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This weekend I attempted to dress up our very bland Japanese house by glueing all the origami ninja stars the kids in Himeji gave Ryan and me on a string and hung them from the ceiling. Everytime I look at them, next to our brightly colored Invader Zim Grr blanket that’s covering the majority of the shoji doors I get happy. There’s a pile of origami balls of different sizes on our tv too. The stuff of happiness. The stuff of innosence and dreams. I really need to write that school and say thank you.
The cold weather, forcing me to stay inside longer, has also forced me to deal with ways to both make our house more attractive looking on the inside and warmer. Old Japanese houses are notoriously sucky in that there’s no central heating. People, I guess, just curl up underneath their heated table or kotatsu, eat nabe or stew and wait until winter is over.
I also took the beautiful Japanese style table running and tacked it on the wall in front of some of the sliding doors. Sounds strange, but it’s been quite effective. We’ve had to leave one door cracked for the cat to run in and out but the cold seaping into the room was quite annoying. The table runner leaves just enough (or maybe a little too much) space for the cat to run in and out but keeps the rest of the door sealed. Plus unlike keeping the table runner on the table, having it here will actually keep it clean.
I found this past summer’s Iida Puppet Festival poster and put it up along with a traditional bandana from the same festival, but really I’m stretching it. When we go back to America I think we need to find more posters to liven up our place for the rest of the winter months
