The first floor has a small bedroom in the middle. Bathroom is on the bottom floor.

The second floor is interesting. There is another bedroom in the middle with open space on both sides of the room. Imagine living in a room where your two sides are open to the first floor. Open up a window, “hello down there! Can you bring up a coffee?” Maybe even install a pulley system with a basket to transfer food and other items (I had a friend in middle school who did actually do that with her parents. Her parents amused her. How nice!) The second floor also contains the tv. The interesting part is that the second floor bedroom and the second floor itself have their own set of stairs. The bedroom stairs led up to another private room on the third floor that has its own private balcony. The stairs on the second floor lead to a balcony that guests can enter and use. Pretty nifty! I’d love to have my own private space. So exclusive!

In the pictures, the balcony on the left is private (for painting and meditating), the one on the right is public. There is a bookcase and a lounge chair!

For sure, the person that gets the second floor bedroom should pay more rent.

The decor is really asian. Bamboo, sliding floors, paper lanterns, and asian art on the walls.

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The second floor is the living part of the house. TV, music, and the wood floor reaches around the edge of the house, but not the middle.  The narrow edge near the windows is where you play darts.

The third floor is another bedroom. You’ll notice that guests can walk all the way up to the third floor and to the balcony without going into the bedroom, so there is privacy.

The walls are a cityscape. This is a bachelor’s pad. The balcony has star tiles, like the walk of fame!

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Then we went to Dharma Drum Mountain, a Buddhist school for monks to drum? The place didn’t look overbearing at all and was quiet peaceful. None of that, swooping roofs, red and gold dragons or colorful sculptures. It was really modern, sleek, and minimal.

The Center was inaugurated on October 21, 2005. The buildings in the Center were designed in harmony with contours of the mountain, with brown, gray, and white as their main color, reflecting a humanistic spirit while merging with nature, and featuring a simple and moderate architectural style, making the whole environment and the complex itself a means of teaching.

In addition, in effort to realize environmental protection, ecological construction methods were adopted in constructing the buildings, so as to show respect to, preserve, and protect life and natural resources.

This was taken by someone else. Pictures aren’t allow inside the building.

The picture doesn’t do the place justice. There is a glass window behind the statue that you can look through to see the running water on the wall behind it. There is also a pool of water running around her.

Regardless of religion, it’s a really calming place and the design is really nice.

I bought this awesome mug from the gift shop.

The sillhouette is filled with silver foil and lines eminate from him. Totally my favorite cup now.

Later we went to Black Store, a restaurant my brother keeps raving about. It was good. But I felt so guilty in the end. Which is just about every night now for the past 4 days I’ve been here.

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Here is the front! I like the columns. It’s really too bad I can’t take pictures from building mode anymore, since I have a family moved into the penthouse, but the furniture I chose for all the homes are really luxurious. If you live on the third floor, the rooms are smaller but the furniture is better. Originally I had three homes on each side…those rooms were like…Japan tiny.

Start at the top! This is the left side of the building and open to all tenets from the recreation room two stories down. There is a bar at the bottom left corner, and lots of seats and a bubble maker (that is actually like a hookah).

This is actually the middle of the fourth floor. The elevators go up to the fourth floor, but the main door to the penthouse is right in front of the elevators, so guests have to ring the doorbell right at the elevators. I like the outdoor reclining chairs with the bookcase in the middle. The left door goes to the penthouse party room, and the right door goes to actual living space.

This is the top of the right side of the building. This floor is only available to my family that lives in the penthouse. See the stairs! Outdoor rooftop onsen > <. Gaaah. I need more decor here @_@. Plants…

The fourth floor with the walls up. The room is actually a backwards C. The space you see in the middle of the C is a balcony to the rec room. Imagine walking out and seeing the large windows and the rec room! All the railings are glass and you can go to the rooftop using the spiral stairs. This party side of the room has a bowling ball strip, disco floor, and a karaoke machine you can’t see at the top. Also a candy vending machine, (the bright green). And a bar.

Here it is with the walls down. The black and white tile flooring is the balcony.

The living space. Japanese style walls. Every room is an individually separated room. Wood floor hallways and tatami flooring in the rooms. The doors also slide. The little room in the middle is the tea room with only two walls so it is open to the third floor. Imagine being in the tea room and being able to see the third floor, the kitchen, like a loft. The spiral stairs to the third floor are right next to the main door, in that little room. I had to make it a room because those stairs go directly to the roof, and if I didn’t put the stairs in the little room, the whole floor would be freezing in the winter.

This is with the walls down. See the open space near the large windows? Loooove it. I looove lofts. The rightmost room is a sauna.

This is the third floor. See how the pent house goes down to the third floor, but only in the middle, and is occupied by other tenants on both sides. There is also no door to the third floor of the penthouse on the third floor, but there are for the other two apartment homes.

I also love this kitchen > <. Shiny stainless steel.

This is the recreational room available to all tenants. The door to here is just an open archway. Treadmills, weight lift machine, cycling, pool table, darts, and jacuzzi. Spiral staircase on the corner to go to the balcony or the rooftop. This rec room is also in between two apartment homes.

