Kirkbrides in San Francisco

Strawberry Music Festival 2010

2010-09-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

The festival runs from Thursday through Sunday; I figured I could take Thursday off from work for packing, and then we would pick Robert up from school and head straight out. Sure we might miss the opening acts on Thursday, but we'd certainly get there before dark and have time to begin the process of setting up camp, then go catch the final act or two. How quickly I forget what it's like to travel in the bay area!

We picked Robert up from school at 3:30 and hit the road:

Strawberry takes place at Camp Mather. Owned by San Francisco Parks & Recreation, Camp Mather is nestled deep in the Stanislaus National Forest, just beyond the Western edge of Yosemite National Park.

We figured it would take around 4 to 4.5 hours to get there from SF, although Google maps optimistically provided a travel time of 3.5 hours. It took us an hour to get to the bay bridge from Robert's school, and another hour to get through Oakland. By then it was time to feed Emi and eat some dinner. After dinner we got back on the road and attempted to high-tail it to camp, but when it was all said and done, we pulled up at the gate just before 10:00 pm.

The grounds are a mixed forest of pine, fir, sequoia, and oak, and there was no moon so it was quite dark. It seemed there were cars, RVs, and tents on every square inch of ground that wasn't marked as road. We got our wristbands from the gate attendant and asked about a "family camp" area. They kind of looked at us blankly and said "it's all family camp... just try and steer clear of areas with lights and folks pickin' if you want some quiet", which I did not find to be particularly helpful advice at the time.

The evening's entertainment had just ended, so we drove away slowly, along a dark dusty track dodging the folks who were leaving the main stage and heading back to their already-established camps. As it's a campground, the paths are winding and although we were given a map, we were soon a bit disoriented. My intention was to get toward the back of the campground because I figured it might be quieter, and I figured we might stand a better chance of finding a place to pitch our tent.

Most of the campground is taken up by people camping next to their vehicles, but eventually we found a spot at the back with walk-in camping where cars were parked in several rows, between 4 and 5 cars deep. There was just enough room for us to parallel park at the front, blocking two rows of cars. I was beyond caring whether this was OK, and decided that since we fit, we were going to take it. With the car parked, I took a short scouting trip and found an open, nearly-flat area between two other camps.

Robert and Emi snoozed in the car while Sarah and I set up camp. We were a bit envious of the REI Hobitat 6 tent that our friends Gerry and Cammy had at Hornings this year, so we purchased one for ourselves this summer; Strawberry was its inaugural run. I suppose that when you spend the money to buy a nice tent, what you're really paying for (aside from the ability to stand completely upright, even if you're 6'5"!) is the ability to pitch it quickly and without marital discord in the dark, even in the if you've never had it out of the bag before.

In the end, we got all of our gear stowed away and the beds made up, grabbed the kids, and we all settled right down for the night. It was pleasantly cool, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable.

Here is what we woke up to:

Yeah!

What you can't see in this picture is that there's a "No camping beyond this point" sign staked just to the left of Robert's play tent. We definitely found the back of camp... and yes, that is a plastic bag in the middle of the meadow. It got away from us just long enough to make a cameo appearance in this shot. *sigh*

Soon after taking this shot, we met some of our neighbors. Turns out we'd set up next to a group of 3 families that have been camping at Strawberry together for years. There were kids in the group ranging in age from 7 to 12, and Robert wasted no time in including himself in the mix.

We spent the morning at camp, taking in our surroundings and visiting with our neighbors about the festival: what to do, what to expect, social mores, etc. The Strawberry website suggests bringing musical instruments along to use at informal jam sessions throughout the camp, but I didn't realize that pretty much everyone would be participating. Through the camp I saw (and heard) folks with guitars, ukes, fiddles, banjos, mandolins, drums, lap guitars, stand-up basses (hauling a stand-up bass into the woods is extreme dedication!) and you could hear music being played throughout the campground all day and through most of the night, though at night, at least near our camp, it was quiet enough that it didn't interfere with our sleep. We'd brought earplugs just in case, but never needed to use them.

We did have a few close encounters with nature, including this little guy who we found on top of Robert's play-tent one morning:

Once we established our place, the whole Strawberry experience was just about perfect. We enjoyed lazy mornings at camp making breakfast, drinking coffee, and eventually meandering down to the main stage area

to claim a spot for the evening's entertainment. On Friday morning, there were free sign-ups for kid's fiddle lessons. Robert was quite enamored with this, so we signed him up. He was fairly broken up that he had to wait until the next day to get his lesson; all he could talk about for the next hour were violins! One lesson was enough for him though -- after 15 minutes or so he was past it and said that playing the violin was hard. We'll see if he comes around; I'd love to have a little fiddle player in the house.

Anyhow, after signing him up for the lesson we headed over to Birch Lake

to pass the heat of the day with some wading/swimming, and a whole lot of playing on the beach. There were a number of folk and kid-oriented acts playing at the Birch Lake Stage to keep us entertained throughout the day, and a variety of age-appropriate arts and craft projects for toddlers right up through teens. And there were a lot of kids! When the fellow at the gate told me the whole place was family camp, I guess I ought to have taken him at his word.

