Since I did not have this blog last year (or the years before, I will re-post some photos and other things from earlier years every now and then.) In August I went to Niagara Falls for the first time in my life, and it was absolutely wonderful.

The Canadian falls.

The American falls. It was strange to look over the river and realize that it was the US on the other side, I am always very curious about country borders, because often, I see no sign of this so called border in real life. All I see are trees and water and air, and it seems so much more unclear in real life than it does on a map with clear lines.

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

When my mom and me went to Harajuku the other day, we took some Purikura, just for fun, it is a cute little memory to keep in your wallet.

If you don’t feel like you are looking particularly good on any given day, take some Purikura! It is a photo booth that will automagically make your skin perfect, automatically apply makeup, it will make your eyes larger, the colors in your eyes clearer and your lashes longer. Inside the booth, it is shown on a screen how to pose for the different shots you have selected. Once the shots are done (this goes super-fast), you can doodle on them on a screen at the back of the photo booth, apply text and pictures and whatever you like, before the machine prints out your pictures, pretty much like a regular photo booth. Purikura actually comes from the word Purinto Kurabu (プリント倶楽部), which comes from the English words Print Club. (It seems like people have started to make web pages to do this online, after a quick Google search I found this and this, so now you can try it at home as well. Ha.) /end infomercial.

(Made for illustrationfriday.com – “resolutions”)

I don’treally believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I think it is a good time of year to think of what you want to get better at the next year. Below – my list over things I would like to improve in 2011.

1. Talk less, listen more.
2. Smile more.
3. Surprise people randomly.
4. Make something beautiful every day.
5. Tell people I love them.
6. Stay in the moment.
7. Stop feeling so god damn hazukashii.

What’s yours?

Yesterday was a quiet day once I got back from the airport. I took pictures of my feet while I was waiting at the train station in the evening.

In the morning, I shared a breakfast with my mom before she jumped on the plane. By now she is hopefully back home, half-way around the planet.

Walking to the station, looking at my neighborhood. I have never been to either the Chinese place or Sudo, but I have actually been to the izakaya way in the background there.

Waiting at the trainstation some more. I snapped a picture of the metro map. It is actually really easy to find your way around. This is just the map for the metro, and not all the train lines. I think they have done a great job with color-coding and the way they present the information, I guess my inner nerd popped out for a second there.

Waiting more, looking at the ticket gates, snapping pictures of the ticket gates for no apparent reason.

And then! Dinner! There is a cute standing wine bar in our neighborhood. The food and drinks are really nice standard, but there are no chairs, and everyone is just standing through their entire meals. We had sparkling wine from the Loire Valley (yes, in Pol Roger glasses, ha), and…

…Iberia ham, and…

…a cheese plate, and…

…some really nice spaghetti with a kind of roe on it, but I can not remember the name. We finished up the food and the bottle, and went home and had a bottle more before bed. A nice ending to a gloomy day saying goodbye to my mom. ♥

A couple of days before New Year’s Eve, we went to Asakusa.

I know there is always lots of people there, but this time of year it was just insane. All the shops around here sells lots of souvenirs to the tourists, and it is really a mishmash of nice things and things with the stamp “made in China” all over them. I wish I could take pictures of the actual stalls, but taking pictures of stalls and shops in Japan is generally not allowed.

This year it is Usagi year! (Year of the rabbit!)

The entrence to Sensō-ji, the temple.

Big pagoda! Big lantern!

I wish it would show in the image just how incredibly large this was.

I love all the small pink and white balls that were hanging everywhere in front of the shops and in the streets.

Afterward, we went to eat, and I had some delicious Thai noodles. The noodles on top were fried, and there were regular noodles underneath in a soup that reminded me of Tom kha gai soup.

“Alexander Arguelles presents a series of videos to provide introductory overviews of the languages of the world. Working diachronically through various language families in turn, he demonstrates how to identify each language, translates a text sample to show how it works, and discusses its genetic affiliation and cultural context. For further information about the series, please refer to http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/“

I came across this video by Alexander Arguelles, explaining Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk – the two written languages in Norway. Whenever I try to explain to non-Scandinavian people who Norway have two written languages (“Why don’t you just decide on one?”), and how Scandinavian people understand each other (“So are the differences about as big as German and French?”) – I am not sure just how to explain it – so from now on I think I will refer them to this video.

I keep on being fascinated by polyglots. I wish I knew more languages, but I am not the fastest language learner. I do hope I can continue learning languages as a hobby throughout my life. If I could have one language “for free” – a language I just knew without having to work for it, I would choose French. I probably should choose a language from a completely different language group, like Chinese, Finnish or Arabic, but I have this secret love for French, even though I do not speak a single word of it yet.

If you could have one language “for free” – which one would you choose?

There is a strange emptiness right after you have seen someone of to the airport. I came home, and the streets and the rooms were just so quiet. It is a curious thing, to have all the people you love scattered all over the planet. When they leave, or I leave, there is always this silence for a while afterward. I felt overwhelmed for a second, but then I thought about The Pale Blue dot – our little earth, I watched the video with the commentary by Carl Sagan, and I felt safe, and I felt that everyone I love, they really are not that far away after all. ♥

I haven’t got much blogging done today – I am following my mom to Narita, staying in a hotel overnight, and following her to the airport in the morning. I have never been to Narita city before – it is a small and quiet place it seems, but we still found a decent restaurant.

Sparkle at the train station.

Sparkle outside the restaurant.

I have no idea how to operate this alarm/light-switch/radio/air-conditioner between our beds. It looks like it has been teleported here from a 1950’s movie.

Salad and noodles with cod-roe.

Chocolate parfait!

Doodling with my new Christmas gift. One of my favorite toys as a kid was the Spirograph. What was yours?