Welcome to my Taiwan Inspired Totoro and Spirited Away Artwork blog! We traveled all over Taiwan in October visiting Tainan, Taichung, Sun Moon Lake, Taipei, Jiu Fen (九份) and Hualien. My favorite place on our Taiwan trip was visiting Jiu Fen, which transported us to a Spirited Away film with narrow alleyways all lit up with romantic red lanterns and it's known for it's great street food and snacks. Taiwan seems to have the largest collection of Studio Ghibli merchandise outside of Japan; I was able to find Totoro and Spirited Away character magnets, keychains, plushes, and purses everywhere in the Hinoki Village and mall in Taichung, Taipei, and Jiu Fen. You can see the remnants of Japanese influence all over Taiwan from the buildings in Jiu Fen, Hinoki Village in Taichung, Studio Ghibli stores, roads, bridges and dams built in Taroko Gorge by the Japanese who occupied the island for 100 years from 1895-1945 and brought infrastructure improvements to the island. We enjoyed seeing the lively crowds and eating at the delicious food stands at the Shilin Nightmarket (士林夜市) in Taipei. I loved seeing the beautiful delicately hand carved jade cabbage and all the Chinese jade carvings and porcelain cups at the National Palace Museum. We hiked about 3 miles in the beautiful Taroko Gorge, which has the bluest water and striated pattern rocks. We were able to see the eastern beaches in Hualien driving through green tropical mountains with blue ocean views. We took a boat ride to Sun Moon Lake and a gondola to the aboriginal village on a clear day and learned about the natives way of life and culture. We also visited the beautiful Lavender Cottage in Taichung where we tried delicious lavender milk tea and ice cream. We enjoyed going to cool trendy places in Taichung with lots of plants and local artisans called 酉5PM.TWCAUDEX and Shenji. Taiwan has been a beautiful country with kind people who always lent a helping hand or chatted with us along our trip. I highly recommend visiting this beautiful country full of natural tropical landscapes, delicious food, and rich culture and especially if you are a Studio Ghibli fan.
Singapore Bali and Nusa Pineda We went to Singapore, Bali and Nusa Pineda in April of 2023. It's our first time flying on a plane in 3 yrs since Covid started. Now all the Covid travel restrictions have been lifted in Singapore and Bali and high vaccination rates, we felt safe to travel abroad again. I started my new plant collection hobby during Covid and really wanted to see all the plants I grow living in their natural high humidity tropical environment in Singapore and in Bali's jungles. My favorite place to visit in Singapore was the magnificent Cloud Forest Dome which mimics a jungle. This greenhouse-like climate controlled glass dome has one of the world's largest waterfall and hundreds of rare plants on its tall plant walls including philodendron verrucosums, gloriosums, rare anthuriums, syngoniums, pothos, ferns and begonias. Singapore is a hot country year-round at 90 degrees with high humidity so going into the Cloud Dome and Flower Dome are great ways to cool off. There was a great Avatar display at the Cloud Dome with 6 stories of interactive fun with the Avatar 2 creatures. You can even fly a mountain banshee. I loved visiting the Singapore Botanic Garden and National Orchid Garden with hundreds of species of plants and beautiful orchids. I really was so amazed by the construction of the super trees at the Gardens by the Bay. We went to the OCBC Skyway during the day to see the city views and back at night to see the light show illuminating the tall trees with movie music. They plant tropical plants like air plants, syngoniums and vining pothos all over the trees. We dined at Spago Bar at the top of the Marina Bay Sands and saw a 360 view of the city skyline light up at night. The 51st floor of the Capita Spring Sky Garden also has gorgeous city views of Singapore. The Art Science Museum Team Lab exhibition was fun and interactive for all ages where you can draw your own sea creature and it moves on screen. The light beams, moving floral waterfall display was fun too. Another must do is eat Singapore's famous Chili Crab at Jumbo Seafood. We ate it at the Riverfront Point outdoors enjoying the beautiful river lights. We enjoyed the dimsum at Tim Ho Wan, Hainan chicken rice, and Ya Kun Kaya Toast. We went to many hawker centers around Singapore like the Maxwell Center and Lau Pa Sat Center that has alot of variety of delicious Asian food and drinks