Tag Archives: aquarium

Sep17

Finally, a Top for My Linen Pajamas!

Posted on by
Standard

It feels so good to be able to say that!!  I finally got the top made for my pajama design. I now have one set of Small/Medium size pajamas (^^)v.  They are not as see through as I thought- only a little bit.  The next order of business is to decide on a design and create some applique bits, and figure out the best way to attach them.  This portion- the embellishing- will be done completely by hand. That might take awhile. See, up until now, I was taking a little long to get by pajama design out. Now I have it and even though I need to create a Medium/Large pattern, that shouldn’t take nearly as long as me figuring out the design itself. Once I have my patterns ready to go, it’s just a matter of getting a creative rhythm going to assemble. According to my scientific calculations, I should be able to turn out 2 sets of pajamas a week. (Um, maybe I can tout exclusivity and limited quantities- hey, works for Hermes!)

In other news, I spent the last evening on a mini-vacation with Yo. We drove through the countryside in Chiba, and spent the afternoon at Kamogawa Seaworld Aquarium on the Pacific seaside. The aquariums were fabulous- We had the privilege of seeing (and not touching although there was no glass or anything stopping our hands) a dozen baby sea turtles swimming around in a little terrarium set up. There was also a big, ugly, hydrodynamically unlikely fish (“manbo” in Japaneses, “Sunfish” in English) bumping around a rather dull and otherwise empty small tank. We enjoyed a dolphin show and an orca show.  Actually its hard for me to watch these shows the last couple of times I’ve been to an aquarium: I nearly come to tears, because the tanks are so small and made to seem even smaller by the back drop of Pacific Ocean, not even 30 meters away! This is compounded by the YouTube videos I have seen of the way dolphins are captured in the Japanese town of Taiji. Its rather horrifying. Some are sold to aquariums like the ones I have visited, but most are “culled” (killed to keep them from competing with fisherman for fish)- either way, once they are corralled in The Cove, they are done with the sea.

Anyway, after the drizzly afternoon in Kamogawa, we backtracked to Kisarazu on the Tokyo Bay side of Chiba where our ryokan (boutique hotel) was. We found it on the internet, it had some cool looking rooms with private hot spring tubs (not hot tubs) and a great 10 course dinner package. Each course was quite small but nevertheless I thought I would explode by the time we finished. We enjoyed that in a private room as well. Many ryokans serve dinners in the rooms, but this one did not and thats just as well- the table in our room was low to the floor in the traditional Japanese style, and the dining room had fine old high backed chairs at a proper western table. I could never eat so much on the floor.  We enjoyed some of the shared access baths on the roof, but mostly stayed in our suite where a shower room doubled as a window to the patio which held a garden table and chairs next to the spring tub. We soaked in that as it continued to drizzle rain, the garden lit up very nicely.  The whole room was an expert combination of East and West, very Meiji (Japanese Victorian) style.  Just the right mix of old and new too! And the toilet set had automatic everything- lid up when you entered the closet, down when you left, flush, heated seat, bidet with a dryer…  Very wow.  This hotel even had free DVD borrowing- very thematic here! All they had were black and white Hollywood classics! We watched Treasure Island and Roman Holiday.  When we entered the room it has wonderful relaxing classical music already going.  Anyway.  That represents our last vacation until next summer when we hope to go to Hokkaido to see Yo’s family.