몬트리올에 간다. 다시 한번...

이번엔 몬트리올에 가게되는 이유는 좋은일 때문이 아니다.

내 잴 지난 친구의 아버지가 돌아가셨기 때문이다.

그래서 오늘은 가만 구두를 샀다... 이분을 마지막으로 보게될 날을 위해.

올핸 돌아가신 사람이 너무 많아.

내년은 그리 않았음 좋겠다...

Traditional Korean/Japanese Hair Accessories

I've always like asian hair accessories. In western style hairdos, the result mostly depends on the handcraft of the hairdresser in regards to the hair itself, as in the multiple variety of braids and knots that can be done with different lenght of hair. Accessories often end-up being put on top of those to add up to the hairdo, like tying a ribbon, adding a headband or a crown-like ornement why not...

Meanwhile, in Asia, they put a lot of effort in handcrafting the hair accessories themselves, and the hairdo actually seems to be meant to complete the look of the accessories, as a sort of display of various jewels. I must admit I am pretty much ignorant of chinese style hairdos. However, I know a little of japanese and korean ones, japanese; through history books, and movies, korean; mostly because of dramas.

Culture Blend

Just as I like fusion cuisine - modern cuisine inspired by old traditional european recipes - I like 'fusion' traditional hairdos. I mean, let's face it. Most of what we see, believing that it is a display of actual traditional accessories, is in fact just a modernization of what used to be the trend, making it more modern so to please the eyes of unknowing people. Take General Tao Chicken for example, if you like my food comparison: that is absolutely not Chinese. 

So my point is, I like to mix up things from different cultures. When I mix up pieces of clothing, the result is often pretty messed up, and ends up making me look like a total retard: now, me asks friends around me to approve before I do this and go out... 

For hair accessories, I basically just don't care. People with no notion of where I get my stuff from might think it looks weird, but hair, I just do whatever. Especially since I am in a super small town where anything different from douchebag polos and caps or skanky clothing looks out of place. 

So here are a couple of findings I have to show, that I got from different places.

Japanese Hairpin

I got this hairpin in a store selling traditional japanese prom accessories and dresses (seijin-shiki kimonos and hakatas for example). I forgot the name of the material it's made in, shame on me. I know it's not simple plastic, although the simple light look makes it seem so. I chose one of the most traditional looking in a pile of super extravagant accessories they had, because it was one of the first thing I bought in my last trip to Japan: you always feel awkward on the first bit of money spent, as though it really matters...when you know you'll end up stopping to count after a day or two. Whatever, I always do that: old habits die hard. I still regretted not buying another more, since I did not go back to that sort of store in the trip.

Fusion Japanese Pin: Kyoto

Try to open a store of traditional accessories in Kyoto. There are so many of those, and people in Japan often already own their own traditional jewelry, and pass it down to their kids. Thus, appart from already well settled traditional stores with good reputations, opening a new store selling the same thing is bound to be a harsh job, even for hard-working japanese. I found a store on a very touristic place in Gion, Kyoto, where they opened an accessory shop of 'fusion' hair accessories and jewels. While the look of all their stuff has a japanese feel to it, the purpose of their items is to accomodate traditional style to modern life: traditional accessories require more time to settle in the hair, and are harder to match up with modern clothings. That's the challenge the people in the store took: modernize japanese style accessories, add new to the old.

I had a lot of trouble finding THE one to buy (they were not cheap, so I did not want to regret buying it) but settled for one with a strawberry-looking red heart pin, that can actually be worn over 30 different ways (they gave a DVD teaching how to use them) of which I can take the dangling thingy off if I wish. The pin is not that big actually so I don't really take it off.

I bough this hair clip in a random accessory store in Fukuoka and fell in love with it. I remember I always loved those clips when they started being popular in the 90s, but always wondered if they always hat do be this ugly. I really dislike the uneven shape and the whole thingy in the middle, where you see your hair showing. There were attempt at making them look a bit classier (less cheap looking) by putting accessories like pearls and stuff on the big side, but I was never impressed by the look. Well here is the solution. You use those pins to hold on another completely different hair accessory! Yay!

Actually, the reason I bought this one is because It reminded me of one of the traditional Korean hair jewel they put on the top of the head of royalty. While the actual jewel is a bit too big to look nice when wearing anything else than a hanbok, this one seemed it could give a feel of it and I wanted to try.

Trying it on...

I already posted about those before going to Japan. I ordered those Korean hairitems online to use on my hair and really liked what I received but I am not sure I ever posted pictures of what I did with them... This was taken some time in March.

It sucks that I never manages to take a picture that both showed the top of the head and the side braids I made on that hairdo but here is the result of what I did with the clip I bought in Japan - can you see in on top of my head? - with the sidebraids to go with the style. Traditionally they obviously did not have bangs... but I don't like having none so adaptation here... for a weird result that I actually liked TBH.

