Photo overload!

Nikko, where I live, and Oku Nikko, where the lakes are, are famous for the beautiful changing leaves during this season.  However depending on the weather, some years the leaves are more beautiful than others and this year isn't considered a good year for the autumn leaves.  It has been too warm and it is the sudden icy cold that brings out the red of the fall colors.

Nevertheless, Tetsu wanted to make a trip up the mountains to see what the autumn there was like this year and so last Saturday we left John at home (no dogs allowed on the protected hiking trails) and headed to the lake area and above.

Pretty but not spectacular.

A couple of our favorite trails were closed because of damage from the typhoons and rain that hit Japan earlier this month but there are many other trails to choose from and all of them are quite easy and can be done in everyday clothing.

Even so, most of the hikers look very professional with layers of socks and waterproof wear and things hanging from their backpacks and bells attached to warn off bears.  I felt like such an amateur but tennis shoes and an everyday bag got the job done.

(As an aside, there was a very pretty Chinese lady on the trail in vibrant orange high heels and matching lipstick and wearing a flowered skirt and silk flowered hat who asked me to take her picture.  She posed in many different poses while I snapped away, all with her facing the wilds of the mountains and pointing at unseen birds...  She was obviously doing a photoshoot for her blog or instagram or Twitter whatever.  We each have our own style...  I have Tetsu to take my photo whether I want it taken or not...)

Our goal this day was Odashirogahara which is a marsh in a mountain valley.  There were lots of yellow trees (birch) but no red.

I have been to this same spot other years where the opposite hillside has quite a number of avid photographers with their huge cameras set up on tripods and waiting for the marsh to become calm and glass-like.  There weren't many people there this day.

There is the "Noblewoman" of Odashirogahara, the one large birch tree that stands alone on the edge of the marsh.

Some of the other birch trees along the marsh.

 My photographer.

He doesn't take such great pictures of me... or maybe his subject just isn't very photogenic.  I should be looking away into the distance like my trail acquaintance.

We took the long way back to the parking lot resulting in about a three hour walk this day.  Through a forest of birch trees.

 Yes, it's autumn but not really that colorful.

 Maybe we were there too early this year?

Past a lot of moss on trees fallen long ago.

I guess this part of the trail doesn't get a lot of sunlight.

Should I give up on my funny hat?  At my age it is a little odd...

We can get caught up in the the details of leaves...

....and weeds.

 There was the occasional burst of color.

On the way down the mountain we got stuck in traffic.  I guess there were more people who wanted to see the leaves than I'd thought.  Where were they all?  We didn't see that many people on the trail that WE took.  I shot this picture on the hairpin curve of the one way Iroha road going down the mountain.  At one time it had been a two-way road and I remember bus guides having to get out of the buses at each hairpin curve to blow whistles and guide bus drivers past on-coming buses...

Near the bottom of the mountain we saw some construction above the road we were stopped on.  Look at that boulder that has been secured to keep it from crushing the traffic below it.  The workers next to the orange shovel car are in precarious enough a position but check out the bulldozer on the side of the mountain above the boulder.  It was resting at an impossible angle!  These workers have to have a lot of courage to do their jobs!

Pretty soon the leaves will be gone...  The autumn went quickly.

A day out with Marlene

Last week I got together with Marlene for a lunch date as she is off to the States for a month from today and I wanted to see her one more time.  Though she will be spending a lot of time in New York this trip, she is also going to get to Detroit for a couple of days and so she took the wedding quilt I'd made for Leiya and Tony to deliver for me.  At least I hope they manage to get together!  I don't want her to have to bring it back to me!

Before our lunch (nothing fancy) Marlene suggested we make a stop at a riverside park that is famous for its cosmos flowers.  On previous years I've shown pictures of the fields of cosmos on this blog but last week?  Almost no flowers!  What a surprise!  Either the flowers are past the prime season for blooming or they were ruined by the typhoon and recent rain (most likely) or they were wiped out by river flooding.  That typhoon of two weeks ago caused so much damage to homes and fields and businesses near the many rivers that criss-cross the city!

Interestingly, we found one field of white cosmos still standing...  Are they sturdier than pink cosmos?  Do they bloom later?  We checked out the nearby riverside which looked like the waterline had come up quite a ways on the bank but we couldn't tell if it had reached the cosmos fields.

 The day was beautiful for flower viewing!

