My friend, Ayumi, had an idea to craft an air balloon for his son, Taro. Somehow, I got obsessed with this idea and made an air balloon! She has been a wonderful and supportive friend in the Netherlands so I wanted to make something to thank her.

Flying all over Tilburg.

Since I finished making the air balloon right before I left Holland that I didn’t get to see Taro’s reaction. Thankfully Ayumi took pictures and sent them to me.

How lucky are we to be in EU for the Euro football/soccer championship!
The Netherlands placed 2nd for FIFA 2 years ago that the expectation was high.
The picture was taken from vs.Portugal…which felt like the crowd had already given up because there was very little hope for the team to make it to the tournament.
But a few days before this was vs. Germany. Totally forgot to take the picture but the only color you could see was ORANGE. It was fun… No more Sneijder or Van der Vaart. They lost all the matches.
Well, now onto London Olympics!

At Nederlands Instituut voor Animatiefilm (aka NIAF), they open up for tours to students and art organization.
* There is an open house on June 3rd if you are in Tilburg area.

Last week was a group of film technician, engineer, broadcast, etc from the analog days. They pick an organization to visit every year.
Ole is one of the volunteers at NIAF who helps out the archive department. He belongs to this group and decided to bring his friends.

They were very interested in Max explaining how to mix analogue and digital techniques.

The oldest man was so excited he touched one of the puppets and broke a piece.
(the puppet can easily be fixed with my gluegun)
Then he came up to Max and whispered in his ear,
“The past and the future are closer than you think. I’ve seen the future and it’s beautiful. ”
What a sweet things to say… he made our day.

April 30th is the Queens day in the Netherlands.
Actually, Queen Beatrix’s birthday is January 31st. But her mother, Queen Juliana’s birthday was April 30th. It’s nice that this special day is in the beginning of spring and to see people celebrating under the sun.

3 animators strolled through a nearby park to check out the flea market & outdoor entertainment.

Some interesting toys…

There were rows of retro cars with proud owners.
Of course Max took tons of pictures…perhaps we can use these as a reference for our film?

Hinamatsuri is a Japanese dolls’ festival. (Also known as Girl’s day or Peach flower festival).
This picture is my hina dolls that my grandma bought for me when I was born.
Ton, the director of the Netherlands Institute for Animated Film (the organization we belong to) asked me to do an international day and I immediately thought to celebrate Hinamatsuri.
Peach flowers are one of the most important decorations and the meaning behind is that peach flowers get rid of bad spirits. The winter in the Netherlands is COLD, DARK and LONG! Our spirits have been down for quite some time so I thought maybe I can bring spring quicker and get rid of all bad energy.

My mission was to make 8 dishes for 13 people.
I think when foreigners hear “Japanese food” they automatically think of sushi.
But common people do not eat sushi everyday, it’s only for special occasions.
So I tried to make things that I grew up eating.

Inari (sushi rice in tofu skin pouch)
Chirashi-zushi (sushi rice and vegetables and egg on top)

Buta no Kakuni (very slow cooked pork)

Ingen no Goma-ae (green beans with sesame dressing)
Kyuri no sunomono (cucumber in vinegar)

Satoimo no nimono (simmered taro potatoes)
Hakusai no tsukemono (pickled napa cabbage)

Behind me in the pot is Oshiruko ( rice cake in sweet red bean soup)

Frauke made a peach cake in a shape of a peach flower.

Max, Frauke and I spent all day making these peach flowers and dangling all over a meeting room. Frauke’s finger started to bleed from over-working. No pain, no gain. She proved it.

Max made a slideshow of various hina dolls.

Everybody seemed very curious.

It was a success. I think I was able to provide a bit of Japanese culture to them.
Thank you Frauke & Max for helping me out so much!

I fell while running.
Despite my pain, my knee has a huge grin.

A small breakfast was shipped to some special friends in the world for christmas/ new year.

Pack, pack, pack. It’s not very easy to pack such a small object.

Ready to be shipped! I hope they all got a little smile when they opened this little box.

Then a few weeks later, my mom sent me this picture.
She decided to elaborate and make a “breakfast table set”.

I made this little Mary a few weeks ago for a friend.
It was carved out of a pencil that Max & I used for our project.
I believe tools we used while creating art receive massive amount of energy.
So this pencil wasn’t just an ordinary pencil but it contains lots of positive, creative and joyful energy.
Hopefully this Mary will bring lots of love & peace to our friend.