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Tuesday, 13 October 2009

LVKT at the Rose Regatta Dragon Boat Festival

Monday, 10 August 2009

North American Taiko Conference 2009
NATC is the biggest taiko gathering in North America. Its a weekend of taiko immersion: workshops, demos, performances, everything.

This was the second NATC I have attended. My first was in Seattle. NATC occurs in the summer of every odd year. And every other NATC goes down in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles (2001, 2005, 2009). Little Tokyo is a cool little place to stay for a weekend. We stayed at the Miyako hotel.

Around the beginning of the year we were invited to perform at Taiko Jam for NATC 2009. It was a tremendous offer and we couldn't pass it up. We began the discussion immediately.

Fast forward to NATC weekend. NATC was suddenly upon us. It seemed we were not as prepared as we could have been or should have been, but Taiko Jam went ... pretty well actually. It was such an honor to share the stage with the other groups Kisshin Daiko, On Ensemble, and Portland Taiko.

NATC is as always a great immersion in taiko and the wonderful people associated with taiko. Taiko 10 was awesome, the workshops and discussions were awesome.

One of the workshops I took was Seiichi Tanaka-sensei's Master Class II. Tanaka-sensei was THE guy who brought taiko to North America, straight from Japan. He's a funny guy and its just surreal to be learning directly from him.

I also took Yuta Kato and Shohei Takatani's "Mochi Tsuki" class. I originally signed up for Shoji Kameda's "How Accurate Am I?" class, but it was canceled. Mochi Tsuki was fun. AND we got to eat our hard work!

I didn't take any good pictures ... but Sergio did! Serg's NATC Flickr sets: NATC Welcome Reception, North American Taiko Conference 2009, and Taiko 10.

Jim came down with me, but after he dropped me off at the hotel, it was down to brass tacks (or steel byou) and I hardly saw him, maybe for a meal here and there. Sometimes, he relieved me with an escape from the chaos.

After NATC was all said and done, Jim and I lingered in LA for a couple more days, staying with our most generous host, e*.

We got to hit up some old LA favorites (the Getty, LACMA, the Grove, the Promenade) and found some new favorites (Santouka, NBC Seafood). After all of the stress of NATC, staying in LA was good decompression.

I look forward to the next NATC ... Bay Area!

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Great Escape
Last month, I took a mini-getaway with my mom and Aunty Twilla. We hit up Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon National Park, Yosemite, and Mono Lake Tufa, all in California.
It was about a seven-hour drive (with stops) to Sequoia National Park. When we got there, we went straight for the highlights.
Sequoia National Park is a park full of huge Sequoia trees, some hundreds of years old. We lucked out on the weather. It normally rains all the time, but we caught a patch of clear weather. In the above picture we're near 10,000 feet above sea level and we were literally in the clouds.

The next day we poked around the park. We did one really short hike and saw General Grant, the second largest and second oldest tree in the entire park. The above picture is Ma and Aunty Twi in front of a fallen Sequoia, NOT General Grant.

We also did the Crystal Caves hike. It was a downhill walk to the caves, but uphill hike after. The cave walk was really fun. We had a really enthusiastic guide.

After the hike, we headed out of Sequoia and on to Yosemite and checked into our lodging. The next day, we explored Yosemite village, did a few mellow walks, horseback riding, and a star-gazing thing. You could spend a week in Yosemite and still not see everything.

I took a swim in a dried-up creek.

After Yosemite, we hit up Mono Lake. Mono Lake is home of these tufa formations. Tufa are these rock formations that occur underwater. But the water level had dropped so low, that the tufa were left exposed above the surface of the water. Interesting, but kind of depressing because you kind of think about how the water level is gradually getting lower every year.

In all, the trip was so much fun, and really pretty economical.
Check out more pictures on my Flickr.

Thursday, 12 March 2009

Yesterday was kickass. (Makes me want to blog again.)

Went to school so godawful early in the morning. Developed a roll a film. Still out of it because I was hunting for photos late the previous night before.

Met up with Jim just to bullshit between classes. We decided to cut out of our second classes and watch Watchmen. It was good. I liked that they stayed so close to the original story and barely left out anything. But I wouldn't think people would enjoy it as much if they haven't read the book. It really didn't seem like a two and a half hour-long movie.

Then we went grocery shopping for dinner. I bought an eggplant the night before and didn't really know what I was gonna do with it. We based dinner around that. I made a caponata and Jim pieced together a charcuterie plate with cured meats, blue cheeses and sharp cheddar, kalamata olives, roasted zucchini, and flat bread crackers. I also remembered we had some leftover chicken. Jim got creative on that one. He marinated it like he was "making an Italian dressing" in balsamic vinegar, sage, oregano, and thyme, then he cooked it in olive oil with onions. We also popped a bottle of 75, our favorite cabernet sauvingnon. Everything was awesome. And it looked good. I totally should've taken a picture, but I was already eating and in heaven.

Then we went out to Steiner's for Alex's bday. I was totally gonna take it easy. I had one vodka. But then people were like, "Car bombs!" Ugh. So diabolically good. I think I had three.

When I woke up in the morning, I was topless, but my eyeglasses were still on and I had my hair in a pony tail. I was like, "What the hell happened to me last night?" Jim was in the same state. When I got out of bed to go downstairs, he warns me, "I spilled popcorn everywhere." We really are scummy kids.