It's no good just thinking about it

Recently I haven’t had enough time to write this blog, since I‘m going to take a class at university the weekend after next. I have to do some assignments before the class, but they are progressing at a snail’s pace. Something’s got to give. I should tackle the assignments right now!!! 

This time I’m tackling the assignments pretty seriously, and I'm reading more books than usual, so I’m rather confused. My ideas have not come together yet. In such a case, the teacher always says that you should move your hand. Yeah, it’s no good just thinking about it; I have to draw sketches. 
Well, it’s time to start drawing. 

Maybe these blogs will be short for a while.

Reading

Now I’m reading a book that helps me understand and resolve my university assignments. Recently I haven’t been reading books as much as I used to, but I felt I should read a wide variety of books. The book I’m reading is an introduction to the arts. In the book, the writer says things I’ve never thought about. For example; 

Modern art started after the death of God. 
A work is not worth it without the complement of a critic. 
How is a painting “a painting”? What is “a painting”? 

Umm, it’s too difficult to translate what he said. 
It’s also hard for me to write about this book, so I'll end there, but anyway he has a wide knowledge of the arts. Well, it’s a matter of course because he is an art university professor… 
When I read only one book, I thought I seemed to be intelligent, so I will become an intelligent person if I read many more books. 
Now I'm going back to reading! 

Oh, yes, the curtains were delivered! They are lovely, aren’t they?

at night

during the day

The Cove

by Amazon

Have you ever seen “The Cove”? 

Today I was greatly shocked to see a TV program by NHK. The title was “Live with whales” and it was about Taiji town in Wakayama prefecture where the movie called “The Cove” took place. As I watched it, I became angry and sad. No, I was filled with fury. 

Concerning whaling, there has been a difficult problem because whaling countries and anti-whaling countries could never agree on a mutual understanding due to different cultures. Well, now I mentioned “a mutual understanding“ but in this case, I thought that the Sea Shepherd did not try to understand the other side. Why do they accept a whale meat eating culture and leave the Taiji people as they are. Is thinking so because I’m Japanese? It comes to putting the blame on others eventually. 

Actually, when I was a child, I had relations with whales, because my father was a chief engineer of a whaling ship. He went fishing in the Antarctic Ocean and there was regularly whale meat in the freezer of my house. I was raised in such an environment, so I couldn’t treat the situation that Taiji people suffered as being nothing to do with me. If my father was alive, what would he say? 

Anyway, this TV program was food for thought. There is still an uncertain feeling in my heart.

Went to the dentist

Today I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. I have had my teeth cleaned three times a year for a long time and my dental hygienist has great skills, so my teeth are in good condition. 

Anyway, do you have trouble finding a good doctor? How do you look for a reliable doctor? Or a dentist, a physician, a dermatologist, an eye doctor, an animal doctor, etc. I always have a hard time looking for a doctor. Luckily, my brother-in-law is a dentist, so I asked him to introduce me to a good dentist and I could see a good one and a wonderful hygienist who is his wife. Well, I could see my brother-in-law but I somehow felt like I didn’t want to show the inside of my mouth to my close relative. Thanks to my sister’s husband, the dentist problem was solved. About a vet, an animal doctor who I took my dog to before moving here introduced me to a vet near my new place. However, I didn’t have any connections to other doctors, so there was nothing for it but to get information on the Internet. 
So far, I have been able to see a good doctor, but when I need to look for other departments, it’ll be a pain in the neck to get information.

Had a nice day

I think that when I have a delicious meal, I am the happiest. 
Yesterday my friend and I met for lunch at a restaurant in Jiyugaoka. It was a restaurant recommended by my friend, and is called “Shutters”, which is famous for barbecued spareribs and apple pie. Wow! Both of them are my favorite. I’m certain that their lunch is the best I’ve ever had. Their lunch course included a salad, a soup, two spareribs, pasta, an apple pie and coffee or tea. It cost 2000 yen. It’s cheap for that amount of food, isn’t it? I was really really really satisfied. I want to take everyone there, my husband, my sister, my nieces and nephew and my friends. If so, I can enjoy the lunch many times. 

After lunch, we moved to Gakugei-Daigaku to go shopping. My friend had been looking for a party dress and had her eye on a nice one with a Ajisai (hydrangea) pattern. It suited her very well and at last she bought it today. I wasn’t going to buy any clothes, but I bought two lovely T-shirts and a beautiful cardigan which were bargains. 

I had a really nice day!

My dog's attitude toward me

I went to the hospital as usual yesterday. I woke up at 4:30 am, walked my dog for one hour and left home with my husband at 6:30 am. Why so early? That’s because he drives me to the hospital on his way to the office and I can come home in the morning. I think that if I left home thirty minutes later, I would come home a couple of hours later. Yeah, it’s just “the early bird catches the worm”, but waking up very early is really hard for me, and for my dog. When I shook him up this morning, he seemed not to understand what was going on, and it was hard to take him out. 

