Ikebana~Japanese Flower Arranging with Yoko Sensei: April 2

I am so excited today to meet Yoko~san for my first lesson in Ikebana.  Yoko san is a certified sensei for teaching this wonderful art called Ikebana.
Teresa and I are on our way to pick up Valarie and Kensho.  The ladies told me Yoko san lives in a place they all call Beverly Hills of Japan.  When we arrived at her house I now know why they call it this. :-)  The surroundings the homes are located in is in a very well kept neighborhood with all the houses about equal in comparison.

Mioko was already there for Ikebana class and greeted us with her usual beautiful smile.  When we walked in and took off our shoes I was astonished over the beautiful hand painting she has done on many things.

I am admiring her beautiful house looking at all of her hand-painted items.  I am really liking the wine rack she made with lighting behind the bottles.  She used LED lights so they don't get hot and destroy the bottled wine.    I really, really, want to do this when I get home.

Yoko~ Ikebana sensei is starting to give us instructions on how many flowers we get of each kind and how to start our Ikebana.  Ikebana focuses on a triangular formation, with three predominate flowers symbolizing heaven, earth, and humankind.  We are all listening carefully to her as we want to follow her instructions. We were given choices of using baskets or boxes for our Ikebana.  We all chose the baskets.

 Together we all go out on the deck where the baskets are sitting waiting on us to fill them with beautiful flowers.  We are all so proud of our Ikebana's as I watched everyone work to place their flowers just right everyone was so engrossed in what they were doing.  Not much talking if any and you could tell they were thinking hard on where to put the next flower they had in their hand.

 Yoko san if giving my Ikebana a little help, I want it to look beautiful as I am giving to my host family Kozue and Susumu. :-)

 In Japan, their culture tries not to throw anything away even the stems we cut off to shorten our flowers.  She used a part of a stem and put on the inside of a leaf or support. What a creative idea.

Well, we have cleaned up our area and are proudly displaying our beautiful Ikebana's.

Gift for my host family looks great.  Forgot to mention if you look close you will notice that I have an Easter egg in my Ikebana. :-)

 We are now taking our Ikebana's inside and Yoko san has invited us all to stay for coffee and cake.  All of our Ikebana's look so beautiful, a big thank you to Yoko san for having us in her home to teach us how to make this great Japanese tradition.  The smell of flowers is all through the house now wow loving it.

Coffee and this wonderful cake-like treat filled with vanilla pudding and whipped cream.  I have never tasted anything as good as this.  It's not too sweet or rich tasting.  YUMMO We each got to go to the china cabinet and pick out a cup and saucer to use for our coffee.  What a talented person Yoko sun is her art on everything is just so well done.

 We sat for a while and talked and then decided where we were going to eat lunch.  We ended up at a Chinese restaurant.  The place looked very new and the food was excellent.

How to do a Japanese Flower Arrangement


Simple Ikebana Design

1.  Place a floral frog (a spiked holder for cut flowers) in a shallow bowl, tray or pot, near one edge of the container. Use a bowl with very simple lines, preferably one with no designs or ornamentation. Fill the bowl halfway with water.

2.  Place your longest branch or flowers near the top center of the floral frog, leaning slightly to the left side. This flower represents heaven. Take time to position the flower in a pleasing, graceful line.


Place the medium-length branch or flowers toward the bottom left of the floral frog. Lean the flower towards the left, but at a steeper angle than the first flower. This flower represents the earth. Step back to examine your arrangement from different angles, and adjust to please your eye.

4.  Place the shortest branch or flower on the bottom right side of the floral frog. Lean it slightly away from the longest branch. This represents humankind. Remember that in ikebana, empty space is as important as the floral elements.

5.  Fill the arrangement in with additional short flowers or greenery until the floral frog is completely covered.

Kozue Visit - Lunch at Bell Mall

I spent the morning shopping with Teresa and Valarie and Kensho.  Then we met Kozue for lunch; she is my host family member.  I picked this place to eat at the mall that was called baguette. We waited in line to be seated.  Baguette is famous for serving many varieties of bread as appetizers before you eat.  Valarie, Teresa and I met Kozue for lunch at Bell Mall in front of the bells. 

 I so enjoyed this lunch, I ordered gratin potatoes for lunch and it was very good.  Last time I was here I hated the cheese on anything as it never tasted like cheese. It looked melted but it was hard and just not the way its made in Ohio.  Now the cheese is great and melted along with a great taste.  I was dropped off first and told Teresa and Valarie I will see them Sunday and Monday.  The sunset tonight was gorgeous.

