O-Bento

Today, Yumi has an excursion with her class and so I had to make "Bento" (japanese Lunchbox) for her. I really enjoy making Bento and back in Kindergarten, I used to make it everyday for the kids.

Now in school they have lunch and I can not do it anymore, only when they have excursion or a school-picknick... I really miss it.

Normally I make Onigiri, but today Yumi wanted to have noodle-salat and saussages.

Oh, and yesterday our new oven arrived!!! YAY !!!

It's a speacial one, which heats up til 350C, so we can make "real" Italian Stoneoven Pizza... can't wait to try it out...

...and my wonderful friends from "Timely Tales" put my painting on their website.

You can see it here:

http://timelytales.webs.com/musicalslyricsplots.htm

Now I must go back at my canvas... the idea I had some days ago did not work so well on a big format, so I have to try something different.

Rain and fun...

Now rainseason is slowly starting over here, and the whole weekend was rain, rain, rain and dark. But I must admit it is not as worse as I imagined. The weather is warm and the air is very clean. Back in Germany, rainy weather means cold and catching flu and snuggling up in some blankets... *brr*

I really enjoy the smell of the air here, while it rains... very soft, very pleasant...

Well, and since we could not hike or go fishing, we decided to go to some Izakaya and have fun.

Here you see Squid-sashimi... I LOVED Squid-sashimi back in Hakodate and here it tastes as delicious !!! What a nice surprise.

And I can also recommend the Aji-sashimi here in Fukuoka... so tasty and fresh...

On Sunday, we got a "special delivery". My husband was in Hakodate last week and fortunatelly, he had some time left, to "visit" our old morel-hunting-grounds. Just in time to pick at least 70 of them together with some fresh-grown woodruff.

So I decided to cook "morille a la creme" with pasta. The recipe is very simple. You need some morels, smoked ham, sour-cream, cream and consome.

Fry the ham in some oil, add the morels, then the cream and consome and the sauce is ready.

YUMMY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Magnolia...

Just finished this yesterday and it was great fun to play again with watercolors adding a layer of acrylics and airbrush over them. I will probably "play" with this technique a little more and also using it for the painting I will submit to Kagoshima.

Size is B4, Original available...

my "Rose" goes music

Remember the Rose I posted a few days ago?

http://yuriatakagi.blogspot.com/2010/05/rose-or.html

To my surprise I was asked by "Timely Tales", if they could use my art for one of their songs... I instantly agreed, because I love their music and I'm a fan of "Timely Tales" since I heared the beautiful songs.

Now, who are "Timely Tales"?

Lyra and Timothy, the members of "Timely Tales" are two composers and playwrights who met back in the 90's and formed an unbreakable bond ever since. They recently finished their dramatic play entitled "Librettos" and are close to finishing their first original musical "Chat." But there are even more musicals and plays on the horizon, so watch out world!

For more Info, please check out their homepage:

http://www.timelytales.webs.com/

I'm totally thrilled that they asked me to use my art for a song called "The kiss that lingers"

You can see my image at their myspace site if you click on the song:

 http://www.myspace.com/timelytales

Please check out their other stuff as well... I especially love "ASL" from the musical "chat" and I'm also looking forward to their new songs.

our weekend

On Saturday, we tried our luck with fishing for the first time at the beach near our house. There is a part with sand and a part with cliffs... we went for the cliffs, brought beer, jamon and our fishing-rods. The atmosphere was wonderful. We did not catch anything, because the tide was low, but we had great fun picknicking on the cliffs...

...and were rewarded with a beautiful sunset.

On Sunday after sleeping very long, we went up to Iwara-yama again. This time we took another route, which was less long and after an hour of climbing and hiking, we reached the top again.

This time the Rhododendron was at full bloom, but unfortunatelly the camera never gets the beautiful panorama, you have here.

But at least I could take some close-up shots of the Rhododendron.

In the evening I prepared a thai-soup. After the hike and the hot weather, we wanted to eat spicy-stuff.

...and coincidentally we saw a rare astronomic event that night: Venus and Moon so close together...

A Rose or...

...one of my rather desperate "attempts" to paint with 100% watercolor again...

Sometimes it comes over me and I want to desperately paint with watercolor only, but it always turnes out like a mess, like this time...

So after a big frustration I thought, I can still save this painting and went over it with my usual technique, using acrylics and airbrushs as well... and hey, it turned out quite nice, I think...

Original available, size is B4...

Mother's day weekend

On Saturday we went to Imori-yama close to our appartement. There are some very ancient shrines there and someday I want to see a festival there. 

