Fall in Japan

Hello again.  What's up?  It's turning cold here in Japan.  Chilly really, not super cold.  But, I'm finicky.  We are heading to Kansas City over the Christmas holidays.  It's suppose to be arctic cold while we're visiting.  I hope Kansas City lives up to it's reputation and vacillates back and forth between cold and mild when we arrive.  What have I been doing you ask?  I know you've been wondering.

Well, the days do seem to be flying by.  Can you believe we have lived here almost 16 months? When we return from Christmas we will have about 8 months left of our stay here.  Therefore, I'm trying to take advantage of everything I can.  My youngest daughter came to visit in late October.  We crammed as much as possible into those two weeks.  We did glass blowing, pottery and indigo dyeing.  We visited Kyoto and Tokyo along with sites around Nagoya.  It went fast!

I've done some more pottery since then and think I might make several more trips there before I leave.  I pretty much love everything I make.  Here are the pieces I made from this trip. 

I've been doing a lot of knitting.  I have several friends that knit.  We meet often and hang out at a coffee shop or a friend's home.  I have a shawl that I need to finish asap as it will be nice to have this winter.  I know you can't really tell, but its a beautiful chunky Noro yarn that should be nice and warm.  I've got two scarves in process and just added two different shawls to my queue.  Although I haven't bought yarn yet.  I definitely have enough to keep me busy.  Here are the new possibilities, The Parlour and Find Your Fade.

I was also able to explore some new areas and take Fall pictures.  Fall and Spring are very big in Japan.  They take it seriously.  Japan illuminates the beautiful fall trees and it's a site to behold.  First of all, I'll show you some trees from a Shrine out in the country on a rainy day.  

Last night I went to an Illumination and took some fun pictures.  

Fall is now all over and winter is upon us.  I don't have plans to travel to Sapporo for the Ice Festival. I hear everyone in Japan goes to the Ice Festival.  It's too late to get flights and reservations, etc.  So you may just get more photos of knitting.  Sending you lots of love and wishing you all a 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  

Hello Again.

It's been awhile. The last time I wrote a blog post we had just returned to Japan from our Christmas trip to Kansas City. We were home one week and my husband had an arduous business trip to South Africa. Once he got there it was pretty cool.  One night he stayed in a preserve and saw a lot of animals. The trip there is a LONG one. While he was gone his father took a turn for the worse. Upon his arrival home one week later I had to break the news that his dad was gone. This was very sad news, but we were so thankful that we had just seen him. The next few days we planned a return trip for the funeral. 

This is the presentation of the flag to my husband after the service. Those military funerals are pretty emotional I can tell you that. We spent a few more days taking care of some business and getting a monument ordered. It was an emotional week and we really struggled with jet lag, yet again.  

Now we've been back a couple of weeks and my husband is off again to Mexico and Puerto Rico this week. We've done a couple of fun things in the past two weeks before he left.

Last weekend we visited the Toyota Commemorative Museum. My husband works for Toyota for those of you that haven't been around long. He's seen the museum but I had not. You might be interested to know that Toyota began as Toyoda Spinning and Weaving Company. Half of the museum is about the looms and spinning machines and the other half is about how the automobile business began. It was very interesting. 

Antique Japanese fabrics are beautiful.  

This is a replica of the first Toyota ever built. It was built based on a Chrysler that they took apart and studied. I hope you can see this sketch below.  It is only a portion and was blown up to a huge wall size. 

This is a replica of the first truck. It had only 65 HP. My husband's motorcycle has more power. 

The first car built for America. It had no power and evidently did not sell well. World War II came and the Japanese government wanted them to make only trucks. 

Eventually they were back at car production and the Corona was very popular in America.  This is the Corolla which is still in production.  Toyota has been on a roll since that time. 

About 20 years ago they brought in this steam engine as another example of the era of industrialization. It was a very interesting morning. I wish I could show you the kind of looms that they make today. Crazy fast and advanced technologies. I've made a little video of our visit.  Some of the photos are repeated, but you can also see the current looms.  Enjoy.


Well, thanks for hanging around through the silence and museum posts. Talk to you soon. 

Jet Lag Post

Hello everyone.  We are back in Japan after spending two weeks in Kansas City with our family.  The 3:00 am wake up this morning is getting to me and it's only 9:00 am!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.  We enjoyed being with our girls and parents.

