Miho's favorites

My husband Ray and I went to Tucson Botanical Garden this weekend. When I first came to Tucson, what I really impressed was trees. All the trees in Tucson are SO artistic and beautiful ! Unfortunately, I have no talent at drawing painting , but I love to take pictures. In the botanical garden, there are 16 different gardens within our grounds representing a variety of gardening traditions and botanical themes. It was very interesting to see each of the gardens. There was a bride and groom holding their wedding party and everyone who were invited was dressing up , taking their pictures . We were the only people who wore casual look. Ray looks serious, he said too much smiling make him look stupid , so he didn't smile. Ha ha.. But I think he is a good photographer.

I love books, and I love to spend my time at a book store sometimes .  American book store is very convenient because I can read whatever I want , sitting at a sofa, drinking coffee at the star bucks there before I buy any books.  I don't have to buy it if I didn't like it. It's like a library beside the books are all brand new. Since I came in the U.S.A., I hadn't been reading Japanese books , but I had ton of books in my book case in Japan, and I brought only my favorites ones and gave the rest to library and sold them to used book stores.  I wanted to bring everything, but I had too many another staffs to bring and send for moving, so I couldn't. Anyway, yesterday , I found one of my old Japanese book called " " 10 Rules to Boost Your Luck " written by Two Japanese authors , while I was cleaning my book case. I remember, when my feeling was down, I purchased this book and really loved it at that time . Soo...

I have several favorite quotes.  Here are the new ones I recently found.  Some are very simple , some are very deep and all of them hit my heart and got big impression. " You have to be hard on yourself to be successful in any industry. I don't believe in sugar coating things " by Johnny Weir This Johnny's quote is very simple, and everyone knows about it , however , sometimes I was thinking about that if there are any sugar coating things to be successful in my life and this quote woke me up ! Thanks Johnny ! " To me a positive role model is someone who isn't caught up on being a role model. I don't want to see someone changing their thoughts so they can appeal to a certain demographic.  I believe in pleasing yourself first, naturally, so I am not out looking for role models or to be a role model.  I think people need to make their own mistakes, learn from them and grow, and there's nothing that a pop star, figure s...

It's been a while since last post and today, I want to write about review of COI ( Champions On Ice ) Glendale, Phoenix , AZ and our phoenix trip . The purpose of my husband and I went to COI is to see Johnny Weir of course ! I've never been to see figure skating live show before even I love to see it on TV, because no one ever made me so crazy until I saw Johnny in last winter Olympic. Johnny is just special for me, and my husband also feels the same way. Anyway, before we left home, we made a big sign on a poster panel with the words " Johnny Weir We LOVE ( heart mark ) YOU " to support him. We thought many of the other people will do the same things for their favorite skaters. To our surprise, no one in the Phoenix audience had signs of support for any skaters, I guess in Phoenix, the audience are not deep fans of skating, just casual fans. So we were the only ones in the audience of thousands of people who were holding up a poster. ...

Shakira, She is my new favorite musician. Shakira is from Colombia and she is a composer and also can play most of musical instruments and also great dancer. Especially I love one of her music Objection ( Tango ) .  It's like mixture of Tango and Spanish hard rock. She is fantastic ! Maybe I will buy her DVD so that I can enjoy her performance. I found her music when I was watching " 2004 World championship figure skating Exhibition " DVD, one of great skater Stephan Lambiel who is from Switzerland was using her music ( arranging to without song ) for his program . I like Stephan Lambiel's skate becasue his dancing is incredible, very fast , creative and artistic. Very fun to watch.  Also his music taste for his program is always great.  Of course Johhny Weir is my favorite, but Stephan is my second favorite skater.

Freddie Mercury I didn't know about Freddie Mercury except the name of English rock group " Queen" until a year ago. Queen  is famous all over the world. But maybe I didn't know much about them because Freddie's looking was not my type and so had never paid attention to him and Queen. I'll get back to Queen in a minute, but first, a little background about my music interests. I have been big fan of Japanese rock group " The Alfee " for a long time . Once I saw their live concert, it was really difficult to get big impression with other musicians' music. Because all of Alfee's music is very unique and variety, rock, classic, heavy metal (classic style), dancing, acoustic, and also simple music when they need to make a music for TV drama and movie. Their live event set was always amazing , big fireworks, colorful spot lights were always beautiful. Their lead guitarist is Toshihiko Takamizawa , and he is also the composer of al...

Here is my impression for this year 2006 Marchall's international showcase, Johnny Weir - His talent and skating level is far above any others. I could feel Johnny is telling the story of the music, words, it was really excellent , he is naturally feeling the music and rhythm from beginning to the end , his slow movement was very deep and enchanting.  Also for example " wait for me, wait for me " his arm position and movement was very expressive. another example is his last part that super flexible position, I can't write enough to describe our deep impression.  Too many things to write .  Just really really amazing. Evan Lysacek was fun to watch with three different kinds of music. Different from competition. His dancing was great. EVGENY Plushenko was good, but always same music , style and image, felt little bit boring. Matt Savoie , the music was not really fit with his image and also no impression. Irina Slutskaya was great, sh...