The days are racing by, so full of things to do and see. Starting the days working in the studio with Inez and having walkabouts with Sabasion in the afternoon. Sometimes they tag team and I walk with Sabastion first thing in the morning, work with Inez in the studio in the morning, walk with Sabastion in the afternoon and then wallk with Inez in the evening. I am certainly getting in LOTS of walking time. I will have walking legs when I go home so Tom will have to try to keep up with those!
A couple of days ago Inez and I took the train over to the home of a woman that we had met at the market that had lived in Japan for many years and accumulated things while she was there. She had a friend who lived on a farm outside of Tokyo and every time she found a “find” she would call him and he would take it to store at his farm. It wasn’t until she was moving back to Germany that she opened the door to the storage and gasped with the enormity of her collection.
We bought from her patterns for kimonos. How beautiful! This is how they knew where to hand embroider on the silk.
We bought a pile of patterns for the “obi”. It is the sash that is wore at the waist with the kimono. We laid them all out on the floor then sat back and took turns picking the ones that we each wanted to keep. Inez called it our “obi dance”, stepping gingerly between the sheets on the floor. We had them laid out but because they had been curled up in storage they would curl and we couldn’t see them. Inez got the most excellent idea to use Sabastion’s books to hold down the corners. We would just pick up the one we wanted and leave the books lying there on the floor. Sabastion came in and looked kinda startled to see all his books on the floor. He asked what we were doing and I told him ” We are speed reading your books and throwing them on the floor when we are done”. Thankfully Sabastion is a good sport about such teasing!
Our obi collection.
We also scored some wonderful “record keeping” books in kanji.
Lastly, we divided these wonderful 2 x 14 inch light cardboard paintings. They are used in the edges of screens. We chose, each taking turns one after another until the last one, not picked by either of us remained. “What are we going to do with it?” Inez asks me. “We can’t throw it away”. So a plan was hatched. Inez will have it for one year, then send it to me for a year, and I will send it back the following year.
Here it is. Our “friendship chicken”.
Yesterday, Nov 9th, marked the 23rd anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. As Sabastion had already planned to take me to “Check Point Charlie” that day it turned out to be especially special that our tour coincided with the anniversary.
There is a “cabin” at the site which is manned by staged military for tourist. You can pay them to have your picture taken in front of the building with the actors. The actual cabin has been moved to another part of town.
Behind me was unmistakable engish being spoken with the UK accent. I heard them laughing and talking, saying ” if those were the real guards we could have walked right through!”. I ended up talking to them and they were actually stationed at Check Point Charlie the day the wall came down.
Big bruisers, not like the little guys they had playing the part!
Before we left Sabastion wanted to take my picture in front of the wall.
hhhhhmmmmm…..Sabastion, is there a reason you choose this place in the wall to take my photo???
I am very fortunate to have such wonderful, caring people taking such good care of me so far from home.
