Happy Birthday to Me
Funny, whenever I say that, I'm always thinking of the classic 80s teen horror flick. It was one of my first.
I would have blogged about this yesterday, but I didn't get out of bed til 1pm.
My birthday might have been spent at home taking care of a sick child, but Jeff was nice enough to get sick, too, so I got to spend my day at the Tokyo National Art Museum in Ueno. (thanks to Jeff or me 2GB memory card for my camera) It's more than one museum; it's a whole complex. I was there all day, but I still didn't see it all. There were lots of classic scroll paintings, ukiyo-e, National treasures from the 7th century, some archaeological stuff, swords, calligraphy, Ainu relics (the indigenous people of N. Japan), etc., plus some special exhibits on ancient Chinese art and New Zealand Maori pieces (which sadly, did not allow photos). The Chinese stuff was especially interesting. There were pieces that were from 4000-2000 BC! The Chinese civilization is truly ancient. It was cool to see some pieces that I remembered learning about in my Far Eastern Art class in college.
Here are some highlights*
*In the interest of not clogging the blog with a ton of pictures, I have decided to post larger collections of photos on Flickr. You can see the rest, and you should, here. They may not all be the best pictures, but I had to take them all without a flash.
After that, I went to my first Japanese class of the new term. It was nice to get back into it. It has already inspired me to start studying in earnest again, especially after I realized that I had forgotten a lot of my hiragana and all the handouts were no longer in romaji (roman letters).
I was to meet Helen in Kawasaki after, but since she didn't feel like wandering around Kawasaki when she didn't feel 100% well, it was moved to, you guessed it, the Blue Corn. When I arrived, she, Michael & Shingo were waiting for me.
Helen had me don the Birthday Princess accoutrements she had for me, in the form of a feather boa and tiara. M&S gave me a lovely giant bouquet. There was a slice of cake with ice cream, a sparkler, and my name written in chocolate on the plate (thanks, Ma-chan). Also 2 bottles of champagne courtesy of Helen. Takeshi brought me a bucket to drink mine out of, and he and Ma-chan joined us in one of the many toasts.
Michael had a small nap at some point, and Shingo & I discussed some new songs we could perform. We discovered that we had some of the same songs in mind! I was planning on not staying out that late, but then Macky and Tomoi showed up around 1am with party-poppers, just after Takeshi had put The Beautiful Mothers on.
Macky had flowers for me, specially picked because they were dark red and spiky. Appropriate.
Tomoi gave me, the sweet man who has no reason to be so nice, a neat candle lantern and some shoyu and oil. Next time I looked at a clock, it was almost 4am. There are a few more pics here.
Thanks everybody for a great birthday, especially Helen, and thanks to all of you back home who left me birthday wishes on my MySpace page. It might've been a homesickness-inducing affair, but instead, it was fabulous.
I would have blogged about this yesterday, but I didn't get out of bed til 1pm.
My birthday might have been spent at home taking care of a sick child, but Jeff was nice enough to get sick, too, so I got to spend my day at the Tokyo National Art Museum in Ueno. (thanks to Jeff or me 2GB memory card for my camera) It's more than one museum; it's a whole complex. I was there all day, but I still didn't see it all. There were lots of classic scroll paintings, ukiyo-e, National treasures from the 7th century, some archaeological stuff, swords, calligraphy, Ainu relics (the indigenous people of N. Japan), etc., plus some special exhibits on ancient Chinese art and New Zealand Maori pieces (which sadly, did not allow photos). The Chinese stuff was especially interesting. There were pieces that were from 4000-2000 BC! The Chinese civilization is truly ancient. It was cool to see some pieces that I remembered learning about in my Far Eastern Art class in college.
Here are some highlights*
*In the interest of not clogging the blog with a ton of pictures, I have decided to post larger collections of photos on Flickr. You can see the rest, and you should, here. They may not all be the best pictures, but I had to take them all without a flash.
After that, I went to my first Japanese class of the new term. It was nice to get back into it. It has already inspired me to start studying in earnest again, especially after I realized that I had forgotten a lot of my hiragana and all the handouts were no longer in romaji (roman letters).
I was to meet Helen in Kawasaki after, but since she didn't feel like wandering around Kawasaki when she didn't feel 100% well, it was moved to, you guessed it, the Blue Corn. When I arrived, she, Michael & Shingo were waiting for me.
Helen had me don the Birthday Princess accoutrements she had for me, in the form of a feather boa and tiara. M&S gave me a lovely giant bouquet. There was a slice of cake with ice cream, a sparkler, and my name written in chocolate on the plate (thanks, Ma-chan). Also 2 bottles of champagne courtesy of Helen. Takeshi brought me a bucket to drink mine out of, and he and Ma-chan joined us in one of the many toasts.
Michael had a small nap at some point, and Shingo & I discussed some new songs we could perform. We discovered that we had some of the same songs in mind! I was planning on not staying out that late, but then Macky and Tomoi showed up around 1am with party-poppers, just after Takeshi had put The Beautiful Mothers on.
Macky had flowers for me, specially picked because they were dark red and spiky. Appropriate.
Tomoi gave me, the sweet man who has no reason to be so nice, a neat candle lantern and some shoyu and oil. Next time I looked at a clock, it was almost 4am. There are a few more pics here.
Thanks everybody for a great birthday, especially Helen, and thanks to all of you back home who left me birthday wishes on my MySpace page. It might've been a homesickness-inducing affair, but instead, it was fabulous.
Labels: birthday national museum
posted by Sandi at 8:03 AM
2 Comments:
so happy that it turned out to be a great night...
was worried about it turning into a drab little affair - but it had feathers, sparkles, bubbles, smiles & stupid amounts of alcohol.
woohoo!
so glad we both had good birthdays!
Happy belated, lovely! We love and miss you. It's tough being Seattle's biggest cynic/most attractive person since you've gone. Big (little) shoes to fill.
Kiss the boys for me. Especially Jeff, but make sure he brushes his teeth first.
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