There were a couple of other ladies wandering the fields and even clipping flowers as one of them had the info that the fields were going to be mown down the next day.  Might as well take home a few blossoms while they are still thriving!  I offered to take the other ladies' picture on their Smartphone and they did the same for us!

"You speak very good Japanese."

"I guess we should...  both of us are married to Japanese husbands and both of us have lived in Japan over 40 years!"

Marlene and I have known each other for over 25 years now and though we come from different sides of America we have a friendship based on common experiences, faith and family. 

It was a great day out and we even brought home a few cosmos flowers...

Quilting in a group

I realize that my post today may sound a bit catty.  I really don't mean to be disparaging.

This week I have brought home a quilting project to do.  My patchwork group has had this quilt in the making for probably more than two years.  A blog friend so generously sent me a BOM kit with fabrics and patterns and our group decided to make the quilt with each of us taking home a packet or two.

There are maybe 7 of us in our patchwork group which nearly 20 years ago started out as a mother's group at the kindergarten that raffled off a quilt every year at the kindergarten bazaar.  The members of course have changed a bit as people move on or away but the group started when Mrs. Furui and I put our love of needlework to good use.  All of us in the group are now in our late fifties or sixties and most everyone has grandchildren now (not me yet).

We all love chatting and getting together once a month, one friend making the three hour trip from Tokyo to get to the gathering.  We no longer make quilts for the kindergarten bazaar and instead seem to make quilts for ourselves such as a joint quilt for someone in the group's 60th birthday.  A few people bring their own projects but basically we all just chat until Mrs. Furui or I suggests we do some handwork.  Everyone is really good for basting parties!  I have a feeling that maybe only two or three of us really like quilting and that everyone is perfectly happy just drinking tea and sharing stories.

We also tend to drag the newest members into our group saying they can just "help" and they don't really need any skill, that we'd just like to see them once a month and they can chat while others of us sew...  It is a very laid-back group and almost can't be called a patchwork group anymore.

Back to the BOM quilt.  Mrs. Furui and I doled out packets and gave basic instructions on applique.  Note that BASIC.  A month or so later the finished blocks trickled in and then they sat in a box for another 6 months.  The most recent development to get the blocks out of the box was to suggest we make up the quilt and give it to our newest member as she has joined our group after her 60th birthday.  At any rate, the blocks got sewn together and sandwiched and the quilt has been ready for quilting.

And for the next two weeks, it is my turn to bring the quilt home and hand quilt it.

Most of the blocks have turned out beautifully and all I have to do is stitch-in-the-ditch quilt around all the applique.  (No background quilting).

But a few of the blocks' applique is coming undone!  All those leaves with all those points.  All the flowers with all those inverted Vs.  Sigh...  Our basic instructions were definitely lacking in specifics.

So...  to leave as is as a witness of the different skills in our group or to start repair?

This problem has occurred before for example when a quilt went around to be hand quilted and we forgot to tell the beginning quilter that knots needed to be hidden...  We left that quilt as is because it was for a group member and would be too obvious that the new to quilting member's quilting had been redone.  Love was put into each stitch so what does it matter that it isn't perfect.

In this case, the BOM blocks have been in the box for so long that none of us can remember which block we'd actually made (thus "quilt your own block" didn't apply).  I've decided to repair as I go which in some cases has entailed removing the leaf in question and reappliqueing it.  Ah...  One problem is that the person who tried so hard had snipped all around the leaf shape which sounds like it would result in a curved shape but actually means that there are that many more places for the leaf to become un-ravelled.

My first four stitch-in-the-ditch blocks have quilted up pretty quickly but the one I've been repairing has taken two days to redo half of the leaves...

The other blocks look pretty good and I will probably not try to repair any misshapen flowers...  When you look at the quilt as a whole it all seems uniformly done and beautiful.

As I sew I think about how the few experienced appliquers in our group do NOT really consider themselves mentors and how we COULD have used the project as a teaching experience instead of just handing out packets and saying "Go to it."  I feel sorry for the members who went home and struggled through their assignment and admire them for how they persevered.  I also realize that perfectionism is not the goal... that's why I'm questioning the repair work I'm doing.

This will be a beautiful quilt and our newest member is already looking forward to displaying it on her living room wall.  She will love every stitch of it.

A quick last visit!

