Bento Box birthday

Today for my birthday I had lunch with my sweetheart at Ki sushi where I got a delicious sashimi bento box. My sweetie gave me a darling necklace from a wonderful artist who's name right now completely evades me, but it's the cutest little drawing of a fawn. As a relief from pre-flight stress/ birthday gift to myself I went to Providence day spa for an hour massage, heaven! Now off to bed to get up early to get to the airport.




- Posted by misskitty1970

Norway baby!

My friend's baby shower was today and my partner and I have been getting a combined- effort-gift together the last couple of days. I sewed a the baby pants,toy,and bib. Debra, designed the onesies with, bebe, mamon, and papa lion graphics. I also made a little cold weather set for her little girl since they will be moving to Norway at the end of the summer, figure she'll need something soft and warm. It's made of soft alpaca. My partner added a nice touch to the whole gift with copies of three of her children's books with a little chick onesie.

Mooncakes and stars

Today we went into Soho to run a few errands including buying to large yellow lantern globes for our freshly painted bedroom. After climbing a very scary ladder and fighting a dozen times we realized that we don't like the light emitting from the globes.




Perhaps we need lower wattage bulbs or maybe a different color.
On our shopping adventure we had lunch at Mooncake a lovely asian-fusion restaurant really reminscent of old school New York.


I had a steak sandwich with dill mayo on a crunchy bahn mi hero, with a tasty Saigon beer. Debra had the miso glazed salmon. Both came with salad and both were insanely delicious. The lunch menu is relatively inexpensive, both meals plus one beer was $23!







- Posted by misskitty1970

Spoon-February 2011

This is the February issue of Spoon chock full of Emily Temple Cute, Marble Sud(my favorite!), model Yu Aoi, and a special Russian section.

Snowy day

Monkey business

This is completely messed up. My friend Christina sent me this article with the attached video about a restaurant about 100km outside of Tokyo who uses Japanese Maques as waiters. The little monkeys are dressed in yukatas, wear wigs and masks while serving hot towels. That's so sad.

2 weeks to Japan

I've been getting ready for my trip to Japan, and last night was the first night without sleep because of nerves. Today I went to the dreaded Atlantic Target and got all the necessities like allergy meds, advil, plug adapters and lots more. I've spent so much money getting ready for the trip that it's freaking me out. But I know I will find work when I get back and my bank account will be alright again.
I went to buy my JR rail pass at the JTB office in midtown another giant chunk of change but necessary. The travel office is located in midtown which I seldom ever venture to even though I know there's good Japanese food there. The office is a total Japanese experience. When you come there's a lovely office but no one's there. Near the door there's a machine that looks like an ATM or arcade video game with a telephone. You are greeted in Japanese but when you press the "English" button on the screen you are prompted to make your selections as to what you are there for "JR Pass" for me, please. Then the screen tells you to pick up the phone and a very nice lady asks you a few questions and tells you to sit down. After a minute a woman came out with a clipboard and asked to fill out the form that she'll be back in 10 minutes. She comes back then tells me she'll be back in another 10 minutes. About 20 minutes later she comes back with another person's JR pass voucher so she disappears for the third time behind the mystery door. Finally! I get my voucher but she tells me they'll mail me the invoice since the printer is on the fritz. I'm not complaining because I wasn't in any rush but it was just the beginning of strange things to come.



Okay so I had a lot of time to kill at the JTB office and I found this gem,"American gift", where the Japanese traveler can buy very "American" things, well according to who I'm not sure. You know you can't find peanuts especially Planters anywhere, and Spam, nothing more American than Spam


- Posted by misskitty1970

Scoping out Nakameguro

So in further exploring photography I have been making screen shots of the neighborhood I'll be living in Tokyo using Google Streetview. I've been trying to establish good places to hang out and the basics that I'll need, like grocery stores, easy walking and biking routes to places I may want to go to, like to buy some food or T.P.. So here are some screen shots of my surrounding neighborhood, just to get a flavor of it's essence pre-trip. (Above is LIFE supermarket, the perfect name for a supermarket, because without it you'd be dead ;) )


Next,we have Drug Zone, I can't go without my drugs or t.p..
this is really close to the train station ( below) along with Life supermarket (above), also convienently located across the street a giant Panchinko Parlor (below). Those oar the choicing of Life blow all your money at a gambling establishment or cross the street and buy some food for your kids, nah I rather like the tiny panchinko balls!






Along side the train station there are lots of little places to grab a bite with a large mug of beer or cheap sake, I have no idea what this place serves but by the picture on the window it looks like noodles or chinese food but whatever it is the prices seem decent.


Along side the train station there is always bound to be bike parking as you can see by this pic below.

This is a little street right by my apartment


I thought this was a cute little house along side the Meguro-gawa (Meguro river). Where there are towns of sweet places to hang out.


More places next to Meguro-gawa

The classic vending machines in an alleyway



Lovely back streets

Happy Chinese New Year!

I went out to shoot my Nikon F3 today and lucked out that it was Chinese New Year, and there are pretty insane celebrations in NYC chinatown. I shot two rolls of Kodak 160 VC. I was really fortunate that after I shot the main event at Roosevelt Park I decided to walk over to Divison Street and the Dragon business blessings had just started so I got amazing pictures. There were many Dragon crews, which consisted of a couple of teens dressed in the Dragons and then a another group of teens drumming a large drum, then a third groups of teens carrying large poles to crowd control. Can you imagine a major NYC event left in the hands of teenagers, holy crap! It was amazing! I'm dropping of the rolls of film tomorrow so I hope to see the results next week, for now you have my hipstamatic and other iphone pics.






imagine my surprise when this guy was coming up the escalator when I was heading out of Jing Fong Dim Sum restaurant!



This place has a great name considering it's in a grim basement of an exceptionally dirty street. I stopped into a delicious Chinese bakery, Fay Da (83 Mott Street) on the way home and picked up a roast pork bun, 2 beef curry puffs, and a sesame bean ball, all for $4.95! The beef curry puffs were insanely yummy.





After getting back to my neighborhood my partner and I went for a hot chocolate at Nunu Chocolates on Atlantic Ave and 3rd ave.


- Posted by misskitty1970