for a very cheap. Singapore is a melting pot of many Asian and European cultures like Malay, Chinese, and Indian with Buddhist and Hindu temples, mosques, churches everywhere. It's known as a "Gateway to Asia" and a "Garden city" as plants are grown on many high rise buildings to help cool down the city, provide beautiful landscaping and clear CO2. Most everyone speaks English so it's very easy to communicate. It was very easy to use public transit like the bus and MRT to get around town, which is very cheap. On the last day we visited Sentosa Island and enjoyed the beautiful beaches, bridges and rode the luge and zip lining down to the beach. The Wings of Time water light show was neat too with fireworks, water, and technical display of lights. We stayed at the Park Royal Pickering Hotel in Singapore. It has the most lush green gardens planted with syngoniums, pothos, flamingo anthuriums. You get to experience being in a urban garden in the middle of the bustling cityscape. It also has an infinity pool overlooking the city!
Nusa Pineda, a 45 minute boat ride from Bali, was a magical pristine island jungle with beautiful white sand beaches and coves and landscapes that look like Avatar. It's like paradise here one few tourists and all jungle landscapes with windy rough roads. I recommend hiring a driver as you don't want to drive the rocky roads yourself in 90 degree heat. We stayed at the beautiful bamboo huts Penida Bambu Green Villas sleeping with sounds of animals, birds, insects, chickens making loud noises and showering outdoors among nature. I recommend staying 2 nights in Nusa Pineda to see the whole island without rushing. My favorite was seeing Diamond Beach and Tembeling Beach. We stood at the top of Diamond Beach as the hike down is too treacherous and the line was too long. Getting to the secluded few tourists Tembling beach was an adventure of itself. You drive there, the 30 min bumpy fast ride on a scooter down hill fast with a local driver, then walk 30 min downhill to a swimming hole and gorgeous secluded beach. We ate dinner by the Crystal Bay beach with a group of hungry stray dogs under our table during sunset hour. Bali is the 4th most popular travel destination in the world after Dubai, London, and Cancun. It's known as the Land of the Gods, with it's natural beauty of volcanos, rice terraces, waterfalls, and beaches. We mainly explored the central area of Ubud. Bali gets more tourists visiting than locals. In 2019, 6.9 million foreigners visited Bali vs. 4.2 million native people on the island. We enjoyed seeing all the beautiful Hindu temples all over Bali constructed of stone and wood with gold leaf carving designs. Hinduism was is the primary religion of Indonesian people. You will see huge Hindu god statues all over Bali and Hindu art, traditions, and rituals celebrated. Temples in Bali follow the same architectural principles as in India. The Balinese word for “temple” (Pura) refers to a sacred complex that is often encircled by walls. We visited the Pura Tirta Empul to watch the sacred water cleaning ritual. Bali is home to over 20,000 temples, each of which is dedicated to a different virtue like family, community, and village. The Balinese people are so kind and peaceful. They believe in reincarnation and supporting their community, they put high respect to the balance of humans and animals and plants that nourish their bodies. We had fun swinging on various shaped swings at Aloha Ubud Swing, visited the green Tegallalang Rice Terraces, watched locals carve wood statues and figurines, saw the Mt Batur volcano, and visited Cantik Agriculture Luwak Coffee and saw the cute luwak animal that eats coffee beans and poops them out in the forest floor. The Balinese showed us how they hand clean, peel, dry and grind the coffee beans. We stayed at the Ubud Village Resort & Spa a serene paradise overlooking rice paddies and plants. We visited the beautiful Kanto Lampo Waterfall and Tegenungan Waterfall, both very popular for swimming. You have to hike 15 min downhill to both waterfalls and hike back up. Most excursions require entrance fees too. We saw exotic butterflies and held huge moths on our hands at Kemenuh Butterfly Park. We watched the sacred Sanghyang Dedari Dance and saw a dancer stomp out fire with his bare feet. The ceremony is intended to ask for safety from a disaster or epidemic that attacks a village. This dance is different from other Balinese dances, where dancers must be conscious while dancing. The Sanghyang dance requires