Date of Birth: Born in New York on January 19, 1983
The same birth date as Yuming, a colleague in the same company; writer/poet Edgar Allan Poe whom I fell in love with in junior-high school; Ogai Mori, a writer of Japan's literary history; and dear Mr. Udo Suzuki, another person Japan is proud of. Please let me know if anyone you know is born on the same date.
Height: 158 cm It's my height, honest. It hasn't changed since my debut. I wonder if that means my growth is totally over?
Blood Type: A Well! True born type!, 'cause both of my parents are A. It's a common type among Japanese, isn't it?
Hobbies: Literature remains my eternal passion! I've been missing Japanese literature so much of late. I rushed into a bookstore which sells books in Japanese, and bought about 15 books in one swoop... I stay at home and have been grappling with the books like a hungry beast. Buying furniture, collecting furniture and interior goods Though I said I've been growing my hair long, I've had it cut. Ou, la, la. (Girls who had their hair short once would know this feeling?) Of course email is a tool indispensable for business and private life, but cruise the Net too. I learned about several sites from Toshiba EMI's engineer the other day. They are awesome -- quite interesting, Mesdames! I recommend first of all two of them, Modern Living and otogaiworld-------. Visit them late at night, then they'll be further to the point.
Specialties: To evade saying "I suppose it's OK"*To puzzle others*Independent action of my left little finger*Basketball*Cleaning. Really, I have confidence at it. I get strangely obsessed about the cleanliness of my house. If I suddenly disappear from the music world, you might see Hikaru Utada working as a helper at some inn in Atami.
Favorite Movies: Shawshank Redemption, Meet Joe Black, Godfather Part 2 (I like Robert De Niro), Good Will Hunting, Baghdad Cafe, The Jerk, Unbreakable, Orlando, Amadeus, Sleepy Hollow
Favorite Writers: Kenji Nakagami, "Izoku," "Kishuben"; Ryunosuke Akutagawa, "Rashomon," "Kappa"; Yasunari Kawabata ,"Kanjo Soshoku," "Yukiguni"; Ogai Mori, "Takasebune"; Soseki Natsume "Kokoro"; Kenji Miyazawa (poetry); Yukio Mishima"Kinkakuji"; Ryotaro Shiba "Sekigahara";
Hermann Hesse. Read "Siddhartha" and "Happiness" and "Steppenwolf" as finale, then you'll be fully satisfied! (I recommend the translation by Kenji Takahashi)
Roald Dahl, "Tales of the Unexpected"; Shel Silverstein, "Where the Sidewalk Ends," "A Light in the Attic";Edgar Allan Poe; Elie Wiesel, "Night"; John Berendt, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"; F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby.
Favorite Artists: I have many many more favorite artists than listed below. I have too many, in fact, and they are constantly increasing. Anyhow, here are some...
Freddie Mercury (Queen), Yutaka Ozaki, Bjork, Janet Jackson, Minnie Riperton, Slash (Guns 'n' Roses), Joe, Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, Craig David, Garbage, No Doubt, GLAY, Guru, Enigma, Blink182, Miles Davis, Mozart, Blue Man Group, At the Drive-in, Erykah Badu, Jimi Hendrix, Bela Bartok, Edith Piaf.
Places I Want to Go: Italy, Mexico, Machu Picchu, Sahara Desert, my ancestral home in Yamaguchi Pref. (I've never visited before, and would like to visit as soon as I can.)
Things Hooked on Recently:
*Hoop-shaped pierced earrings (again) and accessories with silver and gold mixed, though I used to focus on silver only before (does that mean that I've grown a bit?)
*Stimulant seasonings such as tabasco, sesame oil with chili peppers, vinegar and wasabi.
*I'm into long baths lately. Throughout the world, whether at home in New York, in Japan or in a hotel in Europe, I'm indebted to Japan's famous hot spring bath powder from Tsumura. My father said he likes it, too. Don't you think I have fairly composed daily schedule, though my looks may be quite far out....
*It's a fairly recent thing but I've become very fond of making drinks myself. I bought an espresso maker and coffee maker and make them myself every day. I also discovered a cute teacup set at DKNY and I make Japanese tea often and drink it. I squeeze oranges every morning to make juice... Are these things so common that everybody does them? For me who doesn't cook, it's great progress!