Since I never found a site I can buy those jade pins used in trad Korean hairdos I used the japanese pin I bought in Kyoto and I really liked the result. Oh I am a sucker for shiny things, wherever they are from. Must have been some weird animal attracted to shiny stuff in another life I am telling you...

Rambling

Ever felt like nothing is working out for you, whatever you do and however hard you try to make it a nice day? I'm feeling like this right now and can't say I enjoy very much. Actually, since it's past midnight, technically yesterday is over. But then, isn't it worse, since my shitty day just spread its disease to the next day?

You know, those selfish days, where everything nice that is happening to others, you just feel like eh, they not happenin' to meh... yah those days.

Like seeing people enjoying the day while you work,

Like people making more money than you do when you still work your ass off,

Like seeing a person you care a lot about being happy with a new girlfriend/boyfriend,

Like friends having partys all over the globe while you feel like stagnating in one spot,

You know, those stupid PMS-like days, when you are not even close to your period.

awww.... I suppose a lot of rambling was needed, I ramble on past happy stuff too much lately and fail to realize nothing is really going on right now in my life. I need to find something interesting to occupy my mind with... any ideas?

Good night guys.

End of rambling.

Japan - Cup Obsession

Since I went to Japan for the first time, I turned into a crazy tea drinker, both associating green and red tea to sweet memories of the places I visited and the people I met. Everytime I drink Sencha, I mean fresh, good sencha, that actually has a crazy bright green color, I am reminded of my host mother, in Tamana, who actually had the best green tea I ever drank. Fresh sencha is quite bitter and one usually needs to get used to it before liking it - I suppose we can compare that to people getting used to coffee, since green tea has about as much different kind and tastes, and origins as coffee does, on top of the fact that both of them are quite bitter, and help stay awake. My brother for one, never really liked the green tea I brought back from Japan. However, being there, most people you get to know will have tea with you to start a conversation, so the drinking of tea is quite mandatory, whatever one thinks of its taste. Thus, I think my brother has had his quota of green tea drinking for all his life in those three weeks we spent travelling. I love how he valued japanese people and did not want to offend them by refusing tea being poured over and over in his cup. 

On our first day in Tamana, my host city, I think we had tea five times with different people in 2 hours, including the refilling of both our cups....

With my love for tea, also appeared my love for teawares and the delicate feeling fine china gave me. Thus, I always admire greatly shops that actually took the care of having special tea wares for their customers. I usually take pictures of those in stores I particularily like... and in Japan that was almost everywhere. That's why I decided to blog on that, Japanese tea wares, with the tea they served and the impression I got of the place...

Kumamoto Castle

I had tried to get my brother to drink Matcha at home, with the low quality one I bought from the times I went to Japan before, but the taste was never quite what I remembered. One of the reasons is that it is difficult to evaluate the temperature of the water precisely, and Matcha requires a specific temperature so that one can enjoy the taste. If I remember correctly, green tea needs to be at 80 degrees celsius and Matcha between 50 and 60, depending on the amount of matcha powder put in the bowl. Anyways, my brother never liked those I made for him. 

I made him try one on our very first day in Japan, at a little stand in Kumamoto Castle, where a beautiful old lady was making them for tourists. He actually did not dislike it, which surprised me, but still did not get any more cravings for drinking it later on the trip. At least I got him drinking one, once. 

Most matcha ware have their own history, and people well versed in the field know of the famous makers by watching the bowls and the signatures at the bottom. I am no expert, so I simply admire the work...

Hirayama Onsenn - Yu no Kura

There is a place, in the first Ryokan we went at, where we can actually make japanese style pottery and paint on it, and they use their own wares in the traditional restaurant where food is served for customers - both people renting rooms and people coming for the baths. Japanese style ware for japanese green tea, like I took, and japanese-modernized style ones for people who take coffee, like my brother (this was our first breakfast in Japan and my brother had no reason to get green tea, as there was only the two of us at the breakfast table... so here started the endless Japanese assumption that my brother and I were a couple travelling together).

Neighbour of Oomuta

On the second day of our arrival, Miyako took my brother and I to a place to make Ramen with her daughter which was a little ill and had taken off school especially for this. Since Japanese schools are quite strict with school, even though she was ill for real, if people from her school saw her going around town with her mother and guests, they would look down on Miyako for being a bad mother, so we ended up going to a nice little tea shop to have a break in the afternoon. The shop was some half an hour away from Oomuta, Miyako's city, and we went there so that people would not recognize us. Really, japanese and losing faces....