The entire campground and venue were consistently clean and organized. So organized in fact, that if you'd happened to have grabbed a bottle of beer for the walk to the venue, but hadn't quite managed to finish it by the time you'd arrived, the fellow at the gate checking wristbands would hand you a cup to pour your beer into since glass isn't allowed at the main stage. How's that for accommodating?

The porta-potties were regularly maintained, there was no unauthorized vending, and no hordes of scruffy tour kids. There were large bands of roving teenagers, but they all appeared to be attending the event with their parents, and as such were not getting up to too much mischief.

This festival was exactly what I had hoped it to be; I can't wait to head back next year! We spoke to a number of folks who said that the Spring festival (held over Memorial day weekend) is also great, but that the weather is less predictable. Camp Mather is at over 4500 feet elevation, so the Spring festival can be quite cold. Apparently last year's Spring festival featured four days of non-stop monsoon rain, and this year's Spring festival began with 6 inches of wet overnight snow that collapsed tents and canopies, and only partially melted over the rest of the festival, so we'll probably be giving the spring festival a miss, at least until our kiddos are a bit older:

Niijima

2009-09-30T15:15:00.000-07:00

Last Mon, Tues, and Wed were public holidays in Japan. We took advantage of the long break to head down to Niijima, an island about 100 miles South of Tokyo to go camping. Our trip was delayed by several days because of a typhoon that was coming close to the island, so instead of arriving on Friday, we got there on Monday. Our original intention was also to take the hydrofoil ferry, and enjoy its 2.5 hour travel time. Due to high surf kicked up by the passing typhoon though, the hydrofoil service was canceled. In its place we took the normal passenger ferry, an adventure in itself.

We left Tokyo at 23:30 on Sunday evening and arrived at Niijima around 8:00 the next morning. There are very few seats on the ferry. Instead, you are issued a small tarp to lay down on the deck. Becase we were camping anyhow, we didn't bother w/ our small tarps and just lay down the ground cover for our tent. Here's a view from our boat-deck campsite:

You can see Robbie snoozing in his stroller; he spent about 1/2 the night there, then decided to come join us on our tarp. There were also blankets available to rent for about a dollar, so we got a couple of those and spread them out for extra padding.

All in all, we got a pretty good night's sleep and woke up rested and refreshed the next morning:

We eventually arrived, disembarked, and made our way across the island to the campground. The campground is a real gem. It's a few hundred yards from the ocean, has a field kitchen with running water and electricity, rudimentary shower facilities, proper bathrooms, and did I mention it's free? Yeah Niijima!

Some of the campsites had picnic tables, but they were taken. We ended up next to a patch of trees for some shade, and a bunch of guys on a surf holiday from Australia. It is a large campground as you can see from the pic, but it was mostly empty when we were there, relatively quiet and peaceful. After setting up camp we found a bicycle rental place down the road, procured bikes for $10 / day, and hit the beach.

Robbie and I went straight down and got in the surf. The water was beautifully clear, azure blue, and a bit chilly, but not painfully so. The surf was high, so our fun consisted mostly of standing ankle-deep in the water until a wave came in. Then, at the last instant I would lift Robert up so he wouldn't be submerged. I'd laugh, he'd squeal; rinse and repeat.

If I'd remembered to take the camera out of my pocket before hand, we might actually have some pictures from the rest of of our trip, but alas, I did not.

There are 5 major beaches on the island, and we hit 2 of them. I guess we'll have to go back. There is also a Greco-Roman themed onsen (public bath) with 6 or 7 pools of varying degrees of scalding. This place also has proper shower facilities; an ideal place to take an evening dip after spending your day slathering yourself with sunscreen and getting covered in sand and salt. Did I mention that it's free too? Go Niijima!

One personal highlight from this trip for me was Sarah finding a Japanese fisherman's glass float washed up on shore. I've quite literally been beachcombing for an authentic one of these my entire life (whenever I go to the beach, anyhow). So now I guess I really can't get rid of her -- she'd probably take her float with her! ;-)

On Wednesday morning we broke camp and trekked back to the ferry. We caught it just after 11 am and were back in Tokyo around 6:30. Robert spent most of his time on the top deck, hanging on the railing and looking out at the passing islands, other ships, gulls, sea foam, jellyfish, etc. When we docked in Tokyo, he was not ready to be done with his boat ride and asked if we could sleep on the boat again.

Climbing Mt Fuji

2009-08-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I skipped out of work after lunch w/ several friends of mine from BGI. We hopped the Chuo line limited express train from Shinjuku to Otsuki, and got from there to Kawaguchiko on the Fujikyu line. We then transferred to a bus that took us to Mt Fuji's 5th station, and after a bit of time spent looking at the souvenir shops, we began our ascent:

Here's a view from fairly early in our hike (when we still had a bit of light):

Here's a spot along the trail where folks deposit the bear bells & ribbons from the hiking poles they'd purchased at 5th station, and a few people also added some traditional offerings to the mountain:

Sunset:

During the first evening we hiked for several hours, from about 4:45 until about 7:30. I booked us spots at a hut called "Tori Iso" between 7th and 8th station. Somehow my reservations got lost, but as luck would have it, we added a native Japanese speaker to our group about a week before heading up, and she re-reserved our spots for us. Our lodgings included an all you can eat curry dinner, and a warm, dry, 5.5 ft long plank to lay on and try to sleep, just under the eaves on the hut's 3rd (and highest) tier of bunks.

