T Stand for Comfort Food

Happy T Day everyone. It is Tuesday and time to share our drink related posts over at  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. We'd love to have you join us if you haven't been by.  All you need to do is share something drink related.

Are you sick of me showing you Japanese food yet?

How about plastic food?

Many restaurants in Japan fill their front windows with displays of their food so you will know exactly what they serve.

This dish in the center above is Japanese comfort food. It is a plain egg omelet that is filled and rolled over some rice, and then served with either a barbecue like sauce or ketchup.

I had one with the barbecue like sauce. It's not my first idea of comfort food on a rainy day, but it was good and I certainly enjoyed it.

And as big as it looks, I ate the whole thing. :)

I don't actually know what it is called either. It is dinner food however, not breakfast food. To me it is more breakfast food and alot of  Japanese breakfast food is more like dinner food. But when in Japan, go with the Japanese way and enjoy it.

And one drink you might have with this  comfort food (other than water) is this watermelon smoothie.

And if you like Diet Coke, as I do, you would be out of luck in Japan. You can get regular Coke and a Coke Zero like drink, but that's it.

I was missing the bubbly drink  the night before we flew home, and I broke down and bought a regular Coke from the hotel vending machine. I am not used to all that sugar. Wow. But I saved the label and made this page in my Japan travel journal. I like that all the writing on what would be the back of the label is in Japanese.

I also found these little dog stickers.  We saw several of these dogs in Japan, and they are sure cute! The breed is called the shiba inu  (inu means dog) and here's a photo I found on-line at Japan Today. 

Ha-ha-I thought this face was as cute as my stickers.

Off on a field trip today with my seniors. Hopefully I will have some photos for you. And also, one month of work left until summer break. :) 

Wishing you all a wonderful T day-either what's left to it or your whole day.

Favorite Movies-Day 1

CJ over at CJ and Ink is running a challenge. She's asking that you post your 10 most favorite films for 10 Saturdays.  OK, so I started off a day late, but wanted to play along. They can be a favorite for any reason.

 It sounds like fun. I chose this film for day 1 since this is the first film that popped in my head and is a classic that I have seen about 30 times and really enjoy. I bet once you see the poster photo a certain musical refrain might start running through your head.

I was just a freshman in high school the summer this film came out and I remember going to see it with a couple of friends and my mom. My mother has never been a big movie lady but someone had to drive us since we were only 14. 

My mom also was never really a swimmer and I don't think she actually likes water, so I guess this film didn't impact her too much. I can't say it ever deterred me too much from going in because I love the water, but being more of a freshwater swimmer I guess it doesn't matter too much. I will say that since they have started having a lot of great white sighting off of Cape Cod (which isn't all that far away), it does make me wonder what is off the coast where we like to go boating.

But it's a great classic film and such a good story, even for someone who isn't much into blood and gore movies. I'll be be back next Saturday with my next film.

And speaking of movies, last night the hubby and I went to see the latest Avengers movie. I think it was definitely a film that required having seen many of the older Marvel comic films, but since the hubby and I do that together, I have to say I really enjoyed it.
Waiting for the sun to come out later today, but it should give me some studio time this morning. :) Sunshine makes the flowers bloom, so here's another page for Moo Mania and their more flowers theme.

This page isn't one of the most complicated ones I've ever done, but I went last week with a blank page in my calendar journal and decided I needed something. So this is what I created.

And flowers definitely fit Jo's challenge of Flora and Fauna over at Art Journal Journey too!

 I definitely need more art time lately.  Augh!!!! I've had tons of appointments, plus wanting to do some gardening, and work. And I have more appointments this week plus my nephew's wedding on Saturday night that I need to travel for. Oh I need to retire. so I can have more fun time. Ha-ha.

Hope everyone's enjoying their weekend.

Monkey Island

In Nichinan, Japan, there is an island where Japanese Macaque live. In the 1950's it was discovered these monkeys wash their food before they eat it. They became very studied and Kyoto University built  research station across from the island.

We got to visit the research station and listen to a little talk by one of the biologists there. And then we got to go out onto the island with him.

We landed, climbed out of the boat and watched as about 50 monkeys came running out of the forest. They had been trained for the food obviously, but how cool for us to see them running out.

And we could walk around on the beach, with monkeys at our feet. We just couldn't touch them or look them right in the eye.

I didn't bring my camera with me here, just my phone. So this is how close I really was to the monkeys. No zoom lens for this adventure. But I didn't really need it. It was pretty amazing to me.