the dancer's body to be possessed by the Dedari. Overall we enjoyed learning about Balinese culture, traditions and interacting with the locals and nature in Bali. In early April 2023, we hiked among beautiful poppies and CA wildflowers at Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet. We drove 1.5 hour east of LA and northeast of Temecula to see these beautiful poppies and CA wildflowers at Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet. There were fields of orange, yellow, purple all over the hills overlooking a gorgeous blue lake. It was an easy 1.3 mile loop hike not too crowded the further up you hike. It's $9 parking per person. It was perfect 70 degree CA sunny weather and thank goodness for our abundant rainy season to create this super bloom display of wildflowers! We stayed on the pathways being very careful not to trample on any delicate poppies and their ecosystem. We saw lots of California poppies, deep blue arroyo lupines, purple Canterbury bells, yellow rancher’s fiddleneck, white popcorn flowers and yellow daisies. All the watercolor paintings of flowers and poppies I painted above were inspired by the wildflowers I saw at Diamond Valley Lake!
We visited Bishop in the Eastern Sierra's mid-October for fall foliage. It's difficult to predict every year when you will see fall colors, as it depends on how low temperatures drop in the high country. Bishop is the closest place from Los Angeles, only 4 hrs north, to see the true turning of the seasons from hot summer days to brisk cool mornings in the Eastern Sierras off of Highway 395. The changing colors of the leaves and the scenery is magical as the landscape turns from greens to red, oranges and yellows. We saw the most beautiful fall foliage, yellow aspens fluttering in the wind at Intake Two Lake, North Lake and Sabrina Lake. You can stop along the roads that lead to these lakes and see beautiful yellow and orange aspens. At Intake Two Lake, you can take a peaceful walk around the lake taking gorgeous photos of the lake's fall foliage reflection and watch the fisherman fish on the lake. All my watercolor and acrylogouche paintings were inspired by the fall foliage I saw in Bishop. I enjoyed the Bishop mountain drive watching the fluttering aspens fall to the ground. Autumn is the second Spring where every leaf is a flower. Check out my Kblossoms paintings here.
The theme of our Arizona roadtrip is waterfall and caves in the Sonoran desert with beautiful saguaros. On the first day we drove through a monsoon with roads flooding in Phoenix and Scottsdale. Our Boulders Resort stay in Scottsdale was so relaxing and looks like an arboretum with lots of saguaros cactus and boulder rock landscaping among golf courses. Their adobe casita rooms match the rocks. On the second day, we hiked to the Papapago Park Hole in the Rock in 100 degrees heat and visited the Desert Botanical Gardens and learned about butterflies, cactuses, animals living in the Sonoran desert. We hiked to the beautiful Tonto Natural Bridge Cave northeast of Phoenix AZ where we had to rock scramble on slippery rocks and a river to get to the cave. We then offroaded 15 miles to see the majestic Grand Falls Arizona that is fed by the Colorado River. There was recent monsoon that filled this majestic chocolate falls. We visited the Wupatki National Monument, near Flagstaff that preserves pueblos once inhabited by ancestors of the Hopi and Zuni people, amid red rocks and prairies. All the watercolor and acrylogouache cactus and succulent paintings above were inspired by Arizona's gorgeous Sonoran desert landscapes. We made it to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon driving about 2,000 miles round trip. In my humble opinion, the views of the North Rim are more gorgeous than the South Rim and there are fewer crowds. There are very few guard rails so you get as close to the edge as you feel comfortable. We explored the Navajo Moenave Dinosaur Tracks in Tuba City AZ and saw many velociraptor tracks and bones. On the last day we went to the West Rim of the Grand Canyon and saw the Eagle Point rock, Skywalk and saw spectacular river views at the top of Guano Point. The skywalk tickets were pricey but it wasn't too scary to walk it as the glass is scratched up so you can't see that you're 4,000 feet above ground with rocks below you. The Skywalk is 10ft wide and extends 70 ft over the rim. It was worth traveling the long distance from the North Rim to West Rim to see the magnificent red rock views of the canyon.
