Salmagundi Club website http://www.salmagundi.org

The event, “Pioneer Women: First Ladies of Salmagundi Club” is 6 to 8pm at the Salmagundi Art Club, located at 47 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Please help Samizu, who is frail and very poor, and lives in Maine USA, raise $1,000 US to pay for travel for her and two paintings, to receive this honor, by visiting Samizu’s “kickstarter” fundraising page. Check out this link to Samizu Matsuki’s kickstarter page.

Samizu Matsuki’s gold medal winning triumph was for returning techniques of Western Classical Realist artistry, refined through generations of Japanese art schools, back to the West. This was in defiance of then-prevailing American fixation on abstract expressionism. Her work electrified enormous crowds who came to her exhibited works.

Matsuki’s meteoric flash was short lived. Failing health at end of the 1970s cut short her career, despite many offers of commissions and exhibitions. Yet during her brief intense career Samizu was like an artistic accupuncture needle, reopening long closed channels of creativity, playing a subtle yet critical role in re-establishing  the legitimacy of highly realistic oil painting in the 1970s American art scene.

Matsuki’s unique ‘magical realism’ style was also influenced by Setsuko Migishi at Joshibi University in Tokyo. Samizu is a 1958 graduate of Joshibi, then called Womens College of Fine Arts.

You can find many companies online that offer stag party planning for your group in other countries. Searching for a Japanese destination however, may be a little more difficult than you had bargained for. With Japanese culture being so different than western culture, the stag party hasn’t yet been made into a boxed event. However this can work in your favor! It will require a little more digging, but the advantage of doing it this way ensures that your guests have a one of a kind experience that is completely original!

Tokyo is a great place to either start your holiday, or as the city to base it in. One of Japans largest and oldest cities, you’ll find everything you need to make this stag do unforgettable. Consider having a karaoke party one evening. Karaoke is a huge smash in Japan, and there are many venues that host parties. You have two options when looking for a place to hold your karaoke night bash in Tokyo. The first is a large bar where everyone is free to participate. If you only have a few guests this might be a good option. You won’t need to rent the room, so you’ll be able to save some money here. The downside to this is that you’ll also be sharing the karaoke stand with other tourists and locals. This could be part of the charm for your group though!

Your other option with a karaoke night is to visit what is called a “karaoke box”. These are bars that have many smaller rooms, and are available to rent. Individual parties have the option to rent one of these small karaoke rooms, and sing and party to your heart’s content! There will be other parties renting the other rooms, so there is still the ability to mingle with the local crowd while still keeping your guests entertained and active. Since it will only be your party in your room, there is no waiting for others to finish before your group can begin their fun!

Another must do while in Tokyo is seeing a Sumo match. This centuries old tradition in Japan will make a highly memorable night for your stag do, and allows you and your guests to witness something unique to Japanese culture. If you want your trip to focus on Japanese traditions, then you don’t want to miss this! Remember that in Japan, Sumo is highly respected as are the wrestlers. They are treated like royalty, and you should treat this event as the same! It wouldn’t be a bad idea to learn basic politeness and customs when planning your trip, and be sure to share these customs with your guests.

In the mornings and early afternoons you’ll definitely want to treat your stag party guests to the exotic marketplaces you’ll find throughout the city. Don’t forget all the fine dining to be had while in Tokyo as well! Japanese chefs are famed throughout the world for their inspired and delicious creations, and no stag do would be complete without it!

Whatever events you decide to choose, a stag do in Japan is sure to be a hit! Plan a party that will be remembered as the greatest holiday ever and visit exotic Japan for your festivities!

Mio Matsumura Loves Kokeshi Dolls

Check out this site if you want to know more about what a Kokeshi Doll is. Here’s a quick summary though – There are two main styles of Kokeshi dolls. One is the traditional style, the other is the creative style where the artist can show more expression in his creation.

This one is huge in Japan!

The traditional Japanese kokeshi dolls are often linked to an onsen within the Tohoku region of Japan. They are given the following types of names which are spot on or closely related to the onsen name: Tsuchiyu, Yajiro, Togatta, Naruko, Sakunami, Zao Takayu, Hijiori, Kijiyama, Nambu, and Tsugaru.

Kokeshi Doll Collection

Here’s some cool rice paddy art. Way better than crop circles!

Some advice on studying Japanese. In the end, it’s all about what works best for you.

JPop group Perfume appeared live the other day, but what’s cool is they have a new single coming out in August.

The ANA Gundum plane looks a little boring. Maybe they’ll make a flashier design in the future.

Narita Sky is here! Get from Narita airport to Tokyo in 36 minutes (or your pizza is free!)

Make a hotel reservation in Japanese with this handy step by step guide.

I just bought a Sony DSC-T70. Mainly because it’s small, it’s fast, it has internal zoom, and I’m satisfied with the image quality. The menu is pretty slick. There are nice icons, lots of Katakana, and I also downloaded the English manual form Sony’s website. All it took to get used to it was going through the settings, reading the Katakana, and memorizing a little of the manual. Now I’m golden and I’ve saved about $50. I mean… um… ¥5000…

If you’re interested in this camera:
You can download the English manual and get specs here.
You can read a review here.

And here’s a nice hands on review.

I thought I took a picture of a salon, but I can’t find it. So here’s a repost from my salon that failed post.

I studied about 2 hours every day and learned almost everything in a week. The next class was way easier to understand and I wrote about half in English, half in Hiragana and it was pretty sweet to be able to read Japanese. It’s like reading some cryptic language… and I feel cool… and now I totally sound like a foreigner by saying that. But it’s all good because now I can read things like “udon” and “karaage” and that’s a step in the right direction in my book.

