mobile uploads

Sorry man. been busy and haven't had time to put stuff up. Here's stuff from the past 2 months that I found on my mobile!

京の味

Kyoto Cuisine. Of course you don't have restaurants here that say "Japanese Restaurant". The nearest you get to that is family restaurants. This was a Kyoto cuisine restaurant, of course featuring tofu cooking. It was a lot of tofu, but there were so many courses I ended up pretty full!


Bushes (these were actually knee-high :P)

Taken from a ankle-high elevation. I thought the bushes looked like trees.


霊山

The Spiritual Mountain Fuji. Within Kanto, Fuji can be seen floating in the backdrop, watching over the region. On this day, the snow on its cap was so white it looked less ghostly - it looked almost like just any mountain.


布団たたき

Thihs is what you do on a sunny day. You take your futon out and beat it. And boy the dust that actually falls off it!


What you do with too many chestnuts.

I was given chestnuts. Lots of it. I decided that making it into a desert would be the easiest and it was yummy! It's a bit like burburchacha, except it has only stuff i like!


活け花展でいただいた一服

Japanese cakes that came with the tea. Went for a flower exhibition and even the cakes had a flower theme! Yummy!

STRAWVERRY PARADIZE!

I don't cook, but I improvise.

Left: mix-and-match meal from convenience store. Purple rice is onigiri smashed into a bowl and heated in the microwave.
Right: What do you do when you get a whole box of strawberries to yourself? Boil and mash most of the box, add almond powder and milk and freeze to chill.

It's been a windy night. And tomorrow we have a typhoon scheduled. The customary welcome - delayed trains and floods, are on standby, but I'm doing fine. I have a roof to keep out the rain, walls to keep out the winds, and it's just cold enough to leave the sliding door slightly open, to feel really comfortable under the blankets. A little colder and I may turn the Kotatsu on.

Last Autumn saw much less rain, so this is somewhat new to me - but I can't help feeling like it's the same rainy season in spring, all over again. It's a great relief that the harshest of summer is gone, and my brain seems to have come back from the dead. It was so bad, just weeks ago, that I took the whole day to get two hours' work done. This must be how electric shavers feel like when they're running on old batteries - sucking the cell so hard, and all they deliver are electric groans that do not cut. Perhaps I should take stock, to see how many of my brain cells survived this summer. I'm not at all excited about finding out if I'm getting more stupid every year, but if I am, then that would be a rainy day I could prepare for.

So much news about the economy picking up, but my region isn't quite yet. Work's starting to come in, but nothing convincing as yet. Bar the rain, I've been able to squeeze in regular swimming sessions. I still can't do the Butterfly, but it's been pretty good at taking my mind of things, although it seems I'd have to work a little harder to get it to take a few more inches of the waist.

Discovered a new coffee product from Georgia. Was about to think that as far as the consumer is concerned, it's all marketing fad - but seems that the inner connoisseur in us manages to separate the pearls from the marbles once in a while. It's really an intensively convergent market over here - very few products genres, but madly differentiated, up to a point where differences often do not anymore make that difference that allow products to move between the line that separates Commodity from Happiness. Coca-Cola is an old hand. Few are.

It's oddly quiet right now, considering that a storm is coming. Or is this the usual quiet before a storm?

今日の晩御飯

Ikebana, Day 3

Ikebana

Ikebana is big in Japan! Yes, literally!

Summer Sky

If we hold on together

There are always these nights, when your body starts to lose its peak vigor, when your brain starts to wonder, what you have done, and what there is left to be done.

Nights you stay up alone, your mind keeping you awake, but your body begging for sleep.

Nights you feel like you're all alone in the whole world of six billion people, a world overpopulated and underloved, wanting and denying.

I wonder, what would one do on such a night, if one were born before the Internet, before the Telephone, before Telex? We've come this far. Yet keeping on believing that tomorrow actually holds something for us, is increasingly difficult. We're getting increasingly connected, but I feel increasingly cornered. Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my voice. That it takes too much courage to get the word out there.

A Year In Pictures

蓬莱軒

うまき

Life, as it is.

RANDOM PHOTOS

Sashimi Hiyashi-Udon Teishoku

BEFORE

AFTER

Udon
★★★☆☆
Tofu
★★☆☆☆
Desert
★★★★☆
Sashimi
☆☆☆☆☆
Overall
Home food still doesn't beat eating out.

Tau-Huey!

So exciting... this is the packaging.... wonder what it looks like when I open it!

What's this???? Oh.... the tau huey and the syrup. Black sugar syrup.

Here's it when mixed!