Here's a view of my leg and a monkey.

It was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

So in my Japan travel journal I wanted to include not only paper pieces I brought home but some art, and some sketching. So I drew a few things that remind me of this part of the trip.

My favorite sketch on this page is the monkey face I made. Now a drawing I actually like. :)

 I am linking up to Jo's flora and fauna theme at Art Journal Journey. I thik this page is just perfect for that.

So totally on a different topic, I've been watching the royal wedding this morning.  Did anyone else?

I am ready to go back out (I did walk early today) and do some gardening before it starts to rain, which they say it is going to do later today.

Happy weekend.

The Golden Pavillion

 Today I will take you to the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.  It was  gorgeous setting and the Emperor's palace was beautiful. However, all the serenity was disturbed by the HUGE crowds-I think the absolute worse of anyplace we visited. Luckily I had a zoom lense on my camera so I could get some decent photos, that and the fact that you had to keep to a path and could not go near the Pavillion.

And for something not from Japan, here's some sketches in my drawing journal which I will link up to Jo's Flora and Fauna challenge at Art Journal Journey

 One of these days I will figure out how to draw a bird that I really like. Birds are just one of those animals I can't draw quite right. :) But practice makes perfect, or so they say.

And we're still dealing with spring bugs-these tiny flies  are so bad on some days (if there's no breeze) you can't even step outside. Luckily there are only really bad for a couple of weeks and we are on the down side of them now.

Have a fantastic Friday. And thanks for visiting. 

Destination Japan

Happy Thursday everyone.

 I didn't bring any art supplies with me to Japan as I knew there wouldn't be much art time. I did bring some pens and a little notebook, but other than jotting down some observations, I never did do any doodling.

At home I keep a  daily drawing journal which is actually a calendar with full pages for each day.  Nothing got filled in while I was gone so that left a lot of blank pages when I got home.  Rather than doing a lot of drawing, I made a couple of collage pages to fill them in, as leaving blank pages just bugged me.

Try It On Tuesday has a new theme which is Destinations. Perfect for my pages!

And because I have a bunny and some flowers on these pages, I am also linking up to Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey  Her fun theme is Flora and Fauna. And finally, Moo Mania has a "new" theme which is more flowers, and both pages have flowers so they fit for that challenge too.

Hope everyone is having a great week. I will be back with more photos another day. I'm running a little late this morning now that I've gotten this far into the post. :)

Thanks for visiting.

Good Morning T Day Ladies

Hello everyone. Tuesday has arrived and so it is T Day once again. Head over to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  to join in with our drink related posts.
I am (once again) heading back to Japan and today we are having one of my Japanese breakfasts. This was morning number one in Japan, and we were up early as we started our trip with a day at our sister city high school. We were in Nichinan in Southern Japan and going to  Nichinan Gakuen, a private school in this small city.
Our hotel had a buffet breakfast with some unusual choices for us western breakfast people. I had some pineapple chunks, a glass of oj and a bowl of miso soup with tofu, as well as a salad. On my plate I had some sticky rice, some potato salad and some other type of fried potato. It seemed more like a potato pancake, but it wasn't that, nor was it just fried potato. I also a couple of little bites of salmon. Fish for breakfast doesn't bother me, but salad just didn't seem quite right, although I can't say I minded it at all.
Notice we had no silverware. I stuck to chopsticks all week, even when silverware was available. Just because we were in Japan.
The sticky rice in Japan was particularly good also.
And then we were off to school. It was Saturday, so school was only a half day long.

 Here's our teacher group at school.

 And the big welcome ceremony we attended.

 These are our school's students learning a little bit of Japanese calligraphy.

 Here's the group I taught along with another traveling teacher.

 There we are,

 The cafeteria is named Portsmouth after our school. We are naming a theater in our school Nichinan after them.

 And in the afternoon we went to visit the 2 teams that this school is highly competitive in, in fact, to attend this school for these 2 sports you must be recruited.
First of all is ping pong.

 I was surprised a lot of these players came from other places in Japan, as  well as China and Korea. They would have a long 8 hour practice on a no school day.

 And the second big sport, in fact the biggest of all, is baseball. These players (for both teams) come and live at the school and practice year round, not just seasonally like at our local high schools. The baseball players have their own campus with a dorm, cafeteria and all the practice fields.

It was  pretty impressive.
It was a fun day visiting this school and learning about the similarities and differences. Hope you enjoyed a little visit via some photos.
I hope all you ladies have a great T Day, and I appreciate you stopping by today.