Japan | kimberly ah

Jun 15 2015

adventures, Japan 2015, My Love Affair with Tokyo

We’re HOME (And I Already Miss the Donuts)

Goodness. The coming home jet lag is far worse than anything I’ve experienced in Japan. Naoto and I got home on Wednesday night, but it’s all been a sleepy fog around here since then. Hopefully this week I can get back on track with sleeping at night and blogging during the day (or at least blogging!)

Our trip was fantastic-Tokyo steals a little bit more of my heart every time we visit and I really loved the break of going to Kyoto and experiencing a bit of the slower pace and the older sites and shops there. In Tokyo, we hit a lot of our “regular” haunts (mainly stationery related!), but we did so many new things that I can’t wait to share with you. Oh, and I know last trip, I was all about the sakura. Well, this time, we happened upon hydrangea season and I think I took a thousand pictures of those beautiful blue blooms. And the DONUTS! We went to Mister Donut every day, of course, and indulged in all sorts of delightful treats, including matcha donuts, which were the special this season.

So stay tuned for another “Japan Month” around here with some garden posts sprinkled in!

Tagged adventures, food, I *heart* Japan, Japan

May 11 2015

6 Comments

adventures, Japan 2013, My Love Affair with Tokyo, Office Supplies, snail mail, Spending the Yen

Spending The Yen 5: Hiragana Stamp Set

Once again reviving the Spending the Yen series…

I bought these hiragana* stamps two years ago in a tiny scrapbooking store near an izakaya where Naoto and I shared dinner with his family. When I bought them, I didn’t realize how frustrating they would be to use. Every time I wanted to write something, I had to ask Naoto to spell it out for me. So I put them away in the spare room and forgot about them until recently. Every once in awhile I’d see them sitting on the shelf, taunting me and the money I’d wasted. But, now that I’ve had some practice during my Japanese class, I’m using them! I’m still pretty slow, but I can usually pick the right sounds for the words and names I’m trying to write. (Though, I still have Naoto check my work to be sure!) Here’s a peek at the whole set. (Some of the characters may be upside down because I put them away haphazardly last time.) When I use them, I have my textbook open to the hiragana chart so I can refer to it as I sound out the word. (I don’t have my hiragana sounds memorized yet…) It really does remind me of learning to read as a kid. I’m slowly getting better with practice, so I’m trying to stamp a random Japanese word on outgoing mail for the rest of the month. (I’ll let you know how that goes!) I have “arigato” (“thank you”) down thanks to writing a few thank yous lately.

*If you don’t know what hiragana is, this site does a nice job of explaining it. It’s basically the Japanese phonetic script–each “letter” represents a vowel sound or a combination consonant/vowel sound. There are forty-six sounds. In some ways, they are easier than English because each sound only makes that sound. (Unlike in English where we have the long e, the short e, the silent e…) But, the letters are difficult to decipher sometimes and very challenging to write, I think.

Tagged adventures, crafts, I *heart* Japan, Japan, mail art, office supplies, rubber stamp, snail mail

Apr 29 2015

2 Comments

crafty adventures, Office Supplies, snail mail

Cherry Blossom Mail

cherry blossom mail I’m a bit late for cherry blossom season, but last week, I sent out some pink blossomed mail to a few pen pals. What can I say? I’m inspired by those postage stamps. When we were in Japan last year, I picked up a bunch a sakura stationery and of course I tucked it away to use this spring. I wrote letters on the kaishi papers, folded them around a Japanese tea bag and tucked them inside these sakura printed cellophane flat bags. The tiny sakura flowers on the papers showed through the bags…flowers everywhere! I sealed up the bags with washi tape and used labels for the addresses. Easy!

I got a bit behind last week on the Write On Challenge and National Letter Writing Month but I’m all caught up and looking forward to finishing strong. I can’t believe April is almost over! How has the challenge gone for you?

Tagged crafts, I *heart* Japan, Japan, mail art, office supplies, snail mail, washi tape

Apr 23 2015

2 Comments

Office Supplies

TV Japan

Comcast has a promotion going on for the rest of April offering TV Japan for free right. TV Japan a mix of all sorts of Japanese programming–news, soap operas, game shows, talk shows, sports shows, and children’s programming. It feels like mostly news and kids stuff during the day, but at night, I’ve found a couple of travel shows with subtitles that are really fun. Even though Japanese class is over, I really can only understand about 1% of what’s going on during any given program. But I still keep TV Japan on all day when we have it because immersion is fun and you just never know what kind of crazy thing you will see. One of my favorite little “shorts” is a stop motion with these blue and white blocks of clumsy clay with hilarious little voices. The clay guys walk on screen with indentations of office supplies and (I assume…) proceed to ask each other how they happened upon that shape. (Perhaps, since it’s a program for children, the audience is supposed to guess the shape? “Can you guess children…and thirty somethings in America?”) Then, each clay is shown in a flashback, happening upon an object. The music during the flashbacks is my favorite part of the show. The clay must have really bad eyes because he always trips over the object. When the clay stands up, the object is stuck to him. And then the object falls right off. Back in real time, the blue clay finishes his story and it’s the white clay’s turn. (Cue the flashback music.) The white clay tripped over a pencil and onto… (Can you guess???)…a magnet!

