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17 Mar 10
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Crab crab crab Taking pictures with the huge Dotonbori crab (for Eyes for Lies) made us hungry for some crab. So lunch today consisted of expensive but really delicious crab sushi.It came with a cute soy sauce container in the shape of a crab, which I hope to use as... |
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16 Mar 10
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Dutch cuisine in Osaka Eating Dutch food in Japan is still really fun for me. And it tasted really good! We had bitterballen, pannenkoeken and Dutch fries. And we were so full afterwards!We had two different kinds of pannenkoeken, a bacon-cheese-onion (like last time) and an... |
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16 Mar 10
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eleventh monkey on other blogs Well, I know I love the creatures I make and like to show them off here on my blog. And sometimes other people show off my creatures on their blog too! I found the love skulls on Super Cute Kawaii and Hannah the Horse on Cutable. And... |
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16 Mar 10
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Potatoes on White Day Remember when I cooked Yasu Mexican food for Valentine’s Day? Well, today Yasu cooked me German potatoes in honor of White Day! Isn't he the sweetest?!White Day is a Japanese invention. It is the day men give gifts to the women who gave them chocolates ... |
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16 Mar 10
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Eyes for Lies photo-shoot One of my favorite blogs on the internet is Eyes for Lies, I've been reading it for years. It is written by a real-life truth wizard and she’s a natural at identifying clues to deception. She often evaluates suspects of real crimes and it is fascinati... |
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11 Mar 10
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I do like sake Before today I’d only had sake once, I bought a cheap cup of sake at a konbini in Yokohama and it tasted like rotten rice. And I was convinced I didn’t like sake. Still a visit to a sake brewery is always interesting, so today Yasu and I visited... |
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10 Mar 10
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Back in school My online class has started and I’m working hard to be a good student. Of course, I needed a place to keep all my hard work safe, so I made a binder. The cover is decorated with hand-cut felt letters, buttons and of course a little monkey. I al... |
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04 Mar 10
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Mrs. Kindness Way before I moved to Japan, Yasu worked part-time at a small company in Kobe. Next door was an insurance office where a very friendly older lady worked. He always referred to her as Mrs. Kindness and always talked very fondly of her. Today I finally met... |
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03 Mar 10
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Colorful macaroons Ever heard of macaroons? Well, I know (and absolutely love) coconut macaroons, but those colorful things they call macaroons in Japan were new to me. Apparently, they’re French macaroons, or macarons, and they’re immensely popular here. Having been ... |
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02 Mar 10
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Cows Ever since I made a cow as a present for my mother’s birthday, I’ve wanted to make a few for my shop. Life is busy, and finally 6 months after I finished my first grazing friend, I’m adding two proud cows to my Etsy shop. Betty the Cow loves cooki... |
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23 Feb 10
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Cartoon teachers The online class I signed up for will start next week, and I'm super excited! And I just had to share the cartoon one of our teachers made of herself and her fellow teachers. Aren't they cute?!I'm already so busy without doing homework for this upcoming... |
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21 Feb 10
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Sugar rush migraine Chewlry featured one of my giraffes in an Etsy treasury. I really love all the colors! Etsy treasuries expire pretty quickly so I made a screenshot of the treasury:I especially like the POW Charm Necklace and the Medium Multicolor earrings. They make me... |
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19 Feb 10
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1000 days in Japan One thousand days ago today, I arrived in Japan. May 26th, 2007 in the late afternoon my plane landed at Chubu Airport near Nagoya, and it was the start of my Japanese adventure. It has been and continues to be a life-changing experience. Wow, I can't... |
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17 Feb 10
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Classroom make-over Last week we had Thursday off due to some national holiday, and some construction workers saw that as an opportunity to spruce our school up a bit. Our classrooms weren’t that inspiring with their dirty walls, loose and filthy brown carpet... |
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16 Feb 10
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Valentine's Day with homemade guacamole I never cook. My kitchen is smaller than my fridge, cooking in it is way too time-consuming, it is also more expensive than eating out in Japan and I’m not really good at it. I’ve tried it over and over, and I definitely plan to take it up again wh... |
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11 Feb 10
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Birds I finally added two birds, that I made a while ago, to my shop. They’re called Albert the Albino and George and about 10 cm (4 inches) tall.Albert loves singing and white chocolate. George loves musicals and apple tea. And they’re both looking for... |
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11 Feb 10