Anyways, I really looooooved the place. They had amazing sweets. I can never get enough of Japanese sweets. I do not remember the name of either the town, the coffee shop of the dish I took however, stupid me. Just note that the dish on the right was not ice cream. It was a sandy sweet dry dish I fell in love with... shame I have bad memory for names...

Note here the tea cup that is a nice mixture of modern West fine china with Japanese traditional designs.

My brother took coffee again at this place :P I like the fact that while he took coffee, which is absolutely not japanese, his cup actually was made in a more traditional material than mine teh he

Oomuta - Miyako's place

Isn't this cup beautiful? this one was a cup Miyako had at her place, with cute strawberry and flower patterns. I had a single portion of instant coffee in there. Funny how while I love actual good quality coffee, I got so used to drinking asian instant coffee that either of them taste really good to me. Sometimes I actually crave for their cheap coffee while at home while drinking our strong Ethiopian coffee beans.

Kyoto Station - First meal

It was a long train ride before we reached Kyoto station from Fukuoka and we did not get a proper meal on the train so we were famished when we got there. After getting our luggage cared for until we could check-in at our Kyoto downtown house, we went down a mall to get lunch. I don't remember the name of the place -surprise surprise - but it is not that bad, because the meal was not that good. It looked cute, sure enough, but the curry rice omelet's chicken was full of weirdly crunchy fat which I disliked very much. However, as you can see, the cup I had my red tea in compensated for the poor quality meal. Who would be upset when looking a this cup?

Kyoto

A Rabbit CUP!!!! <3 This one was from the Shirotama-Dango house we went to on our first days in Kyoto, and got the dango set with drawings made in komugiko.

Red tea in a store we went to grab a snack before going to our appointment to make japanese style pottery. We ate weird looking but tasty pastas, and I got a simple white teacup, that made a nice pictures only because of the japanese style sweet I had bought earlier in the day. Really, Japanese sweets are awesome with tea, be it green or red.

Kobe

You saw this picture before. Here again, this one is not for the cup itself, but for the content. I wish I was able to make such nice things out of coffee....

Fukuoka - Tenjin Core

Ok, trying to remember where this one is from......Oh! So this one is mixed up, but I am too lazy to change the order of the picture. It was at the beginning of our trip, in Fukuoka, at a nice Americanized place with a nice Whisky selection we went to for my brother's cigarette-alcohol break. Loving the details.

Tokyo

On our last day in Tokyo I went to a sweet shop with Mamiko, to meet up with François that had gone to have a drink on his own while we went window shopping. I really liked the cup of this one, even if the quality of the porcelain was not the best I had during the trip. The cup was a bit heavy and thick. Still, there was a cute milk container, so whatever, it passed the test.

Frankfurt

The last cup I had - appart from the ugly airplane cups - on our trip was at Frankfurt airport, where we had breakfast. I found it a bit childish for the style of the restaurant we were at, but I personally totally buy that style.

Homemade Japan

 This is the final result of the cup I made in Kyoto - the one on the left is my brother's - that got sent to us a bit after we came back from our trip. We made the shape and chose the colors, but since they needed to be cooked twice, we did not personally apply the paint. I am still super pleased with the result and the cup looks awesome with japanese tea in it.

Tokyo

The reason I chose to start from Kyushu and end the trip in Tokyo was clear: We would get used to jet lag in a calm environment and get my brother to get used to Japan little by little, with non-demanding plans everyday, and chilling in the country side, then gradually, while visiting touristic places, get to busier cities and party a bit. I am quite happy with how things ended up in the end, because everything went according to plans. 

When we arrived in Tokyo, we had seem plenty of nice temples and traditional places, so we could enjoy some busy city time with people I had planned on meeting. Ine of those person was Tomoko, the niece of my former japanese teacher, and a great friend whom I hadn't seen in a while. She got married and had a baby girl between the last time I had seen her and now, so we obviously would not get to party with her, and they were quite busy with other stuff at the time, but I got to visit her new place a bit <3.

Then I went to meet Yutaka, my best friend's good friend that had lived in Montreal a while, and moved back to Japan just before I got to university. I got to realize how much good time I had missed, had I been in Montreal before. I got, however, new good friends in Japan, that will only make my next trips to Japan more enjoyable.

