Another Use for Clothes Pins

The farmer behind our house has covered some of his rows of vegetables.

Kerry Martin's SCBWI Presentation

Kerry Martin, senior design editor for Clarion Books, was in Tokyo this month. She visited our SCBWI chapter and gave a presentation about the process of bringing art and text together for picture books. Some of her favorite picture books are The Boy Who Couldn't Swim by Deb Lucke, Wave by Suzy Lee, The Gardener by Sarah Stewart, A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams and I am Dodo by Kae Nishimura.

Author/illustrator Kae Nishimura was in the audience! Here she is with Kerry Martin. They went to Parsons School of Design in New York together. Click here for Kae Nishimura's website. It is in Japanese but maybe you can switch it over to English through Blogger.

SCBWI member illustrator Midori Mori was also in town. Click here for her website.

SCBWI member illustrator Patrik Washburn translated from English into Japanese. His website is here.

Neighbor's Kiwi

Our neighbor wrapped part of the kiwi vine in a piece of old screen. Any idea why?

Chestnut Chocolate

This chocolate bar had a layer pf chestnut in its center. It was really good.

Autumn Equinox

It's the beginning of chestnut season, too. Click to enlarge the photo.

Some need a little more time. This one was closer to the ground.


Kids Web Japan--Autumn Equinox

Respect for the Aged Day

Big Sister and Little Brother bought this flower arrangement for Baba for "Respect for the Aged Day." It is in a clear plastic bag. There's someone peeking over the top of the bag.

Kids Web Japan-- Respect for the Aged Day

September Taro

Tamanegi

Our vegetable stand man planted tamanegi, onions (small white lettering) by seed.

Here's the row. Looks like he's going to cover it. Looks like it needs to be watered--again!

Watering

Our vegetable stand man watered something with a water can. It was the first time I've seen him water anything. (We're usually gone during the summer.)

The hose got away from him here in a different field! Maybe he should stick with the water can.

In the Middle of a Pond

Can you tell what this is for? Click on the photo to enlarge it. This photo was taken at Fuchunomori Park.

Skipper on Meadow Sage

Naomi Kojima SCBWI Workshop

Writer and illustrator Naomi Kojima held a workshop for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, SCBWI Tokyo. Here are the books she has published.

At the workshop, she had us make a picture book dummy, a practice book. An illustrator divides a story into 32 pages for a picture book and decides what to draw. It was hard work dividing a story into 32 pages! But it was fun!

Here are posts about two of Naomi Kojima's books:

Singing Shijimi Clams

Christmas Song Book

Taking Care of the Broccoli

Everything has its place

I've never seen this before--a separate garbage can for

bottle tops.

Stands for the Rain

A couple of umbrella stands were out in front of shops today. It only sprinkled for a little while.

Shell

You can see through its eye! The cicada shed this outer shell. See the split on top of the back? Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Look! There was a "shell" over its eyes. It sure left a lot of details behind. Look how fuzzy it was!

Our Vegetable Stand on WoWoW

Looking out our kitchen window around lunch time, I discovered a circle of people in front of our neighborhood vegetable stand. As it turns out, they were filming for the Japanese cable TV channel WoWoW. I'll try to find out more about it. Our neighborhood vegetable stand will be famous!

The vegetable stand man left to work in the fields.

Here is the director and one of his assistants. They are watching the tape of the scenes they filmed.

Here's the camera crew.

The actors are right in front of the vegetable stand. In one scene the older man went up and pointed to something on the wooden sign. That sign was one of their props.

Equipment.

Click on the label below to see more about our neighborhood vegetable stands or here for the most recent post about our vegetable stand.