Good bye year of 2019

The time has gone  by quickly. Now, today is the last day of 2019. I can't believe it, but it is the reality.

I bought rice cakes at the Japanese food market. They are for the New Year dishe.
 
I love a zoni. Zoni is a New Year's dish with rice cakes and vegetables in a soy sauce based soup.
But this is the custom of Hokkaido where I grew up. Other part of Japan might use miso based soup. 

Rain, rain, rain

It was raining all night long last night.

Now, 7am, The rain is still falling.

It's going to be a depressing start this morning.

But I try to be happy. 

I do a laughing act in front of the mirror.

It comes with feelings.

Happy acting makes my heart happy.

And I start the day with a happy feeling.

What happen to,,,

During a morning walk, sometimes I take some mails with me because there is a blue mailbox on the street where I walk.

This morning, I took two letters with me. But when I get there the mailbox wasn't there. What happen? I wonder. Then I saw a mark on the street corner where mailbox used to be.

Hey, someone stole the mailbox.

I came home on a midnight drive. It was an easy drive with extremely few cars. 
 Although it was a cold morning, I went to a nearby park to take a walk and tai-chi as usual.

Breakfast Sunday

It was a cold Sunday morning.  This is the morning my friend and I have breakfast in Japan town. We always arrive to the restaurant about 30 minutes before it open and take a walk in the neighborhood. 

We spend the hour and a half and left the restaurant.

Sound like a Christmas

Last night、a friend and I went to an Astro burger for a supper. I had a cheeseburger and french fries he had a Greek salad. The Christmas song was playing in the restaurant.

I worked on the demonstration piece a little more and finished it. 
It looks good.

Salmon

It was a nice day this morning, but it's getting dark and cold in the afternoon. I went to shop at the market this morning. The last time I was here in this market, a person worked in the fish department told me that they are going to have a bargain sale of the salmon fillets on Friday. That's the reason I came to the fish department of this market. I eat fish almost every day. Especially I like a salmon. It was a really reasonable price of the salmon. I bought 5 packs of salmon fillets. As soon as I came home, I put all  the salmon in the freezer. I will enjoy salmon dinner for a while.

The last watercolor class of the month was rainy and  cold day.
What's more, This is the one day before the Thanksgiving day. I worried that how many students will come to the class. 

I had the three students in the class. Not bad, I was happy and we had a nice enjoyable class.

No Heater

It’s cold in my house. Because, I don’t have a house heater. I have been living in this house without heater many years. I am from snow country, I can take a California winter, It’s nothing to me.
 
But outside the house is nice and warm under the sunlight. So, I went to a shopping mall and writing my Japanese newsletter.

A senior breakfast

John and I had a breakfast in Little Tokyo. We talked for almost two hours. Our topics are broad in range. We can talk for a long time. However, if we stay in the restaurant for too long, the waitress might not like us any more.

The Oden the Japanese hot dish

The refrigerator is empty.I have to go shopping, otherwise I will starve to death.I went to the Japanese food market after a long time.I buy an instant Oden that I want to eat in the cold winter. I got everything I needed, but the Oden.

In the heavy rain.

It was a heavy rain this morning. I went to home depot to get a crowbar, I am middle of the take down built in easel in my studio. I can't finish the work without a crowbar.

Am I,,,,,

When I take a morning walk to the big park near my place, I saw lots of tents for the homeless people. The cold season is here now it must be a hard living in the tents. By the way, am I a homeless because I live in a rented house? ^-^

I am a driver

My good friend N stop driving the car a couple of months ago. Since then, I drive him whenever he need to ride for shopping or something. He is almost eighty years old.

The year of the mouse

A next year in Japan will be the year of the mouse. One of my clients asked me to make a new year's card design using a little cute mouse image. So, I started studying the mouse.

A watercolor paper

Eleven students came to my last week watercolor class. I used a new watercolor paper for a demonstration. It worked very well. 

A Melon-pan

     A Saturday morning, I took a long distance morning walk course. It was still dark outside. I saw only two people in the park.

     On the way back home, I stopped by a Mexican food market. The Last time when I came here I saw a sweet bread witch look like a Japanese melon-pan so I wanted to get one but I couldn't find one this morning. I will get it for sure as soon as I see it again.

A morning walk

It was a cold morning. But I must go for morning walk.

JCI Art Show

JCI Art Show is over. I had a nice time at the show. I taked with some new people and got some interesting information. I should say it was the successful show.

.

A Sunday morning. This is the morning we have a breakfast meeting at Little Tokyo.

Yesterday was the day of our watercolor class. Five people came. Thank you. I did a demonstration as usual. It was a simple painting of a wood. I wanted to show how to paint a lot of the different type of trees in one place.

