New Blog

Hey I've moved.
Go here from now on for all the exciting news.

http://www.kateoleary.com/blog/

Hair Dye

I have the winter blaaaahs.

I met with my neighbor today and it was really interesting.
A couple of weeks ago I brought her an article that my Mom sent me about Blythe dolls.
They have a renewed popularity in Japan and America since a company started to make them again.

Yumiko was interested in this and did some research on the dolls and also shared with me the Japanese version of Barbie, Licca-chan. When Barbie was first introduced in Japan they thought she looked too adult so they made this doll with more child like features. I told her that in America there was movement to make Barbie reflect the more ethnically diverse population and if there was any concern for that here. I’m not sure she really understood what I was saying. All the dolls here are Caucasian and don’t look Asian.



For some reason hair dye has been a popular subject for us lately. It’s a recent trend in the last ten years for young Japanese people to dye their hair. A lot of schools use to have rules that your hair had to be black. It was also common for older woman whose hair was turning white to dye it brown. When it first became popular to start dying your hair brown she had a hard time understanding why. I told her all the different colors that I have dyed my hair and she thought that was funny.

Here is a line of hair dye that uses Blythe dolls.








She asked what color my mother’s hair was. I told her that her that my mom dyes her hair brown to cover the gray. Sorry Mom, I hope that’s not embarrassing. But it brought up a really good point. Yumiko didn’t know what I meant by gray. She asked, White? I said no gray. She asked me to find a color to show her in the house. In Japan their hair doesn’t turn gray it turns white. I had never thought about it before. Sometimes you get white hair and sometimes it’s gray. She hadn’t realized this either and we both agreed that it’s a good thing for us to visit each other and learn about other cultures. This sounds like an after school special but it was really fun.

Check this out

This is a photo from our weekend in Sapporo.
I have no idea who these people are but they wanted to get their picture taken with Dan and I.
Seriously. There are photos of us with every member of their family.
Maybe they thought we were Brad and Angelina. HA.
Any way .

Check out Brendas blog.
http://japanesebrenda.blogspot.com/2007/02/yuki-matsuri-yo.html
She was with us that weekend and it was tons of fun.
She's way more together with updates than Dan or I and you get a entertaining take on our week.

Note to our sensitve readers there is some strong langage involved.

New Work

Here are some acorn friends that I've been working on.

One Morning

From Jan 31 to Feb 7th I didn't have email. So if you emailed and didn't hear from me, that's why.

Here's one of my mornings.


This is what I see when I wake up.


Take a shower. This is interesting because it shows how we have to get hot water. See the black knob on the far right. Turn that on to open the gas. Then the right beige knob on the top of the black is pushed down and turned. As you hold that down you turn the crank directly under it and look in the window to see if you light the gas. Then slowly let the top knob up and turn in again. Then you can turn on the water.


This is the kerosene heater that heats the house. I huddle in front of it when I get out of the shower cause it's COLD.
Our bedroom is to the left there. Our laundry is hanging there too. We don't have a dryer.


The sink outside of the shower.


We have a washing machine. This is how we do laundry. You can start to see how the room fits together. The sink is on the far right, then the shower, washing machine, kitchen is beyond that and if you turn left you would see the heater and bedroom.


Breakfast. Those are Dan's Pringles not mine.


Walking to the bus.


Waiting for the bus.


On the bus.


The art supply store. It's combined with a frame shop. This is pretty common. This is the biggest on in Hakodate and it's really small but it keeps me going.


Back to work, my desk.


This is my computer desk. I was going to show the view out the window (a mountain) but it there was too much condensation.

A challenge

What? You want me to only eat things that are cute?
Okay.



This is a bao bun that was pink, filled with something yellow and had a face.
This photo looks a little gross but it was really cute.
It didn't taste so good. But it was cute!



This was a bag of dried beans(?) with little pieces of hard candy mixed in. Pretty good.

Kyoto

Before Seoul, Dan and I went to Kyoto.
He posted some beautiful photos of our trip on his site.
http://danhenrick.com/