It’s really riveting TV!

Tagged I *heart* Japan, Japan, office supplies

Apr 20 2015

2 Comments

Japan Does It Better, snail mail

Japan Does It Better 22: Gifts of Friendship Stamps

Have you seen the Gifts of Friendship stamps released in the U.S. and Japan? The stamps celebrate the exchange of flowering tree gifts between the US and Japan. In 1912, the US received a gift of over three thousand flowering cherry trees from Japan. In 1915, the U.S. returned the favor by sending fifty dogwood trees to Japan. These stamps celebrate the 100th anniversary of that gift.

Since I am a huge lover of cherry blossoms, I preordered loads of the U.S. version to use on my spring mail. I also asked my sister-in-law if she would buy a sheet of the Japanese version for my stamp collection. Lucky for me, a care package arrived from Japan this weekend (with lots of treats for Naoto and me!) and two sheets of the Japanese stamps were tucked inside. I really love the U.S. version, even though they are reminiscent of the cherry blossom stamps issued a few years ago for the centennial of the 1912 cherry tree gifts. The US sheet contains ten of the US stamps and features two of the Japanese version (but for use in the U.S.). I think the colors on the U.S. version are perfectly springy with the pretty blue skies and pinks and corals and pale purples of the flowering trees. And the Japanese ones are lovely, featuring close-ups of the cherry blossoms and dogwood blooms with Japan’s Diet (Congress) and Constitutional Memorial Clocktower respectively in the backgrounds. The Japanese sheet contains the US and Japanese versions as well as six other stamps that highlight the white dogwood, cherry, and red dogwood branches on a simple cream background. I love that Japan added this variety to their edition. On the US versions, the writing is very spare, just noting USA, 2015, and the “Forever” denomination on the stamps in plain black text. The Japanese versions are accented with gold text of the 82 yen denomination and “Japan-U.S. Flowering Dogwood Centennial” in both English and Japanese. The U.S. version is much more spare than the Japanese version, which seems to celebrate the exchange with both countries’ flags and the flowering trees decorating the sheet.

I do love both versions and it’s not often that two countries can go head-to-head in a sheet of stamps battle. But I do think, in this case, because of the variety and the gold details that this is another case of Japan Does It Better!

To see the rest of the Japan Does It Better posts, go here.

Tagged celebrations, I *heart* Japan, Japan, mail art, snail mail

Jan 12 2015

5 Comments

crafty adventures, holidays, Office Supplies, snail mail

New Year’s Cards 2015

On January 1st, I spent the day catching up on all of my mail. I sent out a big stack of seventeen New Year’s cards and thank yous on the second.

For New Year cards, I sent three different versions–two different Japanese postcards and letterpressed greeting cards. We got the Japanese postcards at Mitsuwa again. Roughly translated, the fan one says “We humbly wish you a happy new year” and the bamboo one says “Thank you very much for all assistance rendered the previous year. We ask for your continuous guidance this year as well.” The little bamboo drawing on the bottom is a classic Japanese New Year symbol called a kadomatsu.

The greeting cards are from Saturn Press, a letterpress printing company in Maine. (They don’t have a website, but I found some information about them here, which I think is quite interesting.) The card features two juncos sitting on a branch and the quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, “And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.” I love everything Saturn Press does, but these are my favorites–from the birds to the simple phrase and the gorgeous paper stock with its deckled edge…these cards are dreamy. I put all of the cards in envelopes (even the postcards) and decorated them with washi tape, metallic stars, and old Japanese Woodblock Cavallini calendars. (I had several in my stash, so I picked out the wintry months to use. Cavallini uses artwork by Hasui Kawase, the same artist who was on our Christmas cards.)And to seal the deal, I got to use my shiny new Letter Writers Alliance member stamp. It feels good to start the year out with a stack of mail…let’s hope I can keep up the postal momentum!