We ate and drank from about 8 until 9, then passed out until about 11pm at which point I was awakened by heavy rain lashing the roof mere inches from my head, and high winds howling through the eaves. The storm eventually passed, and I flirted with sleep until about 1am. Our group's alarms started going off then, and we got up prepared to resume our ascent. The hut's supervisor, however, told us that it was too windy and cold to make an ascent to the summit, but when we poked our heads out the door of our hut, we saw a constant stream of headlamps heading up the mountain. So after some debate, we disregarded his advice, pulled on our thermal underwear, and gave it a go. Just over 4 hours later, we'd reached the summit:

Here are Glen, Jim and I at the top:

After this picture was taken we found a warming hut, grabbed a round of coffees, downed steaming bowls of ramen, and wandered around for a little bit before meeting back up and beginning our descent.

Turns out we took a wrong turn around 8th station (or, to be more accurate, we failed to take the correct turn) and we ended up at the Gotemba 5th station about 1/3 of the way around the mountain from where we expected to be! Unfazed (at 10:30 am), we ordered a round of beers to celebrate our conquering of the mountain and let Glen sort out how to get us back to Tokyo.

Long story short, it took a different bus and train combo to get us back to Tokyo, but to Tokyo we returned, and a mighty good adventure we'd had too, all things considered.

I've got some video footage that I will be splicing together over the new few days; I'll post it later in the week once I've had some time to get it all worked out.

Dry Ice

2009-08-16T05:29:00.001-07:00

During summer in Tokyo, if you buy frozen things at the supermarket, they put a bag of dry ice in amongst the frozen stuff to keep it cool on the way home. A nice touch, and as a bonus, there is dry ice to play with when you get home:

Distaster!

2009-08-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not updating in so long. I've discovered Facebook, and it is good.

Perhaps disaster is a bit melodramatic -- tragedy, anyhow. Yesterday on my way to work I missed a shift on my bike... or rather my bike missed a shift, as I'm not entirely sure I should be taking the blame here... anyhow, my derailleur hanger (didn't even know what the heck a derailleur hanger was until yesterday) sheared off of my frame, sending the rear derailleur through the cassette. Of course the rear derailleur can not possibly fit through the cassette, but it deserves an A for its efforts in trying.

Final tally: one broken derailleur hanger, one mangled rear derailleur pulley, one bent chain, one flat tire, and one frustrated bicycle commuter who was late for work!

Here's a pic of the bicycle (yes, that is a plastic bag tied around the derailleur to keep it from bouncing on the pavement as I tried to coast along) and as I alluded to earlier, I got a flat tire too, so after a few blocks I couldn't even coast along the downhills. *sigh*

However, I did get a great picture of Robert this morning while I was taking stock of the situation. A future bicycle mechanic?

I stopped by a bike shop yesterday, shortly after the mishap. The gentleman behind the counter told me he could not fix the bike because it's a Bianchi-specific derailleur hanger, and he can not order them since he's not a Bianchi dealer. *sigh* so I went to the Bianchi shop in Naka-Meguro this morning to see about ordering the part. I got there at 10:51 am. Too bad they don't open till noon! I guess they spend their mornings riding their bikes or something? So my trusty companion and I went to the neighborhood park and discovered that summer is waning; the cicadas are starting to die off:

After playing at the park, we returned to the Bianchi store at noon, only to discover that they don't think they can order my part because my bike, a Bianchi Axis, is not a model that is sold in Japan *sigh*, so I've spent this afternoon searching for derailleur hangers on the Internet with some amount of luck. However, I am going to have to pay $20 shipping for a $20 part. *sigh*. And that's just the hanger... I guess I'll be commuting on my shopping bike for the next few weeks while gathering all of the necessary components to effect the repairs.

Rainy Season

2009-06-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

If you talk to a Japanese person, they'll tell you that June is Tokyo's rainy season. During our first two Junes in Tokyo, it didn't seem to rain appreciably more in June than during other times of the year, so we'd begun thinking that "June rainy seaosn" was a bit of a myth. Not this year.

June came a bit early; it started raining during the last week of May, but since then, it's rained almost every day. It is pouring as I write this.

Undaunted by the threat of rain, we went out last weekend to see Star Trek (without Robbie) and thoroughly enjoyed the film. It's well cast, and the plot does an excellent job of resetting the franchise, paving the way for the coming stream of new Star Trek movies. I can hardly wait!

We went to the Shinagawa Outback for dinner (I wanted to go to a Singaporian restaurant but Sarah twisted my arm -- on my birthday, can you imagime?) and of course we took our umbrella because it was threatening rain. Unfortunately, because it wasn't actually raining when we left, we forgot about the umbrella. So on Sunday afternoon, I figured I'd take Robbie back with me to Shinagawa to pick up the umbrella.

We went by bicycle, and I took a wrong turn but did not realize it for quite some time... I just kept pedaling, thinking "Shinagawa station has got to be just a little bit further up this road". But I'd actually turned onto the road just past the station, so as I continued to pedal I was getting further away from my intended destination. What should have been an hour's ride ended up being more like an hour and a half and Robert gave up on me at some point during the ride and fell asleep around 5pm for the dreaded late-afternoon nap. Epic fail.