I stayed upstairs until I heard Susumo talking out loud.  At first, I thought he was playing with their cats but come to find out it was their grandson Louie.  I enjoyed playing with him.  Susumu made me grapefruit shahi which turned out to be very tasty.    Susumu placed Louie in front of their piano and Louie enjoyed trying out his playing ability on the piano.

Susumu played along with him at times.  It was nice to watch the two of them together. 

 Susumu put some pumpkin seeds he had got from China in a skillet and heated them up.  I did enjoy eating them with him.

Tochigi City ~Shopping March 27, 2012

Picking up Valarie and Kencho this morning to take a road trip with us to Tochigi City to do some shopping.  Again they are waiting outside for our arrival.  When they get in the car we all say our good mornings and start off chatting about our day.  Teresa wants to go to some of her favorite places to shop and mine too.

 As I catch up with the rest of my friends Kencho stops me and reads this sign to me.  No dogs allowed to poop in the sidewalk. Now only in Japan would I expect to see a sign like this. LOL

 Teresa directed us to her favorite shop where we were greeted with free cups of freshly made cups of coffee for each of us.  Poor Valarie didn't get to enjoy shopping here as she was fighting her allergies.  Her eyes were swollen and she had the sniffles, along with feeling sick.

Kencho is hungry and so are the rest of us.  Teresa has a card for a new place to eat in Tochigi City called Warabi. Ric and Teresa had eaten there and liked it.   So we are on our way to find this restaurant.

After walking to where we thought the place should be and not finding it we stopped two schoolgirls and showed them the card.  They seemed to know where the place was and walked us all the way to the new place.  Only in Japan would someone go totally out of their way to take time out of their schedule to make sure we all got there.  Thanks to those wonderful girls for being so kind.

I love the designs of animals used to hold up barriers.

We are in the new place to eat and we all took our shoes off and decided to eat in the private rooms that have Japanese seating. We each take our place at the table and the waiter comes and gets our drink orders and explains what's on the menu because it is all written in Japanese. 

Our lunch was delicious.  First, we were served steamed vegetables and our drink orders. I had ordered an iced coffee and liked the tin glasses that the coffee was served in.

Basil Risotto 

Pumpkin Risotto 

Apple pie and vanilla icecream 

When we were done eating and paid for our food the owner comes out and gives us each a big bag of green olives that are soaking in olive oil.  He told us to let them soak for at least 3 hours. One of the waitresses remembered Teresa from an earlier visit.  She walked us outside and took our picture and then we added her to the photo.  This was absolutely a delicious place to eat.

We are on our way to do some more shopping in Tochigi City.  I still have several things on my list to buy for special people.

I see a shop that sells the samurai boys' day dolls.  Once inside the shop, my mouth fell to the floor.  Wow, lots of very nice boys day samurai dolls to look at.  Before I came to Japan for vacation I was wanting to buy boy and girl dolls.  Boy's Day is May 5th so there are stores displaying boys dolls, I think girls' day dolls are going to be difficult to find. Japanese display samurai armor inside the house to hope that the child will grow up strong like a samurai !!

   

I finally find one I can afford and ask owner to purchase.  He told me it was already sold.  I was very disappointed. He then showed me another doll that looked just like the one I wanted but was bigger.  He told me he would sell to me for almost same price as smaller one.  I told him yes I would buy it for that price.  :-)  He packaged the doll up with very protective material to keep it from breaking during shipment.  Here is a picture of the boy doll I got.

 As we were getting ready to leave store the owner stops us and tells Kencho he can go pick out a carp flag fish that was in a basket.  Kencho ended up picking the bright orange one which I liked.

  We took the big boxed up samurai doll to the car and started off down the street to another one of our favorite shops. This shop sells handmade baskets and brooms.  I bought a large handmade basket with nice handles for $1800 yen, wow what a great bargain.
I used to basket to carry the rest of the purchases I made that day. 


Only in Japan can you find a drink machine on every corner even in the country.


We are looking for a coffee house to sit down and relax but so far we are not having good luck.  We did find an interesting shop that sold antique furniture.  Boy, there were several items I looked at that I just loved.

We have not found a good coffee house so when we finished looking in the antique furniture store we decided on our way home we would stop at Lawson's and get something to drink. I liked this so I am sharing with my blog followers.

Later that evening when Teresa dropped me off at Kazue's house I rested then it was time for dinner.  Ate and I visited with my host family.  Later Shusumo brought home a bottle of Japanese wine and together we drank the bottle and talked in English.  What a perfect ending to a perfect day.