Brushing up on our knowledge of Japanese brushes...

In consolation for my spouse being deployed for a month through Thanksgiving and most of December this year, he took a day off of work to accommodate my wish for him to go on a cultural trip with me... this time to the brush-making city of Kumano, just on the outskirts of Hiroshima. This was yet another of the Cultural Adaptation tours sponsored by MCAS Iwakuni and led by our fearless tour guide Akie.

According to Kumano's mayor, the brush museum curator and another dignitary who acted as our host throughout the day, Kumano is home to about 25,000 people, 2,500 of them are employed by the brush-making industry. Kumano's calligraphy and makeup brushes are hand-made, and supply about 80 percent of Japan's calligraphy and makeup brushes.This is a huge source of pride for the town, and there is a museum, art center and even a mascot, Fuderin, picture above with Rodney and me. Fuderin is not a mushroom, or a Hershey's white chocolate kiss on a stick... he is what I would describe to be a anime brush. Fude (foo-day, not food or feud) means brush in Japanese.

Now, mind you, the day's activities cost us 1,000 yen each, or about $10 each. The first stop was to the art center, where we practiced our calligraphy and painting with two different types of calligraphy brushes... which we got to take home as a keepsake. Kumano's mayor welcomed us to the town and there was a town resident at each of our tables to show us techniques and make us feel welcome.

Kumano's mayor (man in suit) and Akie (right) our tour guide.

23 residents of MCAS Iwakuni participated on the trip.

My attempt to outline the berries in front of me with a calligraphy brush. An artist I am not.

Rodney worked on a postcard with tulips on the front. He later recovered from the girly-ness by drawing a baseball for our sons.

We created posters and post cards. The city provided the postage so we could actually mail our postcards to the United States. A couple of close family members will be receiving these in the mail:

Next on the agenda was lunch, which was at a restaurant named Midoriya, within a 5-minute walk of the art center. They had the entire meal out and read for all of us and it was delicious!

The meal was one that is traditional for the New Year, and included oysters, which I am not a fan of, so Rodney enjoyed mine... and two other ladies', who didn't care for oysters, either. In total, Rodney ate eight oysters and raved about each one. He was as happy as a... clam.

After lunch was our trip to the KumanoFude Museum, where we saw all different sizes, shapes and uses for handmade brushes, as well as how brushes are made. Well, we saw 12 of the 73 steps required to make a handmade Kumano brush. But first, we took a brief tour around the museum. The brush below is the largest in the world, weighing about 400 kilograms, or 882 pounds.

There was artwork created with brushes...

And some examples of what Kumano brushes are used for...

Our brush-making demonstration took about 20 minutes, and Mr. Kano has been a brush maker for more than 50 years. For the brushes he made for us, he used Chinese goat hair.

Ash is used to reduce the amount of oil in the hair, so it stacks together nicely.

A wooden board is used to stack the hair. Then the hair is brushed to remove odd-sized hairs or hairs turned the wrong way. This is done several times. The hair is then trimmed to the length desired with scissors.

An adhesive made from seaweed is used to make the bristles stiff and keep the individual hairs together as one solid brush shape. Once the brush is placed in water by the new owner, the adhesive deactivates.

It appeared that Mr. Kano enjoyed his job, and did not seem to mind answering our questions through Akie's interpreting.

Across from the brush-making demonstration was an artist demonstrating how some Kumano brushes are used... creating beautiful art.

Like any good museum, there was a brush gift store near the exit.

I would have purchased one of Mr. Kano's brushes, but he specializes in calligraphy brushes only.

Since I don't plan to take up calligraphy, and we just got some brushes as keepsakes, I opted to buy an eye shadow brush. I wasn't the only cultural tourist makeup brush shopping, and there were plenty to choose from, all of them with natural hair, no synthetics.

Kumano also gave the group some gifts, and there was a raffle on the bus ride home as to who would win different items. The grand prize was a small Year of the Horse display, which Rodney, who was born during the Year of the Horse, won. Will was also born the Year of the Horse, so the fact that it came with a large and small horse was very appropriate for our family, We have it displayed in our living room. Hopefully both Will and Rodney will have a great year!

Burning last years luck...

For the second year, the Guthries (minus Rodney this year, as he had to work late Momday evening) headed to the Kintai Bridge area in mid-January for the Tondo festival, which is basically a huge bonfire made from bamboo where you bring your shimekazari (Japanese wreaths) and other good luck ornaments from the new year festivities to burn them with ceremony to start the new year off right. We also ate mochi, a sticky rice cake in a sweet red bean soup, which Will and I love, but Xan does not care for. You can see why he's not a big fan in last year's blog post. Basically, he wore more of the soup than he ate.

