Kisami Ohama, Shimoda

Gotta get away... summer is slipping by and the beach is calling!

Kisami Ohama, photo by Stacee

Lucky for us the summer lingers long in Kanto and it's possible to get in some sunbathing well into September.

photo by Stacee

We found a great rustic beach house five minutes from Kisami Ohama beach in Shimoda, called The Perch.

by Stacee!

Ohama is a beach known for its white sands and clear waters. Much prettier than anything in the immediate Tokyo vicinity!

A.S.

Chiro was in heaven - tons of fresh air, attention, walks, runs! She didn't like swimming though.

Yam-kun

Peetie on the left, Yamato on the right

My foster kitty Yamato passed away last night.

Yamato was a Fukushima kitty rescued last winter by Naoyuki Seki in Namie. He was very skinny and hungry. After a few weeks at the shelter, he came down to Tokyo for his neuter and ended up s...

taying with me. Relatively feral at first, he slowly over the months warmed up to us, though he was always very loving of his fellow felines in the house, Timothy and Peetie. In the last couple of months, I was able to pet him.

Yamato was diagnosed as FIV+ and in the last few weeks got very sick and stopped eating. Though he went to the vet several times and received daily syringe feeding and subcutaneous fluids at home for the last week, he was found to have FIP, a fatal disease with no proven cure.

He passed away at home, in our arms, with Peetie snuggled up next to him, purring and bathing him. I am relieved his suffering is over. I am so thankful for his companionship and growing trust over the past few months. Rest in peace, Yam-kun. Thanks for spending a little of your life with us. We love you.

We went on a boat.

It was a big boat, packed with revelers, dancing and decked out in yukata, and the spirits flowed freely.

Well, "spirits" is a tad generous. Sapporo beer and mango chu-his, more like.

My yukata got progressively sexy as the night wore on.

We cruised around the Tokyo Bay, under the Rainbow Bridge. Saw the city from the harbor, set back from all the twinkle lights.

Fun was had.

This seems like a good place to mention a few songs about boats that are kicking around in my head, that I love. I used to always always have a soundtrack playing in my head but nowadays the music has subsided somewhat. I'd say now it's more like half the time. I blame tech. I still love music but all the synching and uploading and downloading, it's exhausing.

If I Had a Boat
by Lyle Lovett

I Wanna Be a Boat
by Jawbreaker

ethiopian delish

Vegansaurus used my photo for one of their posts!

Mmmm Ethiopian food. I ate this with Cory.

Angel Auction at What the Dickens

The lovely folks at What the Dickens in Ebisu hosted our Angel Auction last weekend, where volunteers put their professional services up for bid. On the block were marital arts lessons, Indian cooking and piano lessons, a tour of the German embassy & meeting with the ambassador, and much more.

Photo by Jennifer Julien

WTD is a great spot even when they're not raising money for a cause, with free live music most nights. They also have nice food - in additon to the standard British pub fare like meat pies and fish & chips, they also have veggie offerings like a cheese & tomato sandwich, hummus, some kind of quiche, and other stuff that the chef dreams up. Plus the whole place is dark and woody with cozy corners and feels like something in Diagon Alley.

Noah Style

On our last day on the island, we had the rental til the mid afternoon and the flight took off in the early evening. Time for a shop and a stroll and a lingering lunch.

Noah Style is in a residental area near Shuri Castle, up a hill in a modest neighborhood. In fact, the cafe is a pretty converted house.

Inside, there is a tiny clothing store with things made from soft natural and organic cotton, and another area selling organic vegetables and other goodies like house-made sweets and enviromentally friendly laundry soap.

The menu offers a few carefully crafted options - soups, sandwiches, plate lunches chock full of color, and the daily special, which we got. It had 11 kinds of food, with brown rice and organic coffee. Such vegetables as beets, urizun-mame (winged beans), and hijiki seaweed. It was all followed with a tiny lovely sliver of cake made from brown sugar and nut butter.

N was inspired by this lunch and bought some kuruma-fu as soon as we got home and made a stunning dinner for us.

Out the back patio, we found several bedraggled bunnies hopping around the garden, and a large tortoise in repose under the deck.

A definite recommendation for people who love delicious wholesome food, lovingly prepared and artfully presented.