Welcome to my Utah/Arizona red rocks inspired jewelry blog! Due to the Covid pandemic, we decided to drive explore our local neighboring states and enjoy the sheer natural beauty of the Southwest rocks and natural arch and sand dune formations. Utah is truly amazing place of natural wonder. Wherever I wander I am overwhelmed by the spirit of place and ethereal landscape. Utah is like art in captured in stone. The landscape of southern Utah is a wonderland of erosional artistry. A unique combination of geological processes has resulted in a landscape with an infinite variety of color and form. We went to Utah in the Fall of 2020 and Spring of 2021. We did a lot of hiking and explored the breathtaking sunset canyon view at Cedar Break near Escalante. We hiked to the Tropic Ditch Falls in Bryce Canyon National Park and saw beautiful orange hoodos and river rocks. We also were brave enough to offroad in deep sand for miles to then hike to the remote Cosmic Ashtray, Escalante a beautiful volcanic sand hole on top of many high cliffs with an unmarked path. We also hiked 4 miles with 5 river crossings to reach the Escalante Natural Bridge. We got to go witness the beautiful cake like layered red rocks at Capitol Reef National Park. We hiked on beautiful rocks that look at Joshua tree rocks on water at Watson Lake in Prescott Arizona. We were sandblasted by white sand at the Great Chamber in Utah that looks like a window to heaven with the gorgeous blue skies and clouds. We hiked in in an unknown path to Sunset Arch in Escalante. The beautiful red rock colors and scenery of Utah and Arizona has inspired me to create my jewelry designs here using carnelian and citrine stones with gold colors that capture the essence of the red rocks in crystal form. We seized any opportunity to explore and photograph the almost limitless natural wonders in the red rock country of Utah. Hopefully these pictures will encourage you to come out for a visit and start your own journey!Since the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020 I developed a new hobby to learn about growing plants! Before Covid I started with only 3 plants and now I have 60 unique plants! I love creating an urban jungle environment in my home with plants as it elevates my mood and relaxes me. I've been learning about plant care and propagation online, on YouTube and by visiting local nurseries. Above are pictures of some of my plants and local plant shops I have visited in Los Angeles. On my spare time I like to shine the leaves of my plants, prune them, water them, repot them if they are too big, stare at their beautiful leaves, and visit local nurseries. I also love to paint my favorite plants too for fun, above are all my planty doodles! My favorite plant in my collection is the albo monstera borsigiana. I love the variegation huge beautiful leaves of my albo monstera that I got from PlantMadness in CA, they have healthy beautiful albo monsteras that are locally grown and shipped with care. I designed my own Baby Yoda Monstera Albo T-shirt for plant lovers out there who love Grogu. Baby yoda is oh so cute using the force to make the monstera plant grow! The albo monstera is my favorite plant in my collection. It comes in men's and women's sizes and is made of a soft ring cotton fabric and you can order one here. You can buy my poster prints of my planty paintings here. Thanks for reading!
