Espardenyes

It's hot. And leather flats/sandals do nothing to help the situation. That's why as soon as I get to Barcelona after I've spent some quality time with my favorite Catalan, I'm getting a pair of espardenyes. Also known as espadrilles.  They're made of straw and canvas and let your feet breathe. Please please please let me find the size, style and color that I want. I've lived and looked for shoes in Spain and it is no easy task when you wear a size 41. However, big feet have proved themselves to be advantageous, no one ever borrows/ruins my shoes except my sister and she lives in Chicago.

recycle reuse

So I bought the above shoes on clearance at Miss Sixty, oh and I should mention when I bought them they were bejeweled with the purple jewels you see on my sweater, but in less than a week they started coming off. There are still two unaccounted for jewels in Nayoro, Japan and San Francisco. When the jewels started coming off I thought "I guess I could use plain purple suede flats".  Then 10 months later I decided to embroider them. And a few weeks later after looking at this post I decided to do something with jewels that were cluttering my living room. Thanks Carbon Couture, you're a genius.

Flowers

Finally. I've only been to a few museums in Japan but today, by far, was my best experience. I saw the Kataoka Tamako exhibit in Asahikawa. To be honest I'd never heard of her and when Mayumi, my Japanese teacher, suggested we go I thought it was going to be an exhibit on eggs. I confused the artist's first name Tamako with tamago which means egg. I like eggs so I figured why not. Once we walked into the exhibit I was pleasantly surprised. It turns out Tamako is a painter, not an egg. She's also amazing.  I'm not going to lie the most eye-opening part was seeing that she painted Pose 14 at 100 years old. She died at age 103.
Dear whoever/whatever controls the future,
Please let me be creative until my dying breathe.
Thanks,
Aby
As you can see Tamako loved her some Fuji-san and flowers

Brownie points

I'll take the jacket and the shoes...please!

photo from Street Style Aesthetic

Escapism

Books

I had a headache for two days! I don't understand how karma works I am soooo nice. What did I do to deserve that pain?! Fortunately, today I feel great and in about 20 minutes I'm off of work! And speaking of  "work". Today at "work" I finished The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. I highly recommend it...if you're into eating. One thing I'm taking from this book that I firmly believe in is: "...a meal that is eaten  in full conciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true cost of the things we take for granted."
Next I'm going to read Memoirs of a Geisha...I hope it's good.

32 is still a goddamn number

32 is the number of days I have left here in Hokkaido. Gonna make it count. The next 32 days I will be wearing my smile rain or shine, thinking about which clothes I'll be leaving behind and hoping that future is full of outfits like this...