at her panties, as you do, managing to yank them with the delicacy of a blitzkrieg over her small bottom, down to just above her knees.

Necko-chan adjusted herself on my lap, and invited me to venture further into her garden, to pick the flowers, so to speak.

There beyond the gates, the soil was in good tilth, fertile and wet. Running my hands through it like a furrow, a tremor rocked her body. I removed my hand and inhaled her fragrance on my fingers. Nekko-chan took my hand, and with a seductive purr, motioned for me to continue.

Hidden among the dewy folds of sepal and calyx was her flower, a lovely little daisy. I plucked one of the petals, producing a moan. She loves me. Plucking another, she answered with silence. She loves me not. I plucked again and Nekko-chan’s mouth parted as if to say something, but produced a heavy sighing, “Nya~o.” She loves me. She loves me. She loves me.

With her head leaning back all they way against the wall, I watched the expressions on her pretty little face. The eyes were half open and turned up, nothing but white staring at me. Her broad mouth opened wider, and a whimper emanated past quivering lips. I continued to work at it, and as I did her body grew increasingly rigid until, exhaling one last time with a deep moan and wilted in my arms.

When I had stopped, her eyes cracked open, slowly and unsuredly, as if she were emerging from a deep sleep. She looked forlornly into my eyes, and after a moment kissed me tenderly. Then, taking my hand, the hand that had given her so much pleasure, she kissed it, licking each finger one at a time, all the way down my palm and to my tired wrist, kissing my hand as it had never been kissed before. Then, taking my sweating face into her small hands, she kissed me good-bye.

*

It kills me that I forgot to get Nekko-chan’s number or to give her mine. I returned to Umie the next night and the following, came again last night and am here for the fifth time in a week pissing the salary away one cheap drink at a time hoping for her to reappear and bring a little happiness my way.

“Where the Devil are ya, Nekko-chan?”

I’ve never spoken much with Umie’s bartenders. Don’t care much for the guys, to be honest, what with the way stand behind the counter preening themselves like beauty queens. They wouldn’t know service if it came up and spat in their pretty faces. Still, I crawl through the mutual indifference that lies between us like a craggy, barren no-man’s land and ask them whether they have seen Nekko-chan. They haven’t, but they’re happy I ask because it gives them the opportunity to poke a little fun at me rather than merely ignore me as they have all week.

Growing up like I did with six older brothers and sisters, you develop a high tolerance for pain, and a Teflon coating. Jokes played at your expense don’t usually stick. So, I don’t take the teasing seriously the way a pantywaist only child might. I smile when they kid me, laugh heartily at my own expense. I even inflate my chest with pride when they call me a playboy, but deep down I know I’m in pain.

Play with girls, Shinobu advised. I did and for a few heavenly hours forgot all about Mie, the loneliness and the longing. The nail I had soundly driven into her coffin popped right back up, and like a strong anesthetic wearing off, I ache even more than before.

The boys behind the bar continue to laugh and mimic the way Nekko-chan and I groped each other. They have no idea what going through my mind as I try hard to get drunk, try to numb my emotions, so I can pretend to be the ladykiller they have worked me out to be. And now that I’ve drunk more than ten bottles of Heinneken, one after the other, like a chain smoker sucking on fags, I finally give up on Nekko-chan ever returning, and leave.

The weekend will soon be over with little to show for it save a hangover, a heavier heart and a lighter wallet.

“Peador, the playboy walks home,” I say to myself. “Sometimes, it’s best to give the poor girls a break and spend some time alone.”

Another night sleeping on an empty futon stained with sweat and thin from this insufferable humidity.

“The playboy walks home,” I mumble to myself.

The frustration and loneliness is unbearable. Tears gather at my eyes, my chest tightens, my footsteps drag. As much as I want to cry and cry and cry, I can’t. If only I could wail all the way back through that bleak tunnel-like walk home, to drop to my knees and sob, sob until I fell asleep.

Ahead of me, a middle-aged man steaming from the drink plies a hazardous course in my direction. His gray suit is unbuttoned and hanging loosely on his thin frame, his white shirt is untucked in the front, necktie askew.

He pauses before a concrete block wall encircling the dreary offices of the Ministry of Justice, and bracing himself against it with one hand lowers his head and vomits ramen onto his own black loafers. He coughs a few times, vomits again, then foosters his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. He drops the bunched up handkerchief to the ground and resumes his weaving path towards me.

It isn’t until we pass each other that I realize he’s been watching me as intently as I’ve been watching him. With surprising agility, he lurches at me, “Fuckingu gaijin!”

I grab him by the shoulder and turn him around. “Nani?” I ask again. He slurs something in hard Japanese that I can’t catch. I pull him closer by the lapel. “What did you say?”

“Fuck you!” he replies in unmistakable English.

