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A Daruma doll (達磨) is a hollow, round, Japanese traditional doll modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen tradition of Buddhism. These dolls, though typically red and depicting the Indian monk, Bodhidharma, vary greatly in color and design depending on region and artist. Though considered a toy by some, Daruma has a design that is rich in symbolism and is regarded more as a talisman of good luck to the Japanese. Daruma dolls are seen as a symbol of perseverance and good luck, making them a popular gift of encouragement. The doll has also been commercialized by many Buddhist temples to use alongside the setting of goals. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
I have always loved Daruma dolls & truly believe in their symbolism. The first time I had ever decided to use Daruma dolls to set a goal was when I planning my pregnancy. Jian & I had purchased 3 miniature Daruma dolls from our favorite Japanese clothing & lifestyle brand BEAMS, long before I had ever decided to try to get pregnant. We had originally planned to keep them as display collectibles. It wasn’t until I started my IVF journey, when I decided to use those Daruma dolls to set my pregnancy goals (& perhaps make a wish or two). For each of the dolls I had set very intentional goals. After those three goals had been met, I knew the Daruma dolls held a great significance and meaning within my personal journey.
Jian & I have taken our daughter on many short-term localized vacations, road trips, airplane trips, but we’ve never actually prepared ourselves to take her on an 11-hour plane ride across the Pacific ocean until last year. We had also not taken a long-form trip like this since before the COVID pandemic happened, & I wanted to take extra precautions to make sure good fortune & good planning were on our side. I know I am sounding very superstitious here, but I wanted to cover all my bases on the ‘luck’ front.
This is when I thought of my miniature Daruma dolls sitting on a display shelf in Jian’s home office. At first I thought of getting a Daruma doll just for the fun of it and not trying to take it too seriously. I wrote down a few wishes I had regarding our trip on a small piece of paper. I folded it up and placed it under the Daruma doll (after drawing the first eye, of course).
I wasn’t sure if this was just a silly little ritual that you do symbolically, or if it was the real deal. I had to wait until the end of our trip to determine its legitimacy. As you can see where I’m leading with this, it was a triumph! All of my wishes had been fulfilled. Just so you know, I didn’t write down any outrageous wishes or anything like that, only simple things like: a smooth flight, make lots of core memories, don’t get sick during the trip, etcetera.
This is the part where I tell you about the tradition that started forming in my head. I had decided from that trip on, that I would get a new Daruma doll for every major family trip. It was from that point on, I had become a true believer in the power of the Daruma doll.
This coming Spring, in a few weeks actually, we are taking our little bean to Japan again. This time we are tagging along with our best friends and their family (our friends, their 2 kids, 2 grandparents). Our friends haven’t been on a proper, long-form vacation in nearly a decade, & they felt that now was their time to go. They invited us to go with them, & we made the impulse decision to tag along.
We had originally planned to take only one overseas vacation this year, taking our little bean to China for the first time to meet her other relatives. However, with the current currency exchange rate being so favorable to us here in the U.S., & we are still riding the high of our last trip to Japan (even though that was 2 years ago), we leapt at the chance of going back there. Plus, Jian has always wanted to experience Japan in the Spring when the famous cherry blossoms are in bloom & seasonal allergies are running rampant.
I have continued my new found tradition & recently bought two new Daruma dolls: one black (to ward off bad luck), & one red (to promote good luck). Since we are traveling with a larger group this time around, I wanted to make sure I stacked the deck in the good luck department. I am hoping (& praying) this new tradition I’ve started is successful once again. I will try to report my results upon our return.
This all may sound like silly superstition & childish games, but it is fun to have something positive to look forward to & a solid goal to reach for. Besides, this is just for me & not for everyone. So that’s that. Until the next one, 乾杯。
Today’s song of the day:
Well, I didn’t get to write that epic Japan travel recap blog that I promised to post here. 2023 has already come & gone, & we are officially two & a half weeks into 2024. On the same day that we flew home from Japan, Jian had to fly right back out for a crucial work trip in Los Angeles. He barely had time to shower & eat lunch before he was rushing back to the airport. I, on the other hand, got pretty sick from the jet lag when we got back. I mean, the jet lag knocked me on my ass for nearly a week. At least we weren’t planning on going anywhere special for the Thanksgiving holiday, so that was a bonus…but my brother was going to be staying with us for a week, which means I barely had time after recovering from jet lag to get the house guest-ready.
