Exciting news!
We did a book cover for Museyon Guides, “Art + Travel (Europe).”
They just sent us the book and it is amazing. Printed beautifully and so inspiring.
Luckily we are off to Holland in 2 weeks that I will definitely use this guide book to immerse myself with art while I’m there. If you’re planning to travel to Europe, this is a really nice guide book to pick up.
They have other series like “Film + Travel” and “Music + Travel”. These books make you want to travel all the time.

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!!

A lot of my childhood friends tend to give me toys when I visit them.
I can say that this is the best toy I’ve ever received!
It’s called toy series and you can make miniature foods!
The sad part is that it’s not eatable. I must say it’s very tempting.
This time, I got “sushi” set.

My mom kept most of my art work in the attic.

“self portrait” from 2nd grade.

“Paddy Cakes” from 2nd grade.

And here are some drawings from my sketchbook from when I was in 1st grade.
For some reason, I was obsessed with drawings houses for different animals.
The first one is frog’s house.

Mama frog is pregnant (top right) and next to kitchen is a will-be-a-baby’s room.

This is squirrel’s house.
I guess for a very tall tree house, you need a very tall street lamp.(left)

A school of fish.
The funny part is a before/ after drawing of fish. (top)

Little people drawing with a regular size crayon.

A ghost’s birthday party.
I see Snoopy.

This is the funniest and weirdest drawing ever.
It says “whiskey” over and over. (You read top to bottom, right to left)
Is this a writing practice?
But it’s written on my sketchbook, not on my Japanese notebook.
My parents don’t drink, so I have no idea where this came from.

Do you know Akihabara?
It’s an electronic town in Tokyo, Japan. It’s really famous for maid cafe and comic stuff, but since I was little, it was known for electronics.
So Max and I decided to look for headphones!

What do you say? They’re huge, like earmuffs. They really keep our ears warm, too.
Very comfortable and loving them!
Info:
Max-Sony MDR-2600
Ru-Sony MDR xb-700

Here’s a quick video of my favorite creatures from the Okinawa Aquarium. Garden eels are little, worm-like critters that burrow in sand flats. They kind of sway back and forth and resemble sea vegetation. Sometimes multiple eels burrow in the same hole making them look even more surreal. Weird.

There is a dolphin who lost her tale in Churaumi Aquarium.
Her name is Fuji.
She was attacked by an unknown disease which resulted in infecting her flukes.
After a surgery, Fuji lost 75% of her flukes and couldn’t swim like before.

Depressed Fuji gained weight.
So this projected started- to create an artificial fin for Fuji!
Bridgestone Co (Tire maker) and acrylic sculpture teamed up and created several artificial fins after trial and error.

Now Fuji is used to her flukes less body and can swim like other. She uses her artificial fin to participate in the show and corporates with the research.

I met Fuji in the Dolphin Lagoon. She is very friendly and will come very close to you.

You can read a full story of Fuji here!

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.