My trip to the UK and books, books, books!

Hello.
...
Yes, I know...I have been a VERY bad blogger. SO here are my excuses and everything in between!

1. Work became really busy.  I mean REALLY busy...
2. I went to the UK!!!! in July.
Here are the pictures:

the British Museum

Spent the whole day here and still didn't get to see everything...

The weather was fantastic during my whole stay in London!

the feet of a buddha

After the British Museum, I went to a lovely antiquarian bookseller...

Jarndyce

and bought:

a 1871 edition of the Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

and a 1911 edition of Intentions by Oscar Wilde

the red book on the left is a recent buy.

It is a reproduction (facsimile) of the 1911 first edition of 

The Concise Oxford Dictionary

published to commemorate the 100th anniversary. 

It looks fabulous with the old books that I have.

The inside of the Tate Modern Museum

I spent at least 5 hours here!

London old and new.

Keble College in Oxford. The dining hall.

The dorm room I stayed in at Keble College.

I wonder who is staying there now.  

I left a copy of Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" on the bookshelf.

I had so  much fun in the UK. 

It was only a few weeks later that the riots in London started and that made me very sad...

3. In August I went to Okinawa:

and saw people dancing in the streets.

Visited Shuri Castle on my day off and found 

an interesting looking spigot!

4. At the end of August I had a few days of vacation and visited Nagasaki.  Found a very interesting structure:

that turned out to be a very long slide!

...

5. I also went to two other Prefectures in Japan (sorry no pictures) and of course Tokyo again...all for work...

But a few things arrived in the mail that reminded me of the blogging world...

first it was :

the author Lisa's bloodspot blog is here:

http://papertigertail.blogspot.com/

Finally going to start reading this now!

Which reminded me I have to write a blog on this wonderful series

but I might just wait till her new book arrives!

In the meantime check out the author's blog here:

http://cristyburne.wordpress.com/

And then IT came...

If you are a longtime blogger fan then she needs no introduction...

Tess the author of the Life at Willow Manor blog has published her first booklet of poems.

I said I would buy it if she published it and I have.  It arrived safely here in Japan just a few weeks ago.  I used to love poems but drifted away not being able to find anything new that resonated...but Patina (as is the Willow Manor blog) is filled with poems that are lovely to read out loud and lovely to read silently just like a short story.

I looked up Patina in my brand new First Edition Concise Oxford Dictionary and it says,

"Patina: Incrustation, usu. green, on surface of old bronze, esteemed as ornament. "

Hello again.  I think I am back at blogging!

Magic.

Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki

I can't believe I have never posted about Okonomiyaki.  Some call it the Japanese style pizza but I think it is more like a layered crepe. A crepe with diced cabbage and any other vegetable you like with meat, prawn or squid in between.  I like mine with cheese.  

The finishing touches are sauce and mayonnaise with bonita flakes and "aonori" green seaweed flakes are sprinkled on top.  The one in the above picture is a "negi yaki" so there are tons of sliced green onions on them!

http://www.justhungry.com/okonomiyaki-osaka-style shows how to make it "Osaka" style and there is even a dot com website for okonomiyaki! here: http://okonomiyakiworld.com/

I actually prefer the Hiroshima style okonomiyaki because you place the cabbage ON the batter (first layer of crepe) instead of mixing it WITH the batter which I think makes the cabbage less tasty.

I digress...since I am not trying to write about the recipes which you can find at the above links...I actually want to talk about MAGIC.

The magical wonders of the...

watch it in action:

It can squirt out five lines of mayonnaise or ketchup or whatever you like because...

there are holes.

So simple magic is.

Now, for another kind of magic.

I just got back from a friend's fantastic charity concert.  There were 9 different bands that came together to raise money for the people effected by the earthquakes and tsunamis in north eastern Japan.  

Magic is for those who "do".  That is what my friend K has taught me.  I think what she did was magic  because she brought people together for a purpose. Out of nothing she created a night of giving!

Here is another band that is creating magic!

Monkey Magik

They are volunteering and raising spirits and will have a charity concert in the summer here in Osaka.

Thank you so much for all of  your prayers and kind thoughts...to me all of this is magic too and I am so very grateful!