Happy New Smile 07!

This picture is the new-year-postcard I sent for 2007. I picked it up from some illustrator's website. What do you think of it? Bad taste? Funny? Anyway it have some impact, doesn't it? The zodiac-sign-animal for the year 2007 is boar.
I sent this postcard to some of my close friends who understand my sense of fun but I wasn't brave enough to send it to friends who will just think it's bad taste...I sent just a pretty boar postcard to them.

Japanese people send greeting cards for New Year instead of Christmas. I used to draw the zodiac-sign-animal of the year by myself taking weeks, when I had more free time, but I recently just pick up one good picture from internet and print it. 30 postcards were ready just in a couple of days.

Hope coming new year is very very happy one for everyone!!

Boro-Ichi

Went to "Boro-Ichi" in Setagaya with my mum. "Boro" means rag and "Ichi" means market.　The market is held only 4days a year on 15th and 16th in Dce. and Jan. It has very long history started about 430 years ago and identified as intangible cultural heritage. The history started as a Japanese-Kimono rag market but there are so many different stalls nowadays selling interesting things such as antiques, ocarinas (musical instrument), autique cameras, re-make outfit made with Kimono silk, cutlery, vegetables, sweets, old records, mirrors, incense and even Pokemon trading cards for children!

Photo 1: Wooden kitchenware stall sold rice mortars and pestles to make rice cake
Photo 2: Antique wooden dools
Photo 3: The wooden carving to decorate household altar (We call it "Kamidana"). Wow! The price is from 5,800yen to 130,000yen.

The photos 1 & 3 are the things that we know ordinaly Japanese used to have at home but have no idea where to buy nowadays...

Many interesting things to see but nothing to buy...

The market was the place for old people to come to FEEL nostalgia and for young people to come to SEE something rare.

Who made this Ramen bowl?

Today was the pottery class as I mentioned a week ago.
I have to tell you all who see the photo of my works that this is my FIRST time...
I started to make it without having a clear image what I was going to make.
At first I wanted to make a small bowl maybe like a deeper cereal bowl for Japanese miso soup or rice. I was too concentrate on making it thinner and the surface even and next time I noticed it became like a big Chinese noodle bowl... Oh, my gosh! It's too late. I had to have a big Chinese noodle bowl which I didn't want to. I gave up re-making it and made another small plate for Chinese pork dumpling instead to go with the bowl, with the remaining mud.
Even though I made something I wasn't really going to make, the pottery was really fun.
We are going back to the pottery class next week again to colour them.

After the class we had a meal at a Chinese restaurant. Then decided to have a cup of tea and cake at my friend's house. We went to a cake shop, which has a tea room as well, on the way to her house. I found the notice saying "Now we have hot wine - the price(500yen)includes the glass, you can take the wine glass back home".(You see the wine in the photo of the cakes) The glass was simple and nice one so we wanted to have it but also wanted have the cake and the wine at her home not in the tea room. So we walked back her house carrying the glasses with the wine in our hands.
We must have been looked like alcoholics :)

The Sphere-shaped Mirror

The free tickets for Tokyu Bunkamura Museum have arrived again to my mum who has some shares of the company group.
Luckily my favorite woodblock-print artist M.C.Escher was exhibited there now.
I first saw his works 4 years ago at the same museum but this time it's entitled "Super Escher" so should've been something super. The difference from the exhibition four years ago was that there were many drafts showed this time which told us how he thought, used math and drew his works. He must have been very patient to do such a elaborate job. He drew things which reflected in a sphere-shaped mirror and "mirror" is one of the keywords of his works.
The exhibition was again very busy. One thing I want to mention is that they provided us a free audio (and visual!)-guide by Nintendo DS which is mainly designed for playing games. That was great and easy to handle. I really wanted to take it back home ...

Let's kill the spare time

The ribbon rings in the first photo are what I made in the Hawaian ribbon lei class a month ago.
The glass beads in the second photo are what I made in the glasswork class today.
Only what you can tell looking at those pictures might be that I need to buy a better digital camera which can take good close-up photos.
But my friends often ask me to go to that kinds of craft work classes recently like old retired people looking for something to kill their spare time.
I love making craft works but I want to make something I actually use...
Next week is pottery class.