I have seen these really beautiful web forms floating around the various internet pages lately, and I absolutely want to make my own comment form more like this when I have some extra time! (Which means not right now, but I will get around to it!) Aren’t they beautiful? (You can click on the images to get to their sites.) It makes me want to contact them and leave comments just because of the beautiful design on the forms!

Here are some pictures from our hotel room! When I wanted to go on holiday, I said I wanted a Japanese-style room, and while most places were western resort style, we did find a pretty little hotel with Japanese-style rooms. The room was quite spacious for being in Japan, and in the picture above you can see the private onsen. It was really nice, super-warm water, beautiful clean smell from the water, and it made your skin fabulously smooth!

At night, they had the cutest little outdoor starry light. Midnight bathing is something I can defiantly recommend, sitting in super-warm water and drinking cocktails.

At night, they moved the table over, and put out the futons right next to it. I feel asleep to a nice smell of tatami. ♥

Here are some of the pictures of the trip to Shimoda last weekend! We bought a pretty bento at Shinagawa station before jumping onto the train.

The place we were going to was about 4 hours away from Tokyo, so that meant plenty of time spent on a train, looking out the window and reading books. I love these little capsules where you do not have other distractions, all you are suppose to do is to sit back and be where you are.

And this is Shimoda! It was quite rural compared to Tokyo, and the nature was beautiful! Plus, I have a special place in my heart for palm trees, and there were lots of them here. I think it is because the place I grew up was too cold for palm trees, so now, whenever I see a palm tree, I clap my hands together and smile and associate them with holidays and exotic places.

All stacked up with alcoholic beverages!

Our hotel was right next to the beach, and I love these only-open-in-summer shops on the beach.

I did a little walk on my own down at the beach, and there were so many beautiful textures and details. In a dumster near by there were baby birds nesting, but I didn’t dare to go close enough and maybe scare them, so they are not visible in the picture.

Stay tuned for pictures of the hotel room, including a private onsen bath!

I have about 10 entries lined up and good to go, but pushing the publish button seems like a big task at the moment, so sorry for a little bit of delay in the entries around here. I have been keeping pretty busy, with the trip to Shimoda (with onsen-goodness, pictures to follow), returning to take the JLPT (which I have no idea how went, I don’t even have a stomach feeling for it), signed up for the cute Hello Sandwich workshop and made some notebooks (it was so nice to make something with my hands again)! Apart from this, I will most likely be doing some speaking regarding language learning at a Japanese university, I made business cards (pictures will come!) and I am also planning a trip to Norway (anyone in Oslo or Bergen who want to say hello?), so getting the tickets booked and in order was quite the hassle this time around. I needed to know when I could return to Japan, which was depending on the things and deadlines in Norway, and getting the right information from the right people certainly took a while. All is well in Lala-land now though, I got the dates I needed to proceed to buy my plane tickets. But then – tamtamtam – I searched around (the internet and a travel agent) for cheap airplane tickets – and oh my god – what prices! They seemed to had doubled since the last time I flew to Norway (which is well over a year ago, but still)! But, I got by with a little help from my friends, and now I seem to have found a cheaper ticket, however it requires a stopover in Russia, and I do not have a visa. This should still be ok, as long as I do not leave the airport while in Russia. Ah, this is probably the most jumbled entry ever, sorry for that, my head is in overdrive and I just have to finish all of this organizing. Have a good one!

My escapades in the kitchen continues. Since I am notoriously bad at following recipes down to the last detail, I made my own version of pumpkin soup and raw zucchini pasta. I should start the column “Sushibird cooks / Food for dummies that usually stave right next to the breadbox”. I am, however, slightly proud, because if I can manage to cook these things, anyone can cook. So if you have never cooked before, you can still manage to cook these things. And the huge bonus is that they taste good as well. These dishes are vegetarian and can be made vegan if you substitute the milk products for plant-based ingredients.