My Favorite Words:
kinomi kinomama (with only the clothes one happens to be wearing); shogyo mujo (All things are in flux and nothing is permanent); kechon kechon (completely); charappoko (no sweat); gakeppuchi (cliff edge); ikkaku senkinn (quick money, fortune at a stroke) (--laugh);
February; maybe; love;
"Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be" - Abraham Lincoln;
"Instead of tug o'war, let's play hug o' war" - Shel Silverstein;
"Turn a negative into a positive picture" - Lauryn Hill
Friday, October 21, 2011
Yoshitaka Amano
Yoshitaka amano??
he is my inspiration ,.. ^^b
Yoshitaka Amano was born in 1952 in a small town at the foot of mount Fuji in Shizuoka, Japan. As a child, he reveled in making unbroken loops of drawings on the huge paper rolls that his brother brought home from his job at a paper factory. "I don't remember a time when I wasn't making drawings," he recalls. While visiting a friend in Tokyo in 1967, he boldly took his paintings to the animation studio Tatsunoko Productions, creators of Space Ace and Mach Go Go Go. His talent was instantly recognized, and at the age of 15, his family reluctantly moved him to a company dormitory in the capital city. After a year of training, Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko's greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the US as G-Force and Battle of the Planets), Hutch the Honeybee, and Cashaan: Robot Hunter. Yet after fifteen years with the animation studio, Amano began to grow restless. He tendered his resignation at the age of 30, exchanging his established career for the precarious life of a freelancer. "Even the tax authorities questioned my decision," he remembers. "But once your life is too stable, your creative dies." Amano soon gained a loyal audience through the Japanese publication Science Fiction Magazine, which serialized his work in their Twlight World feature. In 1984, he published his first collection of paintings, Maten (Evil Universe) . He went on to collaborate with numerous writers, creating close to 20 illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. These works include Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D, Kaoru Kurimonto's Guin Saga, Yoshiki Tanaka's Arslan Chronicals, and Rasen-O (Spiral King) and Chimera by Baku Yumemakura. At the same time, in 1984 he teamed up with director Mamoru Oshii to create the animated film Angel's Egg, which became a cult hit in Japan. His artistic success won him access to yet another format in the 1980s; concept illustration for videogames. His first project, Final Fantasy, became an international hit. He also created character designs for the games Front Mission, Gun Hazard, Rebus (released asKartia in the US), and Emblem of Eru (to be released in Japan by Capcom.) Amano pushed his boundaries even farther in 1997, when he began creating work in New York City. "New York" says Amano, "is my fantasy city, a place where I can dream freely and without constrictions of the known." His 1997 "Think Like Amano" exhibition in New York City's Puck Building presented a retrospective of his work, and debuted his series of ambitious New York paintings. In the fall of 1998 the exhibit travelled to Tokyo's Uenonomori Museum, where it drew record crowds. 1998 also saw the premiere of 1001 Nights , a collaborative film/music project with composer David Newman that was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The 3D computer graphic animated film was produced by Yukio Sonoyama and premiered as the inaugural event in the L.A. Philharmonic's innovative "Filmharmonic" series. In the fall of 1999, Amano will present a multimedia exhibition of his new character Hero, open from October 6th through October 31st at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York City. Also in 1999, Amano has joined for the first time with Neil Gaiman to introduce a new edition of the wildly popular Sandman series.
he is my inspiration ,.. ^^b
Yoshitaka Amano was born in 1952 in a small town at the foot of mount Fuji in Shizuoka, Japan. As a child, he reveled in making unbroken loops of drawings on the huge paper rolls that his brother brought home from his job at a paper factory. "I don't remember a time when I wasn't making drawings," he recalls. While visiting a friend in Tokyo in 1967, he boldly took his paintings to the animation studio Tatsunoko Productions, creators of Space Ace and Mach Go Go Go. His talent was instantly recognized, and at the age of 15, his family reluctantly moved him to a company dormitory in the capital city. After a year of training, Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko's greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the US as G-Force and Battle of the Planets), Hutch the Honeybee, and Cashaan: Robot Hunter. Yet after fifteen years with the animation studio, Amano began to grow restless. He tendered his resignation at the age of 30, exchanging his established career for the precarious life of a freelancer. "Even the tax authorities questioned my decision," he remembers. "But once your life is too stable, your creative dies." Amano soon gained a loyal audience through the Japanese publication Science Fiction Magazine, which serialized his work in their Twlight World feature. In 1984, he published his first collection of paintings, Maten (Evil Universe) . He went on to collaborate with numerous writers, creating close to 20 illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. These works include Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D, Kaoru Kurimonto's Guin Saga, Yoshiki Tanaka's Arslan Chronicals, and Rasen-O (Spiral King) and Chimera by Baku Yumemakura. At the same time, in 1984 he teamed up with director Mamoru Oshii to create the animated film Angel's Egg, which became a cult hit in Japan. His artistic success won him access to yet another format in the 1980s; concept illustration for videogames. His first project, Final Fantasy, became an international hit. He also created character designs for the games Front Mission, Gun Hazard, Rebus (released asKartia in the US), and Emblem of Eru (to be released in Japan by Capcom.) Amano pushed his boundaries even farther in 1997, when he began creating work in New York City. "New York" says Amano, "is my fantasy city, a place where I can dream freely and without constrictions of the known." His 1997 "Think Like Amano" exhibition in New York City's Puck Building presented a retrospective of his work, and debuted his series of ambitious New York paintings. In the fall of 1998 the exhibit travelled to Tokyo's Uenonomori Museum, where it drew record crowds. 1998 also saw the premiere of 1001 Nights , a collaborative film/music project with composer David Newman that was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The 3D computer graphic animated film was produced by Yukio Sonoyama and premiered as the inaugural event in the L.A. Philharmonic's innovative "Filmharmonic" series. In the fall of 1999, Amano will present a multimedia exhibition of his new character Hero, open from October 6th through October 31st at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York City. Also in 1999, Amano has joined for the first time with Neil Gaiman to introduce a new edition of the wildly popular Sandman series.
