New Year in Japanese style

Happy New Year!

We celebrate New Year in Japanese style every year.  I've been doing it since I came to the US with my husband.  It became tradition to our family now.  We like the calmness of Japanese New Year.  I work in the kitchen practically all day on the New Year's Eve.  But I must do this.  It's like a renewal of my will to spend time and effort as much as needed to make something nice, to develop skills to make something that makes loved ones happy, to be creative, and so on.  

So it's a ritual that I have to go through every year.

Therefore, I couldn't leave my American husband and American daughter until the New Years day is over to visit my parents in Yokohama.  It's a kind of funny that I couldn't make it to have New Year day in Japan because I had to do Japanese New Year in East TN.

But I was able to catch the trail of Japanese New Year in Kyoto.

I wasn't expecting this, but those New Year arrangements are supposed to be displayed until 7th.  So I saw lots of beautiful arrangements.  My mother was surprised how sophisticated the arrangements in Kyoto were.  The style is different from Tokyo.

Kyoto is such a popular place and I almost feel ashamed to visit.  But I must admit that it's so beautiful.  Well, if you only saw the beautiful pictures of the traditional looking Kyoto and visit there, you will be surprised at how modern Kyoto is.  Less crowded than Tokyo, but still pretty crowded.  Some temples are too crowded to feel the tranquility, some are too busy with street vendors.  

But you can find the calmness somewhere.  A corner in a shrine, back street, temples that are far form the main part of the city, etc.

One of the biggest reason that I love visiting Kyoto is that everything is tasty there.  The restaurants in the station building, tiny noodle shop in the back street, vendors in a market, not to mention fancy traditional restaurants.

It is obvious that food are made with a great care.  It probably take long time and good ingredients to even make a broth for the base.  

It must be the culture and tradition in the old city.  I admire that so much.

My interest in Kyoto grew once I started to study Fiber Art.  I always loved Kimono fabric, but now I am interested in how they are made.  

I visited Shibori museum and Museum of Traditional Crafts.  I just love the craftsmanship that goes into the beautiful works.  The skill is unbelievable.  

But sadly, they are endangered.  Those products cost so much because of the intensive labor yet those traditional crafts are not part of modern westernized life.  So only handful of people can afford it.  It doesn't bring enough money to the craftsman to sustain their living.  Young people are not attracted to be one of them.

I've heard about that everywhere I went.  Even taxi driver was mentioning that.  It is sad but it is true. I wouldn't pay thousands of dollars for Kimono even it's beautiful because I don't need it.

Kyoto amazed me with its desire to create tasteful and beautiful things, and the skills and the amount of time that go behind the things they produce.  I always wished that I had born in the past to be a craftsman, but it's still going on there.  That makes me feel so happy.

Yet Kyoto left me feeling sad.  The tradition and skill is rapidly disappearing.

But I was inspired by it.  I will continue learn and incorporate the inspirations into my creation.

So visiting Kyoto was reassurance of my New Year hope.   I will try making this year meaningful.

Summer Holidays are over!

I can't believe that the school started already.  Somehow, it starts early August in East Tennessee.  So I feel like it should be cooler, but it's still August, so it is still hot.  Summer is not over yet.

We had a busy first half of summer vacation.  We went to Florida, we attended Wedding, my daughter went to drama summer camp, and we went to Florida again. 

But last half of summer vacation was very slow.  We didn't have any plan, and the construction was going on, we practically stayed home everyday, not doing anything much.

It was not really fun for my daughter nor for me.  

So we are so glad to have school started.  And the construction is done, so we can now paint the newly renovated bathrooms and bedrooms.  Suddenly we are very busy!

Here are the sweets that I made during summer.  I was so fortunate to have good berries and peaches in June and July.  Almost all the sweets were made with local fruits.

Today marks one year from the day we came to TN form North East.  I feel like I didn't do anything this past year.  We had the cycle of having renovation going on, which means I get stressed out having workmen in the house all the time, then it's done and they are gone for a while but we can't relax, because we have to paint, then the next renovation starts.... we did that 3 times in the past year.  Our painting part is not done yet.  But after that, it's done for now.  I am glad.

I hope 2nd year of our new life in Appalachia will be nicer.  We couldn't go out much because either we wanted to do something at home while the workers are not around, or we had to paint.  I'd love to visit lots of places and check out some events.  I want to start working if it's possible.  I don't know if there are many chances like in North East for me to make dance costumes, but I would like to do something with my skill.

There are a lot of hopes for the future.

Visiting St. Petersburg

When we visit my mother in law in North Florida, we sometimes drive to Orlando for theme parks.  But this time, we went to St. Petersburg.  I've wanted to visit St. Petersburg for long time to go to Dali Museum.  I found out that Busch Garden is in Tampa which is on the way to St. Petersburg so my daughter might be able to have a fun there also.

It turned out that the rides there were too much for both of us.... and after going to very relaxing and not crowded Jacksonville zoo, it was difficult to enjoy the zoo part at the park.  But I definitely enjoyed Dali Museum!!