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Our heart on top of the Sky Building Remember we had a pink heart lock engraved December 21st? Well we wanted to hang it on top of the Umeda Sky Building, with all the other heart locks on lover’s deck, but that are is only open at night. And that day we were flying to Guam in the evening ... |
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11 Feb 10
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Aaah, Japanese food! Guam was awesome! We had the best time there, and we ate a lot of American food which we enjoyed. But now that we’re back we’ve realized how much we’ve missed Japanese food!! Last night we had the most gorgeous meal at an izakaya (we were to bus... |
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11 Feb 10
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Too much medication Our last couple of days on Guam I started to get sick, not sure what caused it, maybe it was all the freezing restaurants and the heat outside? I was on vacation and I wasn’t going to give in to sickness. So I bought a bunch of painkillers and some co... |
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11 Feb 10
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A hard day's work All day today, I’ve been working on two new designs, one of a little cat and one of a little monkey head. I turned both of them into brooches. They’re so small (they fit in the palm of my hand) that it’s hard to believe it took me a whole day, ... |
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11 Feb 10
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Kumiko the Bear I made another gift for a friend! It seems like I’m only sewing presents these days, yet I can’t stop doing it because it’s so much fun to make people happy with some handmade goodness! This time I made a bear with different colors in the front t... |
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11 Feb 10
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Yasu's choice Yasu likes a lot of food that I don’t like much so he never really gets to eat that when we’re together. But my taste has changed since I first came to Japan and I almost liked nothing, so this weekend I let Yasu choose what we were going to eat... |
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11 Feb 10
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Starbucks tumblers Just before Christmas Yasu and I were given these two Osaka Starbucks tumblers and a prepaid Starbucks card! We love, love, love Starbucks! And after we got back from Guam (where they don’t have Starbucks) all we wanted to do was go to Starbucks and t... |
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11 Feb 10
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Thirsty anyone? Drinks in Japan are weird! I thought that the red bull coke drink Yasu in Guam was strange and disgusting, but here in Japan they create even more insane combinations. Like coke and beer, appropriately named Cola Shock. Or even worse (or so I imagine,... |
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10 Feb 10
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Keiko and Tomomi the winking love birds Giving presents is fun. Giving presents that I made myself is even more fun! During the last days of my winter vacation back in Japan I was sewing a couple of winking love birds for two very special ladies.I’m happy to report that both Keiko and Tomo... |
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10 Feb 10
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ABC craft store Look what I spent about 7000 yen on today:A coworker told me about this huge craft store in Tennoji and she really thought I should check it out. And I agreed with her! Who wouldn’t want to spend a couple of hours wandering around the hundreds of aisl... |
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10 Feb 10
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Tasty souvenirs The boyfriend goes to Toyota (the city and the car factory) for a reunion and is so sweet to bring me back some souvenirs. Strawberries covered in white chocolate and some very special pudding. Take a closer look the breasts made our of pudding isn’t t... |
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10 Feb 10
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Indie Business 2.0 I’ve just signed up for this:Indie Business 2.0 is a 6 week online class for people wanting to build an online or local creative business. It focuses on starting, surviving and succeeding in small business and it covers everything in between. The class ... |
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10 Feb 10
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A package from the eleventh monkey So I’ve just used my new stamps for the first time on a package today! And I’ve started packaging my creatures and ornaments a little differently. Not just in plastic but with a little eleventh monkey banner on top.I think it all looks really cool... |
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10 Feb 10
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A monkey for a generous student Last month, one of my students surprised me with a bag full of felt and embroidery floss! Isn’t that sweet and awesome of her?! So I made her a little present to thank her for her gift, a monkey brooch.Unfortunately, she hasn’t been to class ever s... |
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09 Feb 10
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Blogged somewhere in between... September 26 - Not teaching English!October 24 - Shoko the DogJanuary 23 - Eri the Ape |
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09 Feb 10
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Eri the Ape Another farewell party tonight, this time at Ninnikuya. A restaurant that puts a lot of garlic (ninniku in Japanese) in all of their dishes! Delicious, but smelly. We were saying goodbye to Eri this time, and I made her this cool neon-black ape, to... |
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09 Feb 10
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Teaching stitches again! I wish my desk always looked like in the left picture when I am preparing for classes, and that students look like in the right picture when I’m teaching them.That’s right, this week I get to teach another sewing class! And this one is Valentine-the... |
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06 Feb 10
