My birthday at RRRoom

I spent my birthday at my favourite place, RRRoom with new friends, Gen san, above (what a beautifully kind face he has)! and the very kawaii Fuji san - see video if I manage to upload it ok, and of course, Koji and Kumiko san who are always so warm and wonderfully welcoming. Koji sans cooking was gorgeous as always and they even dimmed the lights when they bought me my birthday cake, which looked perfect until I smudged the writing, whoops:D

Tonight i'm having a girlie night out so expect more pics soon!

xxx

Old songs and new beginnings

Just a quickie to share this myspace link here for 2littlewhos. It comprises of some old songs I recorded in Wales with my friend Steve Williams. We're hoping to get together when I get back to England to do some more recording which is really exciting:D
Steve has another myspace page here, which has some great tracks on it, please check it out if you get the chance.

Light and love xx

Portrait in colour

I do love having creative friends:D
xxx

Random bits of artwork

Just a quickie to share some artwork. My friend, James Chadderton, just did a portrait of me in black and white on his computer and I think he's captured me pretty well. Apparently someone accused him of only drawing robots so he's done a couple of portraits to prove them wrong! If you want to see some of his other work have a look at his deviantart page here.

I'm also adding the Lisa painting again because I've changed it a bit, it was too busy before. I have to say I'm not entirely happy with it still but I'm going to leave it as it is and try again I think.

The other drawing is one I did in the cafe the other day, just doodling with no fixed idea in my head, just letting the drawing take shape by intuition, most enjoyable:D

As for the bunnies, that's a bit of a departure for me with regard to subject matter but I did it for my friend Kazuko san for a new yrs present, she's crazy about rabbits!

love and light xxx

I love RRRoom

I'm so lucky to have found this great cafe called RRRoom in Yokosuka Chuo where the food is great, the company wonderful and the music sublime!!! Is there anything better than good music, people and food!! I don't think so but let me know if you think differently. My friends, Krishna and Ali, found this place by accident whilst looking for the library. I go there for a meal every week or two and meet up with some new friends. They also have a great selection of books to look through whilst you sit and drink their fabulous freshly ground coffee, mmmm, heaven.

On Jan 4th they had a mochi (traditional Japanese rice cakes) pounding party, where we all took turns to pound the rice to make it really glutinous and sticky, and then the chef, Koji, made some wonderful toppings for it using, amongst other things, Daikon and Kinako. It was a beautiful sunny day and very enjoyable to be outside eating! I was ther with Krishna and we were talking about how no-one does this kind of thing in England, there's not really a strong sense of community any more like there seems to be in Japan.

I love winter in Japan! Any friends back home reading this I'm sorry for the shock of that sentence! I surely never thought I'd utter the words 'love' and 'winter' in the same breath but there's a first time for everything:D

Winter in Japan is totally different from winter in England. In Japan it's sunny with clear blue skies almost every day!! In England it can get horribly grey and depressing.

Also, I've recently discovered that on a clear day I can see Fuji san (mt. Fuji) from my local park, Kurihama flower garden! How cool is that!!!!

Love and light xxx

Stella Imhultberg

I just realised that Stella Imhultberg, one of my favourite artists, has a new address for her blog, take a look at her blog here, and her website here.
I adore her work, it's beautiful and sensual and sometimes a little dark. She creates a great sense of atmosphere in many of her paintings too, the women have a real presence and are very seductive.

Photoshop Work

Here are a few pictures I did about a year ago after completing my photoshop course. I was quite pleased with them at the time and I was happy to have acquired some new skills. I just came across them whilst attempting to organise my laptop, it's far too crowded at the minute and is not running so well as a consequence.

They're not my usual style of work, what do you think?

Rokuro Taniuchi

Last November I went to the Yokosuka Art Museum to see an exhibition on contemporary Japanese sculpture. The star of the show however, was a small exhibition that I didn't even know about in the annex by an artist called Taniuchi Rokuro. He was famous in Japan for his cover illustrations for a popular magazine called Shukan Shincho. The exhibition had a lot of his original paintings and they quite charmed me with their innocence. I really like his style and his sense of composition.

I can also recommend the museum itself, it's a lovely new spacious building on the coast and so it commands a good view.

New years

Happy new year by the way!!! I hope it's a good one for all of us:D

I had a very traditional Japanese New yrs Eve, I was one of 108 people who got a ticket to ring the bell at midnight at the local Buddhist temple, thanks to my friends, Kazuko and Eichan!

It was very exciting for me as I queued up with the local people, including some of my students, who were, I think, very surprised to see me.

New years eve and the first 3 days of the new year are spent visiting temples and shrines (hatsu mou de - going to shrines for the first time in the new year), making prayers and buying fortunes (omikuji). If you don't like the fortune you get you tie it to a tree or wooden structure at the temple/shrine (being very carefull to not tear the paper) and then buy another one at another place!

New years day is also celebrated with a big feast as evidenced in the above pic, mmm, I love Japanese food! Kazuko san is giving the recipe for the shitake mushrooms so expect some experimenting soon:D

Anonymous Inspiration

I just came across these lovely drawings whilst surfing the net and wanted to share them. The black and white work remind me a little of Mashimo Yuki, whose work I saw at the Tokyo City Opera gallery.

I can't read any of the information on the website though so I'm not even sure of the artists name, but here's a link if you want to have a look.