I was so lucky to visit the newly opened museum.  The building itself was amazing.  Dali's art was a little too much for my daughter but she enjoyed the little garden outside and his film. 

We also went on a cruise to see dolphins in Tampa Bay.  It was so much fun!  They followed the boat that we were on and jumped right next to us.  Of course we tried to take pictures of them, but it was very difficult.

One night, we went to eat oysters on shells.  We love oysters.  We had a favorite oyster bar back in Connecticut, but in East Tennessee, it is not easy to find a place to eat them.  After having great dinner, we suddenly decided to go to the beach.  It was too early for the sunset but the beach was surrounded by the beautiful colors.

We looked for pretty shells in the air that was tinted with pink and blue.  It was such a nice moment.  We usually don't do things spontaneously.  So coming to the beach after dinner was fun. We decided to spend next afternoon at the beach.

Before going to the beach in the next afternoon, we went to a tropical garden named Sunken Garden.  It was full of the plants and flowers that we weren't used to seeing.  I enjoyed it much more than Bronx Botanical Garden.  

We spent all the afternoon at the beach.  Reading Françoise Sagan.  Taking a nap.  Building sand statues.  Playing with baby horseshoe Crabs.  Finding more shells.

This time, I couldn't miss the sunset.  So I planned to go back to the beach right on time for it.  When you think about it, you can't see Sun setting on the ocean in East coast unless you are in Florida on the side of Gulf of Mexico.  So it's special.

It was beautiful.  That's all I can say.  I loved the little trip we took.  

From Florida

It's still beginning of June but the summer vacation has started in East Tennessee.  So has the remodeling for bedrooms and bathrooms.  So I am away from home to my mother in law's house.  We drove for 8 hours to get to North Florida.  It used to take us 16 hours from Connecticut, so 8 hours is nothing comparing to that!

What a nice place to be.  She lives in a beautiful house decorated really comfortably.  I always loved visiting her here, but coming to North Florida was not as exciting to us when we lived in North East, but now that we live in Appalachian, it became really exciting.

The size of the sky is significantly larger.  I've developed love for the beautiful mountains surrounding us in TN, but the large sky makes me feel free.  

Coming from the city 1 hour away from NYC, I didn't need to shop at all when I came here before except for outlet malls near by.  But now that I don't have Anthropologie, William Sonoma, Apple Store, Sephora and Wholefoods in driving distance, there are a lot to look forward to.  

Moreover, we had beaches in CT and Jones beach in Long Island was an hour and half away from where we lived.  But of course there is no beach we can go as a day trip in the mountains.  So being able to pack light to just play for a few hours at the beach has become luxury.   We did that yesterday and the ocean was so warm. 

The biggest thing we miss about North East is the diversity of food.  Although the lots of different kinds of food have become available comparing to even 5 years ago in East Tennessee, it's not like NYC that has so many people from different cultures bringing their authentic cooking and ingredients.  Not many place in US can compete with NYC on that, I'm sure.  But Jacksonville has a lot more to offer comparing to East TN.  So we are taking advantage on that.  We found a nice Korean restaurant run by Korean people.  I just love Kimchee!!  I feel right at home when I eat really good Japanese.  (I must say that doesn't happen often in the States....  once a while in NYC)  Korean food makes me feel very similar to that.  I don't know why. I didn't grow up eating Korean food.  It is also spicy and the Japanese food is not.  But there is some similarities in use of vegetables, fermented products, how the rice is eaten with meat or fish, and broth that they use for soup, etc....  So I felt so happy, almost home sick eating tofu and seafood soup, kimchee and white rice.

We always enjoy eating great fruits when we visited FL.  I had berry salad for breakfast for last 3 days with greek yogurt.  It's so simple and nice.  I put 2 cups of different berries and 1 table spoon of tupelo honey and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.  

I love eating fruits for breakfast.  The colors of red berries opens my eyes.  The tartness of them stimulates my mind.  The sweetness of them makes me happy.  I'm ready for the day.

Last night we had a dinner here.  I made a crab salad with mango and avocado, and my sister-in-law (J's brother's wife) brought a home made herb quiche.  My mother-in-law was very happy to have 2 daughters in law cooking for her.  I guess next thing she should look forward to is her grand daughter preparing a nice meal for her.  I need to get busy teaching my daughter how to cook.

There were a lot of berries so I made a rolled cake for desert.

I don't have a standing mixer at home.  I don't even have a hand held mixer either.  So when I bake roll cakes, I usually use a whisk.  I don't mind spending 20 minutes trying to make the egg white stiff....  But it was so much easier to use my mother-in-law's standing mixer!!  I hate to give in to modern technology too much, but this is tempting.  

It's so beautiful to be here.  So relaxing.  Drinking tea in the air-conditioned room with plenty of sun with the cooking book that I wanted to read.  Chasing my mother-in-law's cat.  Going out with a hand weaved basket.  Watching my daughter swimming like a mermaid.  It's so peaceful.