The next week I focused on kya, gya, and characters like that, so it took about 2 weeks to learn everything. Am I a pro? No. I’m pretty slow when reading words and sometimes I have to think about what the character is but it’s a start! I decided to stop studying and dedicate time to work and our wedding that’s coming up. I still look at my flash cards I made every day and have read things every day so it’s still staying fresh, I’m just not studying every day. That should change on June 1st through!

The memberships I’ve found in Japan vary from 6500-10,000 Yen (about $65-100 USD) per month. The hours are 9am-9pm or similar, and I’d rather be at the gym by 7am. There are strange rules like every Thursday it’s closed, or if you pay less you can only be there 1-9pm on the weekdays, or you can have a weekend only memberhsip for 6500, and all holidays the gym is closed. Also you can only pay through a bank account, so you have to open one at the bank they use.

photo credit: takeratta

So let’s break this down… You can’t go on holidays, you can’t go on certain days (like a Thursday, or every other Monday), you can only go around 9am-9pm. What I just mentioned is 8900-10,000 yen per month. So let’s say 10,000 to be safe after taxes and bank fees. If you spend 2 hours total in a gym and go 3 times a week which comes to 24 hours per month you end up paying 416 ($4) per hour to go to the gym. What!? That’s insane. I also asked how much the employees make at one place and they said they start at 800 yen per hour. What!?

By the way, I went to all gyms within a 15 minute walk. Most were full of physically fit people. However I stopped at a place in Fukuoka called American Gym and all of the people inside were freakin’ HUGE! It was an older gym, darker with only a few windows, and felt like people were training for the Strongman competition. Check out the picture of the sign taken by e-chan.

I did some searching, I did some asking, and I visited the very helpful foreigners center in Fukuoka called The Rainbow Center. I found out that each ward has a community center with a gym, basketball court, and other things. My ward’s community center has a small gym with decent equipment. It’s open from 9-9 as well and if you go when it’s open the equipment is available and you don’t have to deal with many people. The price on this… 260 Yen for two hours. That’s what I’m talking about! If you go 3 times a week per month you’re looking at 3120 Yen. It costs an extra 30 yen to use the extremely small locker so everybody just puts their gym bag in the corner of the workout area which is cool with me. This is one of the many deals I’ve found in Japan so far.

Here’s a picture of Gold’s Gym here in Japan taken by charlton_b. It’s always interesting seeing things here that I’ve seen in America.

This is a picture of the urinals. I haven’t seen a mini urinal yet, they’re all huge and they start from the floor and go up about 1 meter or so.

This next one is the style I’m used to, the 2nd is traditional Japanese (or Asian?) style, and the 3rd and 4th are of a public toilet near the river which look pretty sweet (except the litter around it). I was going share the pictures of these two entrances because I thought they look cool, but I thought I’d snap the other ones too so people can see a difference in styles.

I wasn’t going to talk about it and I was going to fix the problem, but just two days after I noticed this, my fiancee mentioned that I’m getting skinny, and keep losing weight. She says she wants me to eat more and either get some extra baggage (aka fat) or bulk up. For now I’ll just eat more and after the wedding I’ll hit the gym. I’m 1.9m (6’2″) and 78kg (172lbs). Within a month I hope to stop tall-skinny trend and start working my way back up to 86kg (190lbs). By the way I was 86.5kg when I moved to Japan.

I can’t believe it’s in 26 days! In about 20 days some guests from America will arrive so that gives us a little less than three weeks to finish everything up. I know we can handle it and I’ll be memorizing itinerary to help everything go smoothly, but I still need to finalize my vows, I need to write a speech for the reception as well as a few other things I want to say, and memorize some lyrics of a Japanese song for one of our duets (luckily I have the easy part!). We’ve added some events to our wedding, removed some, added some new things. Then I have to figure out where to take our honeymoon in Japan.

Mai’s good friend in Tokyo is a designer and has been working on a unique wedding dress since September. I haven’t seen it of course but I hear it looks amazing so far.

How do other foreigners have their wedding in Japan? I’m not quite sure. So far I’ve seen the traditional Japanese wedding with full kimono and I’ve seen the ‘western style’ type of wedding at a chapel or restaurant with a reception dinner following. We’ll be having a western style with a touch of Steve and Mai and our closest friends and relatives will be attending. I’ll probably post some pictures next month.

I’ve seen some pictures of the trees, I heard they’re beautiful, I heard they’re romantic, I heard they’re magical, but I didn’t hear about the crazy drunken madness at night! We went to experience Hanami (flower viewing, enjoying tasty bento similar to this) at Ohori koen (means… Ohori park). I thought I was in for a romantic sakura viewing… but in fact… it was more of a fun time packed full of people, mostly drunk office workers, with some romantic moments in the quiet areas (near the temple).

The road to the park was lined up with vendors selling things from chocholate covered bananas to takoyoki (a grilled octopus dish). There were some families with kids running around having a good time and couples eating bento together, and then… there were tons of drunk people with sake, sho chu, and grills. Apparently the people under the trees brought tarps in advance and 1-2 people reserved their spot. Each cluster seemed to stay within their group of people which is good when family + drunk people are mixed.

We took some pictures but most of them ended up blurry and I took a lot of video which I haven’t taken off the camera. Here are a few of the decent pictures from that night.

If I had to sum up this experience in one sentance I’d say… it was like a tailgating party for the sakura football game. Ahh… good times, good times.