Sakura Overload

Pooch says that once you've seen one cherry tree in blossom you've seen them all. I disagree, which is why I have three further gardens to show you, while Pooch spent his time with me at one of them keeping firmly to the footpaths and determinedly not enjoying himself.

It all began last week at the Tokyo National Museum which only opens its gardens for the few weeks of cherry blossom season. Determined not to miss this opportunity to visit both the Museum and the Garden I went over there.

The Museum is very impressive, being a kind of V&A equivalent for Japanese artifacts. It also allowed me to take part in my first ever Stamp Rally - something that is apparently quite big here where you collect stamps at different points around a venue or area, and when you have sufficient you get a prize. In this case the little badge top left.

 

The gardens were quite small but very well kept. They also contained my first 'zen' garden I've seen since arriving here. By that I mean with the raked gravel.

One of the oddities of Cherry Blossom is that as well as the main branches, you get little puffs of it on the trunk itself.

These give you the opportunity for close up shots, since the branches are often a bit high up for that.

Just opposite the Museum is Ueno Park - a big park famed for its blossom and thus PACKED with people. I should explain the schools are on holiday at the moment with the new school year starting tomorrow, so everyone was up for a party.

As you can see at the far end of the pond, this park is famed for its walkways where there is blossom on both sides and it often meets overhead.

Wherever you find blossom you will also find Hanami Parties sitting on their large tarpaulin sheets under the tress.

You get office workers, families and also groups of teenagers getting politely drunk on the national equivalent of Diamond White (cheap cider english people my age will remember with slight revulsion from their youth).

These parties were also in full swing at Shinkuju Gyoen National Garden which Pooch and I lastvisited in December (and which I blogged about here). The difference the spring has made was very evident. I'm just going to let the photos speak for themselves.

Plus of course the Byrne in full bloom.

Hopefully this post gives an idea of why I do not get tired of looking at cherry blossom - the variety and the context are both very special factors.

I am off to England on Thursday to help my sister out. I hope to fit in one more cherry experience before then and to continue blogging while I'm away. I have been squirreling away various props for use with Jasmine when she and I are left alone together so be ready for some unconventional baby photos in the near future!

Cherry Blossom Fit For a Prince

Naturally since my niece Jasmine was born at around the same time as Prince George, and further because she is the cutest thing ever...

...I expect them to marry. Perhaps they will honeymoon in Tokyo in April. Then they will truly make the title of this blogpost true and not just a long winded way of saying this is the garden of the Prince Sakura Tower Hotel. If you are in Tokyo then the garden is free to visit, although to be honest there are much better ones. I was just in the vicinity and it is open on Mondays, which is when I went.

I know I have already gushed about this in a previous post, but the masses of flowers are very beautiful and just ridiculously japanese.

This garden also boasted the largest Koi I've ever seen.

Random woman's hand included for scale.

As if two blossom visits were not enough, yesterday I went to the gardens at Tokyo National Museum which are only open to the public for a few weeks during the blossoming. The Museum happens to be opposite Ueno Park which is another blossomtastic venue and I took many pictures, which you can expect to see here in coming days.

Before I forget, registration for this swap closes in a few days.

There are still places left so click here to read more about it.

March Makes

Considering this month included a week of parental visit I think I've achieved quite a few FOs.

Going top to bottom and left to right we have...
1. Whale for Jasmine - see below for more
2. Washi Picture Frames - a kit my Mum chose when they were here and asked me to make for her.
3. Scrapbooked photo album - of when the parents were here. This is my first go at any kind of paper craft since my ATC phase in about 2007 and I'm rather pleased with it.
4. Owl socks - see below for more
5. Jasmine's cardigan
6. My hat - epic
7. Cat bag
8. Swatch holder from the online Colour course I did
9. Patch for one of my oldest tops made out of 1/3" hexagons.
10. Lucy Boston block for Jan
11. Mum's bling earrings - see below for more
12. Sian's bling ring - see below for more

I am not exactly an inactive blogger but it seems I've failed to blog about more than half of these which seems odd. Here are a few close ups of things. Jasmine's whale first.

This is a kit from the washi paper shop which intrigued me as it uses the (patented) Easy Tuck! system.

You stick printed stickers on the wrong side of the fabric, cut out your shapes, peel the sticker off the fabric and the board (which is pre-cut and also sticky) and pop the two together. You then stuff the ends into the gaps with some sort of purpose made thing I didn't buy, or a bodkin.

My first attempt left a few loose threads tufting out but I always enjoy trying something new and this was a quick little project.

The other thing for Jasmine is a summer cardi which I knitted using some discounted red cotton from Yuzawaya.

The pattern is a free one from Knitty which you can find here. My other knitting feat was finally finishing the socks I'd been doing a row or two at a time on.

I used the free pattern 'Aquaphobia' which you can find here but omitted the cable. I think this is my third pair with this pattern which is a great one for hand painted yarn that you suspect is going to pool.

Finally, last month I made myself a blingy ring after seeing a sample at Kiwa in Asakasabushi. I took my Mum there and she loved it too, but wanted hers in white as earrings. She's a clip-on wearer so the availability of such things is limited. We bought the parts and...ta da!

When I made my ring I offered to make my sister one too but with more stars (she has a thing about stars). Hers is on the left, my original make is on the right.

I really like using the smaller elements together. Perhaps more of this bling will be appearing in the future!

Recent knitting leaves me without anything on the needles, other than a mass of UFOs of course but then we know those don't count. I will need to think of something since I have a 12.5 hour plane ride coming up when I return to the UK for a visit!

