Virtual Visit to 🇯🇵Japan

I’ve been in a Japanese Culture Appreciation phase for a while now. I can’t get enough of it. It may have been inspired from all those novels I’ve read this year that take part in Japan. Or reading Japanese authors.

It may also be because I’ve been living through the travels of others. They visit Japan, I ask them where they went and what they did then I recreate it at home through watching YouTube videos of the same places or visiting equivalent food or retail places here. That way, it SEEMS like I’ve been travelling too but I’m still in Melbourne.

One of my French class mates travelled to Japan and visited the Yamazaki Distillery well known for its famous Suntory Whisky. Naturally, I headed over to YouTube to get a tour of the place. While there, she bought all of her French classmates, wooden chopsticks made from the wooden barrels where the whisky ferments. They’re great chopsticks. Smooth on the fingers and smelling the wood deeply, you can just get the hint of the whisky aroma.

I also love how she included a coffee sachet of French Roast coffee with its Japanese instructions!

Book Club Author Event 📚

The event is now planned and it’s a waiting game. The book club I started at our golf course will have its first author event. Exciting!!!

The publisher approached me about having the author Alli Parker come along to our club to learn more of the story of her family and how she wrote the book At the Foot of the Cherry Tree. I created the flyers and pinned them up on the display wall to invite club members to come along. It should be a great afternoon as the novel is a great read about the difficult life of Japanese war brides.

Books I’ve Read 📚

Continuing on with my Japanese interest, I decided to read Peter Carey’s Wrong About Japan.

I was wrong to read this book methinks.

There’s something that irked me about his tone in this book especially towards the Japanese. It seemed condescending? His son in this book seemed to be perpetually embarrassed of his father….

Then I thought, maybe he’s not so bad?

So I read My Life as A Fake and his writing irked me even more.

I heard it as an audiobook and none of the characters are likeable. None. In fact, from the very first pages, the depiction of these men rang alarm bells for me. They were all odious. Sanctimonious intellectual snobs and gits. White older men with mal intentions in Malaysia….you get my drift….

Bah. I hated this book but I think it’s because such men/characters are despicable.

A Trip to the Opp Shop

I visited the Savers Superstore. It has one of the best classics and literature collection of books. Someone had obviously gotten rid of their Julian Barnes books. I’ve been collecting his books so now, they’re in mine.

They were $2.99 each. Bargain.

Esther Jacket Finished ✅

I’ve finally finished Petite Knit’s Esther Jacket. It was my big knitting project for 2024. It took a few months to knit and I took my time with it. I made some modifications to the pattern so it’s not as loose and a lot shorter.

The buttons I chose were round brown leather vintage ones that were recycled from another old cardigan of my mum’s.

This year I’ve been doing a lot more recycling and reusing in an effort to not spend much but I think more so, to give items a new lease of life. I like how things have been part of something else because it creates a story.