With this as an introduction, today’s main topic is my dog’s attitude toward me. When I came home today, he sat on the sofa with taking any notice of me. I called him from the entrance, but he kept looking the other way with his eyes open. He looked like he was angry with me. Was that because I woke him up early and let him stay at home? It’s not a very unusual thing. Well, his attitude toward me is always this way, but he was cruel today. I don’t know why, but when I come home, he never comes to meet me at the entrance, and of course he never wags his tail at me, but this is only in my case. Never, never, never!!! Although at least he just took a look at me, he completely ignored me today. Why? Someone told me that he must trust me better than anyone, but I want him to show his feelings of confidence with his attitude. I really envy my husband being met by my dog every day. 

Still, he's cute!

Went to the National Museum of Western Art

I went to the National Museum of Western Art with my niece who is an art university student the day before yesterday. Now they have an exhibition of Rembrandt “the quest for chiaroscuro” and we toured around there, but the main point was to examine the space around the museum. That’s because my university assignment I’m tackling now is to plan an annex to the museum in which I exhibit three sculptures of a modern sculptor.

Unfortunately, it rained a lot yesterday, so I couldn’t look over enough what I should do, but I discussed my assignment with my niece who studies sculpture, as we had cake sets in the museum cafe. Thanks to her, I decided to choose the sculptor, Ron Mueck, whose sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but their scale is disconcerting. One of his works “Standing Woman” is over four meters tall. When I saw it first in the picture, I was quite taken a back by the size, but I liked it very much. 

Now I’m working on planning the museum of Ron Mueck, and it has been decided that my niece will make miniature clays of Ron’s sculptures. It will look very nice if the miniatures are in my model, won't it? 

Oh, and yes, my niece came by my house and drew a picture of my dog for me. Just like the student of the art university, she captured his likeness quite easily.

by Aya

Shades

Golden Week is finally over. My husband had ten consecutive holidays and I couldn’t do much of my private business. 
During GW, we wanted to do some household chores that we cannot do on ordinary days, such as cleaning the veranda, but after all we didn’t do anything on some pretext or other. Oh my! 

There was one thing that I could settle during GW. That’s finding shades. I’d been troubled with the choice between drapes or blinds for my living room. Now there is only lace curtains there, but we have to save electricity, especially in the summer, so I decided to prepare something like a shade. My living room is very hot with the evening sun shining in. On searching for one, I disagreed with my husband. He is a 'curtain person' but I am a 'blind person'. Actually, I’ve yearned for a blind, so I decided to replace the lace curtains with blinds. I never thought he would disagree with me, but he wouldn’t budge an inch. Umm, I was in a fix! I tried to send for a blinds catalog and take him a house with blinds. So he gradually got to like blinds and said that I could do what I like. I’d won! 

Well, how do you think how it turned out in the end? Ha-ha, I ordered curtains. When I went to a furniture showroom, I found beautiful curtains. I thought that this is it!

A theme park

Recently we went to two theme parks to use a dog run that they have there. Whenever I visit a theme park, except a successful theme park such as Disneyland, I always feel somewhat sad, because they have become old and deserted. When I was a child, they used to be busy, but now they are quiet and only music travels in vain. Their facilities are antiquated and the paint has come off. The parks seem not to have been looked after for a long time. In fact, maybe they try to keep the park in good condition as hard as they can, but they don’t have enough budget to buy new equipment and keep it clean. 
Old > deserted > dropped receipts > cannot update equipment > deserted … It’s a downward spiral! Is there any good way to revive the parks? I don’t have any concrete ideas but I’m very interested in reviving the theme parks. If I had had some funds, I would purchase one of the theme parks and try to revive it. Actually, you can laugh about it now, but I applied for an application open to the public that invited the president of a local line to revive the line. Of course, I failed, but I was really interested in such a thing. Sure, I know “Easier said than done.”

Thanks to being empty, he could get the dog run to himself.

Mashiko Pottery Fair

We went to Mashiko town which is famous for pottery on the first day of Golden Week. The pottery fair I’ve been wanting to go just started that day. Mashito town is not in the Tohoku district but they also suffered from the Tohoku earthquake. When we drove into Mashiko town, we were surprised that almost all of the houses with tiled roofs were covered with a blue tarp and quite a lot of concrete block walls had crumbled. Besides that, a great deal of damage was done to the pottery. A lot of pottery was broken and I heard that if the pottery was being baked at the time of the earthquake, they would have touched and adhered to each other. They would be useless. 
We reached there at about 3 p.m. and there were many people in the town. The venue was along the main street and about fifty shops and five hundreds tents lined both sides of the street. We stopped in at the shops one after another. I looked for some dishes I could use for fish and found some good ones. I bought a bowl, too. I was not planning on buying a bowl, but I found a nice one at the charity corner and they said they were selling it for 1000 yen, though it was labeled “4200”. Lucky! I paid 2000 yen for it including a contribution. I was really satisfied with my shopping. 
According to Mashiko’s homepage, over sixty thousand people visit the fair everyday. I’m very happy for their success.