Cherry Blossom in Tokyo

The blossom is just starting to come out. Everything in the shops has been blossom themed for weeks but this is the actual event. Pooch and I went to drink it in by walking along the river at Nekameguro, about 25 minutes walk from here.

The blossom was about 50% out which was plenty to have attracted a lot of visitors. There were stalls and booths up both sides of the river selling food and pretty much every second one had a cherry themed drink. I had a Martini Rose with strawberries bobbing in it. The lanterns really were neon and are lit up at night. The writing essentially says "Buy the best from Cooper's Creosote Ltd" or the equivalent for the local businesses.

There was no scent from these but the colour was lovely. A very, very pale pink whereas the buds looked properly pink. It all reminded me of the flower fairy colouring.

Although looking at the flower fairy, she's not pink at all apart from her sash. Hmmm. Anyway. 

It was pretty awesome. 

Sadly things here have not worked out quite as planned for Pooch (I'm having a brilliant time, not working and all) so it is possible we will be coming back to the UK much sooner than we had originally thought. I won't know how much longer we'll be here for some time yet but in the meantime it means I am appreciating the experiences I am having all the more!

Making a Hat and What It Shows About Pinterest

Long story short, I made a hat.

I rather like it although Pooch's response has been less positive.

I mentioned my intention of wearing it on our outing today and he immediately told me there was no need because it was going to be very cloudy, no sunshine at all. This is despite the sun beaming in through the windows onto our breakfast.

I used a pattern I found on Pinterest which you can find here. I cut the pieces out of iron-on interfacing which I then used as templates for piecing scraps, sewing onto the iron-on/shiny side. Once covered I duly ironed and trimmed the edges then got to sewing. I made a lining but only interfaced the brim of that. The whole thing took about 2 hours which would have been less if I had just used plain fabric for both sides.

However, the interesting thing from my point of view is that this highlights how I now use Pinterest as my first choice search engine when it comes to patterns, tutorials and visual inspiration. A year ago I would have used google every time but this has definitely shifted. I use the 'search' function of Pinterest a lot. The benefit to me is that you are looking at links that have already been "peer reviewed" as worthy of pinning and they have sometimes made their own version so have road tested the pattern for you. It cuts out the adverts, selltorials and, sadly, rubbish versions nicely.

There is a counter argument to be made in that you are only seeing what others have already seen, but then it is a sun hat. I'm not trying to reinvent the bra or develop brave new nail designs.

So here I am...boldly going where many sun hats have been before...

...rather grainily...

R&R

I am so lucky. Don't think I don't know and appreciate it! I never thought I'd not be working when we came over here but I am so happy it turned out this way. It has meant I've had to improve my cooking skills and I have had to do far more cleaning than I would like, but the benefits outweigh that! For instance, the weather here is more like british summer then spring already. It's been at least 18 degrees the last few days and it went up as high as 23 on Monday. Which is when I set myself up like so on the balcony...

I stayed in the sun for half an hour before sellotaping the umbrella to the railing. It's not exactly elegant but pale skin and freckles do not a sun worshiper make! My chair has two drink holder pockets - one in each arm - but clearly these are better used to hold knitting and my phone respectively, so I could bliss out while listening to an audiobook for a couple of hours. I'm knitting baby Jasmine a lacy summer cardigan.

Japanese women apparently prefer to stay as pale as possible and so avoid the sun and use spf 50+ sun lotion - the lowest I could find in the chemist was spf 35. According to my in-depth research (google) a lot of japanese sun lotions aimed at women have skin whitening agents in. I'm not sure how true that is, but I'll definitely be avoiding those. I'm Casper enough as it is! Which reminds me of this meme:

My sister and I cackled when we saw this because it is so true for both of us. 

Nyafe Melange Cat Cafe in Ebisu

When Pooch told me there was a cat cafe within 10 minutes walk of our flat I was a bit skeptical. My experiences at the Ikebukero cafe had shown that these cafes could be pretty variable plus his idea of 10 minutes walk is very different to mine. So when I hopped on the bus for 15 minutes to get there I was playing it cool.

In size it is about half the size of Calico in Shinjuku with the above at one end of the single room and a wall of windows with more seating and cat beds at the other end. The cats can also get completely away from visitors off to the right of the above picture if they want to. There were about 12 cats all together with these two winning 'most adorable couple'.

There was quite a lot of friendliness in evidence.

The guys below were funny. The cat on the right was there first and the one on the left basically sat down and wriggled about til he/she was comfy.

It's not like there was a shortage of beds either - they just seemed to enjoy doubling up. You can't tell from the photos but they both had amazing eyes - like old fashioned clear glass marbles but one with blue centres and one with green. It was very striking.

There was also politics. The occasional tricky pass to be negotiated on the high levels...

And then there was Bruiser.

I thought he looked very sweet at first, then I saw his face. Even with the scottish fold breed ears this was clearly not a cat to mess with! He swaggered up and down the room with his shoulder muscles rolling and swatted at any cat that hadn't already got out of his way.

He wasn't above a bit of stroking but not until he'd put on a boxing show. But seriously - how can you be intimidated by a pussycat with pads on his feet that pink! It was like Barbie had a cat habit and this was him.

One other notable resident was this guy who was amazing to look at.

He was charcoal coloured but when you looked at the fur closer to his body it was pretty much white - so when he moved you got these lines of grey and white appearing. Plus if you look closely he's got an almost bengal type pattern of stripes in his fur. Very special. (All my photos are rather blurry because I had the flash turned off.)

All in all it was a good way to spend an hour but I've been spoiled by Calico Cat Cafe. Even when this little guy decided to sit under me when I crouched down to take a photo...

...it didn't change my mind. It may be twice the distance but I'll still be heading back to Shinjuku for my cat fix in future.