日本民家園：：Japan Open Air Folk Museum

'heavenly van halen' - stereolab

already sandi & martine have blogged about our little expedition - but i wanted to put up a couple of my photos too....
last wednesday, we all went to the Japanese Open Air Folk Museum.
i've been wanting to go there ever since i moved to kawasaki - erm, 10 years now!! and i was WELL impressed. don't know about you, but one of the things that i find disappointing is the lack of english explanations in museums/parks/cultural places. ok, yes, this is japan. but if the place has made an effort to advertise in english - why don't they bother to put signs up there in english?
anyway - i went there, fully expecting not much english. and guess what? there was LOADS! it really impressed me. all the houses are real houses from different areas in japan (mainly kanto & shin-etsu) which have been taken down then rebuilt in the park. yeah, very cool place & i highly recommend it to anyone who it interested in how japanese people used to live & for the nihongo-challenged. also good for taking visiting family members. and it's an easy day trip out - about 30~40 minutes from Shinjuku on the odakyu line.
funnily enough, was talking to sister sin at the weekend, and asked her what she wants to do here (other than go to disney sea) and she said she wants to go there....said it was the only place of interest she could find in kawasaki.

also, if you do decide to go the folk museum, you can also visit the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art
which is right next door. we didn't go to the museum, but we did have ice cream & beer in the cafeteria there. Maxx decided that their ice cream was one of his top three ice cream experiences...

and if you get bored, you can look at the giant sphincter sculpture outside....

☆ シルバーブルー？☆

'blue light' - bloc party

on a completely different topic....what do you think about my hair?
you can't really tell from the photo (you can't always tell in person either...) but the colour is silver blue. or was it blue silver?
whatever....

think i like it.

and i am sorry for the crap photo. took some in focus photos, and i looked so frigging old.
why? MY FUCKING SINUSES!

⋆ nose amputation ⋆

'debris slide' - pavement

irritated...angry...irked...resentful...incensed...outraged...fuming...piqued...
exasperated....wrathful...irascible...tetchy..testy...crabby...waspish...hostile...
livid...apoplectic...snappish

and then we have all the two (or more) word phrases:

in a temper...in a frenzy...beside myself...hopping mad...hot under the collar...foaming at the mouth...in a lather...in a paddy...fit to be ties...bent out of shape...teed off...ticked off

(thanks to the oxford thesaurus for all the words....i am really not that inspired & wordfull to think of so many synonyms for 'angry')


that's how i am feeling today. and have been feeling since monday.

why?
think i can hear all of you saying 'not another boy incident'.
Nope - you're wrong this time. am staying away from boys because i fall for them & then they break me. but that's another story for another day. actually, it's not. it is a non-story.
NO BOY = NO HEARTBREAK = PEACE = A TAD BORING

but anyway...

why am i a grumpy bitch from hell?

MY FUCKING SINUSES.

if swearing offends you - PISS OFF.
sorry, i am incapable of being nice and sensitive (not as if i am that clean mouthed at the best of times anyway...)

i am currently in sinus hell. my face hurts, my eyes ache, it hurts to wear glasses & i am grumpy.
ok, so the grumpy thing may have something to do with PMS - but i am still going to blame my frigging sinuses for EVERYTHING!

permanent headache this week? SINUSES!
waking up late in the morning? SINUSES!
earthquakes in ishikawa? MY SINUSES!
war in iraq? MY SINUSES!
general dis-ease & unhappiness all round the world? MY F-ING SINUSES

yeah - bloody powerful these damn sinuses.

and you know the frigging best thing about it all?
NOTHING WORKS!

headache pills - NO
allergy pills - NO
sinus medication - NO (what's the point of THAT then?!)
aromatherapy - NO (but i grudgingly admit that it did ease the pressure in my head for a while)
steam - NO (but when i was in the steam it was kind of ok, but it's not as if i can walk around in a steam bath all the time, is it? i'd look f-ing stupid)


btw - if anyone, anyone at all, has any other suggestions for dealing with chronic sinus infections, please please PLEASE tell me.

anyway - i just needed to get all this negativity out so i could feel more whole.

actually, that's a lie:
i feel like shit, and i want to spread the shitness around a bit. i want people to know how crap i feel....yeah, i am a truly nasty evil sick person to be around. (no wonder i'm single...)


anyone doctor who can do nose amputations? don't care what i would look like - just want to get rid of the pain....

= Art? Doodle? DoodleArt? =

'destroy everything you touch' - ladytron

i seem to have surrounded myself with uber-talented people: musicians, photographers, artists, academics, craftspeople....and i have to say that i am sometimes highly jealous of their skills/talents/devotion.
i am also, at the same time, supremely proud of them (you?) and if i am to be totally honest, i am chuffed to have cool friends (to my cool friends who are reading this, you are my friend because i like you, not just because you improve my cool ranking....honest!!)

anyway - before i dig a big hole for myself; lose all my cool friends and find myself alone, drunk & befriending random people on the street, let me write about what i originally intended...

my question is 'when doodles become art?'
in fact, can doodles ever even be considered art?
above are some of my more serious doodles...yeah, i believe doodles CAN be serious. ok, i am a freak, but for me i have 2 main types of doodle:
1. the listening doodle.
this is a random doodle that i do when i am on the phone, or in a meeting, or thinking about random stuff. usually, for me, it comes out as loads of stars & flowers.

2. the serious doodle.
i do this doodle when i am killing time, and i really focus on it. i usually do it when i am waiting for someone or something (eg students finishing a test). weird thing is that i've always done pretty much the same pattern. guess i started when i was around 10 or 11 & it hasn't changed much in all that time. i have all the bizarre little rules for myself - for example, the line can never cross itself. and it's become a kind of ritual doodle for me - but it always looks different, even though i have my rules...

so, yeah, above are some of my serious doodles....so, what do you think? and what do you think qualifies as art?

[ [ crash back ] ]

'at & T' - pavement

going back to england is always weird for me. it brings up lots of thoughts, memories & emotions that i didn't really know i was carrying around. i wrote about all that before i went....all the confusion of where 'home' is.

and then it all happens again once i get back here. have been feeling really odd this week (& last)
of course, a lot of it is probably jet-lag related. i always find that a good dose of jet lag puts a weird haze onto the world & the people in it.
but, yeah, been feeling odd.
i can't really explain in simple terms, because i don't know exactly myself what i am feeling.
but i'll try...
i feel (yeah, let's put those feeling words to good use....)
...disjointed
...adrift
...fuzzy
...unconnected

but here's the weird thing....i also feel
...safe
...home
...content

it's a very strange place right now.
also had a very scary thought this morning.
i thought to myself that it was maybe time to leave japan. that scared the pants of me...16 years here. i think/thought/have thought/had thought it is home...

then a second thought swiftly followed:

WHERE THE HELL WOULD I GO?

.. Dijon ..

'time & time again' - counting crows

here's a few photos from my travels to france. i would like to write more a tell you what a lovely trip i had, but i am a walking zombie. i am completely & utterly jetlagged. and, no, it's not actually that bad. i feel like i am walking round in this big pink bubbly thing which is kind of fluffy & soft. not a bad place to be, but am a tad concerned how beer is going to interact with my big pink bubble.

just fyi, these are all photos from Dijon, where the Parents Sin & i spent an hour wandering round looking at really really REALLY old buildings. very cool.