Tagged crafts, holidays, Japan, letterpress, mail art, office supplies, rubber stamp, snail mail, washi tape

Jan 09 2015

Japan Does It Better 21: Gum Papers

Naoto is a big fan of BlackBlack gum, a Japanese gum that is infused with caffeine*. The taste is strong and minty, and apparently, caffeine is absorbed into the body faster with gum than drinking coffee or pop. Naoto usually buys the little packs of five sticks, but the last time we went to Mitsuwa he could only find the large size of the tablet gum. It’s hard to see in my picture (it’s DARK here in Chicagoland!), but inside the container is a slot with a little stack of papers for wrapping up your used gum before it’s discarded. Isn’t that genius? When I have a stick of gum, I keep the paper to spit it out in, but when I have the canisters of gum, I’m at the mercy of finding a nearby trash can. This tiny pad of paper solves that problem. I’m sure BlackBlack isn’t the only gum that has the handy paper option…I’ll have to keep my eyes open for more options on our next trip.

Tidy ways to dispose of your gum…another example of how Japan Does It Better!

To see all of the other JDIB posts, go here.

*I don’t get it…in a world with coffee, why would I want to get my caffeine any other way?

Tagged coffee, food, I *heart* Japan, Japan, shopping

Jan 07 2015

4 Comments

Christmas, gardening, snail mail

Pretty Seed Packets

My pen pal Danielle sent me these fantastic seed packets for Christmas. They are from the Hudson Valley Seed Library as part of their special Art Packs series. Various artists’ works are used on the seed packet, making them perfect for gifts! (Danielle, you know me so well!) She sent Isis Candy Shop tomatoes, packet art done by Amy Ross. The other one, Tender Green Komatsuna, features a painting by Molly Rausch, famous for her postage stamp paintings. If you look closely, you can see that the base of the painting is a vintage Japanese postage stamp, and Molly, with her imagination and a teeny, tiny paintbrush, added the surroundings. You can see the entire painting here…isn’t it fantastic?

This gift blends all of my favorite things: mail, postage stamps and gardening! And, especially when windchills are hitting the -30°F mark, I’m really dreaming of gardening today.

Tagged Christmas, forest park, garden, gardening, holidays, Japan, snail mail

Dec 30 2014

3 Comments

Christmas, holidays, Merry & Bright, snail mail

Holiday Cards 2014

Siiiiigh…our holiday cards are out…most made it by Christmas. Others didn’t. And that’s okay (she says, begrudgingly.) I worked on my cards over two days–one with my friend Jackie and her cats (Eskimo is shown above…she finally warmed up to me on this visit and now that she’s rested on my cards, I’m for sure we are best friends), and the other at home with Presley overseeing my progress (top picture). I took some people off of my list this year, and added some new friends, totaling forty-four cards for the season. I found these Hasui Kawase cards at the Book Table in Oak Park. I love that they are peaceful and snowy. Some people may say they lack “Christmas” but with their “Season’s Greetings” message inside, they worked for a variety of people. I also had a few 16 Sparrows Chicago Snowflake cards that I sent to a few former and current Chicagoans on my list. (It’s their interpretation of the Chicago flag.) And since twenty-eight cards were not enough, I mixed in some of last year’s leftover cards and some from a Cavallini kit that I’ve had for a few years. Not a single piece of washi tape was used for this year’s cards, but I did put a Trader Joe’s sticker on each one. (I often ask for a few stickers when I’m checking out at the store. I like to use them on my mail and my calendar. On a recent visit, the manager gave me the whole roll. Trader Joe stickers forever!!)

So, they weren’t perfect, but I wrote a personal message in each one, so hopefully that part was appreciated, even though the envelopes were a little plain. And now…onto New Year’s cards…I only have a few but the clock -again- ticks…

Tagged Christmas, holidays, Japan, letterpress, snail mail

Nov 12 2014

4 Comments

Japan Does It Better, My Love Affair with Tokyo, Sweet Tooth

Japan Does It Better 20: Häagen Dazs Crispy Sandwich

Oh Häagen-Dazs Cookies & Cream Crispy Sandwich…how I miss you! This is another one of those American-like snacks that is exclusive to Japan. (But if anyone wants to start a letter writing campaign with me so we can get them over here…I have my stamps ready!)

The Häagen-Dazs Crispy Sandwich is an ice cream sandwich made with ice cream (in this case cookies & cream which is, in my opinion, the best!) coated in a hard shell and sandwiched between two crispy wafers. The wafers taste kind of like an ice cream cone, but they are thinner. They add a nice crunch and texture, but not a ton of taste which allows you to focus on the yummy ice cream and coating. The Crispy Sandwich takes the ice cream sandwich to a whole new level…so good. So very good.

Crispy Sandwiches can be found at just about any convenience store, which makes them waaaaay too easy to eat every day. (Not that anyone is guilty of eating one every day during her two week trip or anything…) I tried the plain vanilla and the special spring sakura versions, but truthfully, cookies & cream wins. I’ve read about a green tea version and will make it my mission to find one during our next trip.

Tastier ice cream sandwiches…another reason Japan Does It Better!

For more JDIB posts, go here.

Tagged adventures, food, I *heart* Japan, Japan