Anyhow, I wish I had some pictures to post, but for some reason we haven't been taking any. I'll remedy that over the coming week and post some soon.

Back in Tokyo

2009-05-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

It appears that we returned from Thailand just in time to observe Tokyo's weather rise toward its steamy summer temperatures. Right now things are still relatively pleasant, but it's starting to get sticky, and I know it's just a matter of time until I'm wishing I were back in the US for the summer. We still have not settled on dates for a summer holiday though, nor even if we are going to head back at all. We may wait until the winter, and come back for a bit longer.

While in Thailand, one afternoon we decided to beat the heat by heading to a "Children's Discovery Museum" that was actually a lot of fun for adults too. There were interactive displays dealing with muscles & bones, experiments that explored the nature of sound and air pressure, drums to bang on, and even a section dealing with other cultures including a kid-sized model of a traditional Japanese house, and a Native American teepee. Robbie's favorite though was a device that allowed you to be inside a bloody great soap bubble:

He made us trap him in many bubbles. They would inevitably pop, and he would quickly ask us for another. We also took a river boat tour and visited Wat Arun:

One of the interesting things about this temple is that it was decorated mostly using broken porcelain that came to Thailand as ballast in Chinese ships. Here's a detail:

But like I said, we're back in Tokyo. Now we are getting excited for Star Trek. It comes out on the 29th here, so we've hired a sitter for the 30th and are going to have a date night. Yeah!

Follow Up

2009-05-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Two things I meant to mention in my previous post:

1) The elephant on the left hand side of the video really liked bananas, but not in the traditional "peel them and eat the fruit" sense.

When the elephant was given a banana, he would peel it using his tusk, then eat the peel and throw the banana on his head. Not wanting to let food go to waste, the elephant on the right would then generally pick the banana up off of the ground and eat it.

2) Robbie has his "yours" and "mine" confused at the moment. It's really cute when you're trying to take something from him and he runs away saying "No, it's yours. It's YOURS!" :-D

Bangkok

2009-05-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

Your (ir)regularly scheduled "Kirkbrides in Tokyo" update comes to you this week from the Business Centre of the Royal Orchid Sheraton in Bangkok, where we are currently vacationing:

We have been thoroughly enjoying our time here, and taking things fairly easy. Our M.O. consists of eating a leisurely breakfast, hitting a point of interest or two in the morning, catching lunch on the road, then heading back to the hotel around mid-afternoon for a dip in the pool:

Then it's off to dinner. So far we've been eating mostly Thai (now there's a shocker!), but we've also taken time out for Chinese, and probably the best Indian food I've ever eaten. Here is Sarah at "Once Upon a Time" a touristy (but good) Thai food restaurant:

Cabs in Bangkok are ridiculously cheap. It costs only 2 or 3 dollars to get across town... we took a cab in from the airport, it was about a 35 kilometer trip, and I think it cost around 10 dollars. Just remember to hail the cab -- if the cabbie hails you, chances are he's off meter and will try to take you for 2 or 3 times what the metered fare would be. You can negotiate your way down to almost the same price as the meter, but that only works if you know what the fare should be!

Also, be sure to avoid Tuk-Tuks and Wily Strangers. Tuk-tuks are used by the locals to get home from the grocery store, but if you as a tourist end up in a tuk-tuk, expect to have hours of your time wasted as you sit in traffic, heading from one gem shop to another, never quite making it to your intended destination. We have managed to steer clear of the tuk-tuks, but while en route to the emerald Buddha, we did have a run-in with a wily stranger.

He was wearing a white shirt with a tie, standing near an armed guard at a service entrance to the palace grounds, and looking very official. Our stranger came out onto the sidewalk and regretted to inform us that the palace was not opening until 13:00 today (it was only 10:30). He then drew directions to some other sight-seeing locations on our tourist map and suggested we find a tuk-tuk to take us around to them to kill the time until the palace opened.

As he was doing this, the tuk-tuk driver he was in cahoots with slowly pulled up alongside us on the sidewalk. We eventually shrugged him off and continued our walk around the perimeter of the palace. Thanks Marika! if it wasn't for your warning, we might have been taken in.

We've spent the bulk of our "tourist time" checking out the local Wats

and markets, but we took time out on Tuesday to go to the zoo. Robert got to feed elephants, and i got it on video!

We also took Robert to his first proper movie in a theatre: Monsters Vs Aliens 3D, and he _loved_ it. It was great to watch him discover 3D as well... during the first few minutes he was trying to reach out and touch everything, and he kept exclaiming about every little thing that he saw on the screen until he finally settled down and enjoyed the film. Did I mention it was on IMAX? And it only cost around $20 for the 3 of us? Yeah Thailand! ;-)

April

2009-04-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem like it's been that long since I've updated the blog, but gosh, almost a month has slipped past. April has been nothing if not eventful. As I alluded to in my last post, the cherry blossoms hit full stride this month:

Robert and I went for a day hike in the woods to the West of Tokyo with a friend of mine from work and his daughter. This waterfall, and the scenic valley surrounding it were the highlights of the trip. We stopped here for lunch and Robert spent almost the entire time throwing rocks into the creek. He could hardly sit still long enough to take 2 bites of his sandwitch; I ended up saving it and feeding it to him on the way home.

