I Made It!

Well, yes, the scarf and the girl. Truth be told, I had a little help with both projects.

But the scarf was started while I was at Tufts for grad school (2002), long before Sydney was born. I just finally finished it a week ago, with the help of my friend Tara, who retaught me how to knit in January.

So, it is a different, lesser accomplishment--the first scarf I've ever knitted--but one that you haven't heard me blog about before. We definitely can't say the same about Sydney, who is also more of a work-in-progress. So, stay tuned for more silliness and shenanigans...and let me know if you'd like a handmade scarf in a few years.

Oh, and let's all hope my first daughter turns out better than my first knitted scarf.

Stocking Up

Sadly, this weekend I went to my last on-base shopping bazaar in Japan. I put the girls in daycare (they always have a special opening for this shopping weekend) and spent five fabulous shopping hours by myself.

I set out to buy two things: a long carved wooden decorative piece to hang and some kind of good quality rug. I bought the former within the first 15 minutes and the latter within the last 15 minutes. And I am so happy with these items and everything in between.

The rug is a 7 x 10 Tabriz Mahi Persian, double-knotted wool rug with silk accents. I love that it has several colors (including my favorites maroon and rust, along with navy blue and green) in a small, intricate, sharp pattern; it is impressive, I would say it is to rugs what HDTV is to cable! (And Brian approved it before that analogy!)

Everything else I bought was a little impulsive, yet necessary of course. I have long admired these pyramid purses from one of my favorite vendors, Reiko's gifts. Everything she makes is original and handmade from Japanese kimono or obis. I hope to be carrying this one to our friends Curtis and Zareen's wedding, which we are desperately trying to make June 6.

And this hana ("flower") tea set spoke to me, quite suddenly, in fact, from another favorite vendor, Yoshida-san. For all the tea we've drank in Japan, I needed a tea set I love--with 5 cups, which is the Japanese way (since the number 4 is bad luck).

And I couldn't leave Japan with only one kimono for my two girls, so I bought this beautiful butterfly kimono. I already had another one from a shrine sale. They can duke it out like sumo wrestlers over who gets to wear which one, but I've done my part.

During this bi-annual bazaar, a five-story parking garage is lined with vendors. So to avoid getting dizzy, my strategy is to walk up, collect paperwork for all my purchases, pay the cashier at the top, then work my way down to collect my items. But it never fails that I see something on the way down that I missed on the way up...

Like these adorable handmade "girls in kimono" pillow covers, which I bought for the girls' beds. And although not Asian, these knitted dresses for dolls were too cute to pass up, especially since they were only $4 each!

It is strange, this sentimental feeling of needing to stock up on anything authentically Japanese I could ever want. The type A personality deep within me doesn't like the feeling that time is running out; it moves me to impulsivity. But I think I am mostly done...

Norwoods Do Disneyland

...with the Watts family!

While Brian's away for a month on a humanitarian medical mission, we are trying to keep busy. And we can't afford to miss out on some of our last Japanese experiences. So, this week we drove about an hour to Tokyo Disnleyland with our friends Kathleen, Harry, Sydney and Julia. It was a blast! Everybody had a friend and there were (barely!) enough adults to man all four kids.

We didn't get to try the new Monsters Inc. ride, which opened the day we visited (April 15), because there was an 160-minute wait with no Fastpass option. But we didn't know what we were missing and hit all the usual favorites, including the teacups, Dumbo, It's a Small World, Buzz Lightyear, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.

Apparently one of the trademarks of Disneyland is the variety of flavored popcorn one can eat throughout the park. I was on the make for a Tinkerbell tub, and although we saw several people sporting them around their neck, we didn't know how to ask in Japanese, and alas, never found one. Instead, Sydney was just as happy eating our Monsters Inc. tub full of caramel popcorn. Then we also tried the curry popcorn. We passed on the standard salted popcorn, and even turned down the soy sauce and butter popcorn, despite its originality and local popularity (as revealed by the long line of Japanese nationals.)

I had forgotten how infectiously magical the Disney experience can be! But it's even more fun with your own kids. I hope we can get to DisneySea with Brian in May before we leave. And then here we come Disney World and Shades of Green!

Last Easter in the East






Bunnies.










Sisters.









Friends.


(Sydney, Miranda, Julia and Sydney
at Starbucks after church)


Happy Easter!

Click here for more Easter photos!

Tokyo's Kitchen District

My friend Kathleen recently introduced me to this great neighborhood of Tokyo. It's a foodie's paradise--store after store where you can buy any type of cooking equipment or gadget you could ever desire. And of course, the streets are lined with stores offering a huge selection of pottery and dishes for serving all kinds of culinary creations. But then add to that the serious Japanese business of food models, and you can even buy the "food" to put on the plates. (It's a real dietitian's paradise--if only she could afford those realistic food models, which are a minimum of $20 usually.)

Here are a few of my favorites:

• any entree with chopsticks suspended in mid-air;
• ice cream (because it reminds me of how Brian and I took the fake cone display off the sushi-go-round belt and waited, growing embarrassed, to never receive any ice cream);
• Japanese beer cans complete with fake ice chips;
• and sweet mochi cakes (which I have grown to love).