Marie in Japan: September 2011

This is my new knitting bag, made by my aunt. It's PERFECT. Not only is the bag made out of fabric I bought in Japan, but the pockets are just right for all my tools.

The 'Daruma' fabric on the outside of the bag is from a store called Sanki, about a 15 minute walk from where I used to live in Japan. The blue fabric on the inside is from a fabric shop in Mito (Ibaraki Prefecture), I think.

I love this long pocket on the side- it fits my needles, crochet hooks, and other long tools just right.

I put the finishing touch on the front pocket - a Switzerland pin, and a cute Japanese Mickey pin I bought on my trip to Disneyland earlier this year.

This is my 'origami wallet'.

It's definitely one of the best purchases I made in Japan. This wallet is perfect for holding tons of coins, which makes sense, since Japan is mainly a cash based society.

I bought this 'tenugui' (Japanese cotton cloth) while visiting Yokohama, Japan. My aunt made this beautiful wall hanging from the cloth, which now decorates a wall in my room.

While readjusting to life in America, I've been finding comfort in anything and everything Japanese I find in the states.

I recently returned from a two week road trip across the United States. Ben and I flew to the East Coast, stayed at his mom's house in Connecticut for a week, and then rented a car and drove from Connecticut to California. We stopped along the way for some planned (and a lot of unplanned) sightseeing.

My favorite stops were the ones we didn’t plan, at places we'd never otherwise bother to visit: the one and only Corn Palace in the world (South Dakota), a recreated 1880s town (South Dakota), and the Idaho Potato Museum, among others.

Ben and I had unique obsessions along the way. My obsessions were with the countless hay bales (hay bales in South Dakota are round and in Idaho they're square!), silos, and antique malls I saw in South Dakota and other Midwestern states. Ben was more interested in the windmills, crickets, buffalo, and oddly enough an 80-foot-tall dinosaur he spotted one day on the side of the rode in the middle of nowhere.

I don't know if these things were actually exciting, or just distractions from the endless, and I mean endless, roads we were on for a good chunk of the trip. We had to turn off the radio after a few days because we couldn’t stand listening to the same tunes over and over again. At one point, it got so bad that Ben started honking the horn when no other cars were in sight.

When we weren’t in the car the trip was more exciting. We tried some interesting food along the way. In Canada, Ben introduced me to ‘poutine,’ which I liked better than he did. ‘Poutine’ is french fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy. At Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, we tried buffalo stew and buffalo chili. Both were amazing. And in Jackson Hole, Wyoming Ben tried elk chops and buffalo, and I had a flounder dish one night and some wild game bolognese the next night.

Some of the best parts of the trip for me were finding surprising reminders of Japan in the corners of America. At Mount Rushmore, we ran into a Japanese couple from Tokyo. I don't know if they were more shocked or excited that Ben and I offered, in Japanese, to take their picture in front of the mountain. They even asked to take our picture before we left!

In the small town of Cody, Wyoming we ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant one night. It seemed a bit out of place but we were interested. Ben ordered the sushi and I got the tempura. Ben made a ‘note to self’ after that meal: sushi in the middle of America is probably not the best choice.

Also, I loved finding old Japanese antiques, like tea cups and decorative cloths, at different antique stores we found en route. And when we stopped at the Idaho Potato Museum on our last day, we found some old Japanese potato chips on display.

This is the ground we covered:

DAY #1 (Wednesday, September 7th)

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York

DAY #2 (Thursday, September 8th)

New York, Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois

DAY #3 (Friday, September 9th)

Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota

DAY #4 (Saturday, September 10th)

South Dakota

DAY #5 (Sunday, September 11th)

South Dakota, Wyoming

DAY #6 (Monday, September 12th)