Robert did exceptionally well on the hike. My colleague started out the day by ribbing me because I didn't have a toddler backpack, but he quieted down after 45 minutes of hiking w/ his daughter on his back while Robert spent most of his time running ahead of us on the trail and whacking each of the trees along the trail with a stick he'd picked up. In fact, Robert walked almost the whole way up the hill we were climbing, and really only asked to be be carried for a while on the way back down.

Now as you may know, flowering cherry trees are native to Japan, and during our hike we came across several of the trees in their native form, "yama-zakura" or "mountain cherry" blooming near the trail:

Just as the blossoms were beginning to wane in Tokyo, Sarah's brother Seth and his wife Abigail arrived for a visit. We took the opportunity to play tourist, and stayed at a Ryokan (traditional Japanese hot-spring hotel) in Hakone where the cherries were still in full force:

We also went to Kamakura and caught a parade down the town's main street. There were a number of marching bands; here was my favorite:

Robbie got into the act by pretending to play trumpet. I tried to explain to him that he should be pretending to play the trombone, but he just wouldn't listen. Kids! ;-)

Sarah, Seth, Abi, and Robbie also spent one day at Disney Sea while I worked. To protest the fact that I couldn't go, I am refusing to post any of the great pictures that Sarah took. I guess you'll have to look for them on Flickr.

At school this month, Robbie's class went to the Shirokanedai fire station:

Robert got to sit in the engine's driver seat. He had such a good time playing fireman that he did not want to get out of the engine when his turn was up -- there were tears.

And finally, last weekend we went down to Yokosuka to visit our friends Meredith, Eddie. The naval base has more of the look of a a college campus than a military complex; there are loads of cherry trees, abundant grass and flat open spaces, playgrounds, water parks, shopping, restaurants, and a deepwater port to boot! The aircraft carrier George Washington was in port, along with several destroyers, a cruiser, a couple of Japanese submarines:

and possibly the most inviting warning sign this side of "Wet Paint":

Must ... not ... touch ... pipe ... ... but is it actually hot right now? ... Nope. Whew.

And to close, Robert and I have been enjoying the pond in Himonya koen. Ducks, geese, turtles, and fish (not to mention a variety of insects) inhabit the pond; most of the time Robert is content to enjoy the scenery, but toward the end of our most recent trip, he wanted to try his hand at rowing:

Pictures

2009-04-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some recent pictures from around the house and city. This is the only picture I managed to take of hanami up in Ueno -- the trees in this photo were only beginning to burst forth, but other trees were in more advanced states of bloom elsewhere in the park:

I finally reinstalled the software to pull pictures off of our phones, so here's a dump of some of our best phone photos. First stop, Ikea. In Japan, Ikea has carts for rolling your trays of food around, and glasses of wine to go with lunch!

Here's a picture of Robbie riding a pony at Himonya Koen:

$3 Strawberries... that's $3 each, $27 for the box:

A subway sign asking foreigners to refrain from annoying other passengers by talking on their mobile phones:

Mt Fuji as seen from my office window (it's that little white smudge on the horizon):

And to close, at some point Robert discovered that our couch and chair have removable cushions. Since then, at least once a day, they all get taken off of their respective pieces of furniture, thrown on the floor, and jumped on. He also discovered (with a bit of assistance) that cushions make excellent forts:

Hanami

2009-03-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

It's high time for Hanami (flower viewing) in and around Tokyo, and we are enjoying the season.

Unfortunately though, the weather has turned a bit cold. On Thurday morning while heading out on our bicycles, I to work and Sarah and Robbie to his school, a few bits of white floated down from the sky. We had a few seconds of confusion when we weren't sure whether they were cherry blossoms or snowflakes, but after a moment it was clear that we were pedaling through a snow flurry.

Last year we went to Shinjuku Gyoen for hanami and had a really good time, but we wanted to try something new this year. We met up with a couple of friends from work in Ueno to experience rowdier (by Japanese standards) hanami.

As a bonus, the major avenue of cherry trees in Ueno is right next to the zoo, so we started the day there, then found a nice place to lay down our tarp under a cherry tree. Our spot was near some playground equipment too, so Robbie had a bit more to entertain him than just cherry blossoms.

While we ate, drank, and enjoyed the view, Robbie ran around and played with the random Japanese couples who were cavorting on the various pieces of playground equipment and had a very good time. So much so that when we decided to pack it up and head back to the train, he did not want to leave!

We brought easy-to-pack food such as cheese, bread, crackers, etc., but the group next to us were more experienced hanami enthusiasts; they were making curry on a well-worn portable propane stove. After a while, they brought over a small pot of curry and offered it to us. It was delicious!

By the end of the afternoon, my colleague Ian was being proposed to by one of the ladies from the curry tarp -- evidently she had been married twice to Japanese men, but it had never worked out. It didn't seem to matter to that she didn't speak any English, and Ian doesn't speak much Japanese, she was telling him to be in Yokohama on the 30th for the wedding. At least that's what we think she was telling him. Anyhow, Ian stayed away from Yokohama at the end of March.