Will threw the shimekazari we made in December in to the fire - fortunately he has quite an arm because we arrived a little late and the fire had already been started by the time we finished our mochi.

Of course, the kids had to stage Will throwing Xan in to the fire. Fortunately, Will loves his brother... and isn't that strong.

Three weeks off: My musings on family, being creative and gaming...

This is a post of a different sort... just some of my thoughts thrown out there for whomever to chew on. Comments encouraged... :) I'll be back to the regularly scheduled program soon.... whatever "regularly scheduled" is.

Yes, I know I have not blogged for three weeks. My 92-year-old grandmother, who does not use Facebook, lets me know when it has been too long between posts. (I love you Grandma, really!) I'm hoping to beat her to the punch with this one. I took some much-needed time off from my usual activities, such as blogging, and focused on spending time with my family, being creative, and gaming. And here are how the three of those made an impact on the few weeks I took to recharge:

Time with Family

Being half a world away from all but three members of my family is tough. Fortunately, I am good at adapting, keeping busy, meeting new people and getting involved... plus I can Skype like a madwoman. But, it's still not easy. So, I made sure to try and Skype everyone I could in my family, and my husband's.

Skyping with Grandma Nancy, Grandpa Mark and GG

Skyping with Grandma Peggy, Great-Grandma Velma and Great-Grandpa Bill

Skyping with Aunt Vicky and Uncle Earl

Skyping with Aunt Jill and Uncle Luke, and various aunts, uncles and cousins

With technology and time difference we didn't get to everyone, but we did our darndest. Both families got to see the kids open the gifts they got them for Christmas. It took four different Skype sessions, but we did it! I wrote letters, which I do not usually do, although I appreciate getting them myself, so I figured I better try to reciprocate a bit. And I made a point for the four Japan Guthries to do stuff together, despite the fact Rodney ended up getting pneumonia. We went to a hypnotist show (I have no photos because I was busy being hypnotized, much to the delight of my children and irritation of my spouse), checked out Costco and the light show in downtown Hiroshima on Christmas day (which is not a national holiday in Japan):

and rang in the new year with fellow military families at a neighborhood bonfire.

So, I lived life with my family instead of recording and archiving it like I usually do. Well, I didn't do it AS MUCH. Once a photographer and scrapbooker, always a photographer and scrapbooker, but maybe just in a different format. Which leads me to my next past time I focused on these past three weeks...

Being Creative

I worked on projects that were not custom-made, commissioned orders, which I appreciate, but sometimes it's fun to just create to create, so I did. Most of the projects aren't finished yet, but here's one that I made, just to make (although I will probably sell it or give it away):

And here is something I made  >gasp!<  for myself! I'm a huge fan of margaritas, in case you didn't know.

But the crafting world gave a collective resigned sigh recently when scrapbooking retail chain Archiver's announced it was closing its stores. This shouldn't have really come as a shock to anyone involved in the industry, even as a casual scrapbooker. The industry has been slowly decaying since 2008, which blogger Jennifer Priest does a good job of explaining. Read her post before reading the rest of my post. It will make a lot more sense if you do.

I found myself relating to Jennifer's story, but wanted to add something more to the reason why. I started to comment on her blog, but then found that my comments were reaching the length of a short blog post, so I decided to add my comments here. The digital age has also killed scrapbooking and papercrafting as we knew it. The newspaper and printing industries have had to either adapt or die as people did not electronically. The U.S. Postal Service has been in financial trouble for years because people started sending fewer letters, but overhead costs remained the same. Why wouldn't stickers and printed paper share the same fate? Who prints their photos anymore? In the days of film, you got your negatives back with prints because that was the only way you could view the images you took. Today, you snap a photo on your cell phone and can see it right away. I can't imagine my kids being told they would have to wait an hour to see the photo (remember 1-hour photo places!? Those cute little kiosk-like buildings in the middle of shopping center parking lots?). Or, like when I was a kid, when you had to wait a week or two to get your precious moments back!

