Voyage Junkie

I participated in another dance concert on December 18th, which also happened to be the Artistic Director's 68th birthday!  She's such a spunky woman who still dances like crazy and does handstands.  She looks at least 10 years younger than she is, and acts about 20 years younger.  I hope I am half as ambulatory and energetic as she is if I reach her age. We held her party at Godmother's, which is turning into one of our party mainstays.  We were served wonderful pizza and pasta, and apparently bought tons of sparkling wine near the end of the evening (Japanese people like to get their drink on, especially for birthdays and special events like dance concerts). Let's go around the room.  First we have two little girls (of four).  These two were the older two, and also the more obnoxious two.  The one in stripes was completely insufferable during dinner.  She refused to eat any vegetables or healthy food, demanded several slices of pizza befor...

'Matter of fact, it's all dark.

This kind of name is far more common in Japan than I'm comfortable with...

Take a good, long look at the name of the cookies/breakfast bars (not sure what they are).  If you can't quite make out the French there, it says "Couque D'asses."  English speakers have an immediate, and understandably juvenile, reaction to this product.  However, if you go into the language, there's a perfectly good explanation.  "Couque" (pronounced more like coouke) means "cake" in Belgian French.  And "D'asses" is most likely referring to Asse, a city in Belgium.  So, while wrong in a few ways, this product is trying to say "Cake of/from Asse." For those of you not convinced, " âne" and "cul" actually mean "ass/butt" in French.  The first word is used in sentences like "He's such a stupid ass," and the latter is used more literally as "butt" or "posterior" and in a lot of sexual instances.  Or at least that's what the online dictionaries tell m...

This amazing statue is in Kobe, on the way to a wonderful park on the harbor.  I just love Kobe so much, and I'm so happy we're going there again in a month!

If you're tired of seeing my videos all over the place, this is it for awhile, I promise!  I just finished my current backlog with this installment for my sister Clara.  It's a lonely piece set against a backdrop of autumn trees and a city skyline.  For this piece I listened to the music and took the feel of it to the set, where I improvised in relationship to the various physical structures.  I didn't want to get caught up in the 3/4 time and play into the song too much, so I kept things loose.  My only pet peeve: youtube, why did you choose such awkward thumbnails for this piece?  In post, it made sense to use fades with this dance.  Up until now I've used only quick cuts (or no cuts, in the case of installment two).  However, this dance needed more flow, to go with the 3/4 time.  But every thumbnail is during a fade!  Oh well.  Sorry, it's neither as super cool or as annoyingly ghostly as the thumbnail suggests, whichever you wer...

We went to the Mino Lantern Festival for the second time last weekend.  Matt and I went with two teachers from my school.  First stop: a very beige dinner at a beautiful traditional restaurant.  It was all very delicious and I didn't get sick off of it, which was a nice change.  Still, I don't really like it when all my food is beige and soft.  Something about that just doesn't sit right.  There was, however, a great rice soup with special rice made in a traditional stove, and kaki  for dessert.  The kaki , or persimmon, were crunchy and bright orange, so I ended the dinner with some color and texture, at least.  After dinner, we headed to the lanterns!  They were beautiful, and very different from last year's .  The only down side?  It rained a ton that day, so there were rain smudges all over the lantern cases. The streets this year were very quiet.  We ran into a few other pedestrians, but nothing compared to last y...