london, and paris

hello

and thank you for dropping me a line,

my beautiful friends!

i finally sent my manuscript (for a book i translated) to my editor over the net a few days ago, i decided to do nothing for a while. i was shattered. in the mean time, i started thinking about fashion as this year’s catwalk season kicked off. i’m not really a fashion enthusiast, though. i just look forward to checking reports on fashion weeks. then, i found alexander mcqueen’s sad news yesterday. what a tragedy.

there were young and talented british designers who worked in paris, and then they moved back to london just like mcqueen. when i think of london and paris, i miss something that eventually almost disappeared from the both cities over the last two decades. it’s milliner. millinery is the most romantic item for fashion design, i believe. no matter how unpractical, millinery is lovely to look at. especially in catwalks, it plays the most fantastical role. mcqueen did excellent shows with it.

pic 1, 4 a milliner on the left bank, paris.
pic 2, 3 the hat shop in neal street, london.
all pics from films taken in the 90’s.


have a romatic weekend, girls (and boys)!!

versatile mint

mint sprigs are something i’m always glad to have. if you have some in your kitchen garden, they sure will come in handy when you add the finishing touch to drinks and desserts you prepare. like the fresh blueberries i had (they were also in the food parcel i posted last week), bright green mint leaves made it look gorgeous. as i froze some of them, i can enjoy a bowl of ice cream with frozen blueberries any time, adding a mint sprig of course. indeed, mint is very one of versatile herbs. as you know, i love using mint not only for garnishing but for cooking as well. naturally, mint is essential for me to grow amid my herbie babies.

on a hot afternoon especially in hot summer months, having hot mint tea works for me to chill out, really. i learned how to make proper mint tea when i travelled around morocco. in london, i could easily get a bunch of fresh mint and a small packet of gunpowder tea from ethnic north african grocers in kilburn high road. besides, baklavas were sold there. i’m now living in a suburb of osaka, you know. i make kind of “fusion” mint tea substituting japanese green tea for chinese gunpowder tea. what would i have instead of baklavas? i’d have some traditional sweets, 落雁 rakugan (made from beans and sugar) for example. japanese sweets surprisingly go with mint tea.

with summer winding down, people can’t help but get sentimental, can they. i am missing that short (and often cool) english summer right now… i just imagine myself sitting in a pub near hampstead heath sipping a glass of pimm's as the sun sets. in reality, i fancy a cocktail i can make myself – mojito? why not? -- so i stand up to fix. i think i have all the ingredients at home, by the way. as my local super market does not always have limes, I’ve got a small bottle of squeezed lime juice imported from turkey; i have enough fresh mint sprigs, while i now grudge even a drop of my havana club that i brought from cuba. accordingly, i’ve recently bought white rum from a local shop.



lemon is refreshing; has no season that i have fresh lemon juice all the year around. still, if fresh mint is added, it gets fresher. so i make minty citron pressé in summer. meanwhile, like other drinks i’ve named as above, citron pressé has a story to make me smile, too. years back, i had the most elegant one in the bar of hotel le bristol paris. the taste was the same, however. i was there to interview phebe philo, the creative director of chloé at the time. she suggested meeting there since the hotel was just a stone’s throw from her atelier. in fact, it’d been cancelled at the last minute once before and my client (a magazine) had gone panic. for me, it was so lucky to visit paris from london twice within a month.




pic 1
in the herb garden of my local park, mints are in bloom. what lovely flowers!
pic 2
plum little blueberries… picked, packed and delivered to me from 静岡 shizuoka. so fresh.
Pic 3
fusion mint tea with 落雁 rakugan from 小布施 obuse for summer afternoon tea.
pic 4
for mojito: white rum, lime juice, soda, a few sprigs of fresh mint, sugar and ice cubes.
pic 5
voilà. mini mojito for two. click here for recipe and i bet you’ll enjoy this cuban experience.
pic 6
my own citron pressé avec les rameaux de menthe served hot or iced. but i prefer brown sugar.
*

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.

*

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.

*

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.
*

les gitanes

paris sets people craving for romance. it is an enchanted city where many people fall in love with someone. i didn’t fall in love with anyone in paris, though. instead, i fell in love with paris. it happened to me when an old photography book, entitled “the city of arts”, became mine. i found it in a pile of unwanted stuff in my grand mother’s house that was to be pulled down and rebuilt. i still keep the book even now, which is the oldest book ever i’ve kept in my life and has begun to fall apart little by little.
*

while paris was a great charmer to a teenage girl, it was one-way love for her. gradually, paris seemed a world away, sort of beyond my reach, and i gave up french lessons (well, due to my laziness) at an art college in tokyo i went. years later, i prepared myself for the moment of truth when i made enough money to jet off to my unseen lover. i was twenty-four: married with a little son, but still the girl who dreamed about paris, after all. i was out to be embraced by my lover i’d only known from books and films at last. as you can imagine i was happiest when my dream came true.

*

paris looked passionate about winning my love, but sometimes less passionate, even aloof. no matter how paris remained, my love affair continued…off and on. so i‘ve visited paris many times since then. but, to be honest, i don’t particularly like it there in summer when paris’s heart is just not there because parisians only think of their vacances. that'd make me feel rather left out, even though i could be just an “éntangère”. having said that, my paris tips in summer time always turned out as enjoyable as i'd hoped: one was solo and another in the company of my kids. i just wonder when i last visited paris -- ah, actually, it was early september five years ago when i was on magazine assignment.

*

paris looked passionate about winning my love, but sometimes less passionate, even aloof. no matter how paris remained, my love affair continued…off and on. so i‘ve visited paris many times since then. but, to be honest, i don’t particularly like it there in summer when paris’s heart is just not there because parisians only think of their vacances. that'd make me feel rather left out, even though i could be just an “éntangère”. having said that, my paris tips in summer time always turned out as enjoyable as i'd hoped: one was solo and another in the company of my kids. i just wonder when i last visited paris -- ah, actually, it was early september five years ago when i was on magazine assignment.

*

as the heat of summer has weakened at least in the evenings, balmy breezes take me back to those perfect evenings of parisien summer. but, it’s a little bit sad that i have no plan at all to see my long-time lover again.

*