All the frustrations of the past few months come to a head, I begin raining blow after blow on his face. I hit him once for all the unanswered letters I’ve sent to Mie, hit again him for all the lonely nights I’ve had since she left me. I drive my fist into his ugly face for the tears that won’t fall, punch him once more for the disappointingly truncated relationships I’ve had. His head snaps back, knees buckle and the salariman drops heavily to the pavement. I kick him for all the times I’ve been made to feel like a deaf and dumb nigger, knee him for all the petty, incompetent bosses and vindictive co-workers I’ve had to endure. I kick him one last time for all the times I’ve felt derailed since coming to Japan.

“Fucking Jap!”

________________________________

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved.

Acha made me do it XD.

But give me a good reason to buy this beautiful yukata from un Jour.

See another picture here.

Happy new year again!!

details…

Hair: JUNWAVE- Melissa
Hair flower: artiller- rose hair flower
Geta: YUMEJI- [XmasM] free geta
Skin: Curio- winter
Yukata: un Jour- Le Jarin Secret
Location: Japanese Goods Shop

文件大小：8.70 MB

图片数量：25p

价格：12 美眉币 点击购买

文件尺寸：853×1280

有无水印：有（官方）

I spent some time checking out the place. Here’s the wash area for our Private onsen in the balcony. It was evening and very cold.

on the right is the onsen itself… i’ll post a picture later as it was too dark to get a proper picture of it…

It took some time for the shower to gain its heat but once it was ready it was pretty hot. I had a quick one and dipped into the onsen.

Japanese people are plain crazy and i say this with the nicest intentions. Hot is a word i have used all my life… this was CRAZY hot!

i seriously believe a part of me can be eaten now.

it was inch by inch submersion… until you get to a point and tell yourself… look… you came all the way here and paid all this money…

*plonk* and i’m in the onsen up to my neck.

crazy man… thats what you have to be… or in my case, realistic… i may not ever do this again…

here’s another thing… once you’re in the onsen. DON’t move. the slightest change in position and you start the process all over again… the part of your body that has moved in the onsen feels the heat all over again until you get used to it again…

it felt like 10 hours but was all in all probably 10 minutes… the family was peering through the glass sliding door to the balcony through the curtains… giggling or laughing i would not know… there was nothing else on my mind… just focus…

focus or be boiled all over again…

i got out and changed into my Yukata… remember – LEFT over RIGHT… during late Autumn to winter they provide a ‘coat’ of sorts…

Nathan had his ‘go’ at the private onsen (can’t let daddy get one ‘up’ over him no?)…. and the same scene played out… *chuckle*…

When you come out of the onsen… your legs feel like jelly… just tender and soft…

The Ryokan has a really classy setup for the toilets and wash basin areas… Ichinoya is really nice… highly recommended…

…

After cleaning up… we popped down to the main restaurant in our Yukatas. We had to rent one for Megan (105yen) and another adult-sized one for Nathan.

Dinnertime is more or less fixed. We seat according to our room numbers. It’s a fishy affair to say the least, lots of foreign stuff you don’t get in normal restaurants… rice is plentiful…

We forgot to bring down the camera for dinner… i can’t remember how it slipped our mind… i think we were just too fascinated by the experiences…

It was Shabu Shabu with Sashimi and loads of different items.. some salty some sour…. very tasty… at one point we had to ask how many dishes more were coming… the server couldn’t understand what we were saying so he provided a paper and pencil and i wrote down our query… he indicated with his hand that there was one more dish and it was (fill in japanese word here)…

He could see we did not understand so he tried writing in English: Fried Fish

Haha!! A+++ for effort man… he was so patient and tried so hard to communicate… what arrived looked more like a large deep fried squid ring but was in fact, deep fried fish made into a large circle… simply wonderful…

…

After dinner, we settled into our Futons and proceeded to have a pretty good nights rest.

I can’t believe I’m so late on my Thanksgiving post!  Not that I traditionally write a Thanksgiving post but I’m pretty sure that I usually post pictures or something about this holiday!

This year, I thought I’d go ahead and list the things that I am thankful for.  I’ve seen other bloggers do it and it just seems appropriate for this wonderful time of year.  But first, let me find a picture for you so you have something to look at instead of my rambling mish-mash of words.

Kind of random, but necessary.  I don’t believe that I have showed you guys my little Yukata-boy.

On to being thankful!

1.  I am thankful for having the ability to express myself freely on this here little blog.  If it weren’t for this little thing, I may need to see Mental Health

2.  I am thankful for the clothes on my back.  If not for these clothes, I would be naked and let’s just face it folks that would be tragic.

3.  I am thankful for automobiles.  Cars also cure boredom.

4.  I am thankful for toilet paper.

5.  I am thankful for the bed that I sleep on.

6.  I am thankful for the shoes on my feet.

7.  I am thankful for the house over my head.  Even though it is not a house that I would personally pick for myself.  But if it was given to me, then so be it.  I am still thankful for it.

