ready for the new year

Fixed my lantern.  I am clean and ready for the new year.  I may even paint with silver tonight.

Get Ready for the New Year

I have a theory that Japanese New Year food tastes much better if you have to suffer to get it, like wine that is better if you pay more for it.  Why else would they stand in 4 hour department store lines or face the crowds I faced yesterday just to get food that could easily be gotten by waiting at home for it to be delivered, or gotten from the local grocery.

Stolen sweets are not sweeter, suffered for is better in Tokyo.

Christmas/New Year break

Hard to transition, to switch from teaching thinking to painting non thinking.  these days I do it by making something, to relax..  This time I have made some single bottom getta for my eldest.  Seems to be working out.  She wants them painted black, so it will take a little more time.

A rabbit roll

Rabbits for the new year.  I have had some postcard pressure.  But this weekend I managed to cut a stone I like.  The cylinder prints are fun to make and fun to print, just roll them out.  And they are different depending upon where the roller starts on the paper.  I made a roller a couple years ago that was capable of telling 7 different stories.

pretty much down

The White Bath Sento of Yanaka if pretty much down.  It was a beautiful all wood building and a great bath. I wonder what will go up in its stead?  Is Yanaka betting better or worse?

getting better

I am in more demand that I thought.  Someone stole the painting right off my undon in front of my studio this week.  Either I am betting better, or my audience is getting drunker - I notice the thief did not do a very good job, and left the edges of the painting behind.

Monday Rabbit

We had an accident with our rabbits last week.

I was in the bath.  Shouting and screaming could be heard from the outside, calls for me to come.  to come quick.  Bit trouble with the rabbits.  being naked and in the bath I declined.

Sometimes it is better to not get involved.  Children and wives are far more capable than they may at first imagine.  It is good to let them find it.

The rabbits, one boy, Madara, and one girl, Daifuku, Dyfuku the result of an accident between our former rabbits, Piyunta (male) and Ell (female), Madara a Monday rabbit escaped from Ueno Zoo.

That Madara was a Monday rabbit is only my guess, but not without reason.  Monday Ueno Zoo is closed, so it is the day that they throw a couple of the adolescent rabbits that have outgrown the petting zoo into the cage with the Tigers.  tigers it seems get lethargic on a constant diet of dead meat and enjoy the sport of a Monday rabbit or two.

Madara was capture dazed and lonely on a Tuesday morning, by the police, just outside Ueno zoo.  They brought him to me as they knew I kept rabbits.  We found out later that he is a natural escaper, always finds or makes his way out.  All this leads me to the suspicion that he was a Monday rabbit.  For the bars and cage made for tigers keeps them well in.  But it is no match for a escaper rabbit, especial with the extra motivation of being chase by tigers.

But this is all very far from my Sunday night, quiet in the bath, loud in the garden emergency.