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Bye bye Guam So we checked out of our comfortable hotel this morning and dragged a huge amount of luggage around the island the rest of today. Luckily we still had our comfortable rental car to store everything in so that was no problem (just hope all the chocolates... |
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05 Feb 10
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Freeze! Or we'll shoot... On our last day here we thought we’d rob a convenience store:Just kidding of course, as much as we’d love to live in the States, we do not want to reside in some American prison. No no, we just went to a shooting gallery. The outside looked pr... |
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04 Feb 10
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Thanks Gina! When I got home last night I found a package from my swap partner in the States! She sent me a beautiful card and embroidered sushi embellishment (which happened to be one of my favorite stamps) and of course the awesome stamps and a stamp pad. I... |
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04 Feb 10
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Little ones This weekend I worked on a couple of custom orders. Two little black cats as cellphone straps instead of brooches, and a little dog brooch.They’re very small, just about 7 cm (2.75 inches) so they fit right in your hand. I never really thought abo... |
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30 Jan 10
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Tommy the Butterfly I really liked the butterfly I made for the craft swap, so I also made one for my Etsy store. This one is a boy and he’s quite dainty. His name is Tommy and he loves dinner parties and magic shows.He’s the eleventh monkey’s 53rd creature and about 1... |
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29 Jan 10
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Happy 2010! We have many resolutions and plans for 2010. We’re already working hard to make our dreams come true in this new year. Well, not exactly right now because we’re still on tropical Guam. But we will continue working on our wild plans when we get bac... |
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27 Jan 10
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New Year's Eve Wow, the people here at the Outrigger really know how to party. Yasu and I on the other hand are not that good at it, or maybe we were too sober and sick. I’ve caught a major cold (those damn freezing restaurants) and during the last couple of days I... |
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27 Jan 10
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Old Year's Day Sadly, today was our last day on the beach. It was our first time on this stretch of beach near the Holiday Inn, because our regular hangout, Ypao beach, was closed to set up for tonight’s firework show. This beach was a bit more crowded, the lifegua... |
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27 Jan 10
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Look at this! So I just checked my craft swap partner’s blog and saw this:Wow!!! Awesome stamps which I know I’m going to use a whole lot! I can’t believe how well-made they are! That monkey stamp is just insane, so good! And yes I know that ‘eleventh’ is m... |
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27 Jan 10
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Just another day Another day on the beach, but no pictures were taken. All we did was swim, snorkel, lie on the beach, nap, read and be jealous of all the local people with barbecues. All we had were our two-day old leftovers from lunch at Denny’s, which were disgusti... |
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26 Jan 10
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Goggles and snorkels We were so happy this morning to discover that we were going to have another blissful day on the beach because the sun was back! The beaches here are really beautiful but also very peaceful, there are hardly any other people.Even though the beach isn... |
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26 Jan 10
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Rainy again We woke up this morning mentally ready to spend another day on a beautiful white beach and chasing fish in a beautiful blue ocean, just to discover the rain had returned to our vacation paradise... So we went shopping again, and discovered some... |
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25 Jan 10
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Craft swap Katie from Skunkboy Creatures organized a craft swap this month. I had no idea what it really was, but it sounded like fun and I wanted in! I emailed Katie and she partnered me up with Gina from the States. I was so excited that I already started working... |
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21 Jan 10
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Relaxing Guam Another day on the beach. Ah, how relaxing can life be. I’m getting better at the snorkeling thing, as in the fish don’t scaring me less and less. Except those blue pointy knife-looking fish that like to surround you with all their friends. And Yas... |
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20 Jan 10
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Beach and steak In my country it’s still Christmas, we officially celebrate 2nd Christmas Day, but here in Guam Christmas is over. But the sunny weather isn’t! We spent the whole day on the beach. Swimming, snorkeling (and following colorful fish around), sunbathing ... |
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20 Jan 10
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Jingle bells We spent our first day on Ypao beach, one of Guam’s beautiful beaches! Surprisingly, quite a large number of people spent Christmas Day on the beach here, there were lots of barbecue parties and even live music. A very interesting Christmas traditio... |
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20 Jan 10
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Sunny Christmas Santa brought us sunshine for Christmas! Finally, it really feels like we’re on a tropical island. It’s hot and humid and we need sunglasses to see things! We’re definitely going swimming today but first we wanted to visit Two Lover’s Point. A pl... |
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