Less is more.

I learned this word from a teacher in San Francisco.
I understood it as "If you live with Less things, the life is more precious".

My boyfriend is such a person.
He uses his TV for 16 years and his car for 15 years.
After when my computer has broken, he is using it only the part still usable.
Most of his T-shirts and socks have some holes, but he still wears them. Sometimes he sew them by himself.
He buy few things in his life. He uses all of his goods in a polite way.

I like his style, even though I like shopping. I'm trying to use things for long time, like him.


When we traveled around California, his father came to visit us.
He wanted to go to Las Vegas. But we didn't.
Because for us, it's not an attractive city. We don't like any gambles.
But he has already a ticket from Las Vegas to Japan, so we went there.

Actually, we never liked the city.
Because it's a city of casino. It's all for casino.
Hotels there are really cheap to stay. We had to pay only 40 dollars or so a night.
But it's for let us spend money on casino.
We had to walk through the casino floor many times.
Because the reception is in the end of casino.
And to access everywhere (restaurant, parking, or outside) from our rooms, we had to across the casino floor.
Further more the casino floor is very complicated. There is no floor map. The sign board is not good enough. So we walked a lot in casino.
Also, the outside is really hot. We cannot walk a lot outside of hotels. But the main street, the Strip, is huge so when we want to go to other hotels or shopping center, we have to walk a lot.
So whenever we arrived next hotel, we entered it to escape from the hot. But the floor is always the casino...
When we tried to buy a bottle of water, it costed 3 dollars a small bottle. But if we sit at slot machine, we can get any drinks at 1 dollar.
But we never sit there, because we don't like the way that they do.

In one of our hotels, we found a signboard written "Less is not more. More is more".
It's the advertisement of the buffet of the hotel.
We never tried it.

It's only the city that we didn't like in this trip. Maybe we have hard heads, we are strange.
But we couldn't get used to the city.

I went a small bar in Tokyo with my German friend

As soon as I came back to Japan, I received an e-mail from my German friend.
I met him 4 years ago when I was in a language school in Salerno in Italy. Salerno is a small town near Naples.
I lived there for more than 3 month to learn Italian.

By the way, he, John came to Japan and is traveling around Japan by himself.
Now he is staying in Tokyo and he remembered that I live near Tokyo, so he sent me the e-mail.
We met in Tokyo 3 days before.
He is the same as I met him 4 years ago. Maybe only I have been changed because I got some weights on me...

We walked along the street then entered a small bar. The name of it is "President".



It's really small place. John is the only person who isn't Japanese and we talked in English and in Italian. And there were few women.
Soon, some elder men near our seats talked to us, in Japanese.
They couldn't speak English. But we talked each other in English and in Japanese.
Sometimes I translated their talks, but sometimes, John could understand without any translations, because of their faces and tones.
We talked for more than 5 hours. It was very precious time for us. We enjoyed it very much. John liked it because it was like bars in Salerno.

In Japan, there are some places like this. I like these bars very much one is because this atmosphere, and the other is because the food is good and cheap.
If you come to Japan, please try it once. I'll accompany with you!

Inspiration from my travel in California

These two days, I made 4 quilts seeing a lot of pictures I took in California.
I saw many palm trees in California. I like the scene with big palm trees. It reminds me of paradise.

Especially, I like this scene, so I made these two quilts.



I'm not so content with these, so I'll try again.
(Actually, before these two, I made another one. But I didn't like it...)


Secondly, I like this bench that I saw in Santa Barbara. It was at the end of sea side street.
I like the combination of colors and the arrangement.




I couldn't make my quilts like this bench, but I like these quilts.
I made them with a set of fabrics of Shangri-la.

I have more ideas from my travel.
I saw sea lions, squirrels, rabbits, dogs and many birds.
I saw beautiful buildings, big trees, flowers, coast lines, sun shines and a lot of people.
Everyday, I and my boyfriend were taking more than 100 pictures, so I have about 10,000 pictures now.
From them, I can remember many things.
So now, I have many ideas to sew. I'm really happy !!!!

Shopping in Bridgeport at 4th July

At 4th July, we went the festival in Bridgeport, near Yosemite National Park.
It was really interesting festival for us, me, my boyfriend and his father.
His father liked it very much. He watched almost all of the events there.
I liked the parade. I'd never seen that decorated kiddie cars participated a parade. They were really cute.


And there was a mud volleyball. They were excited so much.

I like the children's eating race of water mellon too!


This festival is for me really especially. Because now in Japan, many festivals had disappeared.
For example, when I was a student, I participated a festival in my mothers birth town. A company there made a team for the festival. But now, the economy of the company is really bad and they cannot hold a team.
In many town, it became difficult to make a big festival one is because the economical situation and the other is because many young people leave their town and work in a big city.

The festival of bridgeport was really energetic. People were enjoyed it very much. It was simple. We all there Japanese enjoyed it very much.

********

When we were walking along the main street, I found a little quilt shop.


I entered in the shop and bought a set of fabrics. It was very cute.
I'll make something with it.