There are two elevators and also two spiral staircases, one on each side of the elevators.

View of the kitchen and the rec room.

I’d love to hang around here > <.

Second floor. Two homes on each side.

First floor walls up. I like the giant knight in the lobby @_@.

Walls down.

The outside park area. Soccer, basketball, lucky shrine, pool…

Kids big toy, and pond that is frozen over because it’s winter.

And if you still don’t really understand the pictures, here is a quick video.

OoooooOoOooh yeeeeeeah. While carving this I had sudden outburts of imitating The Joker. “Wwwhhhhhyyyy sooOOoooo Sssserrioussssssaaah!” Kind of creepy actually. WRU Heath Ledger <: (

Dear Parents,

Don’t worry, the kitchen is still clean.

I went to Kitayama lunch one day. This is what happens when you’re bored.

Ebi tails for the eyebrows.

I scooped out the pulp of the lemon and replaced it with wasabi.

Then you spread the wasabi around and peel apart the ginger so it is completely flat (no wrinkles!), and lay it around. A work of art.

Then I went to see my uncle who has had his new cat, Tigger, for about a year now. I used to live at his house while he was on vacation to take care of Tigger. I haven’t seen him in almost a year now, and he doesn’t seem to really remember me. He run up to the loft and I couldn’t find him, only to finally spot him behind the computer desk.

He used to seem more brown to me but he’s gray now. Kind of panther like!

I bought a big picture biography of her at Barnes and Noble because it in the Bargain Prices area for only $6.98. At these prices, how are writers earning money? Seriously, at some of those bargain prices…anyhow, I learned a lot more about her. Mostly, that her life wasn’t so happy as you would think from how she carried herself in public. She suffered from health problems because she starved for 15 days when she was young during WWII, stuck in a basement. She was married twice but both of her husbands had affairs with other women so she had to end them. How could someone as amazing as Audrey still have men that cheat on her?

So I posted that I took the Ikea picture and redid them. It’s my wallpaper for my desktop now.

I also made this one:

They are 1690×1050. Here are the download links if you like them:

rainbow-black audrey

black-rainbow audrey

Ikea’s been having a sale for the past month and today I was looking for mattress covers. Mine is kind of old…and has some…err…blood stains that just didn’t wash out. Their covers are so cheap anyway, mine was $2.99 and it held up through washings for the past 4 years. So I went and they had a sale on the collection of bed covers that is one up from the cheapo collection I have. For 2 bucks more, I get 80 more thread count and a finer cotton. Score! They didn’t have the light pink I used to have…just a maroon color but that’s okay. Adds drama to my room right?

I also saw these cuuuute alligators! Alligator? Crocodile? Eh, I look it up and identify it, and then I always end up forgetting later on. Meh, I’m sure they don’t care what you call them as long as you won’t skin them. I like long stuffed animals for some reason. I feel like I can drag it around with me like Linus from peanuts. I also like it when animals drag stuff around with them, like dogs that get attached to their toy and carry it with them where-ever they go? Too cute.

Reminds me, my friend has a cute jack-russell terrier named Stitch and recently they got him a stuffed pizza to play with. He loves it so much he feels like he must go to sleep with it at night! Once I took the pizza away from him and hid it behind my back. When he rushed over to my back I kept hiding it on the opposite side of me. At one point, he looked at me with frantic eyes and whined at me! A weird sound for a good 5 seconds…like the kind a seal makes as if he was saying “hey you! I don’t want to joke around anymore! Where is it?!?” The skin above his eyes were all furrowed. Oh…how can torture be so cute?

I’ve been eyeing this canvas poster for a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long time. It says it’s on sale…but that’s the same price I’ve always remembered it to be. It’s $79.99…a bit pricey for art on my small, bare walls. So instead, I took a picture and I am going to edit it for my purposes > <. It’s not like this artist drew it anyway…probably chopped it from the production poster. My results in the following post about it.

But before that, a quick story. Macy’s (or is it Macy*s?) was having a shoe sale. 40% off retail price with an additional 30% off at the register. So these women…oh..I would say they are in their 30s to 40s were shopping around, and they said “oh yeah, and these are 70 percent off!” Being the eavesdropping fiend I am, I snickered. I suppose it’s a common mistake to add up the percentages, but that’s not how you shop.

40 percent off of $100 is $60. 30 percent off of $60 is $42! $42 is clearly not 70 percent off of $100…that would be $30. $42 is still a little more than $30. Anyway, I hope they weren’t counting too closely or they would be in for a surprise at the register. I’m definitely ingraining this into my students’ heads.

Betsey Johnsons. Her style is so kooky, I love it. I’m usually not a fan of wooden clogs, especially if they are weirdly shapen, but these are cute.

I believe these are Guess. Check out that heel! How much for the hour? *wink wink*

Betsey Johnson again. The platform is angled at the heel. These were actually kind of comfortable.

Guess. Walking around in these makes you feel like you could kick everyone’s butts. Or stick a heel in your forehead. I’ve seen that in a movie right?

I suppose this thread is for the foot fetish people out there.