Zachary A. Martz

Wedding Date is Set for Zachary and Angel

Wedding Date is Set, September 7th 2019

So its official Angel and I are engaged and have set our wedding date in September. We are so excited to celebrate with our friends and family and our beloved puppy Dyson.

Find us on instagram:

If you want to send us some best wish see our instagram accounts @takenbyanangel @zamartz and @dysoncyclone

We don’t have a registry because apartment space is limited and admittedly I (Zach) am a “particular person”… or so I’m told… lol

so you can Donate to the wedding with paypal:

send us a donation here : paypal.me/zamartz

Or Donate here on the website

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Tokyo > NYC

Tokyo > NYC is the kind of comparison you can’t make with numbers. It’s something you feel in your pocket, in the quiet weight of a ticket stub, in the way a city follows you home.

I’m looking at a small skyline—an Empire State Building miniature—standing upright on a wooden table like it’s trying to prove something. Under it, a postcard flashes the familiar: lights, crowds, bright squares of color. There’s a paper marked “BROOKLYN,” and a small “I ♥ NY” tucked in close, like a charm meant to hold a moment in place.

Cities do that. They become objects, then memories, then a kind of weather you carry around. Tokyo feels like motion—clean lines, late trains, a sense of order that still leaves room for mystery. New York feels like friction—noise and energy and the strange comfort of being one face in a million.

Maybe “Tokyo > NYC” is just a mood, a snapshot taken mid-flight, when you can still hear one place while landing in another. But I like how the souvenirs argue quietly on the table. They don’t settle the question. They just remind me that travel isn’t about choosing a winner—it’s about noticing what each place wakes up inside you, and what follows you back through the door.

Just some Pearl Shopping

The showroom is quiet in the way a familiar house can be quiet—alive, but not asking for attention. Light pools along the ceiling in a soft ring, and the fixtures drift overhead like pale leaves caught midair. Below, glass cases curve around the room, holding their small, careful brightness.

There’s something oddly grounding about pearl shopping. Not the rush of it, not the “new thing” feeling—more the slow choosing. Pearls don’t shout. They sit there, patient, asking you to come closer and decide what kind of day you want to remember.

I keep thinking about how places carry their own weather. Outside could be loud and sharp, full of errands and screens and speed, but in here everything feels muffled, as if the room has its own snowfall. Even the reflections on the counters seem to move more slowly.

Maybe that’s why I like it: the calm attention, the small ritual of looking. The way the ordinary act of shopping can turn into a brief, private moment—standing under clean light, considering something simple that’s lasted a long time.

Just some pearl shopping, then. Nothing dramatic. Just the quiet pleasure of choosing a little shine to take back out into the day.

Morning coffee

Morning coffee doesn’t ask for much—just a quiet table, a little light, and the patience to let the day arrive at its own pace.

There’s a small still life here: a cappuccino capped with foam, an iced latte turning pale around the cubes, and two plates that feel like an unhurried yes. One slice of cake, tall and plain in the best way. One dark dessert with a ribbon of sauce and a bit of cream that looks like it was set down carefully, as if someone didn’t want to break the calm.

I like mornings like this because they make ordinary things feel settled. The clink of a spoon, the thin paper of a wrapped biscuit, the condensation on glass—small sounds you only notice when you’re not rushing past them. Even the table feels like it’s holding the moment in place.

In Takayama, the day can open softly. You can sit, listen to the room, and feel one world press gently against another: travel and routine, sweetness and bitterness, warmth and ice. It’s nothing dramatic, but it’s enough—a simple pause before the streets fill, before plans get loud, before the morning turns into everything else.

Weekend Office Work

The weekend has a different kind of quiet when you choose to work. Not the quiet of sleeping in, or drifting from coffee to errands, but the steady hush of doing what needs to be done while the rest of the world pretends time is endless.

Outside, Takayama feels composed and patient. The old wooden house stands in clean lines and dark beams, white walls tucked beneath a deep roof. Pine branches lean in from the edge of the frame like they’re keeping watch. Everything looks built to last: not flashy, not hurried, just held together by craft and years.

