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.

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.