The first half of November will go down as one of my all-time core memories. Our little trio had the best time in Japan, & hopefully I can recap everything for this blog site in a different post. All I can say for now is that I cannot wait to take our little bean back to the land of the rising sun again. It was an absolute blast getting to reconnect with my fraternal cousins & hang out with old friends again. I was definitely surprised how well our little bean was able to adapt to such a head-turning new environment. Stay tuned for a slightly more in-depth post in the near future.
The latter half of November flew by in a blur. Then our little trio embarked on a new journey. We were sending our little bean off to preschool for the first time! We were both excited & nervous at the same time, but no one was more nervous than me. I was feeling major separation anxiety, & if you have been following my blog for quite some time, you’ll already know I have a moderate fear of things changing, especially with major life milestones, hence my love of routines & steady habits. Sending the little bean off to preschool wasn’t nearly as scary as I had thought it would be, but you know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do a little freak out session in my head first.
Pretty much the whole month of December was spent being on-again-off-again sick. It was either myself or the little bean being sick, & by sick I mean a small variety of illnesses such as: allergies, cold, flu, etcetera. Our best friends, who already send their little one to daycare, already warned us countless times about how our little bean will be bringing home some sort of virus or germs from school every other week, but surprisingly, she hasn’t gotten sick from anyone at school yet. *KNOCK ON WOOD* We’ve just been passing around the everyday seasonal virus or germs between our little household. Every other week at least one person in our household has a runny nose or a scratch throat, but nothing too serious like the big C-word. *KNOCK ON WOOD, AGAIN*
Our Christmas holiday this year was better than previous years. For the first time in a long time my sister & our brother (her fully-related brother, also my half-brother) weren’t at each other’s throats or fighting like cats & dogs. It was kind of a relaxing & peaceful time. The only mishaps that happened were when a couple of sentimental tree ornaments got broken & my niece passed her cold virus to me & my little bean. Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful month, & nothing significant happened. Uh, well, maybe I should mention that this past week I check into the Urgent Care ward at the hospital to treat a severe case nausea & vomiting. After getting checked out by the doctor, I was cleared to recover at home. It is safe to say that I am now back to good health other than a slight case of the sniffles, but we’ve been having a cold weather front recently, so that might be what’s prolonging my runny nose.
This year, in 2024, I have absolutely no resolutions whatsoever. Zero. I do not need to make any resolutions. I am just going to keep on doing what I need to do & what I want to do from here on out. I don’t need to make any special promises or goals. My goals are just ordinary life milestones that should & will be happening naturally on their own anyway. I don’t need to declare a resolution to make those life goals happen. So that is all I am going to say about that. Until the next post, cheers to everyone in 2024!
Today’s song of the day:
It has officially been nearly one month since my little family unit returned from New York City, more specifically Manhattan, & I am already longing to go back there. We only visited Manhattan for a long weekend (approximately 3 & a half days), so it all felt very rushed & went by faster than a flash of lightning. Leading up to our little family vacation, I was a complete bundle of nerves. We had a majority of the important logistics planned & set in place, but all of the uncertainties that comes with being a new parent were creeping into my thoughts almost daily.
Aside from worrying about how my little bean would handle her first airport/airplane experience, I was very anxious about keeping her safe, not only from human dangers, but she has a tendency to pick up everything she sees on the ground…a trait she learned from her grandma always picking up crumbs & lint off the floor in our house & teaching her to do that too. Now, it has become a habit of my little bean, where whenever she sees something on the ground, she immediately wants to pick it up and put it in the trash. Every time we go out, we can’t walk more than 20 steps without telling our little one not to pick up things left on the street. I am somewhat of a germaphobe, so you could probably already tell I wanted to wipe my little bean’s hands every 10 seconds. However, I am happy to report that I was able to curb my germaphobia & not whip out my anti-bacterial hand wipes every time she touched something. I was too hot to pay attention to my germaphobia anyway.
The weather over the weekend was pretty awesome. Jian used to live in Manhattan (in the mid-to-late 90s), so he knows all too well about how hot the city summers could be there. In the weeks leading up to our trip, Jian was obsessively checking the weather forecast to see how insanely hot it was going to be when we got there. He always complained about how unbearably hot New York City summers could get, & he was hoping it wouldn’t be that intense while we were there. Luckily for us, the weather cooled down a somewhat (it was only in the low 80s Fahrenheit, compared to the forecasted 90 degrees), but the 60+% daily humidity really kicked our asses. It even rained on the day we were leaving. We got lucky & our flight barely made it out before the red alert warning was issued by the weather center for the impending thunderstorm.