Today's diary

This is the day I don't feel like writing a diary. Something like this happens once in a while.

I'm going to work on the new watercolor painting. So, I did a color study for the new painting. I will start painting it tomorrow.

Daytime getting shorter and shorter every day. It means my morning walk schedule changes a little by little.

The watercolor class is getting busy. Hard to handle it by myself. I have to figure out a good way to take care of the class.

I visited my old friend in Desert Hot springs. He moved there from San Fransisco four months ago. I met him first time at the party in San Diego 25 years ago. He is a Japanese man from Kanazawa. I spent about three hours talking to him and I came back home. It was so hot I could not live there in summertime.

Hello, Today is the last day of the month. And I was busy for working on the things I do end of the month, such as writing newsletters and send them out.

The watercolor demonstration of the last week class was a landscape with a river. I showed how to paint the running water. And I will do the same subject this week, but this time how to paint a background scene.

The SBWS watercolor exhibition started. An image above is a study of my paintings.

This is the demonstration piece I did in my class. I did this within 15 minutes but it came out one of my favorites.

Today is the day

I took my three paintings to SBWS watercolor exhibition gallery yesterday. It was the day of take in the art works to the show.

My two Japanese friends and I got together in a Japanese restaurant in Long Beach. We have been doing this two to three times a year. It was a senior luncheon meeting.    I believe that our last meeting was four  months ago. So, we had a lot of things to talk about. That’s why We stayed there almost three hours, We left the restaurant 2pm. We had a nice time talk about a senior life.

The watercolor class last Wednesday was a busy and lively three hours. I did a watercolor demonstration. It was the landscape which I painted using only an ultramarine blue paint. This way students can see the contrast of light and dark easily.

Some people came to see our class. Lately we have people like them visit the class often. It’s very encouraging.

The last week watercolor class was another lively one. We have a lot of new students in the class and senior watercolor instructor was having a hard time remember the names of the students.
 
Other than that, The everything is under control.

6/5/2019 It was the first watercolor class of the month. We had seven students in the class. Surprisingly, more than half of them were newcomers. Just for the safe side, the instructor starts using name sign in front of the each student.

I did a demonstration of watercolor. This time, it was  “White Lily”.

The first step.

This is the first step of my new watercolor painting.
And I add more works and destroy it. LOL.

A good number of students showed up at the class. So, we had a very lively classroom.  Also, we had a visitor in the class.　Hopefully, the person will come back to study the watercolor with us.

My watercolor demonstration of this week was the continuation of the subject of the last week. And, this time, My demonstration　concentrated more of the bird than background.

This is a demonstration piece I did last watercolor class. I planned to do more work for this painting but it looks good as it is. I am thinking that I should do more work or not. That's the question.

We had a very good class last Wednesday (5/1/2019). 
There were 10 students in the class and three students out of ten were new comers. Isn't that great or what. I was so busy and running around the classroom. Also, I was a happy senior watercolor instructor that day.

A busy day today. I am going to teach watercolor class this afternoon.

A Watercolor Class

April 10th Wednesday's watercolor class was going nicely. We had four students came to the class and I did a watercolor demonstration. A subject was "The first snow of the season".

My friend

My artist friend Mrs.S came to visit my house with her husband on last Saturday. They are planning to go back to Japan in the near future. Now, she tries to get rid of all the books she accumulated for all these years. And she asked me if I want the books. So, I end up with a lot of books, and that's what I am happy about it. Because, I needed a lot of reading material for my reading exercise. 

OOP

I had an important appointment this morning, and I forgot about it completely. I found out that this afternoon, and It was too late. I have to  reschedule an appointment.

   A little good news, We had a surprise visitor to our class.  It was Mr. K. He use to be our class member  more than a year ago. Even though, he had been absent the class for more than year, he was painting at home. I was happy to hear that. It's very important that keep painting to improve your skill.

A morning walk before sunrise

This is already the end of March, but it's still cold in the morning. I go out for the morning walk before the sunrise. I think that the time of lowest temperature in a day.

A shopping day

I have been staying home and painting for four days. So, I decided to go out do a shopping today. I bought meat and fish at an American market, but I have to go to Japanese market to by traditional Japanese food such as natto, konnyaku, tofu etc.

Yosemite Watercolor Class

　

I taught Yosemite national park art center watercolor class for thirteen years. But it ended September 2017. This is the photo of a first class in Yosemite. This photo brings me a lot of good memories.

Renewal time

I received a drivers license renewal notice from the DMV. I have been studying test questions for a while so, I don't worry about it.

A rice cooker

My precious rice cooker died on me. So, I believed, because I set a timer for the lunch time but it wasn't ready when I checked the rice cooker. Then I remembered that I forgot to change the clock of the cooker to an hour ahead for the summer time.