Friday, July 27, 2007

A Quiet Friday Night

Ok, so I don't have a lot of time for blogging tonight, but I figured I ought to throw a up a list of links to friends' blogs (it's on the right), if your website isn't there, but you would like it to be, drop me a line or a comment to this post and I will make sure it gets added.

Between work and family, life has kept me very busy this week, but hopefully I will have something worthwhile to write about by the end of the weekend. In the meantime though, I figured I would update y'all on the music that's keeping me happy over the last week:

There are no new releases in this list, but they're new to me all the same: Woody Guthrie Sings Folks Songs, an album of American roots music by an American classic. If you have not listenend to "Mermaid Avenue" by Billy Bragg & Wilco, a collection of Woody Guthrie's unreleased music from later in his life, you ought to, it is fantastic. At work recently, I have had this concert on repeat:
The Grateful Dead, Live at Hollywood Palladium: 1971-08-06. Featuring solid playing by the whole band throughout, this show really highlights Jerry Garcia. If you only have time for one track, make it "Hard to Handle". Jerry's solo on this track gives me shivers. Finally, and admittedly this is a bit of a novelty album, I have been enjoying the album William Shatner put out in 2004, Has Been, produced and arranged by Ben Folds Five with guest appearances by Henry Rollins, Joe Jackson & Brad Paisley. Check out "Common People" and "I can't get behind that", and "Real".

Tomorrow we're heading to a fireworks extraviganza somewhere nearer the outskirts of Tokyo. Sarah has the specifics. I'll take some pictures and put them up there along with some commentary later this weekend. Goodnight!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Arrived

First of all, I am writing to you today on our new MacBook Pro. Due to weight limitations, we could not bring our PCs across -- a fair justification in my mind for the purchase of some new, lightweight, dare I say, sexy hardware. And with that out of the way, we have arrived in Tokyo.

We arrived just as Typhoon Man-Yi was grazing the coast to the west of Tokyo. Due to Man-Yi, we spent the last hour and a half of our flight with seat-belts firmly fastened; a squirmy, baby wriggling & complaining in our arms. In fact, the threat of turbulence was so severe that the captain asked flight attendants to be seated as well, so we missed our final meal. Not that there ever was any actual turbulence, mind you, but it is probably best to play these things safe rather than have a cabin full of flying food and drink, and babies.

We touched down at Narita International Airport at 1 pm on Sunday the 15th, and it wasn't even raining. So much for Typhoon Man-Yi.

We were travelling fairly heavy, so we dropped our checked bags off at a luggage delivery service. What a brilliant idea! for 50 bucks, they delivered 300 lbs of luggage to door on Monday morning. And Monday was a holiday: Marine Day your average "take a day off work to give thanks for the sea" type holiday.

While I was sitting in the lobby of our apartment building, reading the paper and waiting for the luggage delivery man, I started to get a strange feeling; it was almost like the earth was moving. I looked up, my worst fears realized as the curtains in the lobby began swaying to and fro. Thankfully, that's all the more intense the shaking got, and about 15 seconds after it began, it was all over. My desire to go make sure everything was all right with Sarah and Robbie overrode my fear of getting stuck in an elevator, so I swallowed hard, crossed my fingers, ducked into the elevator and hitthebuttonforthefifthfloorreallyfast. Sarah, of course, realized what was going on and watched our apartment's curtains sway, along with the flower on our LDK (living room / dining room / kitchen) table. Robert on the other hand was completely oblivious.

The luggage arrived shortly after the earthquake, we unpacked our things, and we are now more-or-less fully moved in. Here are a few pictures of the place:




Our contact information is:

David, Sarah & Robert Kirkbride
2-7-26 Shirokane #501, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan 108-0072

Phone: +(81) 3-5789-5033