My Tribute to Life

As you may already know, Recently I was working on a little photo project "Come Walk With Me" NYC Dog Walking Tour which required me to walk around NYC. And as extention of it, (embarrasingly,) I finally visited Ground Zero for the first time in 6 and a half years after the attack. Since I felt something that I never thought I would while visiting there, though it's not even around the anversary day, I couldn't help writing the blog, "My Tribute to Life"
I have to say, this blog may not be for those who are at the stage in their lives where they do not want to look back what happened on September 11th 2001 now. Although I did avoid taking the photos that were too sad, the ones I took at the tribute gallery might still make you emotional in some ways.
So, only if you like, please visit the blog at my personal profile and read the blog.







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And I have also added 30 more new photos of Downtown NY to the slide show, NYC Dog Walking Tour on my blog, Please check it out as well!


Armed officer talking with a traveler on Wall St.



Near China Town

Love, Yoshika

Happy Earth Day!!

Happy Earth Day!
This is my myspace comment images for Earth Day greeting:)







Artwork from "Plant A Tree with Your Cell Phone" http://www.seedcollective.org/



Love, Yoshika

911 Tribute Gallery

These are some photos of Ground Zero and the tribute gallery.





Ground Zero



Entrance of the tribute gallery



Entrance photo of the tribute gallery.



Inside the gallery



The photo of the rescue scene



The remains from the attack



Bended metal that shows the terribleness of the impact of collapse.



The wall of missing person messages from victim families



Japanese Origami Cranes sent from family, friends, and co-workers of Fuji Bank as well as schoolchildren in Japan. (There were 24 Japanese victims.)



Explains the meaning of Japanese Origami Cranes



The walls of photos of the victims



Poster outside the gallery

New Pattern Designs!

I have added some pattern designs to my design shop.


Square Pattern Design Mousepad BluebyYoshika



Square Pattern Pink Mousepad2byYoshika


Round Chain Pattern Design2 MousepadbyYoshika


Euphorian Chic Pattern MousepadbyYoshika


EC Mousepad 2byYoshika

And one of them received the today's best from zazzle.com Thank you again!


You're in Today's Best

view product promote online share by email Congratulations! Your product, Square Pattern Pink Mousepad2, has been selected as one of Today's Best on Zazzle! This means it will appear on the Zazzle homepage for the rest of today and it will also be added to the Todays Best Awards Showcase. Keep up the great work! Bask. Glow. The honor is yours to enjoy. -Zazzle

Love, Yoshika

Come Walk With Me --- My NYC Dog Walking Tour ---

This nice weather inspired me to work on this photo project "Come Walk With Me" --NYC Dog Walking Tour --. Although I want to show the slide show on this blog too, I set the size of the slide show big for the better view. I don't think it fits on this blog. So, please check out the slide show on my myspace blog showing over 150 photos of dog walkers in NYC and some NYC photos :-)







Hope you have a lovely new week.

Love, Yoshika

My Window Display Clitique No.2

These are from my window shopping the other day in Upper East Manhattan, the last one is East Village. I thought I should write this entry before I forget!




I just thought these are very eye catchy. It is only that I thought this display sculpture might work better for something else.... It could create very creative & effective window display if used for something else.... I didn't feel this synthetic material matched neither their products nor the wood color of the shop either....


I thought this window was very cute. It wasn't a big window, but very catchy and creative. Their products look good with it too!


Well, I found this cafe very creative. From this cute window display, I first thought it was houseware shop or something. Inside, it seems they also sell some jewelry or something and their table & chair were also well designed and very cute. Everything was so fashionable, but it makes me wonder if the food tastes good or not.... Maybe it tastes like fashion as well.... :D


I think one window display could create lasting impressions in people's mind. And that's very important. And I thought this was a very successful one. This eye catchy window made me wonder what shop it was first.....and I thought it was a very smart idea to use Buddha lighting statues for florist! I think this Buddha statue thing could make the shop look cheap, but they did great job with colors, plant arrangement and choice of furniture etc... it didn't look cheap at all. This window would definitely make people say... "Ah... that florist with orange Buddhas!"



I forgot the name of the shop already. I just liked the lighting. It worked well with their products. It could be used for many other purposes, with different light colors etc....


I think it was an ice cream shop. (I might be wrong...I didn't look closely. ) I just thought this modern feature was very cute. This is very fashionable and young people would love it. And if it really was an ice cream shop, it might makes us feel like eating sherbet. (It wouldn't make me feel their chocolate chip ice cream tasty, though... )

That's all for today...

I caught a cold while going out to Manhattan in recent changeable weathers. But I'm feeling better now :-)

Love, Yoshika

Sakura Namiki in NYC

Chelsea is my favorite part of Manhattan. While walking the area a couple days ago, I found the Sakura blossom streets :-) The last one is West Village.









Chelsea is one of the places in Manhattan that I have lived before. It was not for long. But, I did spend one spring while living there... What a shame....I didn't know that there were lovely Sakura streets....

Love, Yoshika

Yo.Za.Ku.Ra (Night Sakura) in Manhattan

Well, it seems the weather is getting nicer and nicer these days. When I visited Central Park about a week ago (on March 30th), it still looked and felt like winter than spring. Here is the proof.



And this was taken in my area in NJ on the same day.



But, when I visited Manhattan yesterday I saw 30%~50% of Sakura buds already opened on Upper East side, and Upper West 80% of them already blooming. It is strange...I used to live in Manhattan for several years. But, this might be the first time I really appreciated Sakura blossoms on the streets of NY. So, I had to take some pictures.

Yo.Za.Ku.Ra (Night Sakura) in Manhattan




Love, Yoshika

Another Lovely Show Window

As you may have already noticed, I have been walking around Manhattan a lot lately. And yesterday, I was targeting uptown and ended up shaking hands with Conan O'Brian who was walking on Columbus Ave alone. lol (He was very nice and very tall!)

Anyway, there are a lot of fancy boutiques on upper East side, and I saw some very artistic, lovely window displays. I will show one today.





This is the windows of Hermes. I found them very very lovely and artistic and their products also looked very elegant with it. Though the photos don't quite show, I love the combination of colors, and the use of her paintings together. And what I liked about it was that they showed the name of the artist who did the installation on their window.

Please visit her website:
Cynthia Rojas
http://www.cynthiarojas.net/

I will show other show windows that I liked from yesterday some other time.

Love, Yoshika

Eye Ball Window

This is one of the show windows of NY Soho area. I found it very creative. I forgot the name of the shop. But it is the shop of eye glasses. So, it was very "Eye" catchy.



But all I thought from this window was.....


Medama Oyaji!! This is a character from Japanese Comic "Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro". Sorry...I don't know why I have to be comical on my art blog. But this is all I thought about at that time....

Love, Yoshika