Lactarius laeticolorus

Now it's official, mushroom season has started in Fukuoka. I just went home from shopping and spotted one Akamomitake (lactarius laeticolorus) in Odo koen. ^_^

So I'm sure, there are plenty of them now in the forest. Those are very crispy mushrooms, which come out after heavy rain. They have orange milk if you cut them. They taste wonderful with Chahan (fried rice) but also in clear Japanese soup.

Can't wait for our mushroom hunt this weekend. I also hope to spot some Tamagotake now. 

more Koi...

Just finished another Koi pic... done with acrylics, watercolor and airbrush on paper.

Size is B4, Original available.

Rainseason, food and art

We had a lot of rain and it's hot and humid out there, but the beautiful side of this season are the gorgeous flowers everywhere...

Those just blossom near our appartement and I took a lot of photos as references for upcoming paintings.

Because of the rain, we could not do much, but we discovered a Izakaya, called "Shinchan" yesterday, where we had some great Sashimi and Carpaccio.

Today, the weather was a little bit better. We drove to the airport and submitted my painting to Makurazaki for the contest there. Due to the contest rules, I can not post the painting here yet, but I will tell you all about the upcoming show in the "Nanmeikan Museum" soon. I also was able to gather a lot of information about galleries and events here and I will check them out in the next months. I'm already excited !!!

My trip to Kobe

From Sunday to Monday I went to Kobe to meet my friend Erika. Erika is a great artist from Germany and exhibits every year in the "Galerie le port" in Kobe.

We haven't seen each other for 8 years and it was wonderful to meet her and her husband Udo again.

I also met some wonderful new friends and everybody was so nice and kind to me !!! Thank you all so much !!!

Erika's exhibition was wonderful! I love the vibrancy of colors in her art and I hope I can go to her next exhibition in Kobe as well.  

It was my first trip alone with the Shinkansen and it felt like a great adventure.

Before I took the train back home I took some fotos of Sannomiya. It has a very nice atmosphere and I can't wait to see more of it.

 

Here is the street in which the galerie is located.

Thank you so much, everybody !!! Have a great time in Hakodate... *sigh* I would love to come with you and visit there, too...

Ajisai

 

Here you see hortensia, Ajisai in Japanese. It's now the season of this beautiful flower and you can enjoy it in all kinds of different colors.

Broetchen

Actually, I was always scared of baking... don't know really why. I always loved to cook, but baking was something I never tried until we bought this cute oven some weeks ago.

There is one thing I never thought I can do. German "Broetchen" (rolls). I thought making them is an impossible task, especially for a baking noob like me.

But I was curious and found an easy-looking recipe:

http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/145141062849806/Broetchen.html

Here you see the still unbaked rolls.

Here they are baked and smelled like the real rolls, I love so much.

and yes, they really tasted like Broetchen !!! *yummy*

Now I finally get more confident with baking ^_^

Hiking at Aburayama

 

This weekend we went for Aburayama, a mountian-hiking-resort with a lot of trails and picknick-areas at the foot of the mountain.

But if you climb upwards, there are only a few people and you can see many exotic flowers, plants and butterflies.

 

After one hour we reached the top. The hiking was quite exhausting, especially because it's already hot Summer here.

 

We took another route down and on this pic you probably get an idea how steep it is.

On our way down we arrived at another park, where we had some great milk-icecream

and could relax a little...

Yuki and Yumi still had a lot energy left and played on the huge playground there.

In the evening, I was so tired, so I just prepared some Tortillias for everybody...

Oh, and one more thing,

do you know a fruit called "Biwa"?

It's very popular in Japan and it's just ripe now... near our appartement you can pick them fresh from the tree and it tastes really wonderful.

More Magnolias

Finished this today... done with acrylics, watercolor, color-pen and airbrush on paper.

In a private collection in the USA.