8.  I am thankful for the recent assignment that we have received to Eglin, AFB in Florida.  We have friends in each direction that would only be just a couple hours’ drive.

9.  I am thankful for my camera.  If it weren’t for that great piece of mechanical engineering, you would never get to see my son or my husband.  And on occasion, me.

10.  I am thankful for my husband and my son.  They are my inspiration.  They are my life.  They are the reason for me to exist.

11.  And one last thing that I am thankful for…the men and women of the United States Military.  I don’t think I would appreciate them as much as I do if I hadn’t chased my husband until he gave in.  Well, more like shut me up.  Little did I know that he was going to re-enter into the military.  But so far, it has been the best experience of my life!  For that, I am thankful.

Oh!  We decorated our Christmas tree today!  Here is one of our favorite decorations for this year!

It’s Grandpa B’s old John Deer 4020!  Well, not his exactly!  That would just be ridiculous to try and hang that thing on our tree.  Besides, I believe it was sold some years ago.  Paul came home with this ornament the other day and you all should have seen him!  It was like looking at Turd, but Paul’s not as Asian.  (Yes, I will shut up.  I am all by myself on a Saturday night.  The boys are in Turd’s room watching a movie.  Shutting it.)

Yukata en polyester, peint à la main (peinture noir 3D), col et ceinture obi en satin mélangé: me contacter si interessé.

saya baru sadar niiie, kalo saya itu subscriber dari online shopping di jepang, namanya http://mikumo.ocnk.net/. Tadi pagi begitu ngecek email, di inbox item pertamanya adalah dr mikumo ini, notifikasi kalo ada yukata terbaru udah datang…langsung deh saya buka tuh email, trus ngelink langsung ke webnya mikumo, wah..bagus sih yukatanya, motif summer…tapi bujuuuddd dah, maharani ya booo!!!! per yukata itu costs about IDR 298,000 (excl shipping). ngakak saya liat harganya. tapi emang sih kakak saya jg blng hrgnya ga murah je,,tapi motifnya kurang bagus yg di mikumo.

saya jadi pengen bikin sendiri tuh yutaka (takenouchi) haha, salah mksdnya yukata. pengennya yang wrnanya cerah n girly gitu, kenapa saya pgn punya???

1. unik

2.fits to everybody’s sizes

3.give the cute and elegant look to the person

4.seru kali ya buat foto pre-wedd (hhay, ngehemat biaya costume)

pengen yang cerah ky gini ni…

bright and girly yukata

hmm..jadi ngebayangin saya kalo pake yukata, bakal ky lontong ga ya wkwkwkwkwwkk…pengen bikiiiiiiiin

After two consecutive days of bustling Tokyo, our next destination would be a lot quieter in comparison. On 8 September, we began our quick-stop tour of western Japan, moving from city to city with more speed than a Kenyan sprinter on…speed. Naturally, I’m not going to cover all of the exciting places I visited in one go, so stay tuned for the other four parts after this one (yes, this is a ten part ordeal, be amazed). Having spent a week in and around the buzzing centre of the country, I was beginning to think that nothing outside Tokyo or Yokohama existed.

I was filled with considerable anticipation, then, when it was announced that we would be travelling deep into the unknown hill-country of Shizuoka. Of course, it wasn’t unknown at all, but I liked to think it was, like I was some sort of intrepid Anglo-Irish explorer, conquering the terrain of some utterly alien new land. In writing that sentence, it has become clear to me that I need to start reading/playing less fantasy lest I sound like a total psychopath. Regardless, on our drive from the suburbia (I use the term suburbia very lightly, as it doesn’t seem to exist in Japan) of Kanagawa, there was plenty a beautiful sight to behold, and most of it to the soundtrack of Pokémon, as during our four hour drive to our mountain lodgings, I don’t think H.’s mix-CD was changed once. I now know the lyrics to two of the said cartoon series’ opening themes, as of course for me to have known them beforehand would have been absolutely preposterous…ahem.

Surviving miles of long-winding and often treacherous roads, we eventually arrived at our ryokan, a traditional Japanese-style inn. Nestled deep in the hills, ‘idyllic’ would have been putting it lightly. Indeed, as the title of this post suggests, I really did feel like we were some sort of travelling samurai, stepping backwards in time to a now sadly dwindling Japanese Japan, with paper walls, sliding doors, futons and the like. Aside from my unfounded nostalgia and the obvious impracticalities of using paper walls and mats for flooring in a 21st century world of skyscrapers and bullet-trains, it was fantastic nonetheless. Taking off our shoes at the entrance (as is typical in Japanese houses), we were escorted to our room. Sliding the highly ornate door aside revealed a large open space with nothing but a table and some small cushions for us to sit ourselves down on, an alcove by the window adjoined.