A Departure From Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

2009-03-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

While in Nagano a couple of weeks ago, we missed the bus from the monkey onsen back to town by seconds, and had to wait for an hour to catch the next one. Eddie and Meredith both have 32gb iPod touches, and Eddie helped me pass the time by showing me what I've been missing in popular music over the last few years... specifically this, my new anthem:

White and Nerdy.

as well as "Don't Download This Song" with a brilliant animated video by Bill Plympton:

Don't Download This Song.

And, since I don't have access to much in the way of American media I've found myself listening to a number of podcasts. Here are some of my favorites:

The best science podcast on the web, the CBC's Quirks and Quarks with Bob McDonald.

The best personal finance podcast: Marketplace Money.

Sparkletack is a podcast dedicated to informing listeners about the colorful history of San Francisco and the bay area. The format of this podcast has recently changed from an in-depth look at a particular person or topic, to a somewhat less interesting weekly overview of the upcoming week's notable historical happenings, but there is an extensive archive of stories that I am still working my way through.

Best humorous podcast, the venerable Car Talk.

I also look forward to new audio articles from The Economist each weekend.

Please use the comments section to tell me about your favorite podcasts or blogs I ought to be reading. Thanks!

Back to the present

2009-03-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

In the middle of January we took another day-trip to Kamakura... this time we had our fortunes told for the new year at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu Shrine using the Bokuzei (卜筮) method, the Japanese equivalent of Kau cim. I drew #50: Dai-Kichi, or "great blessing" and Sarah drew #19: Sue Kichi, or "minor blessing". Considering the available fortunes range from "great blessing" to "great curse", I think 2009 is going to be an excellent year. It certainly has been so far.

Toward the beginning of February we went to the Uneo zoo. Robbie got to pet an Owl:

And we waited for the penguins to start dancing, but to no avail:

Last weekend we took the Shinkansen up to Nagano. Nagano is nestled in a valley in the middle of the Japanese Alps. The mountains that you can see in this picture are the lower range; the higher range (where the '98 winter games alpine events were held) are behind me.

Nagano is a large apple growing region, thus the omiyage that I brought back to my colleagues at the office was in the form of individually wrapped small apple turnovers. Unless the shopkeeper is handing out samples, purchasing omiyage always involves a bit of uncertainty, but this time I chose wisely and the treats were delicious. Enough about omiyage though, let's talk about snow monkeys!

The monkey onsen is in Jidokudani (lit. "Hell Valley"), a national park about 45 minutes by bus from Nagano Station. The hike in was just short of 2 kilometers along a trail carved out of a steep hillside with a creek running at its bottom. One of the interesting things about the hike in was that there are a number of points where you can see steaming seeps of water entering the creek.

At a convenient point where we could get down to it, we stuck our fingers in and although the water was chilly, it was nowhere near as cold as glacial run-off should be.

After climbing a set of steep and uneven (but paved) stairs, we arrived at the entrance gate to the monkey onsen. While climbing the stairs, we got our first view of the monkeys. They were on the other side of the stream, chasing each other up and down the hill. We paid our 500 yen and entered, walked around a couple of corners, and there were monkeys everywhere.

While researching the trip, I read that sometimes, especially in the summer, the troop moves out of the low country near the onsen and up into the hills; in the winter though, they're generally around. They were definitely present on the day we visited. There were monkeys on fence posts, monkeys sitting in trees, monkeys walking in the snow along the path down to the onsen, monkeys frolicking on the rocks down by the creek, and others just monkeying around.

There is a strictly observed "no feeding the monkeys" policy, so unlike many other places in Asia, these monkeys do not beg. They basically pay no mind to people whatsoever and just go about their business.

I counted 21 monkeys in this picture, but I may have missed a couple:

There were not so many monkeys in the bath when we were there, but that's all right. Judging from the live cam the best time to see a bath full of monkeys is first thing in the morning. For 7 people, including 3 children under 3, we were just glad to be able to make the trip at all -- timing the trip for peak bath time was beyond us:

So the trip to the monkey onsen took up the majority of our Saturday, though we did have a nice traditional Japanese dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday we wandered around downtown Nagano and took some pictures, including this one of the medal presentation stand for the '98 Olympics:

We also went to check out Zenkouji, a Buddhist temple and the 2nd largest wooden structure in Japan. We were fairly tired and hungry at this point though, so we basically just walked around the temple and then began slowly meandering back toward the train station while looking for lunch. We found a great Chinese-style ramen shop, and then a park to let the kiddos do some running around. After the park we headed back to the station, and home.

Kamakura, Ueno, & Nagano, oh my!

2009-03-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

Well, it took a while, but we finally found a new baby sitter. Her name is Jenny and she's great. I got her number from a cousin of hers (not sure if they're really cousins) that we used once when we were still staying at Oakwood. We were not overly impressed with Jenny's cousin, but as I said, Jenny's really good so we are looking forward to a few more evenings out between now and the end of our stay.

Our first break from Robbie was on a Friday evening in late January. We went to go see a band, The Presidents of the United States of America, who happened to be playing a show across the street from my office! Unbelievable, eh? They delivered a solid performance, but it was _far_ too short. Now following Phish, String Cheese Incident, Keller Williams, Yonder Mountain String Band, et. al., will definitely spoil you for going to see more hmmm... "focused" acts, but PUSA was a bit ridiculous. They came on at 6:00 and quit at 7:00. Sharp. They disappeared for about 2 minutes, then came back on and did a 23 minute encore.