Never really had Tau-Huey with black sugar before... it's more gooey than usual - it tastes like hmm sago gula melaka!!!!!

今日はこのように幸せだった。

仕事が終わって、定時退社して、最近何もうまくいってないなあ、と思いながら泳ぎに行った。

プールについて、着替えて、水に入って、頑張って泳ぎに泳いだ。
青く見える水は、誰もが受け入れられるんだね。
いつも青いと思うけど、本当は透明だね。
そして今日の水は、すごく透明で、きれいだった。

泳いだ後自転車で帰宅。ウォークマンを耳に嵌めて過ぎてゆく景色を見ながら、ペダルを漕いだ。夜の道路、コンビに、自販機。明るくて、音楽を聴きながら自転車から見ると、なんか劇的。まるで映画を見ているように人生を見ていた。そう、人生を休んで、見るだけで居るように感じた。その中の空気に、自由のにおいが漂っていて、なんておいしかった！

悩みは結局残るけど、今日はこれぐらいで、まあまあ幸せだった。

partial solar eclipse

同僚が撮った写真です。
太陽と三日月が同時に空に現れたように見える写真ですが、
雲の具合で、ちゃんと撮れなかっただけです。
天体がたまたま直線になっただけで、人生の中でなぜか何かの意味があるのも不思議ですね。
そもそも「直線」とかも人間だけに意味がある概念でしょうか？
こういうありのままのものを、意味深いものするのが、縁でしょうか？

It's another sony....

Like every other!

shopping!

ｍｅｒｏｎ

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

This must have had been my first contact with the world of music, all the way back in Primary school. It's amazing how much things that happen in one's youth can really shape your whole life. Amazing too how music can occupy such a big part of one's life. And amazing how fast life goes by, and how the songs that people leave behind stay in our hearts, along with a precious joy and a deep pain.

This day has been a day of loss. I'm continually surprised how much and how little people can share with those around them. Michael Jackson's passing seems to have slowed down my day so much, like I needed time to grieve the loss, but the world around me doesn't seem to be impacted by it. Not that I was a big fan, but his songs did occupy a part of my personal history. I do not know how I should weep, when those who have been a big part of my life are gone, but the loss of Michael, seemed to feel to me like the loss of a certain part of my own life - one that I can no longer return to. I'm usually seeking out new music, new sounds, but today had been one of reminiscence and grief.

GONE TOO SOON

chicken rice with tips (upper left) on how to enjoy it more!

It seems like "singapore chicken rice" == "rice with soup and 3 sauces".
the sauce and the rice is okay, but the chicken texture is somehow like that of teriyaki chicken...

the surprising thing, though was that the shop had tom and jerry on tv... and was playing jazz. it felt like TCC....

my favorite pen right now - although Pilot V5 is still my choice for writing english!

dunking here too

両菜一湯 大魚大蝦

Not an LV, not a Gucci, but it's Takeo Kikuchi.
My second TK wallet ^^

Yes, it's already going.

a pink evening

Happy is always there. You just have to trigger.

(Click photo for album)

happy birthday to me!

henna art by cafe nation

of course i have a shopping bag

a new way to think about work

イチゴ大福

Time

Time passes very fast, and very slow here. Each working day is packed with things to get done, each season with clothes to buy, each year with expectations to exceed. The seasons change especially quickly here. Before you can wear your new jacket enough times to justify its price tag, it starts getting warm. The only season that seems to pass real slow is Summer. I don't know if it's just perception, but last summer seemed so forever one could forget that it can get this cold. Eternal Summer may sound like paradise in a marketing campaign, but not when a combination of global warming and eco-friendliness makes it sound logical to people to avoid turning the air conditioner temperature down on a 40-degree day. The heat makes you so lethargic you realize your brain has a turbo mode - that sometimes switches itself off.

It's February, and we're moving into the coldest period of the year, although it has been pretty warm (about 6-11 degC) in the day recently. Clothes don't dry everyday. It turns dark really early -- and at 4pm, looking out from the office window makes one yearn to be out there bathing in the last bit of warm sunlight before it turns all dark. Sunrise has been getting earlier very recently. There was a period when it's still gray at 7am, but I'm glad it's now really bright at 8am, because barring that, my futon would convince me it's only 4 in the morning.

Some say that Winter will get colder still, but already I see signs that it's fading off. Fashion magazines are already featuring the Spring collection, and just today, I read online about the coming sakura season. Or maybe it's just that people want winter to be over so bad, they start looking forward to the blossoms even though my city hasn't yet had any snow. It's strange actually, that even though we celebrate the New Year and everything, in a different way, the year really begins in April here.

sometimes happiness comes in a package