Cosplay
Cosplay , short for "costume play", is a type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character or idea. Characters are often drawn from popular fiction in Japan, but recent trends have included American cartoons and Sci-Fi. Favourite sources include manga, anime, tokusatsu, comic books, graphic novels, video games, hentai and fantasy movies. Any entity from the real or virtual world that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject. Inanimate objects are given anthropomorphic forms and it is not unusual to see genders switched, with women playing male roles and vice versa. There is also a subset of cosplay culture centered around sex appeal, with cosplayers specifically choosing characters that are known for their attractiveness and/or revealing (even explicit) costumes.
Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture centred around role play. A broader use of the term cosplay applies to any costumed role play in venues apart from the stage, regardless of the cultural context.
"For almost 50 years, costume fandom has had a consistent and widespread following with costumers markedly influencing science fiction writers, artists and the media. Costuming, as an innovative, three-dimensional art form, has probed and broken all limits of imagination in SF and fantasy. From the first Worldcon in 1939 to last year's Worldcon in Philadelphia, costume fandom has emerged as a robust and dynamic force within science-fiction fandom. At the First World Science Fiction Convention in New York in 1939, a 22-year-old Forrest J Ackerman and his friend Myrtle R. Jones appeared in the first SF costumes among the 185 attendees. The future editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland was dressed as a rugged looking star pilot, and his female companion was adorned in a gown recreated from the classic 1933 film Things to Come. Both of them created quite a stir among the somber gathering of writers, artists and fen (plural of fan), and injected a fanciful, imaginary quality into the convention's overly serious nature. Frederik Pohl, in his book The Way The Future Was, described the couple as "stylishly dressed in the fashions of the 25th century" but feared that they had started an ominous precedent. He was right! So successful were their costumes that the following year, about a dozen fans turned out in their own "scientifiction" apparel. Now, over a half century later, costume fandom has come to represent a large segment of the hardcore genre audience. Artists like Kelly Freas, Wendy Pini and Tim Hildebrandt, authors like Julian May and L. Sprague de Camp, and fans by the hundreds dress regularly in costume. Groups, such as the U.K.‘s Knights of St. Fantomy, the Society for Creative Anachronism and the International Costumers' Guild, conduct business and ceremony in costume, and the masquerade has become the central event of most large conventions
Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture centred around role play. A broader use of the term cosplay applies to any costumed role play in venues apart from the stage, regardless of the cultural context.
History of cosplay
Dorayaki
Dorayaki is a type of Japanese confection, а red bean pancake which consists of two small pancake-like patties made from castella wrapped around a filling of sweet red bean paste.
It originally only had one layer, and the current shape was invented in 1914 by the Ueno Usagiya.
In Japanese, dora means "gong", and because of the simililarity of the shapes, this is probably the origin of the name of the sweet.
Legend has it that the first Dorayaki were made when a samurai named Benkei forgot his gong (dora) upon leaving a farmer’s home where he was hiding and the farmer subsequently used the gong to fry the pancakes, thus the name Dorayaki.
It originally only had one layer, and the current shape was invented in 1914 by the Ueno Usagiya.
In Japanese, dora means "gong", and because of the simililarity of the shapes, this is probably the origin of the name of the sweet.
Legend has it that the first Dorayaki were made when a samurai named Benkei forgot his gong (dora) upon leaving a farmer’s home where he was hiding and the farmer subsequently used the gong to fry the pancakes, thus the name Dorayaki.
