Jeff Desom D’KONSCHTKËSCHT 03/2010 from d'kk on Vimeo.

I have had an absolutely wonderful birthday this year. It was in the middle of December, but since I just started a blog now – a couple of weeks later – I thought – better late than never to post about a good thing! It was probably the best birthday I have ever had, and I celebrated for three days straight.

Someone very special threw a surprise birthday party for me with lots of good friends and lots of wine.

But my three day birthday-fest also had room for a quiet evening just the two of us. I got amazing presents (both for my birthday and Christmas), but that calls for a whole post of its own (coming right up!). And on my actual birthday – my mom came to visit in me in Japan. All the best gifts a girl could possibly ask for.

I love how prettily everything is wrapped in Japan.

Cheese! For the cheese-nerds out there: Langres, Chevre, Mimolette and Parmigiano-Reggiano. On the plate next to it there is Brie de Meaux, but I did not take a picture of that plate.

Cake (just to make sure I can not keep my current age a secret for more than two days on this blog) and champagne! This champagne is one of my absolute favorite champagnes – Louis Roederer. It is the same producer as Cristal, but with this champagne you get a lot more bang for your buck.

And then we ate lots and lots of sushi. It was the best birthday I have ever had. I want to thank everyone who made my day so wonderful ♥

Binka writes about how she is a morning person, and I say I love the night. The night is magical (and at times manic), but I am still learning to not listen too much to myself after the sun has gone down.

“Æ e redd for mørket, som en unge
Trur at alle onde ting kan skje
E det det at vi blir meire fremmed
eller blir vi meire sånn vi e”

Kari Bremnes – Ansiktet te Månen

Happy New Year! It is the 2nd of January already, I have tons of journal posts clogged up and ready to post, but for now, here are some pictures from today.

I have started to take a liking to all the jidohanbaiki around. Some of them even sell warm soup, not just cold and hot coffee and other drinks.

We went to Shinjuku today to find new glasses for my mom, and of course we found glasses to about 1/8 of the price in Norway, lenses and frame included.

Sometimes I wonder how much electricity could be saved if Tokyo turned off all of the big billboards for just one day.

If I recall correctly, I think this was the street that was filmed in the beginning of Lost in Translation, when Bill Murray sits in the taxi and sleepily gazes out at all the neon lights.

The pretty Christmas trees around Studio Alta again.

0906-1012 Hello Tokyo

0810-0906 Prgrss

0807-0810 Quest 38

0804-0807 Graphique

0708-0804 The turning point

I added my Moleskine notebooks to separate pages here on sushibird.com. If you click the images below you will be taken to each of the respective journals. There were simply too many images to add them all in blog posts, and I wanted to keep track of the journals in another way. I love the feel of the pen against the paper in these notebooks. Some of them took a couple of months to fill out, the last one took me 1.5 years, I’ve had too much to do and to little time to sit down and doodle. If anyone else is keeping paper journals or knows of any inspiring paper journals I would love to hear about them. ♥

Some days I wake up and I feel like this. Wild Strawberries has one of the most beautiful beginnings I have ever seen. It makes no sense, and perfect sense at the same time. Bergman was before his time.

December was full of events, and it should probably be split into several posts, but here is a short recap. Macaroons!

I made a Christmas calendar for the pretty one.

I finally finished my Moleskine notebook, after 1.5 years. This is the longest it has ever taken me to fill one up. Maybe one goal for 2011 is to draw more again.

Christmas and my birthday was coming up.

And I ate a lot of sushi for my birthday.

Christmas decorations in Shinjuku.

Relaxing on the bed, trying to have a couple of calm days in between parties, Japanese tests, birthday, Christmas and mom coming to Japan.

I started a new Moleskine.

I went to Asakusa with my mom, it was extremely crowded.

Christmas lights in front of Studio Alta in Shinjuku.

We went to Nekobukoro – a room in Ikebukuro – where you pay 600 yen to enter and pet cats for as long as you like.

We ate lots of good food, and got coffee with small smiling faces on the top.

And we ended up with lots of Christmas gifts around our little tree.

We watched old movies on Christmas eve, these pictures are from The Robe.

And mom and me went to Harajuku, took silly pictures in Puri-Kura machines…

…ate crepes…

And bought drinks from the jidohanbaiki close by.

The Christmas lights down Omotesando.

Sunset close to our house.

I bought cute beer as a gift for someone special for Christmas.

Mom and me went to Ueno park.

There were lots of wild cats around the park.

I still laugh at all the cute signs around the smokers’ areas.

We went to the Mori Arts Center, one of my favorite places in the world.

We ate sushi for dinner. This was the first time I had eaten American-style sushi in Tokyo, and it was a nice change to taste some of the crazy styles of rolls. There are millions of sushi restaurants in Tokyo, but most of the ones I go to serve traditional style sushi, and not the crazy rolls.

And this was my view at midnight on New Year’s Eve, spent together with good people at a good party. There are no fireworks in Tokyo for New Years Eve, but I don’t think it is needed with a view like this. All the city lights are just as gorgeous. Happy New Year everybody, may 2011 be amazing and wonderful for you.

Vad som mera än något annat försonar mig med döden är bilden av en plats: en plats där dina och mina ben ligger begravda, nedslängda, avtäckta, tilsammans. De ligger utströdda där huller om buller. Ett av dina revben lutar mot mitt kranium. Et av mellanhandsbenen i min vänstra hand ligger innanför ditt bäcken. (Mot mina brutna revben ditt bröst som en blomma.) De hundratals benen i våra fötter ligger kingströdda som gruskorn.

John Berger / Översättare: Steve Sem-Sandberg.

In November we went to Kawagoe.

All the mascots and funny little signs never stop to amuse me.

Kawagoe has a lot of these old style buildings like in the pictures above.

And I found Tanuki peeking out from behind a bush. Earlier this year I also learned the Tanuki song by heart, but I will not recite it here to respect the PG rating.

The tower on the right is the most famous sight in all of Kawagoe.

I drank cheap white wine from small crystal glasses.

We went to a little fair, where they had the cutest birds on display.

This is one of my favorite kinds of parrots, the Eclectus Parrot. It reminds me of Yoshi from Super Mario World.

Where is the head?

Gorogoro – ZzzZzz

What a handsome boy!

And he can dance as well!

On the left – a penguin at the petting zoo. On the right – view from the new apartment.

They had a little train and bubble machine powered by people biking. If you wanted to ride the train, you had to bike one round first.

Later that month we went to the Ueno Zoo. Obviously I was mostly interested in the birds.

Tiny wild birds went into the big birds cages to eat their meat.

And the big mean birds were watching the tiny little birds.

And now for the lulz, birds can be so damn funny sometimes:

The leaves hadn’t really started to change color yet.

And there were still lots of bugs and dragonflies around.

I found this plant that reminded me of molecules.