june whites

today is the last sunday of june. i suppose many couples tied the knot yesterday. any girl, once, now and probably forever, wants to be a june bride. i don’t know where this superstition came from, though. white wedding gowns look gorgeous and really stand out against the background of fresh green in june. “white” remains quite special as the colour of bride, while black is no longer the colour of wearing mourning. many women do attend weddings even in little black dresses these days. when i saw a host of articles about june bridals on the net, my elegant white elephants came back to my mind out of the blue.

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i thought: although i haven’t seen them for ages now, yes, somewhere, i still have those white things that make me feel romantic. Indeed, they were vacuum-packed in a plastic bag and kept in a box in my closet. so i opened the bag and let them out -- just exquisite. i sighed with deep admiration. my admiration obviously was for french women in mid 19th century who had done incredible needlework like these. i found white nightgowns at les puces in paris in the 80’s. flea market was one of my must-visits whenever i made a paris trip back then. i remember how i negotiated the price with the lady antique dealer when i bought the first one.

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dawn work, embroidery, pin-tucked pleats, trimming, scallop and ruffle are genuine vintage and all hand-sewn (a few seams in some parts were reinforced by machine). so, when did i wear these french white cotton chemise ancienne? well, one of them was cropped off to wear as a blouse; i wore it back in the new romanticism era. also, i’ve worn some with simple needlework as nightgowns. but, as i was scared to wear out, i was saving the complicated rest for special occasions, which have never happened so far. meanwhile, my other romantic whites: a lingerie bag bought from vietnam and a swatow hankie from china are new, so that i can use them without fears.
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culture or nature?

it rained, all in all, until this morning. i’d enjoyed having a daily walk in the park adjacent to the premise of my flat pretending there was no rainy season this year until today. but, as i certainly noticed that some flowers in the park almost blighted, i knew they needed that. so, i felt happy about the rain for them, even though i usually hate rain.
* i was thinking about my present environment when i was walking in my park yesterday: if i had to choose between culture and nature, which would it be? i didn’t think i’d bear to live a life without cultural inspirations. until i moved to this suburb in osaka, i had an urban life (mostly in london) with galleries, museums, cinemas, opera houses, concerts, bohemian cafés and glamorous restaurants, street markets and multi-ethnicity of people from all over the world. now, there are no such things; culture-wise, people are less adventurous here.

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however, i have my park -- a huge, by japanese standards, and beautiful park where a dazzling variety of fauna and flora live. it amuses me throughout the year. i am not saying i no longer need cultures, though. in fact, i am dying to have a local art centre like camden arts centre or whitechapel gallery in town. but, there are very few who fancy a city-run contemporary art gallery to use our tax, i suppose. so, instead, i have a prefectural-owned park that is situated so close to me. how lucky i am?
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in retrospect, i seem i always tended and tried to live near a park in my life. while living in london, i could get both: culture and nature. london parks are gorgeous; actually living near one of them was a dream-come-true experience. but when i lived in new cross (a hip town now? according to the new york times) because of goldsmiths college where i was then studying art, i couldn’t help feeling restless, owing to the environment that there were no parks nearby. greenwich park and blackhearth are not an easy walking distance from new cross, you know.

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i wanted a green retreat as much as i wanted a daily debate on art back then. now that i have no choice, i am happily live up to only one of my ideals. in my park, i have my favourite spots where green looks magical. and, i encounter little creatures like a kingfisher in a secluded spot, while i am relieved to see honeybees hovering over the lavenders, since i know their recent mysterious disappearing has become a big issue not only in the usa and uk but in japan as well. small coppers (butterfly) and carpenter bees are also busy working at the moment.

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the purple of the stream-like lavender fields gets deeper and deeper day by day. what a joy – the reason why i feel now this way probably came from my experience of recovering from serious illness. i was hospitalized two years ago today. since i got back home, i don’t take anything for granted anymore. meanwhile, i greatly regret that i treated my father as if he would be around forever. he did not, quite the contrary, he died much earlier than average japanese guys. while he was alive, we never had a walk together in the park he too loved. yes, it’s father’s day, today. treat your daddy good. happy father’s day, everyone!

blue and white

in kansai area where i live, the rainy season officially began on tuesday and june is a sullen month in japan usually. we’ve been having little rain so far, however. today, it looks even sunnier than yesterday, which makes me feel great. i, along with some two hundred workmates, completed a big translation project on friday, which means i’ll be staying home during daytime and weekdays from this week again. hooray!
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i really should go back to my own unfinished project right away. but my alter ego keeps telling me to take it easy; there’s no point in wasting a sunny day of a rainy month for the project with no definite deadline. ok. one more day, just one more day i should forget the fact that i made a vow to become a flagellant and remain an epicurean? i thought so. so, i’ve been lying on my sofa thinking what i would associate with june since this morning. i am imaging something refreshing – like blue hydrangeas in the rain for instance?

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and then refreshing colours – blue and white, perhaps? like my tea towels i bought myself in different global cities. also like my old china. i used to visit antique fairs in tokyo to buy 伊万里　imari (porcelain wares): sometimes a bit pricy 染付 sometsuke (hand painted with blue and other colours) and mainly inexpensive blue-and-white 印判　inban (blue-pattern printed), some of which i had to give up at some time or other when i changed the direction of my life.

luckily, my favourite blue-and-white café-au-lait bowls and plates are still kept in my cupboard. i bought one by one whenever i visited paris in my twenties. i was kind of obsessed about blue-and-white crockery when i was young. i had various english blue-and-white porcelain wares, too. then i got a little bit bored with them as i got old. therefore, i didn’t really care whenever i left many of them behind (i now regret that). at any rate, blue and white will forever be my favourite colour combination. and, what’s yours?

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balcony strawberries

wimbledon? strawberries!! – english people would instantly associate with. and, they love the messy way of eating strawberries posh etonians invented: eton mess (click for a recipe). over here in japan, strawberry is an all- time queen of fruits. to pander to market demand, our consumption has been pushed ahead of its season year by year, so japanese kids might associate christmas with strawberries, really.
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as strawberry has become an innocuous ingredient for rather pedestrian pastry chefs, we can see strawberries all year long. still, there is great variety of cultivated strawberries. i prefer pointed small one to hulking one. when a strawberry is cut in half, pointed one looks unbelievably beautiful. no matter how we eat strawberries, sadly, its real season is already drawing to a close here. it is way too early, don’t you think?

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my strawberries survived the winter and came into bloom again this spring even though i did nothing but watering for them. my strawberries' petals are pink and the flower resembles a wild rose, which clearly reminds me of the fact that strawberry is a member of the big rose family. my balcony strawberries produced fruits this year, too. although the shapes aren’t perfect, the taste is simply but amply sweet and sour. it brings me back some memories of summers i spent in england. over here, meanwhile, the rainy season is approaching.

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