I like that contrast—trying to answer emails and finish tasks while a place like this sits nearby, unconcerned. It reminds me that work is rarely dramatic. It’s repetitive and ordinary. And still, it shapes the days.

There’s something grounding about being around buildings that have weathered seasons without announcing it. The wood darkens, the roof carries its own history, and the whole structure seems to say: keep going, but don’t rush.

So the weekend office work happens. A few loose ends get tied, a few plans become less vague. And when I look up from the screen, I’m grateful for the calm presence of Takayama’s traditional streets—quiet proof that time can move slowly and still get everything done.

The Dyson Guardian

The Dyson Guardian sits low and steady in the shade, a stone animal softened by time and moss. It’s the kind of figure you can pass without noticing if you’re rushing, but if you stop, it starts to feel like it has always been there—watching a narrow stretch of path, holding its place while everything around it grows.

The woods are bright with green. Leaves crowd the frame, ferns and small plants filling every gap, as if the forest is patiently reclaiming every edge. Behind the statue, a red fence runs along a stone wall, clean and geometric against the uneven rocks. That red line feels like a quiet reminder that this is a human place, even as the trees lean in.

I like how shrines do this: they make the ordinary feel slightly wider. A set of steps, a damp smell in the air, the faint suggestion of incense or rain—small details that open a door in your attention. The guardian doesn’t perform. It simply stays. Its face is worn but still expressive, a calm snarl frozen into something closer to patience.

Maybe that’s what I mean by “The Dyson Guardian.” Not a brand or a joke, but a private nickname for a sentinel that seems to pull stray thoughts out of the air and leave the mind a little cleaner. You walk on, and the forest sound returns, but you carry that stillness with you for a while.

Deep Deep Thoughts

A small dog sits with its back to me, ears lifted like two questions, watching the day through a bright window. Outside, everything is washed in light—soft greens, a pale street, the faint suggestion that the world is continuing without asking us to keep up.

I keep thinking about how dogs practice attention better than we do. Not the frantic kind that chases pings and updates, but the quiet, steady kind. The kind that can sit on a favorite bed and simply stay with what’s there.

“Deep Deep Thoughts” sounds like a joke until you meet a moment that’s too ordinary to be anything but true. A window. A pause. A creature whose whole philosophy is presence.

Sometimes a home teaches the same patience. It holds warmth, collects routines, and turns them into something like memory. In that familiar stillness, you can feel two worlds touch: the inside where you’re safe enough to soften, and the outside where everything keeps moving.

Maybe that’s what the dog is doing—listening to one world press up against another, making sense of it without words.

If you need a thought to carry today, let it be simple: sit for a minute. Look out. Let the light arrive. Let the quiet have its say.

Village in the fog & rain

The valley looks like it’s holding its breath.

From above, Shirakawa-go sits gathered in the lowlands—dark roofs, pale roads, small squares of green—while fog drapes the mountains and loosens the edges of everything. Rain flattens the light, turning the village into a quiet study of soft color and distance. The farther the forest climbs, the more it disappears, as if the day is gently erasing what it can’t quite hold.

I like places most when they feel lived beside, not performed. Even from this vantage point you can sense the steady, practical rhythm below: homes set close, fields stitched into orderly patches, paths running like thin lines of intention through wet air. The famous shapes of the gasshō-zukuri roofs read as simple geometry from here, but there’s warmth implied in them—work, meals, voices, a life continuing while the weather makes everything else hazy.

Fog does something generous. It keeps the scene from becoming a checklist of details and turns it into a feeling instead: a muted, rain-scented calm, the kind that makes you slow down and listen. In a place like this, even the modern road looks temporary, like it could be swallowed by clouds at any moment.

Village in the fog & rain—exactly as it sounds, and somehow more.

Soba Lunch Break

Lunch arrived on a lacquered tray like a small, quiet ceremony.

Two plates of soba sat in soft heaps, the noodles pale and unshowy, the kind of food that doesn’t need to perform. Beside them were the familiar accompaniments—dark dipping sauce in little cups, a dish of sliced scallions, a small dab of wasabi, and a ceramic pitcher set down with the same care as everything else.