How to make Dorayaki
Taiyaki
Taiyaki is a Japanese fish-shaped cake. The most common filling is red bean paste that is made from sweetened azuki beans. Other common fillings may be custard, chocolate, or cheese. Some shops even sell taiyaki with okonomiyaki, gyoza filling, or a sausage inside.
Taiyaki is made using regular pancake or waffle batter. The batter is poured into a fish-shaped mold for each side. The filling is then put on one side and the mold is closed. It is then cooked on both sides until golden brown.
Taiyaki was first baked by a sweet shop Naniwaya in Azabu, Tokyo in 1909, and now can be found all over Japan, especially at food courts of supermarkets and Japanese festivals .
They are similar to imagawayaki ,which are thick round cakes also filled with sweet azuki bean paste or custard.
If you plan on making taiyaki, you’ll need a taiyaki-ki (taiyaki mold). But if you’re simply after the flavor of taiyaki, you can also make silver dollar size cakes with the batter and fill them with anko. This confection is called dorayaki (literally, “grilled gong”, in allusion to their round shape).
I wanted a more crisp bread for my taiyaki and have tweaked a krumkake recipe I found online. This recipe yields a firm, light crust that’s not too sweet.
Taiyaki
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
2 1/2 Tbs. cornstarch
3 Tbs. water
3 large eggs, room temperature
2 Tbs. honey (optional)
1 1/2 cups anko, room temperature
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and cornstarch. Set aside.
Beat together the eggs, honey, if using, and sugar till frothy and to it add the flour mixture and water. Whip till smooth.
Preheat a taiyaki-ki and brush it lightly with oil. Pour in a small amount of batter to the preheated pan, add a tablespoon of anko and more batter as necessary to fill in the details. Close and latch the pan.
Turn the heat to medium low and cook about 30 seconds then turn the pan over. Heat evenly for a minute and turn again. Repeat. The taiyaki are done when you can easily open the iron and the taiyaki are a golden brown, about 4 minutes. Serve immediately.
Makes 12 Taiyaki
Difficulty: Easy | Time: 30 minutes | Ingredient Availability: Easy
The Japanese use fillings other than anko for taiyaki. Chocolate, custard and even savory fillings are also popular additives. Use whatever you like; make it your okonomi-taiyaki!
You can make dorayaki with this recipe and add more honey to up the flavor and make it more moist. If you want, cut shapes from the dorayaki with a cookie cutter while the cakes are still warm. You can then sandwich anko between them.
Taiyaki is made using regular pancake or waffle batter. The batter is poured into a fish-shaped mold for each side. The filling is then put on one side and the mold is closed. It is then cooked on both sides until golden brown.
Taiyaki was first baked by a sweet shop Naniwaya in Azabu, Tokyo in 1909, and now can be found all over Japan, especially at food courts of supermarkets and Japanese festivals .
They are similar to imagawayaki ,which are thick round cakes also filled with sweet azuki bean paste or custard.
If you plan on making taiyaki, you’ll need a taiyaki-ki (taiyaki mold). But if you’re simply after the flavor of taiyaki, you can also make silver dollar size cakes with the batter and fill them with anko. This confection is called dorayaki (literally, “grilled gong”, in allusion to their round shape).
I wanted a more crisp bread for my taiyaki and have tweaked a krumkake recipe I found online. This recipe yields a firm, light crust that’s not too sweet.
Taiyaki
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
2 1/2 Tbs. cornstarch
3 Tbs. water
3 large eggs, room temperature
2 Tbs. honey (optional)
1 1/2 cups anko, room temperature
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and cornstarch. Set aside.
Beat together the eggs, honey, if using, and sugar till frothy and to it add the flour mixture and water. Whip till smooth.
Preheat a taiyaki-ki and brush it lightly with oil. Pour in a small amount of batter to the preheated pan, add a tablespoon of anko and more batter as necessary to fill in the details. Close and latch the pan.
Turn the heat to medium low and cook about 30 seconds then turn the pan over. Heat evenly for a minute and turn again. Repeat. The taiyaki are done when you can easily open the iron and the taiyaki are a golden brown, about 4 minutes. Serve immediately.
Makes 12 Taiyaki
Difficulty: Easy | Time: 30 minutes | Ingredient Availability: Easy
The Japanese use fillings other than anko for taiyaki. Chocolate, custard and even savory fillings are also popular additives. Use whatever you like; make it your okonomi-taiyaki!
You can make dorayaki with this recipe and add more honey to up the flavor and make it more moist. If you want, cut shapes from the dorayaki with a cookie cutter while the cakes are still warm. You can then sandwich anko between them.
other ways to make Taiyaki
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)