Notice about moving

Hi.
Today I have something to notice you.

This blog has been consolidated into one with my another japanese blog, flower child.
And the new place is here.

I've already started the new place, and now it has two languages, English and Japanese for one picture.
I hope you'll come to see me there.

With leaving here, I want to say many thanks to you all who has been with me here till now.
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much.



Sincerely,
Tomily

Earthquake

今朝いつもの朝仕事を終えてから、テレビニュースで日本を襲った地震の映像を見て、愕然となりました。

長く遠く離れて暮らしているけれど、その月日と距離の長さに比例するように、母国への愛おしさはどんどんと膨らみ、そして今回のニュースに、悲鳴をあげている母国の姿に、涙が止まらなくなりました。

今のわたしを取り巻く環境との兼ね合いもあっての涙かもしれません。

勝手ないいぐさですが、「わたしの日本が。。。。。愛おしい国の人々が。。。。。」という台詞を何度も何度も頭の中で繰り返し、映像の前にぽろぽろと涙をこぼしつづけ、しまいには頭がぼぉうっとなっています。

できるだけ多くの命が救われますように。

皆の暮らしができるだけ早く穏やかに再開できますように。

皆の心の不安が少しずつでもやわらぎますように。

祈ることしかできませんが、それでも、ただひたすらに祈っています。

**********

This morning, I was violently stunned with the images of Japan.

It was crying over the damages the strong earthquake had made.

Muddy streams were washing the land and furious fire were raging.

Houses, cars and creations by people were devastatingly broken and laid mercilessly.

Japan was crying, and is still crying now.

I just wish our people over there are safe.

Wish as many lives as possible are saved.

Wish they have their families safe, home to go back, food and water to live.

Wish the fear they've just experienced is consoled.

Even though all I can do here in the U.S. might be just praying, I'll never stop praying.

I'll be with them.

Please, please, please our people in Japan, be patient, be strong, don't give up.

Past pictures with Pen-FT -vol.2

Hi.
As I told you last time, here's another 10 of pictures taken with Olympus Pen-FT in early summer of 2009.
They are actually from test rolls for the camera after having gotten it.

When I got these images back from photo service, I wasn't able to like them very much and I've left them till yesterday. (Though some of them were uploaded on either of flickr or blogs.)
Then yesterday, I started to like them when I looked over past pictures and found them from a bunch of past images.
I think you can understand how this sort of things happen.
Just time and the whimsical feeling can bring you this happening.

I took some pictures with Pen-FT recently and I've already had the film developed and seen all the images.
They look way far different from pictures above in color and focus, though I didn't figure out what elements exactly affected it. (But I guess it's maybe because I didn't rely on the light meter of the camera, but trusted on my own sense for exposure, and chose rather medium aperture (like from f4 to f8) to get fairly good range of depth of the field this time.)

I think I'm going to use Pen-FT more often than ever.
Now I don't dislike the pictures Pen-FT renders at all.


Have a nice week, guys. :)

Past pictures with Pen-FT -vol.1

Hi.
Are you having a restful weekend?
I hope all you guys are enjoying the first weekend of March.


This morning I talked about photography with my husband over breakfast.
And I was suddenly inclined to look over past pictures after that and came across these taken with Olympus Pen-FT.
These are from the trip to Northwest in the summer of 2009.
In very first day of the trip, I met the camera at a photo shop which I always visit whenever I stay in Portland.
And though I didn't have any plan to buy a camera at that time, I couldn't help myself wishing if it were to be in my old camera collection.
So I got that and started to use in the trip immediately.


I don't have much to say about the pictures above.
I just wanted to make sure how this camera takes lovely images.
I picked and am showing you first 10 today, and I'll show you another 10 in the next post.


I hope they add some extra on your weekend.
Have the good rest of weekend.

The Oscar night and the feast

A week ago, My husband and I had a very good excuse to have another feast.
The Oscar night.

We didn't watch almost any movies that had nominated, but the event gave us the feeling of festivity enough.
We shopped for a bottle of cheap but our favorite champaign earlier the day.
And we didn't have to think much about what to eat, because it was Sunday.
On every single Sunday we eat pizza, and the day's pizza was "pizza ai tre formaggi". (not quattro. I didn't have four kinds. ;P)
We didn't forget arugula for our cheese pizza as always.

I really like to follow the Italian way to eat our course.
Appetizer first, pizza second and finish with salad.
Salad, especially if it has some refreshing fruits in it, always washes our mouth, especially when you've eaten cheesy dish before it.
I fixed grapefruits and olive salad, and the dressing was made from the juice of grapefruits, maple syrup, salt and pepper.

For the appetizer, I didn't buy anything special but placed ordinal things lying around the fridge.
I just made smoked salmon dip for boiled broccolis and carrots.
The narrow and long white plate, which I've possessed for 8~9 years, is very good for pickled veggies and olives.


The feast was very good, and I don't remember much about the Oscar nor watched till end of the show. ;)

An unchanged favorite sandwich

The moment I fell in love with one sandwich came to me almost a decade ago.
At that time, I didn't know much about bread and cheese, and I even don't remember of the name of the sandwich.
But I just fell in love with that sandwich and still remember how it was good.

Now I know a little about bread and cheese, and I can guess what that sandwich called.; "Caprese", probably.
It has slices of tomatoes, brie cheese and basil leaves, and the bread was artisan whitish bread which had crisp but not too crunchy crust and elastic crumb.
I remember very well how speecheless I was and how much I was concentrated on just chewing it down.

I fixed a very similar one yesterday for my lunch, and it reminded me of a-decade-younger-me.
I think I'll remember that young me whenever I eat this sandwich.
And I'm sure I'll always happy with it.


*******


As I told you in the last post, I'm using various cameras in turn recently.
I took today's pictures with Olympus Pen-FT.
It is a half-size camera as you know, and I had a problem with a CD the images were loaded onto.
I just wonder how people who use this type of camera get images after developing.
I myself scanned the negative, but it was too much work.
Usually I order developing with prints or a CD for my negative film, and as I didn't think one-hour-photo service can make half size prints, so I asked them to make a CD this time.
But it actually didn't get images correctly, I had a lot of half-chopped images.
So I needed to scan the film by myself.

Thus I know film photography needs a lot of work compared to digital photography, but what or who can make me apart from film cameras!