I know you've probably had enough of all these family photos but I have to record our last visit with Takumi and Julieta.

We actually hadn't planned to see them again when we took them to the station on Monday but after the big news of Takumi's proposal, Tetsu wanted to get together with the two of them again and we made plans to go to Tokyo to have a celebration dinner.

The two of them had spent a few days on the northern island of Japan and then had gone to Tokyo to visit the Ghibli museum and another unusual museum.  They said they were free on Sunday, the day before they were leaving Japan and Tetsu and I considered driving the three hours, or taking the trains, another couple hours...  We had John to consider too...  could he ride with us in the car for that length of time?  The vet suggested leaving John at home and that 8 to 10 hours in his circle wouldn't hurt him.

But!  Takumi messaged back that he and Julieta still had a day on their Japan Railway passes which is a HUGE savings for foreigners when they visit Japan.  They could take the Bullet Train at no cost to and from the city next to us and so Tetsu and I let them do the traveling and we took them out to lunch on Sunday in OUR part of Japan.

 We went to a shabu-shabu restaurant.  I think Julieta-san is happy to be engaged!

 All you can eat shabu-shabu which was a first for Tetsu and me. 

The different meats were brought in these stackable boxes and we ate A LOT!!!

We heard a lot about their trip to Hokkaido and about the proposal.  We heard about their adventures in Tokyo and the unique shops and restaurants they went to.  Tokyo is such a different world from the small town of Nikko where I live.  We briefly talked about wedding plans but since Julieta had only accepted Takumi's proposal a few days before, EVERYTHING is still open to consideration!

This is NOT the engagement ring.  Since we were going to see the two kids again I immediately went to a Pandora shop in the next city a few days ago and picked out a charm for Julieta.  She had said that Takumi had bought her a bracelet a few months ago and so I thought she should have a charm from her future mother-in-law and also to commemorate her trip to Japan (as if an engagement ring isn't enough!).  I chose a Mt. Fuji and cherry blossom charm that can only be bought in Japan.

 After lunch we did a bit more shopping...

And then dropped the Takumi and Julieta off at the station again.  This time for sure it was good-bye until maybe a reunion in the States?

We just got messages from both kids saying that they had arrived safely back in Los Angeles and thanking us for a good time.

"Thank YOU" I thought for giving us so much to be joyful about this trip!
 

Surprise!

So we had said good-bye to Takumi and Julieta.  We had had a great two days together despite the typhoon.  The two of them went to Hokkaido for a week to...?  Tetsu and I sat back and talked about our various conversations with each of them separately and together.  Maybe we will hear from them again before they leave for California?

Then Tuesday night around bedtime I got a photo from Julieta. 

What is this?  Where are they?

And the next message from Julieta was,

"Of course I said yes."

WHAT!!!!???  TAKUMI HAS PROPOSED!!!!!

Oh what a romantic my son has turned out to be!  I never would have thought he'd put such thought into the place and time of his proposal!  And down on one knee even!!!

Julieta was all shaken up by the surprise proposal and said she had had to sit down for about half an hour she was so light-headed.  I pieced the details through a few more messages.  The photos were taken by "some innocent bystander" whom they had ask to take their picture.  Takumi had obviously been planning this trip to Sapporo with the purpose of proposing for a long time.

I asked if Julieta knew what was coming and she said not until Takumi began stuttering and got down on one knee did she guess that this was going to be the big night, though they had been talking of getting married for quite a while now.  Takumi presented the ring, Julieta said yes and Takumi closed up the box and started to get up...

"Aren't you going to put it on my finger?"

A little nervous perhaps?  And Takumi said there were an awful lot of people around grinning and observing the very public proposal.

I think that the hillside that Takumi and Julieta-san were at is a lovers look-out with the night view of Sapporo spread out beyond.  We recalled that Takumi had said that he and Julieta were planning to take in the night scenery of Sapporo though Tetsu and I had never heard of the place they were going.  From the pictures it looks like there is a place for lovers to ring a bell to peal out their love to the city and there is also a place to leave a lock declaring their everlasting love.

I am SOOO happy to get this nearly on the spot photo-shoot and am grateful to the innocent bystander who took the very nice photos of Takumi and Julieta.

To celebrate Tetsu and I are going to try to get together with the two of them one more time before they leave Japan on Monday.

Introducing Takumi and my daughter-in-law-to-be, Julieta!!!