One thing we ended up doing was going through my MIL's collections and splitting them up between the sons and their families.  She's been gone almost a year, which is so hard to believe.  She loved beautiful things and I thought I'd show you some of them.  None of these photos were taken with the blog in mind, so they are not the best, but they will give you an idea.

I really wanted this lovely portrait of her when she was four.  It is rather large and since we are not living in our home right now, my BIL took it.  He didn't know that the doll in the basket was still in her possession so we found it and he took it with him.  This was hanging on a large wall above the stairs, it is almost full size.  

I did however leave with this beautiful painting.  I believe it was painted by a cousin or Aunt. My daughter is willingly storing it while we are in Japan. It's such a sacrifice.

My MIL had a lovely collection of dolls and some half dolls.  I came home with the half dolls.  These photos are not inclusive.  I brought some of the little ones without their pincushions to Japan with me.

My MIL also had a lot of beautiful jewelry, mostly costume. This ring however, was promised to my husband from his Grandmother. My MIL wore it all the time. I believe she had it reset at some point, but the diamonds were her mother's wedding setting. We ended up with other jewelry, but I haven't taken more photos.  

Lesson learned, document everything!  Write names on photos.  Maybe I should say, print off the photos AND then write the names. Write down your stories. Tell your children where things came from and who gets them. Be specific. It was difficult not knowing what was real and what was costume jewelry.  Fortunately, we had no arguments between siblings regarding who wanted what.  Probably because it was all brothers. I didn't put up a stink about the portrait. Aren't you proud of me?

* Sorry, Melinda that I didn't get a chance to meet up with you.  Between the weather and a health scare, the time ran out.  

The Big News

We are moving to Nagoya Japan in a little over a month!

There you go.  I've said it.  It's finally out there for all to hear.  Next week we travel to Japan to find a place to live and get things set up.  My first visit, ever.

Because of this impending news, I have been cleaning.  Why is it I wait for some big event to go through old boxes and files and CRAFT CLOSETS???  Then I get distracted by overwhelming projects like scanning every living single photo I come across.  I do work best under pressure, although there is too much to be done.  

I actually started in my closet.  Have you seen the craze over the book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Japanese author, Marie Kondo?  I knew I needed help in this area, so I gave it a whirl.  It worked really well, even though I've only used it for my clothes.  Sorry, this is an UGLY PICTURE ALERT.

 These are literally all of my clothes pulled out of the closet and drawers and stacked in my room. 

Empty, empty.  I gave away a large amount of clothes that I never wear and I don't miss a thing. Later, going through my photos led to a little panic over a rather large missing segment of our life.  I couldn't find those pictures anywhere.  Finally, victorious, they had been hidden under a larger box and not opened for years.  Here are some treasures from that period.  

Okay, skip a few years. 

 Look at how young I looked, even with gray hair!

Back to the not-so-pretty pictures.  There have been a lot of trips to the thrift store to donate, donate, donate.  I don't have the patience or time for a garage sale.  I'm not sure who would traipse up here anyway for one.  

Well, one last pretty photo for your viewing pleasure. Cuz who doesn't like flowers?

Goodnight all. Hopefully, I'll post more exciting updates next time.

Family Wedding

I know I promised to fill you in on our other activities this summer.  Our youngest daughter came home for a few days in August.  One big event that week was a family wedding. First we went to a single "A" baseball game. Which always ends in fireworks. Cell phone pictures of fireworks are blurry, unfortunately. 

 We ended up having to go shopping before the wedding.  "Hunky Husband" forgot all his nice clothes at our apartment.  We had to entertain ourselves in the men's department for a little while.

 He got a little tickled at one of his own jokes at lunch.  Actually, more than a little tickled.  

The wedding was beautiful but on a very hot day. 

 This is my Aunt and Uncle.  They are the bride's grandparents.

 My cousin and his beautiful daughter walking down the aisle.  I wish I could've taken a picture of her guy.  What an amazing reaction he had.  It was so sweet.  

 This is the bride's Momma and my youngest girl, hanging out afterwards during the photo session.

This beautiful reception was in their back yard. They did an amazing job!

What a special evening.  I promise that I'll be back.