We mostly ate good food, went drinking and Karaoke, and it was a short notice, but I really enjoyed that and wish I had had more time to see all of them. Sadly, Yutaka will move out of Japan with his wife (newly wed from a week before we got to Japan <3 ) so I might not get to see them much if at all T.T

In Tokyo I brought my brother to Akihabara - I mean, obviously we needed to go there :) - and we got to a Maid Cafe called @homecafe and had a nice meal there and took pictures with our maid waitress (I will try to scan them, they were instant photo). Unfortunately, we cannot, for obvious reasons, take pictures inside the place, so I could not even take a picture of my meal, which made me quite sad. Next time I go, I'll ask if I can get my picture with the maid taken with my food (they make us pay to take pictures with them, so maybe the only way I can get my food in picture is to have them include it in the picture)... anyways. That was quite intense... given the fact that the day we went was exactly one year after the huge earthquake, and we had a complete minute of silence in a maid coffee... what a place to think about sad things.... XD

Since I could not take pictures of my food in the Maid Coffee Shop, I took a picture of the display of another one. The food is so cute >.< 

Second dinner with Yutaka and friends after the Akihabara afternoon with my brother, ate awesome food, that we'd order from a computer beside us. Makes the bill separation complicated, but the service is very quick.

Newly Wed <3

I remember my brother got quite drunk that evening, with too much scotch and beer, and he was all happy and high on the way back, when we went to catch the last metro. We walked by a bakery wearing his name and made his pose in from of it. While he was happy we took interest in drunk-him long enough to take pictures, he never actually realized why we made him stand there... awww

Atsushi and my brother trying to own it...

My stay in Tokyo was awesome, and most of it got possible thanks to Miyako's long-time friend Mamiko who lent us a room to stay at near Ju-jou station, near downtown Tokyo, so we did not have to worry about paying hotel fees. She got a day off - students in her class were almost all absent from school because of influenza so she got off - and stayed with us on our last day and we went girl shopping (my brother went to have a quiet drink somewhere in Shinjuku after getting a haircut meanwhile).

Kyoto - 豆水楼

If there is one thing I learned from my goings to Japan, it is the care for little details, that in the end, makes all the difference between something that looks awesome and something that looks cheap. Some people believe that food, for example, needs to be so tasty that the shape, size and way of presenting it should not matter. I beg to differ. I think the more effort put in little details, especially in details that can be viewed as superfluous and a waste of effort, the more merit the person has, the more earnest the person seems to be about what he is doing. Things like, why do my bed in the morning if I am going to undo it in the afternoon... well it does make a room look nicer - note here that at this very moment my room is pretty messy... Everything in the small detail. A guy told me once, "I think girls who take care of their feet well are amazing: if they care up to the feet, then imagine what time they spend on the rest!" ... lol, so many aspect of life we never thought about... ha ha

Anyways, in Japan, traditional food is always prepared in small quantities, brought up set by set - from 1 to 3 small dish at a time usually - and prepared with a lot of care. I realized  in Japan the having something the tasted awesome, but that was also awesome-looking had quite a charm. It is rare, in fact, that I had weird tasting stuff in the food that was presented to me in Japan. 

Tousuirou

When we got to Montreal to take our first plane, my brother and I bought a lonely planet of Japan, as well as the Lonely planet app for Kyoto and Tokyo. I highly recommend both because they are really well made and unlike the Guide Michelin that assumes you have a car, Lonely Planet has many different kind of suggestions, from backpacking ideas to let's-travel-like-a-big-shot ones. Also, for the iPhone app of lonely planet, it is great as it has a up-to-date GPS integrated that does not take up Internet plan: it situates you through space satelites. How cool is that. So travelling in bicycle in Kyoto without getting lost is actually possible, even without paying loads of money. In the map they also situated the places that they believe are worth visiting - of all the place we tried in the book, all of them were worth it so why not give it a try. 

So we got to Tousuirou through the recommendation of Lonely Planet - Kyoto, and were quite happy with what we got.

People were nice, wearing traditional outfits - must be uncomfortable for long working hours IMO, but very pretty. We sat along the counter - people should always sit at counters when traveling. I see no point in getting your own little spot in a restaurant unless you are very tired and want to relax, and the place you choose to sit at is beside a nice waterfall or something. I mean, how can you know what is worth it if you don't interract with the people who actually live where you are at. They should know their shit. 

Neither my brother nor I have a big appetite, so we usually just eat a lot of time during the day, small quantities. I think that was ever our biggest problem in Japan. Japanese people eat really a lot during meals and as you order a set in restaurant, the parts usually come one by one, so that you don't know when it actually finishes, so you don't know what to do when it comes to "eat a bit less to keep place for the next ones... I mean, how many next ones?". For instance, while we had tons of small plates coming through, there was this big pot with tofu in it, that we should technically have all eaten, and gotten two refill of... needless to say we did not finish the first one.

The only way to know when the meal is about to be over, really, is when the rice comes. There is ALWAYS rice in Japanese traditional food, and it always comes last, as if everything else was to adornate the rice, that is actually the proper meal. In this case we actually had soy milk ice cream coming after, but yah, that was still the end of the meal. See how there is almost no rice? I asked them to give us only a little as we were insanely full, and it is quite impolite to leave food in the plate. We gained weight in Japan, eating so much afraid to be impolite.