 

The climb up was harder than we expected, but we made it.

Again, we had a beautiful view... and coincidentally, we met some people, we already met on another climb and had a lovely chat with them.

They gave us a guide-tour to some other great spots there. I know, I repeat myself on and on, but people are so nice and lovely here !!!

And... on Mother's day, we decided it would be the perfect day to cut our Jamon :))))))

 

Just as I'm typing this, we are having another portion with a glass of sparkling-wine, enjoying the evening over here :)

Cherry blossom 11

This week I had some time to paint again and I wanted to do another cherry blossom pic...

Done with acrylics, watercolor, pens and airbrush on paper... size is B4, original available. 

Goldenweek-part 5

 

Yesterday, we went to the mountains for more bamboosprout, Udo and Zenmai picking. Yumi found a spot with Sasanoko-sprouts (a small bamboo-type).

On our way back I could not resist, taking a photo of this beautiful water-mill...

 

Today we slept very long, relaxed a little and then went to the beach at Momochi-koen. This is just 3km away from our appartement, but looks like we are on vacation somewhere...

...the atmosphere there was very mediteranian and I want to go there again in the Summer evenings having a glass of wine and some Pizza...

The kids enjoyed to play at the beach there and then we went home. Now Golden week is over and tomorrow it will rain, so I will do some cleaning, ironing, painting and writing letters... :)

Goldenweek part 4 Dontaku-matsuri

Yesterday we went to Dontaku-matsuri, one of the popular festivals here in Fukuoka.

We arrived just in time to see the parade...

and had great fun.

The weather was so mild and summerly... musicians and actors performed everywhere on the streets and the atmosphere was lovely.

After enjoying the fest, we went to some great Izakaya before heading home.

I love Japanese Matsuri... maybe we will go again today, but first we want to go to the mountains again and pick some Udo.

Golden week part-3 or never believe in the books

 

Today, we went hiking at Iwara-yama. The weather was perfect and we were curious, if we could reach the top.

The nature is as wild and beautiful as in Hokkaido and we instantly felt like back in Hakodate.

On our way up, we found a lot of plants, flowers and herbs, we also found in Hokkaido.

Here you see a poisenous flower/plant, called mamushisou (the latin name is Arisaema). It causes skinirritations, if you touch it. It grows EVERYWHERE there and I like the exotic look of it.

  

Here you see a "carpet" of Nirinsou (Anemone flaccida)...

...some Wasabi...

and climbing further, about 300m up, we suddenly found Gentian (gentiana Japonica) !!!

This was already a big surprise, but...

...the biggest one was THIS !!! Kurumabassou !!!! Woodruff !!!! Waldmeister !!!! YATTA !!!!

In the books they wrote over and over, there is NO woodruff in Kyushu, it stops growing after south of Gunma or something, so I was very sad, but also stubborn, I could not believe that there are so many plants in Kyushu, which also grow in Hokkaido, but no woodruff.

I carefully took some in my hands and let it wilt a little... and yes, suddenly it smelled like typical woodruff-aroma !!!

I was so happy, because now I can prepare woodruff icecream and Waldmeisterbowle for us !!!! So never believe the books, always see for yourself ^_^

 

Here, after 2 hours hiking and climbing we reached the top and had a great view over Itoshima.

and on our way back, we had the next surprise. We drove back and stopped a little to look for morels and suddenly we found Udo (aralia cordata). It tastes like between artichoque and asparagus.

 

so we picked some and drove home... will prepare some tonight, maybe with a good Waldmeisterbowle to celebrate this day !!!

Golden week part 2

Today we went to Canal-city, which is a HUUUGE shopping place in Fukuoka.
The kids did well in school and we promised them to go to Pokemon-center there.
We really enjoyed the atmosphere there... I'm not so much a fan of shopping-malls, but Canal-city is a great place, especially for good food and having fun.

 

Later, we went to Kushida-shrine... one of the most important ones in Hakata. I want to see a festival there once.

Here you see the shrines, they used to carry arround during Yamakassa Matsuri... I think it's very dangerous if one of those falls into the crowd. So now they use little ones.

 

I love shrines...

and I love the Koi there... makes me want to paint another koi-pic.

Afterwards, my husband was sooooo sweet and took me to an art-supply store.

I bought a board there for the contest in Makurazaki. I have a good idea and I want to paint it down in the next weeks.

Here is a little "warm up"... yesterday the kids were in school and I FINALLY had some time to paint.
I simply enjoyed playing with the colors and depth here.
Done with acrylics, watercolor, airbrush and pens on paper (size is B4), original available.