Up the road from the ryokan.

Setting our bags down and helping ourselves to a rather pungent, yet equally delicious sweet rice-ball thing, we decided to bathe. This particular ryokan was of the hot-spring variety (more sausage, folks!), though this time it was a  private affair, so the three of us had a bath to ourselves. For any reader that’s just joined in this epic tale, nakedness is something that the Japanese take with a pinch of salt and a degree of gusto, and rightfully so. I think it’s high-time that the Europeans and Americans got off their high-horses of prudery and realised that, well, every man has a penis and every girl has a vagina. Unless you are transsexual and therefore have the best of both worlds. Either way, big bloody whoop. Inconveniently for three heterosexual males, our outdoor grotto bath was shamefully romantic, perhaps best suited to couples, rather than rabbles of young men. The water was hot indeed, whilst the overpowering odour of sulphur made soaks of more than five minutes difficult.

More of the ryokan's scenery. No bathing men, sorry!

Returning from the bath-house to our rooms, adorning some traditional Japanese robes in the process (think tailored dressing-gowns), we were quickly ushered into an adjacent dining room where supper had been delightfully provided for us. It was the real deal – sushi, sashimi, tempura, you name it. Salmon, tuna, squid, shrimp and chicken (the cooks had angelically taken it upon themselves to rustle up some meat for the duo of European palates) accompanied by pickled vegetables, all washed down by a pint of very refreshing beer. It was a mouthgasm, and that was putting it lightly. Stomachs full, we lumbered back to our room to find that while we had been eating, the small table that had once graced the centre had now disappeared and laid down in its stead were futon, Japanese bed-rolls. Considering the handiwork of magical Japanese elves (and not the inn staff), I collapsed into…well, not sleep, actually. It took absolutely sodding ages for me to venture off into the realm of slumber because of my ridiculously hard pillow; so hard was it in fact, that when I woke up in the morning, I had more knots in my shoulder muscles than a suicide-bomber has virgins in Paradise.

A scroll in our room, supposedly to ward off evil spirits.

Sadly, we had to make a quick exit if were to get to Nagoya (our next stop) on schedule. We had a huge and hearty breakfast; traditional meals are hard to differentiate in Japan.  Breakfast has miso soup, as does supper. It has fish and meat too, not unlike supper. And of course, the ubiquitous pot of rice is on hand at any meal you care to imagine. Fresh fruit was pretty much all that defined our morning meal from the food we had eaten the night before, though it was still thoroughly delicious. If there’s one thing the Japanese have certainly mastered, it’s the culinary arts.

Breakfast.

Thus it was over; we exchanged our yukata robes for our t-shirts and shorts, our wooden sandals for our shoes, our welcoming, slightly uncomfortable futon for our travel-bags and headed for the entrance. The ryokan keeper pounced on us from the desk (in a nice way, you understand, not in some sort of angry lioness way) and demanded we take a free gift back with us. From amongst paper-fans, cloth and chopsticks, I took a  black and gold floral wash-bag, something that my father now uses to keep his Fixodent and dental-floss in. Nice.

Out into the mountain, we hit the road.

My friend Maggie has always been passionate about fashion, design and sewing which led to a career as a fashion buyer for Marks & Spencer.  Inspired by a family wedding which took place in Japan, Maggie has been collecting kimonos, both vintage and new for over 10 years.  She has become very knowledgeable about oriental culture and as her collection of kimonos grew so did her understanding and appreciation of the traditional symbols and images used on them.

This  knowledge of Japanese imagery and silk textiles has developed into an unusual “day job” as a kimono interpreter. It is so interesting listening to Maggie explaining a particular image or design and if, like me, you are tempted to become the owner of one of these beautiful items, it makes it even more special to know a bit about the culture behind it.  I have a silk haori jacket which I wear belted and also a garment which is more like a coat but I wear that belted as a dress as I love the beautiful silk,the designs and the sleeves but prefer a fitted look.

Cotton Yukata Fabric

Maggie fulfilled a long-standing dream last month and visited Japan where she met with suppliers and enjoyed the beauty of  the kimono in its own surroundings.  She has been newly inspired, made some new contacts , strengthened relationships with existing ones and returned with some more beautiful silks and yukata cottons in her luggage (excess baggage had to be paid of course!!)

Maggie has a shop in which she offers vintage kimono, Japanese silk and cotton fabric for use in dressmaking or crafts and also some items she has crafted herself by adapting the oriental culture to fit in with the western lifestyle.

Scarf made from Vintage Japanese Kimono Silk

I always find Maggie’s enthusiasm about Japan so infectious and I’ve encouraged her to start a blog because she has so many interesting things to say about Oriental culture in general, and kimonos in particular, that I think people will really enjoy reading it.