We went to the Tuscon Gem and Mineral Show in February 2020 to collect more rare and beautiful crystals and precious stone pendants and rondelles to design more Kblossoms jewelry! We attended 4 gem shows in Tuscon Arizona: The Pueblo Gem and Mineral Show, 22nd Street Mineral Gem and Fossil Show, Kino Gem Show, and Jogs Gem and Mineral Show. Many of the Tuscon hotels and city was converted into gem showrooms and tents. They even used hotel rooms as show rooms! I loved the huge deep grape color purple amethyst hearts and angel wing geodes from Uruguay. My favorite crystals were the clear quartz and citrine spheres and towers illuminated by lights. The Tuscon Gem and Mineral show is the largest in the country with great wholesale prices. I was so happy to hand select some amber, larimar, london blue topaz, emerald quartz, and green amethyst tear drop crystals and pink ruby rondelle pieces to create jewelry designs with. I bought some beautiful golden yellow and burgundy red baltic amber gold floral lining pendants from Poland.
A trip to Tuscon wouldn't be complete without visiting the beautiful Saguero National Park and Sabino Canyon. We went to see the tall saguero cactuses in the rain among storm clouds. Sabino Canyon has a beautiful mountains, creeks, and waterfall hikes you can do in a day. Just visit their visitor center for some suggestions. The saguero cactuses stand tall and have arms that seem to wave to you and they are so unique. We hiked among the sagueros in rainy conditions on this trip. We hope to come back one day to see the beautiful pink orange sunsets in the Saguero National Park, the classic Arizona sunset. Hope you like all the handmade precious stone jewelry I designed from the stones and crystals I bought at the Tuscon Gem Show! Check out my Poshmark store here to see all my precious stone jewelry designs. Welcome to my Japan Fall foliage blog! After witnessing the beautiful cherry blossoms in Japan in March 2019, we were inspired to visit Japan again in November 2019 to witness the gorgeous fall foliage! We visited many Japanese temples, gardens, and parks around Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Aichi and Osaka to see fall foliage. My favorite leaves are maple leaves in vibrant red oranges all over Kyoto! In this trip to the mountains, temples and countryside of Japan, I feel like we got transported into a Hiyao Miyazaki movie like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke as we saw all the beautiful nature, moss green covered rocks, tori gates, shinto shrines, lightning rope, spirit creature stones, maple trees everywhere!
We visited Icho Namiki (Ginkgo Avenue) in Tokyo in the rain. It was a gorgeous site to see and fun to take a stroll with gingkos above and on the ground. We also went to Showa Memorial Park to see a beautiful grove of gingkos lining both sides of a fountain. You pay a small entrance fee to get in and I highly recommend this park for gingko viewing. We took the subway to see the Hikarigaoka Park gingkos and maple trees which is a gorgeous site. At night, we visited the Rikugien garden fall foliage 🍁🍁🍁 a beautiful landscape garden night illumination in Tokyo. I love how Japan has beautiful serene gardens in the middle of the city among high rises. We found beautiful fall foliage at Jokoji Buddhist Temple in Aichi Japan. There were alot of red and yellow maple trees. 🍁🍁🍁 It's so beautiful and serene here perfect place to meditate with nature. This temple was in a remote place where we took the bullet train from Tokyo to Nagoya and rented a car and drove an hour to the mountains to see it. It was worth the drive hardly any tourists there. We hiked up the pathway to Jakkoin Temple in Aichi Japan at closing so we only saw the base of the temple at dusk. I highly recommend the 2 mile round trip mountain hike to the Minoo park waterfall as you will be rewarded by a waterfall framed by red and orange maple trees at the end. The entire hike in the forest is lit up like starburst colors and there are many food stands and restaurants along the hike. You can take the train there from Osaka to the mountain base. We also found beautiful orange and red maples at Tanzan shrine, Nara. 