pinku

Kichijoji Dreamin'

We love where we live in Tokyo - it's full of free entertainment, bars, an excellent secondhand English bookstore with a very knowledgable and friendly owner!!, great shopping (for me), awesome restaurants, an animated park and let's not forget the craft stores. More often than not we never leave our little area on the weekend and it's never boring. This weekend we had an impromptu night out on the town and as you know those are the best kind.

First we started off by having dinner at Mamezou (まめ蔵）, a Japanese curry institution in Kichijoji that's been around since 1978. We had been meaning to eat here for ages since our friend, Tomoki works there. Darin mentioned that curry rice is definitely Japan's comfort food and I couldn't agree more. It tastes great on a cold winter's night. They have a dinner set for around 1300 yen where you select the curry of your choice, and you also receive a small bowl of yoghurt for dessert, and a glass of wine.

Next we checked out an Okinawan Bar (sorry can't remember the name) that's run out of the back of a truck. Sounds kind of cheap and nasty (which we like too) but it was surprisingly fancy with great food and service by Koba!! We were protected from the cold by many sheets of plastic and kerosene heaters. Our feet even got hot. This place is easy to find though - just walk right through the Dai-Ichi Hotel in Kichijoji and take the back exit and there it is to your right. It'll be a great place to have drinks in the summer as it is located on a fancy wooden deck.

tyler with his london beanie knitted by me...sorry it took so long!

Since the Okinawan Bar only seats about 8 or 9 people, we felt obliged to leave after a couple of hours and give some other people a chance to experience some Okinawan delights. So we headed to the Bloomoon Cafe. Martine sent me some great pics from the night including this one of our heads in a wine glass:

And I had fun playing with Martine's new camera, and took this shot of Tyler and Martine:

We stayed until the bar closed and then meandered home - a true luxury in Tokyo when more often than not a great night out is ruined by having to cram into the last train home for the night. Another reason we love Kichijoji is because there is going to be a rock show in the local sento (public baths). At first I thought we all might have to be naked, but looking at pictures from the first Furo Rock......everyone is clothed.

Aus-tray-lee-a

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Today is Australia Day and I'm feeling a little nostalgic - it always happens when I am far from home. I selected two verses from the famous poem, My Country, by Aussie poet Dorothea Mackellar to share with you. I usually don't celebrate Australia Day as such but it's great to have a day to reflect on where you are from and how it has influenced who you are today. We are having a little impromptu partay at our house tonight where we'll be drinking Coopers and eating sausages. So indulge me and let me share a few more of my favourite pics from our recent trip back to the homeland.

Please disregard the fact that I am drinking a Corona in this photo.....

bendall.biz

My very talented husband made an e-zine about our roadtrip in Australia. Check it out!

Although I loved the snow on Saturday, my heart will always be where the warm weather is...

In knitting news (yes, I still do knit) I am working on Forecast by Stephanie Japel. I will be adapting the sleeves as Winnie did for hers and I will also add a few inches to the length of the body. Oh and I also opted for plain unmirrored 4x4 cables instead of the bobbles and braided cables...basically because I am lazy and don't want to have to refer to the chart. I happened to have a full bag of Rowan Cork in light blue so I am using that. I would prefer a red cardie, but hooray to me for using stash. I'm nearly finished the body so I should have an FO soon.

Oh and I'm so excited because I finally got to sign up for Alison's Sockapalooza event!!! Go now and sign up too - you've got 23 hours to do so!

Oh and lastly here's one of my most recent FOs - Squarey from you know where. I finished up squarey in Australia and gave him to my mum for Christmas - I think he was a hit!!

Whatta weekend!

I'm all recovered. Life is so much better when you are not weighed down by tissues and a runny nose. And I have discovered that winter is much more bearable when it snows for one whole day. If you read any other Tokyo blogs and some more then you'd already know that it snowed ALL DAY in Tokyo on Saturday. This is big news especially for us snow-deprived Queenslanders. We celebrated the snow by soaking in an outdoor onsen with the snow falling on our heads and taking lots of pictures of snowmen!!

And that was just Saturday. Look who I got to hang out with on Sunday!!

