Me, a Japanophile?

At the risk of appearing to have a fetish of sort for all things Japanese, I gotta post these two fabulous finds from Jean Snow's site. 

Mekas: A guide to Japanese street photography (think theSartorialist) and Japan-obsessed Australian illustrator, Andrea Innocent. I'm really digging the illustrations from the Lonely in Tokyo series! Above is one of her work from that series, entitled "Bunny Cottage".

Love me, Asia!

Some great imagery of Japan from Mboogiedown, whose site I'm supremely thankful for. I especially adore the beautiful photos of women decked out in the gorgeous kimonos, not something I'm privy to on a daily basis :-) And from Fine Little Day, a link to a repository of old Japanese postcards. To quote her, when it comes to finds like these, "I love the Internet!".

Also, to commemorate the coming occasion that is Chinese New Year, here's some light reading to find out a little about Chinese symbolisms.

P/S: Whew! The images loaded in a jiffy today, guess Blogspot had some issues yesterday?

Trouble in Blogspotland?

Is anyone else out there experiencing problems uploading images? I've been at it literally from two in the afternoon :-(

UPDATE: I'm probably one of the last mohicans to find out about this, but I'm going to post it here in case anyone else out there is still in the dark -- you can check for Blogspot issues over at this address, http://status.blogger.com/.

Emma Adbåge Illustrations

The whimsical style of Emma Adbåge's work is grabbing me big time. She also keeps a wonderful blog.

via mecozy.

Dollar Origami

Cute lil origami koi by Won Park, from a dollar bill, no less. Found it at yatzer.

Coffee by Christoph Niemann

I read this awhile back and meant to post about it, so I bookmarked it but then, it kinda slipped my mind. Anyway, figured it's too good not to share, even if it's old news in the blogoshere ;-P

Christoph Niemann's ode to coffee is ingeniously illustrated and spot-on hilarious, I reckon all coffee-lovers should be able to see something of themselves in the drawings :-)

Life on the Tibetan Plateau

I am enjoying "travelling" in Tibet via Life on the Tibetan Plateau. I love that the site doesn't only showcase places of interest, but that it also gives glimpses of Tibetan lives and culture.

The picture above is from the site. Looking at it makes me think of Vermeer, so gorgeous!

Hola, 2009!

I don't know about you, but I feel I got bum-rushed into the year 2009. I was completely unprepared and the past month whizzed by so fast I almost had a whiplash :-p Anyway, this is belated and much delayed, but happy new year and may good things happen as we usher in the new year. And if by chance, the bad stuff falls upon us too, well... let's all keep in mind these things are random. Ok ok, I'll lay off the doom-ey gloomy thoughts.

To celebrate the occasion, I thought we can take a look at how "hoshigaki" is made. No, I'm serious. Hoshigaki is dried persimmon in Japanese and there is a great little animation illustrating how the sweet delicacies are made over at Otow Orchard. 

Why hoshigaki, you ask? Why not is the smartypants answer. Seriously, I find I'm inevitably very appreciative of anything that can show processes (of any subject matter) in easy, understandable format. So, hope you enjoy the link as much as I did!