🍁🍁🍁The vibrant colors are unreal and phenomenal. To get here we took the train to Osaka, rented a car and drove about 1.5 hrs to Nara in the mountains through switchbacks. We had to get used to driving on the left and sorta followed our google navigation which read off road signs in Chinese. I felt like I was crossing that red bridge in Spirited Away to the Muroji temple in Nara. Just like Chihiro did in the movie, I held my breath so the spirits can't see me. Next to the red bridge was a nice restaurant where you can enjoy a hot bowl of soba noodle overlooking a beautiful river and bridge on a cold Autumn day. Ruriko-in Temple fall foliage reflection is so beautiful with rainbow colors, Kyoto 🍁🍁🍁🍁Rurikoin Temple is one of the most beautiful sites in Kyoto as the Buddhist temple is open for public only twice a year in Spring and Autumn. The main attraction of the temple is maple trees which display astonishing scenery with the historical buildings and traditional Japanese gardens at the temple. The orange red maple leaves reflection on the lacquered wood floors was a gorgeous sight to witness. Ninen-zaka Slope and Sannen-zaka Slope are iconic streets of Kyoto City, which represent Japan’s good old days. Lined with cute shops selling food, chopsticks, umbrellas, and Totoro and Studio Ghibli gifts. On our last day, we visited Hoshi no buranko bridge at Hoshida Park in Kyoto 🍁🍁🍁, one of the largest wooden draw string bridges in Japan. It means place of many stars. The bridge is a little shaky when you walk towards the middle and you're literally suspended on top of a beautiful forest of orange and yellow maple trees! We drove an hour in the rain from Osaka to get here and then hiked up the mountain. Japan has taken my breath away with it's natural beauty and preservation of nature. It has become my favorite travel destination to come back to frequently to see cherry blossoms in the Spring and fall foliage in the Autumn season. I don't think I would get tired of the beautiful trees and flowers here. Until next time beautiful Japan, thank you for sharing your nature's wonders and beautiful culture with us. I'm so inspired to paint everything that I've seen on my trip from yellow gingkos, rainbow landscapes of maple trees and bamboo forests and beautiful city gardens. My golden gingko tree bird branch watercolor painting and gingko leaves jewelry above were inspired by the Japanese gingkos we saw all over Japan! You can find my gold citrine gingko jewelry in my Poshmark store here: https://poshmark.com/closet/jubileekat Autumn is a second Spring where every leaf is a flower! This year in October, we went to see beautiful yellow and orange aspen trees in full bloom! 🍁🍂🍁. We love the crisp air and fields of golden yellow aspens fluttering in the wind! The whole valley and creeks were on fire and so lit with orange and yellow aspens! It's only a 5 hour drive to Bishop from LA and so worth the drive as the aspens were so gorgeous. The best way to see fall foliage in Bishop is drive on the roads towards North Lake, South Lake, and Lake Sabrina and stop anywhere where you see a forest of aspens and do a short hike towards the trees. That's how we explored and got these aspen tree pictures. Our favorite spot in Bishop was Mist Waterfall, you can park on the road and do a short hike to a beautiful bridge overlooking the waterfall with beautiful flowy streams with aspens on both sides!
Bishop's fall foliage rivals that of Colorado as Sabrina Lake and South Lake looks as beautiful as Maroon Bells in CO. Fall colors are not necessarily uniform in the Eastern Sierras. For example, fall colors may be at or close to peak color at one geographic location while another spot elsewhere may be just beginning to change color. For example, a place like Rock Creek Lake may have brilliant peak color while South lake is just beginning to turn color. The first three weeks of October are a great time to see the aspens turn yellow in Bishop, CA. Typically, the aspen trees lose their leaves later in October as color moves down into the valley extending the fall colors season into November. But an Indian Summer can extend high country foliage longer. Wind plays a role as well in how fast the leaves fall off. I love how the aspen leaves do a fluttering dance for you in mild windy conditions. Above are some of my citrine yellow gold filled Kblossoms jewelry, citrine agate druzy necklace, citrine smokey quartz crystals that were inspired by the gorgeous fall foliage in Bishop. Stay tuned as we will be going to Korea and Japan soon to see fall foliage, can't wait to see vibrant yellow gjngko and orange red maple trees there! You can find all my Kblossoms jewelry in my Poshmark store. |
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