Before heading to New York, we researched the hell out of all the food we wanted to eat while we were there (a.k.a. bookmarking tons of Instagram reels). Our eyes were definitely bigger than our stomachs, & we were naïvely trying to cram 10 days worth of meals into, technically, 3 days of being in New York. Even still, we were able to tick a couple of our must-eat spots off of our list. We started our food journey with a New York City staple: the bacon egg & cheese breakfast sandwich at Gregory’s Coffee (not planned). We ate the most delicious desserts at the very first American location of our favorite Japanese cakery, HARBS. We had our first Korean gastropub experience at OSAMIL & celebrated Jian’s milestone birthday. We couldn’t go to New York without eating its iconic Italian food. That’s when we met up with Jian’s second cousin for dinner at L’Amico, & yes, we had iconic New York style pizza there. Meeting with very important family friends who helped Jian & his family get settled in New York City after immigrating was held over a special brunch at Mark’s Off Madison. Brunch in New York would not really be brunch if we didn’t have the smoked salmon, scrambled eggs & bagels platter (which we did). We pretty much ate all of the signature New York City foods minus cheesecake & the chopped cheese sandwich.
While we were in New York we ended up not visiting much of any landmarks or famous places. The only major landmarks, for lack of a better description, we actually spent time visiting was The Metropolitan Museum of Art & Strand Book Store. Sure, we walked through various popular neighborhoods & districts like, the Flatiron district, Union Square park, Bryant Park, East Village, etcetera, but we didn’t go to the actual “touristy” places like Central Park, Times Square, The Empire State Building (even though our hotel was 4 blocks away), or all the other famous places seen or depicted in movies & TV shows. One place I wish we had visited was the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. We were staying in Koreatown, & the memorial was on the opposite side of town in the financial district. So with our little one in mind, we decided not to make the trek across town & spend most of our time exploring the areas closer to our hotel.
Speaking of hotels, we stayed at the Le Meridien Hotel on 5th Avenue. (Just saying the name 5th Avenue reminds me of Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, & the book Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. by Sam Wasson.) True to typical New York City fashion, the hotel was very compact. We have stayed at the Le Meridien hotel chain quite a few times. In fact, we’ve stayed at the Le Meridien Hotel Pasadena in the past, & as we expected, the Fifth Avenue version of Le Meridien was very New York city apartment-esque, compact yet very efficiently designed.
For our stay, we had originally booked a corner suite with a city view for our trio, however since we were arriving before the hotel’s check-in hours, the original room we had booked wasn’t yet available. Our little one had vomited on the plane from the bumpy landing at JFK airport (who knew she gets motion sickness like her mom?). She got a little bit of it on her clothes, which meant we were kind of desperate to get any available room so we could quickly drop off our luggage & change her clothes. Ultimately we ended up staying in a Gran King room with a terrace (a.k.a. outdoor patio), which was more than adequate for us. Here are some room photos for your reference. Please excuse the messiness. I didn’t get a chance to take any first impression pictures, & had to hastily take photos after we had already settled in.
Planning our little bean’s first ever airplane ride to New York City was a piece of cake; Jian & I are pretty seasoned travelers. However, traveling with Jian’s parents was chaotic. The two of them were like kids in a candy store with an unlimited spending limit. They wanted to do so many things & see various friends scattered throughout the boroughs, yet Jian didn’t want them to explore the city by themselves in case they were to get lost. It was difficult at times to coordinate our daily plans as everyone had their own individual agendas. Pile on the heat & humidity on top of all that, you know people are bound to get easily tired & cranky sometimes. However, we thoroughly enjoyed our trip & are making plans to go back to New York again next year in the spring. On the next trip, we are absolutely not traveling with any grandparents, just our own little trio.
Next up, we are going on our ginormous adventure back to Japan, but with our little bean this time. This one’s also going to be a chaotic trip, but at least it will be organized chaos because it’ll just be the three of us, which is a whole helluva lot easier to manage. I really, really hope I can write another detailed blog post again like I did back in 2016 when I went on a group tour with my relatives. I don’t think my little bean will let me have much computer time after this trip, but we’ll see. Until the next one, cheers!
Rabbits & Foxes 
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