Like Jennifer mentioned, I, too, have a couple dozen huge, thick 20-lb. 12x12-inch scrapbooks for each of my kids to move in to their first house with them. If I am lucky, they might scan the pages and toss the books in a basement or attic. I'm finding I am doing a lot more blogging online. It's not as pretty or creative as my scrapbooks were, but it's easily accessible, portable and hopefully there for as long as Blogger is willing to host them. And they're easily searchable and accessed on any handheld device with internet access. I don't have to spend a ton of money on paper, adhesive or albums. I can expect the same cost every month: My internet bill. And if I feel like getting a little digitally creative, I just play with Photoshop, also a cost I can expect to be the same every month with my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. The spouse is happy because it appears I am spending less money. But camera lenses and computer crap is expensive. The next lens I want costs roughly 1,500 sheets of 12x12 scrapbooking paper. But, weighs less... that's a bonus, right? It is when you are a military spouse worried about making the weight allowance for each new move!

Now, I am not saying I will give up papercrafting all together. I work on the computer A LOT, so sometimes I want something tangible to have fun with. Those are the moments I find myself in my scraproom. Yes, I still have a room devoted to crafting, but it was significantly downsized with the last move... and will probably be downsized further with the next one. Meanwhile, my computers keep getting faster and my monitors bigger. And speaking of faster computers and bigger monitors...

Gaming

Yes... gaming. I spent a number of seemingly fruitless hours playing a video game these past few weeks. Anyone who knows me probably thinks of me as someone who doesn't really spend too much time on video games, aside from some Candy Crush as I wait for an appointment or just before I go to bed. I have no idea where to begin with Ghost Protocol or whatever it is, and I get the concept of Minecraft, but it doesn't really interest me. I have always enjoyed board and card games, but since the spouse doesn't really care for anything aside from Texas Hold 'em poker, which I usually beat him at, we don't really play board or card games. But I do have a guilty gaming pleasure I have had since college: Maxis/Electronic Arts' Sims. I was first introduced to SimCity2000 in 1995 because one of the computers in my college newsroom had the game installed on it. My biggest frustration was having enough water pumps to keep the Sims from dying of thirst and moving out of my city.

SimCity 2000

I would spend hours in the newsroom after hours and on weekends, playing. I was an early gamer and didn't know it. Creating my city, growing it, forcing my thousands of subject to obey my every command.. ahh, the joys of college. I guess it appeased my inner megalomaniac so I didn't do anything crazy in the real world. Well, at least nothing crazy that would affect entire cities, anyway.

While this obsession ebbed and flowed over the years, I usually had some Sims game on my computer.

SimCity 3000

I got SimCity 3000 when it came out (the year 2000 had already happened and the cool buildings and technology the game promised did not exist yet, kind of like Back to the Future and The Jetsons, hence the name change).

When it was introduced in 2000, I jumped on The Sims, because if controlling little ant-sized people in SimCity was fun, controlling the actual individual Sims was even funner, right? (Yes, I know "funner" is not a word... my inner 12-year-old video-game-addicted self just broke loose... no worries, I caught her and shoved her back in to learn grammar.)

I skipped over The Sims 2 because I was giving birth to actual little people I could (sort of but not really) control. Then came The Sims 3, which has been around since 2009, I believe, and what I am currently playing now.

The Sims 3

The Sims 4 is scheduled to debut later this year, but I am not sure if I will be an early adopter or not. Time will tell, as will the rhythm of my life whien it comes to other responsibilities, like work. Not that  I don't work now. I think I work more hours now than I ever have, but I get to decide when and where I work so that makes scheduling fun time WAY easier.

But I used to feel guilty about playing video games. I was a closet gamer until now. They were what I considered to be unproductive. At least with crafting and scrapbooking I had something to show for my hours of diligent work. With gaming, there was nothing. My parents would not have displayed a photo of my highly-successful Criminal-careered Sims family with 12 kids (thanks to the fertility treatment lifetime reward) on their shelf. But they do display the photos I take and scrapbooks I make.

But, it turns out, that I may live 10 years longer than the average non-gaming person. If you don't believe me, check out this TED Talk by gamer and game designer Jane McGonigal... trust me, it's worth the 20 minutes. It's a lot more thought-provoking than Downton Abbey or Game of Thrones, I promise, and I watch both of those shows. Not convinced? There are a bunch more TED Talks that explain the benefits of gaming on the brain, on an individual's quality of life and on the world.

After Jane's Talk, I stopped feeling as though my time with my Sims was wasted. And when the non-gaming spouse makes fun of me I just count the minutes I am adding to my life.... out loud so he can hear me over the Duck Dynasty episode he is watching from his recliner.