Yes, that's right, the show was over at 7:25... and the tickets cost about $67 each! Grrr... but putting things in perspective, since all of PUSA's songs are 2-3 around minutes long, we got to hear about 35 songs plus a bit of banter, and their playing really was solid. As an added bonus I suppose, since the show was so short, Sarah and I ended up going out afterward and enjoying some peaceful and quiet time together over cups of Tulley's coffee and ice cream. Yum!

Our next foray into the realm of babysitter was a couple of weeks back when we went to go see Revolutionary Lane... not so much of a date movie as it turns out. However we finished up the night at Outback for some good ol' American food that more than made up for our movie selection.

Hmmm... I guess I haven't really talked about Kamakura, Ueno or Nagano yet. My bad -- instead, here's a gratuitous pic of Robbie:

What you can't see in this picture is that I am also wearing a pair of similarly silly glasses. And yes, that was intentional.

Note the igloo tent in the back ground. We got it at Ikea sometime early this year and Robert is absolutely in love with it. He goes in, tucks himself under a blanket, and looks at books. The tent is sitting on a round rug in front of our living room's window-wall, and it's got a bunch of pillows that he's moved inside as well. I figure Robbie must be naturally predisposed toward appreciating one of my favorite activities: camping. I can not wait until he's old enough to take out into the wild. In the meantime, a buddy of mine from work has just purchased a car and we're looking forward to heading out for day hikes with he and his daughter Kiyera in the spring.

Next time I'll get to Kamakura, Ueno and Nagano, I promise.

Playing Catch Up

2009-02-26T13:29:00.000-08:00

After returning from Omak, we built a snowman:

Visited the elk feeding station near White Pass:

Visited relatives in Pasco, my folks in Lacey, and my aunt and grandfather outside of Portland:

Then we went to the beach with friends. We flew kites:

and it snowed. A lot:

After the snow began to melt, we lost power and were forced to play cribbage by candle light. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that. We returned to Lacey for several more days after the beach, then we high tailed it back to Tokyo.

As a quick preview of the next installment, our friends from WSU Meredith and Eddie recently moved to Yokosuka, a city about 45 minutes South of Tokyo by train. We have done a couple of day trips with them to Kamakura and the Ueno Zoo... but this weekend we're heading up to Nagano to do some sightseeing and visit the Snow Monkeys!

Tag of fourths

2009-02-14T15:24:00.000-08:00

Ok, the last few weeks have been a blur. I've been busy with work, but that's not much of an excuse. The larger issue has been with my PC. I've been engaged in a long and incredibly frustrating battle with Vista, raid drivers, and a pair of 1.5TB drives that will not format. But enough about that. Instead of catching you up on all of the interesting goings-on in our life since we left Omak, I'm going to latch on to a fun idea that I got from reading Gerry Cammy Reed & Spring's blog. The idea is simple: go into your photos folder, open the 4th folder, open the 4th folder within, and keep going until you run out of folders. Locate the 4th picture in this folder, post it, and put a bit of context around it. Without further ado, I give you:

This photo came from my "ETRL" folder, a cache of pictures related to my part-time job at WSU's Engineering, Teaching & Research Laboratory. The fellow on the treadmill is Chris T., a friend & colleague of mine from school who also lived near us when we were in Kenmore. What's strange about this photo is how little I remember about this day. ETRL was basically a media lab; we produced content for online university courses, as well as online/virtual components to traditional courses. For the most part, we digitized lectures and used Flash animation to create interactive examples, tutorials and the like.

Between my first and second senior years at WSU, I spent the summer in Pullman working full time at ETRL and taking a couple of classes. The head of our lab, Jane B., the gal in the white lab coat, was working on her PhD in exercise physiology. I can only assume that we were co-opted into assisting her with an experiment. What I failed to mention earlier is that Chris, the man on the treadmill, was our systems admin and I think it's fair to say that "systems admin" and "treadmill" don't appear in the same sentance very often! If I remember correctly, he was elected to be the man on the treadmill because he ran track in high school. I'm at the right of the picture controlling the speed and incline on the machine while a couple of other members of the ETRL crew look on.

That's about it. Remember to tune in next week when I catch you up on what we've been up to since that snowy trip from Omak to Yakima. Some quick highlights: Lacey, WA, Pacific Beach Winter Wonderland, Ueno Zoo, Yokosuka Japan.

Visiting Our E. Washington Kin

2008-12-26T22:41:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it's because we're on vacation and don't have any particular schedule to keep, but the confluence of arctic air and moisture-laden storms off the Pacific that have kept Washington State swaddled in a blanket of white since we arrived have been a real treat for us. On Monday it warmed up to around 20, so I took Robbie to Randal Park. He had a great time in the snow, but he still did not want to wear his mittens!

On Tuesday we travelled from Yakima down to Pasco to visit my father's family. We had a very nice visit, and a tasty dinner at Cousins, but I did not take enough pictures! Here is one I did take; Robert with his great-grandmother Ardery:

There was around 6" of snow in Pasco. Not quite as much as many other parts of the state, but quite a lot for Pasco. On Wednesday, we headed North to Omak to spend Christmas with Sarah's mother's family. The drive was uneventful, but Omak brought a return to frigid temperatures.

