You know the saying “you can’t see the forest for the trees”? I think that in Nishi-Shinjuku you can’t see the city for the skyscrapers.

I made a new comment  form! And it even works! I wrote earlier about the beautiful web forms I have seen lately, so I wanted to make my own. I still have to fix the submit-button and style it up,  but at least the plundering with the form itself is done.

A couple of goodies I have found or rediscovered on the web during the latest week:

1. This amazing kinetic sculpture of San Francisco. You _have_ to see the video. It is absolutely gorgeous and incredibly impressive!
2. Earth at night. Wow. Look at how lit up Japan is over there!
3. Go make these cute page corner bookmarks!
4. Here is a rough guide about how to order food in Japan if you do not speak any Japanese. Usually I think various guides often contains a lot of odd tips, but this one seemed pretty straight forward and down to the point.
5. Melvin the machine! If you enjoyed playing with dominos when you were a kid, you will love this.
6. Japan has glowing green mushrooms! Maybe the radioactive levels are through the roof after all 😉
7. I generally dislike theme-restaurants and cafes, they are usually more expensive and the quality of the food is often so-so, you pay for the experience, basically. Still, I saw this Alice in Wonderland restaurant, and I almost, just almost, want to go once just to see what it is like.
8. I know I  have linked her before, but whenever I feel out of inspiration, I check out her site. The one and only Linn Olofsdotter. Love. I also like the way she describes her workflow, watching movies while she works, doodle instead of sketching. Sounds like the perfect workflow to me!
9. DaisyDisk is a great utility for mac to find out what files take up most space on your hard drive. Really neat info-graphics and very useful.
10. A bit old, but an interesting 12-minute video about “Japan – the strange country”. It focuses mainly on the negative points about Japan, but it is still an interesting little tid-bit of information.

Anyone who can make Bergen look this cute deserves a cookie and a hug. It almost made me excited about going there!

… and this is what I have so far. I am just not used to drawing such big things anymore (each panel is about 50×70 cm, so the finished pictures will be about 1.5 meters long!), I haven’t made pictures this big since before I moved to Tokyo, about two years ago. It is a lot of fun, but I think I have totally underestimated the amount of time that goes into big pictures like this. It will probably take me several days to fill in all the details, I am not even done with all of the outlines yet. I always find the outlines the hardest on big pieces like this, getting the proportions right – a pain in the ass. However, it _is_ a lot of fun, and really good practice! Here is the sketch for it I have posted previously. I will change some of the background elements (too much fish, too little sea-creatures), but the main part of the picture will be the same.

I made some business cards, I think they turned out cute 🙂 Everyone here is giving out business cards left and right, so sometimes I have been in situations where I have felt a bit silly not having one. Now that’s fixed 🙂

I tried to make another pattern today, a little softer in the seams than the previous one. I think I am slowly learning how to tile them up without making it so obvious. I am wondering if it would be easier to make them by hand instead of tiling them on the computer, maybe the seams would seem more natural?

I just wanted to write down some cute quotes I like and make a daily post out of them as well.

I made another Frittata! This one had olives, tomatos, cheese, broccoli, peppers and a pesto sauce. If you are looking for the recipe I have written it down in an earlier post here.

We had a really wonderful dinner when we were in Shimoda last weekend, and here are the pictures to follow.

Beautiful starter with various little dishes, plus umeshu (plum wine) to drink as an aperitif. I actually thought that was quite interesting, because in Europe and US we usually don’t drink that much sweet drinks for aperitifs, no? I am more used to dry Champagne or a dry/bitter cocktail to make the mouth water and your stomach happy and ready for the meal. That being said, the umeshu really worked well with the various starters.

After the starters, incredibly fresh sashimi followed. The fish was almost crunchy because it was so fresh. I normally do not care for fish with silver skin (like saba), but it was just amazingly good here.

After that it was organic, local grown vegetables and dip.

There was one part of the meal that made me think and wonder a little bit. Not about the food itself, I will eat almost anything, but the fact that they put these abalone on the grill, and they were still moving. I tried to remind myself that they are not people and can not feel pain in the same way as humans, but I still have some issues seeing things being grilled/eaten alive. It is quite silly, I mean that if I am eating the food – I should also deal with and handle to see how these creatures cease to be. I think I, like most other people, prefer to not know and not think about it, and go on with my life without considering where the food came from. It was quite interesting to observe my own reaction, and to measure if maybe, just maybe I enjoyed this part of the meal less because I could see where it came from originally. The dish was good. I suspect I think I would have thought it was even better if it had come already grilled and ready on my plate. I don’t want to make this into an ethical discussion or debate, I just wanted to share my thoughts. I know quite a few people who are reading here are vegetarians or vegans (and I absolutely respect that) and have very strong feelings about what food to eat and what food not to eat. I’ve had my own fair share of experience with vegetarianism and veganism, but at this point in my life I am not vegetarian nor vegan. (That being said, I do not consume a lot of meat on a daily basis.)

And this little guy was bitter! It was quite good, but getting used to the bitterness took a bite or two.

So when the palette cleanser came along it was perfect to clear the mouth of the previous course, and get ready for… even more food(!)

We had a delicious nabe with cooked fish and vegetables.

After the fish was cooked in the nabe and served to us, rice was put into the same nabe with the broth from the fish and cooked, it made a delicious rice soup.

Finally, it was all-you-could-eat-dessert-buffet. However, I do not especially like sweet things (I gave up on eating desserts and chocolate and most sweet things two years ago), and after a couple of weeks away from that and daily coke, and no longer crave sweets and I actually do not like the taste of most cakes and candy. That being said, I picked three little dessert things, and the one with the red top was actually really nice, it was almost acidic and tasted like a fresh cheese cake. The other two were really nice as well, but to sweet for my taste. I am sure that if you are into cake and sweets you would have loved them though, wonderful nuttyness from the yellow cake and a sweet (real) strawberry taste from the pink blob in the back.