We realized that we’ve been in the Netherlands for a whole year!
Then we also realized that we haven’t been traveling within Europe as much as we hoped.
Brussels was only 2 hours away and we fell in love.
I found the tasty fruity beers.
Max found many tasty beers.

Cartoon museum was cool. But both of us didn’t know much about European cartoons especially Dutch / Belgium / French cartoons that it felt short.

At the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, there is an exhibition of “Stanley Kubrick Photographer”. Tons of photos of when he was a photojournalist.
Simply amazing. Some series, you can just stand and watch for a very long time. They all tell stories and it’s very easy to get stucked into his world.
If any of you are in Brussels, this is a must see exhibition.

Last week, Ru and I took a quick trip to Paris to visit the company that is going to be representing us for commercials in France, Bollywood. I had been to Paris before, but it was Ru’s first time and she feared being stricken with Paris Syndrome. (from Wikipedia: “Paris Syndrome is a transient psychological disorder encountered by some people visiting or vacationing in Paris. Japanese visitors are observed to be especially susceptible. ) Luckily, the trip was wonderful and there was nothing to worry about.

Dom and Ben (the founders of Bollywood) and Sandrine were very welcoming hosts and booked us a room at the amazing Hotel Amour. At the concierge desk, we were greeted by a saluting Mickey Mouse…of sorts.

Every room in the hotel is unique in its decor and ours was all black with a
delightfully tacky disco ball ceiling.

There was also a stack of vintage French Photo magazines from the 70s that showcased fashion and war photography. Each image had a blurb about the camera lens that the photographer used.

Ru went a bit overboard with pastries and we stopped frequently to admire the window displays. We tried almost every type of baked good, but didn’t get a chance to indulge in a macaron at the famous, Ladurée.  Next time.

On our second day, we visited the Louvre Museum. July is the the height of tourist season in Paris and we expected the museum to be crowded. It was strange. Certain wings of the museum were completely desolate, while the more popular artwork was impossible to see. Here’s Mona Lisa blitzed by tourist paparazzi.

One of the most incredible parts of the trip was a small book store in the Latin Quarter, Un Regard Moderne. I highly recommend that anyone interested in art/comic books reserve a good chunk of time to dig through the enormous stacks of books.

The owner of the store knew every square inch of the store and as we read one book, he would hand us a set of thematically or graphically related material.

I told him that his shop was incredible. His response: “Yes, but these are very strange books.”

Our bags were much heavier on the way home.

A little journal about our trip to Barcelona and Lleida in Spain.
Animac, an animation festival in Spain, invited us for the screening. Since Spain was one of the countries I’ve always wanted to go, we decided to take this opportunity.
Due to teaching at Parsons, we could only take 7 days.
We left on the night of 2/23 (mon). We arrived in Barcelona on 2/24 (tues) afternoon.

2/24 (tues)
We only had a bit of time for dinner, due to our nap from the flight.

We went to the port area.

From the back, this lobsterman sculpture looked like a free form somewhat organic sculpture.
We kept discussing from far away how Gaudi really influenced Barcelona and NY will never have such an interesting sculpture on the main street.
As we saw the other side of the sculpture, we noticed that…it was a gigantic lobster man, with a goofy face!
I wish it wasn’t so dark, so we could have taken a better picture.
All this art talk for a….lobster man!

2/25 (wed) GAUDI day.
We passed by Casa Batllo, and went to Casa Mila.

The roof top. I thought it’d be a little warmer but not so much…

I loved the exhibition on how Gaudi came up with the idea of crazy architectures.
He taught me that if I look things from different perspectives, there are million ways of approaching.

Then off to Sagrada Familia!
I actually was not expecting that the interior is a total construction site…
We kept saying, “this is like being in Williamsburg (there is a lot of construction)”

But in the basement, there were tons of miniature versions of Sagrada Familia. It is worth the money to go in just to see the basement exhibition.

My eyes didn’t know where to look at. The amount of details are crazy.

Off to Gaudi Park!

Gaudi’s design was blending into the nature.

Ru decided to draw…

We found these round balls all over the city.
After I posed, Max apologized to the lady. Apparently I almost kicked her.

2/26 (thurs)

Off to Lleida! It’s only 1 hour north west from Barcelona.

We are at Animac! Everybody welcomed us with huge smiles.

It’s a very cute town.

2/27(fri)

Max entering the theater.

Our screening was in the morning for little kids.
Approx 600-800 little kids from age 4-6 came from various schools in Lleida.
I’ve never seen so many little kids in my life!

See how many?
When the screening started, they all screemed!
They also clapped to our “Davy Crockett in Outer Space” music video.
I think they liked it. Yay!

Animac set up a bubble to hang out.

It’s hard to get out.

Inside.

With David Priego and his brother Victor.

We went to a little concert by “internet2″.
They make everything with cardboard.

I enjoyed drawing the musician dance.

Max was trying to photograph, but it was too dark.

2/28 (sat)

Directors’ discussion conference.

Thank you Ines, who helped us throughout.
Then we took a train back to Barcelona and headed out to the Picasso museum.

But before that, we ate udon. I thought it was lame to eat Japanese food but I was dying for soy sauce. I often have hard time when I travel because European foods are a little too oily for me.

This was one of the most amazing museums ever.
I have a lot of Picasso books at home, but there were so many drawings I didn’t know!
What an inspiring artist Picasso is. We were there for hours….!!

3/1 (sun)
Bye bye Spain.
We had a wonderful time. Thank you Animac!!

The main event in Okinawa trip was to go to Churaumi Aquarium!

This aquarium has a gigantic acrylic window where you can view 3 Jinbei Sharks! (Whale sharks)
There is a very little information about Jinbei sharks, like how big they get, how long they live, etc.
The cutest thing was that a baby jinbei shark has a suction on top of its head.
So the baby jinbei shark is attached to the mama jinbei shark upside down.

There is a little room where you sit under the tank. So cool.
The name Jinbei shark comes from a clothing called Jinbei.

It’s a summer Kimono for men. It’s usually blue and have checkered or stripe patterns.
The whale shark looks like its wearing jinbei, hence “Jinbei Shark” .

This fish made me laugh really hard.

In front of the gigantic tank.

There was a dolphins show outside.
It’s amazing how athletic and smart they are!

This is called Octopus tree. We saw tons at the Ocean Expo Park where Churaumi Aquarium is part of.

Okinawa is one of Japan’s southern prefectures. Okinawa islands connect Taiwan and mainland Japan, and it used to be called “Ryukyu Kingdom”.
My parents, Max and I traveled to Okinawa last week.

This is a picture of the first restaurant we stopped by to eat “Soki” noodles.
We parked the car and the parking lady told us if we went to this restaurant, we’ll get 1 hour free.
From the back, it looked like a normal house but as soon as we saw the entrance, it was so beautiful!
It’s so nice when you stumble into something that makes you smile while you’re traveling.

Here is the view from Shuri Castle. You can see the town of Naha. (capital)

Inside is a museum of Ryukyu Kingdom history. Of course there is a miniature that I love.

There were tons of cool sculptures!

Shisa is a mythical creature from Okinawa that is a hybrid of a lion and a dog.
It usually comes in a pair.
The left has a closed mouth meaning it keeps the good spirits in.
The right one has an open mouth which wards off evil spirits.
Most houses had Shisas decorated on their gates.