The tempura was the bright interruption: light batter, crisp edges, shrimp and vegetables stacked like they’d just been lifted from the oil. Even before the first bite, the table felt steadier, as if the afternoon had agreed to slow down.

There’s something reassuring about a lunch like this, especially on the road. You do the simple motions—dip, lift, slurp, pause—and the noise in your head thins out. The meal becomes a kind of marker, a brief place to sit while one part of the day hands itself off to the next.

I don’t remember every detail of where I was headed afterward, but I remember this: buckwheat and broth, crunch and steam, and the sense that for a little while, nothing needed to be more complicated than eating.

If you’re traveling through Shirakawa-go Village, a soba break like this is an easy way to let the place sink in.

Ryokan Dinner Delux

A ryokan dinner has a quiet way of making the world feel smaller.

Two trays set on warm wood. Small bowls that look like they were chosen as carefully as the food inside them. A blue dish holding something soft and shining. A little cup that asks you to slow down. Even the sauce feels like it has a mood—dark, still, and poured into a heart-shaped bowl as if to remind you this is meant to be noticed.

Ryokan Dinner Delux is not loud. It doesn’t try to prove anything. It just arrives, course by course, like a house settling around you. The table becomes a landscape of textures: smooth porcelain, lacquered edges, steam rising where it can, and a grill waiting nearby with its own patient heat.

There’s a kind of comfort in being fed this way. Not the heavy comfort of too much, but the gentle comfort of enough. Enough variety, enough warmth, enough time.

I always forget how much a meal can feel like a place until I’m sitting in front of one like this—hands resting, mind quieting, listening to the small sounds that happen between bites.

Handmade Gold Lead design

There’s something quietly moving about handmade work that doesn’t ask to be loud. It just sits there—finished, glossy, and patient—holding the hours that went into it.

This Handmade Gold Lead design makes me think of small objects that become part of a place, the way a familiar coat hangs by the door or a set of keys lands in the same dish every night. In the photo, two dark, polished boxes rest on a worn wooden surface. The gold leaf catches the light in simple shapes: a paw print pattern on one box, and a maple leaf on the other, like a little marker of time and season.

Gold leaf work has a way of feeling both delicate and stubborn. It’s thin enough to float, but once it’s sealed into a surface it becomes part of the object’s skin. The contrast here—soft gold against deep black—feels steady, almost ceremonial, even if the box ends up holding everyday things: a ring, a coin, a note you don’t want to lose.

The caption mentions Kanazawa, Japan, and it fits. The city is known for its gold leaf craft, and these boxes carry that sense of careful tradition without looking untouchable. They look meant to be used, to be picked up, to gather fingerprints, to live alongside you.

Sometimes that’s the best kind of design: something made by hand that quietly becomes yours.

Cooking with Koji

The first thing I notice is the quiet order of the room: pans hanging in place, utensils lined up, the kind of kitchen that feels lived-in without being loud about it. Three people stand around portable burners, aprons tied on, heads bent toward the small, careful work that turns ingredients into something warmer than the sum of its parts.

Cooking with Koji sounds like a lesson in a single ingredient, but it’s really an introduction to time. Koji asks for patience the way an old house asks you to listen—subtle changes, small aromas, a shift in texture that’s easy to miss if you rush.

In the photo, there’s a calm focus as someone offers a small dish across the counter, as if passing along a secret. A pot waits, a bottle stands by, and a tray sits ready for what comes next. Nothing looks dramatic, and that’s the point. The most memorable kitchens aren’t always the ones that perform; they’re the ones that hum.

Koji sits at the center of so much Japanese cooking—miso, soy sauce, sake—quiet foundations that make everyday food taste deeper, rounder, more complete. Watching it up close reminds me that tradition isn’t a museum thing. It’s a practiced thing, repeated until it becomes natural, like reaching for the same coat in winter without thinking.

If you’ve been curious about fermenting, start here: with a simple workspace, shared attention, and the willingness to let flavor grow.