Day: June 15, 2010

We walked along the Pacifica coast. It was a beautiful day, but not a happy one.

Every year a few Pacifica houses fall into the ocean. Every El-Nino year (like this one) a lot of them. We suspect these might be next.

Cool rocks and conglomerates.

Splashing in a puddle

We suspect Leilani had gotten food coloring, or she was sick, and without any reason – at least that’s what it seemed like to us she had ever increasing meltdowns that day, until she threw herself down and refused to walk back with us.

Leilani took her camera to school and shared it freely. I took a few, a few elementary school aged kids took a few, but most all of the photos were taken by preschoolers. It is a long post with lots of photos, but I want to preserve the memory of Leilani’s friends on one of their last days together. This fall most of them will be in Kindergarten

I found that in between, makes a good alternat title for this post. “What I See”

They played a ball game. From the left Bigil (Nikhil’s sister in the pink sweater), last in the row with Leilani: Antony, then Oscar, next is Josselyn then Leilani and the big girl is Jennifer, (Antony’s sister).

From the left: Standing: Nina, Ezequiel, Sophia, can’t figure out who is next, sitting behind Estefanie ( Antony’s sister) and teacher Liselle. The other row from the back: Antony, Jennifer, Oscar, Josselyn and Leilani

Bella (Camille’s sister)

Bigil

Bigil and Sophia

They raised and released butterflies.

Dylan, Nikhil and Anthony

Camille

Nina and Bigil… too close…

Dylan

Ezequiel

Camille, Samantha S, Marianna and Bigil

Regina, Lily and Josselyn

Jay and Teacher Liselle

Liselle with Jay, Leilani and Camille

Leilani and Sophia

Lily

Teacher Liselle

Dylan, Ezequiel, Bigil and Nikhil

Oscar

Regina and Lily

Samantha B

Sophia

Susan and Bella

Leilani photographed her Stitch collection. The Lilio and Stitch fad not has officially surpassed the earlier Nemo addiction, lasting over a year and a half and not wearing off a bit.

I got 2 orchids on freecycle – one started blooming 6 weeks later and lasted 6 weeks, and the other one started 9 weeks later early April and still has 12 of the 13 flowers more than 2 months later.

Olivia comes to visit Leilani often

In the beginning they made messes like this. Its a lot better now (the laundrybasket is parked permanently in front of Leilani’s room.

Leilani took these photos. I did crop a little and increase the saturation. I do not quite know how she does it (other than that she shakes the camera a lot while taking photos), but I’ll watch…

I made this jar with Leilani’s class. I can’t believe I didn’t get a photo of Leilani’s butterfly

The 2 year olds produced this beautiful quilt

And that was from the 3 year old class

While the parents made the baskets to be auctioned and raffled off teacher Victor entertained the kids.

We also raffled off the silkpainting from this post

We continue our mainland fascination with parades. After skipping the Chinese New Year’s parade this year (because of the cold and waiting last year), we decided to try the Japantown parade. Cherry blossoms against a pale blue sky sounds so much better than the dark and windy streets of a February evening in SF. Plus the website had pictures of a Hello Kitty character, so Leilani was convinced.

Just because things never turn out as they seem, but better in the end, we got there too late and missed Hello Kitty, but saw plenty of Hula halau (schools or troupes). It turns out that there is no Hawaiian parade in the Bay Area, but Hawaii is popular in Japan and so Hawaiian culture makes a big appearance in the Cherry Blossom Festival.

And it was a nice and sunny day, first sunburn of the season if I remember correctly. The downside was that we underestimated the crowds and spent the whole time standing and not getting a great view.

There really were a lot of hula groups, probably 6 or 8 that we saw:

And there was also some authentic Japanese culture. Near as I can tell, these were shrines from temples being taken out for a walk, spreading good fortune and blessings to those who came to see them (not unlike parading the statues of saints in Europe):

The more the shrines get bounced around by those carrying them, the more good fortune shakes off of them, so if I understand right, the job of the guys riding on top is to make them sway, and shake, and generally have a rocking good time:

Not pictured was the whole other side to the parade: the anime (Japanese cartoon/comic) super-heroes, super-villains, robots, and a cartoonish version of glamour girls. Lots of young people, both Japanese and gaijin (non-Japanese), dressed up as their favorite one of these and joined the parade or the crowds. I won’t say Leilani was impressed, but I think she enjoyed seeing people walk around in costumes and play-acting a bit.

I thought it was interesting how Japanese culture now includes and oddly embraces these characters both from the outside (American view of Japanese culture) and from the inside (seemingly). And it appeared that the anime characters appeal to both “nerdy” types and let’s say more social types within both the Japanese culture and American followers.

And that perhaps was the biggest revelation for me: that there is a “modern” Japanese culture in San Francisco. Everyone knows about Chinatown, and with the tourist shops it sometimes seems like a parody of itself (even though I suspect that is just a façade, and a profitable one too), but few know about Japantown. I woundn’t say that it’s thriving like Chinatown, but it is surviving. It does have a lot of shops and restaurants too (including a Hawaiian shop), but there were a lot of shops for Japanese people, include a whole bookstore with books in both languages–it would be equivalent to there being enough French people in SF for FNAC (the French equivalent of Borders) to open a store in SF (now there’s an idea…).