I finally got to meet Molly and her mum, Jan. Both of them were as cute and interesting as they are on their blogs. We had a lovely lunch with Daz and Stefana and then us four ladies head out on a crafty tour of Kichijoji. A perfect Sunday really.

For more snowy photos, click below.

Life with a cold

For the past few days I've had to go to work while nursing a pretty bad cold. I just took a 3-week vacation so I really couldn't take anymore time off work. So my life with a cold amounts to drinking copious amounts of ginger tea (shouga-yu) and making afternoon trips to the convenience store to buy multiple packets of those lotion tissues (the really soft ones), vicks vapour drops and while browsing the other cold-related goodies at the family mart, I couldn't go past these gems:

I remember the days when I would visit the conbini to buy a sweet afternoon snacks....the good, healthy times. Now I have resorted to purchasing frightening white patches to put on little boys' chests....I did use them last night but since I have lost my sense of smell I couldn't smell a thing. Darin tells me they were quite strong. It's sad to think that little boys don't need their mother to rub vicks into their chests any longer.

I haven't resorted to wearing a white mask though. I'm just not going to do it. Some girl on the train this morning was staring at me quite blatantly while I slathered some moisturizer on the end of my nose - it's red raw. She seemed quite horrified. The moisturizer felt good though.

In other news, I have discovered that American Apparel now have three stores right here in Tokes (thanks suzy!). I am excited to check them out but I must admit that I was quite disappointed when I went to their stores in New York. The quality seemed questionable and the price didn't match. Their sizing also seemed to be for the androgynous body-type - I am sure they'll do quite well here in Japan.

Two thousand and six!

Hey everyone, I made it back to Japan in one piece except now I have a chest cold. I guess that's what happens when you expose your body to a 30 degree temperature change in 7 hours. I didn't miss the internet or blogging at all - can you believe it? But I must say that since I have been catching up on everyone else's bloggy news, I am psyched to get back into it all.

Our holiday in Australia was, of course, wonderful. We caught up with family, old friends, went to bbqs and parties, swam almost every single day, lazed at the beach, and we went on a one-week roadtrip (Mackay to Cairns) where we saw a platypus in the wild - seriously! On a side note, I am Australian born and bred but I seriously thought the platypus was a much bigger animal - they're tiny (grow to a maximum length of 60cm!!!)!!

Bowen QLD

Brisbane experienced the hottest December on record and I don't think it went below 30 the whole time we were there. For some reason though, when you are on holiday sipping cold beers on big airy wooden Queensland verandas it just doesn't seem to matter. The only thing I didn't feel like doing was knitting. I finished off squarey for my mum for Christmas but other than that - nothing except for knitting a London Beanie on the trip home. Why would I want to knit when I could swim?? Seriously.

We had a great Australian summer xmas full of eating traditional turkey dinner while sweating, playing in a kiddie swimming pool with water guns (well, that was darin), and opening presents in the middle of a murderously loud thunderstorm.

Here's my cutie niece Mia cuddling her favourite xmas present, Charlotte the care bear!!

I was able to don my wedding dress once again for our family wedding dinner at the Merthyr Bowls Club in New Farm. I wish I had some photos for you but they are stuck on my brother's hard drive in Australia. I think we'll get them soon. I was also able to celebrate my 31st birthday in sunny Cairns eating fresh papaya and orange juice for breakfast and spending the day by the pool.

This holiday was full of firsts:

• Darin and I went to Gold Class for the first time (we saw King Kong) - thanks mum!
• We visited Far North Queensland (FNQ) for the first time and had a great introduction when Julie picked us up at Cairns airport to drive us to Port Douglas on our very first day in Australia for a sausage sizzle by the ocean - it was magic.
• Both Darin and I scuba dived for the first time
• We slept on a massive pontoon right next to Hardy Reef which is part of the Great Barrier Reef
• We saw a platypus for the first time but we luckily didn't see a cassowary.
• We did the XXXX Brewery tour - thanks Julie!
• Darin surfed for the first time
• We got upgraded to business class for the trip home (for some unknown but very welcome reason)!!!

Our first glimpse of the Whitsundays from the car

I already miss my family, my friends, the warm weather, swimming, crazy Aussie animals and wearing flip flops, short skirts and my bikini top all the time. I do have some photos from our road trip so if you wanna see them, click below!!

Queensland Road Trip 05/06