Puréed Curry Pumpkin soup

1. Cut the god damn pumpkin into large pieces, remove the seeds from the middle and the skin from the outside. (I have never cut a pumpkin before, and god lord, you have to use strength. This was the hardest part about this dish, the pumpkin-cutting.)
2. Boil (or over-boil, doesn’t really matter, luckily for me,) the pumpkin. Minimum 3 minutes, maximum 7ish.
3. Put pumpkin in food processor together with some sour cream, milk and curry paste. Mix until pureed.
4. Serve with a dash on sour cream on top! Tamtam! Finished!

Raw Pesto Zucchini Pasta with Olives and Pine Seeds

1. Buy a couple of zucchinis, wash them of and cut of the outer green layer.
2. Spend way to much time cutting them into thin, long pasta-like shapes. (Yes, I realize my description of making food makes me sound like a helpless teenager, bear with me, I am trying here.)
3. Toss said cut up zucchini in a Tupperware, and drench it with a thin pesto sauce and let it sit there for a while.
4. Take out zucchini, put it on a plate, add some olives, feta cheese and pine seeds. Served cold.
5. Done.

Hope you enjoyed the recipes! I will add more simple recipes in the future. As always, I am looking for other people’s simple recipes as well, so please do comment if you have any good ones! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I had to go to Nakano last week to renew some documents, and I snapped a couple of pictures along the way. On my way to the station I passed the Nostalgic country house. I wonder who actually lives there, there are two cars parked in the driveway, so I know there are people in there…

Beautiful Nakano with all of its small back streets.

This poor guy has probably already ended up as dinner on someones plate…

And these guys as well…

And then, I walked through the Nakano bike park! So.many.bikes! The pictures do not do it justice, there were bikes upon bikes upon bikes.

Every 4th of July I end up with this kind of eeire feeling that half of the summer is gone already, and I think this song by Aimee Mann describes my mood. I have so many thing to fix in the next couple of weeks it is almost making me dizzy. And excited. And a bit nauseous, all at once.

I had a wonderful weekend, we went down to an Onsen in Izu / Shimoda (pictures to follow!) , had an amazing Japanese-style traditional dinner, (really gorgeous food, but a bit freaky when they put things that are still alive on the grill), and not to mention the private onsen on the balcony! I basically spent Saturday evening in the little pool on our balcony after dinner, and the water makes your skin silky smooth! I got up really early yesterday morning, took another dip in the onsen, before I had to head back to Tokyo (about 4 hours away) to take my JLPT test. I have no idea how the test went, parts of it went wonderful and other parts were well, not so wonderful. I am just glad it is done.

Now I am well planted at home again, I’ve caught a cold, and I am trying to shake it of so I can update my blog and do all the housework which is waiting for me. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

A quick inspiration post! After I redesigned the website, I realized that all of the mish-mash on the top sort of reminded me of my favorite jewelry designer, Michal Negrin. If I ever were to start my own jewelry business, it would definitely be in this style. I love all the little details and trinkets! I own a couple of pieces, but they are not here with me in Japan, so I couldn’t take pictures of the pieces I own. However – it is all faux jewelry, but the quality is really good and long lasting.

// & I am going on a trip today, so no new posts until tomorrow night! Have a lovely weekend darlings!

I made an attempt at sorting my faux jewelry today; having all away in little boxes makes it harder to take out and use, so I wanted it out.

My strawberry boat is filled with… a glass, earrings, some rings and lots of fake flowers.

I think it looks like one of those small chu-chu-boats that runs slowly down the riverbank filled with gifts and sparklies.

This is the final sketch for three big pictures (each is about 50 x 60 cm) I will start this weekend on canvas. I wanted something Japanese-inspired. To match the furniture we have upstairs I will paint the background red instead, but on screen that just looks awful, so I changed it on the sketch. It might take me a while to project this huge image and redraw all the lines on a larger scale, so I better start while I still have some free time on my hands.