Let’s add another fantastic Japanese craft to my long list of stuff I’m gonna buy whilst visiting the Japanese isles, shall we? Temari. Balls covered with embroidery thread. No big whoop, right? Wrong. Look at this collection of temari.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nanaakua/tags/temari/
I’m going to need about ten or fifteen of those, thanks. Perhaps if I just hand Japan my debit card and pin code, this will all go much faster.
Addendum 1/9/14: Two things. One, my friend Moss and I were texting the other night. She just came back from Japan and I asked her for any tips and she said there was an utterly amazing ramen place in Kyoto. I like the description the gave for what their ramen is like.
Two, I bought my tickets for my flight here at work on Delta, and ever since then I’ve been getting Delta ads in Japanese. Now, whenever I bought tickets to Costa Rica or Belgium I never got ads in Spanish or Flemish or French, so why am I getting Japanese ads?
It makes me think that Japan does not have a booming tourist industry. Or most people who go there have a grasp on the language already. I want to tell Delta not to waste their time because I cannot understand what the ads are saying, but that would require effort and therefore it will never happen.