Here are a couple pictures I took of Robert shortly after our arrival:

We all enjoyed our stay in Omak. Our activities could easily be broken down into three categories: over-eating, napping/sleeping, and reading/playing board games. Robbie's aunt Abi and uncle Seth arrived shortly after we did; Robbie likes most people, but he really took a shining to his aunt. He spent most of his time either in her arms, on her lap, or hanging on her leg. I think Sarah rather enjoyed the break. ;-)

This morning we woke up to a temperature of -5 (that's -21 Celsius if you're keeping track). After it warmed up a bit, Earl and I took Robbie out to see the farm. He found the tractor:

Please note that Robbie finally decided that it was OK to wear his mittens. Yeah! And to close out the post, here's a short clip of our drive South of Leahy, WA:

I could have edited the clip down from 59 seconds, but I wanted to you a nice sense of what the drive back to Yakima was like. All 3+ hours of it. Really though, it was a good time, especially once Robert woke up from his nap and went "Uh oh ... ngh, ngh ... Stuck!" while straining in his car-seat. Shortly thereafter we had our first family sing-along, and it proved quite entertaining. Robbie's repertoire is a bit limited at the moment, but we'll soon flesh it out. We're heading to Lacey on Sunday, probably via White pass, so we should have plenty of time to practice.

Chilling in Yakima

2008-12-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

This morning it was 3 degrees out:

For those of you who are Fahrenheit challenged, that's -16 degrees celsius. Why did we leave Japan again? Actually we've been having a fabulous time here in Yakima.

We landed in Seattle at 8:30 on Saturday morning:

and Sarah's brother Seth picked us up. Thanks Seth! We ate lunch with him, then high-tailed it across the pass just ahead of the storm. It was 10 degrees as we arrived Yakima and the snow began falling in fine dry flakes. By morning, we had several inches of powder.

We were all a bit jetlagged on Sunday:

but today everyone seems to be more-or-less adjusted.

Tomorrow we are going to head down to Pasco to visit my relatives down there, then we head up to Omak on Wednesday for Christmas with Sarah's grandparents. They've got a bit more than a foot of snow up there, but it's a bit closer to freezing there too, so maybe Robbie will be more interested in playing outside.

We'll head back to Yakima on Saturday, then it's over to Lacey on Sunday.

... そして私達は東京に戻った(... and then we returned to Tokyo)

2008-12-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

So I promised an e-mail from nice relaxing Honolulu. Sorry to dissapoint... it seems I overestimated blogging's appeal compared to sleeping, playing on the beach, swimming in the ocean, and just generally goofing around in the fantastic weather we had last week. We did not spend much time indoors.

We started off the week by taking in the Honolulu zoo on Monday morning. The facilities are a bit old, but the animals seemed to be well cared for. Here is Robert showing off his new Crocs in front of the Sloth. The Sloth is what looks more-or-less like a shaggy branch almost directly above Robert's head:

The next day we did the Honolulu Aquarium. This was not a particularly large aquarium, but it was very good; lots of large salt-water tanks, colorful reef fish and live coral. I don't have any pictures, but it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Here is the obligatory beach picture. This is the interior of the sand castle I built for Robert. There were turrets, but Robert played Godzilla, smashing them down just about as quickly as I could put them up! The little boy on our the right in the picture was building a sand-castle near us, but it kept getting swept away. After a while he asked me if he could help with ours.

Who am I to say no?

My folks arrived mid-week and we shared a Thanksgiving buffet:

I purchased a ukulele while Robert played with some other traditional Hawaiian musical instruments:

Then it was off to the WSU vs. University of Hawaii football game. The Cougs did not put in a good performance, and it rained off an on for the whole game, so I don't have any pictures. But in closing, here we are, goofing off at the airport waiting for our flight back:

Sea Paradise: The Yokohama Aquarium

2008-11-22T06:11:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we headed down to Yokohama to go visit Sea Paradise with a friend of mine from work and his family. The little digital camera I packed was woefully inadequate for taking pictures of the jumping dolphins, porpoises, and beluga whales during the Marine Mammal show, however I did catch a good picture of a Walrus doing its Macauly Culkin impression:

Sarah and Robert preparing to enjoy the show:

A 3-story tank:

And what aquarium would be complete without a snack stand in the form of a San Francisco cable-car? Interestingly, the poster you can see in the window at the end of the car informed me that the F-line train running from Fisherman's Wharf, up Market Street to Castro has only been in service since 1995. Who knew?

Anyhow, I know this is kind of a short post, but we're heading to Waikiki tomorrow for a week's vacation so there are a few last-minute details to finish up. The itinerary we've got planned looks something like this:

Sunday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Monday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Tuesday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Wednesday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Thursday: lay on the beach, play in the water, and eat Turkey.
Friday: lay on the beach & play in the water.
Saturday: lay on the beach, play in the water, and watch the Cougs lose.
Sunday: lay on the beach, play in the water, and head back home.

My folks are flying in on Wednesday and staying at the hotel next-door. We're staying at the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani across the street from the beach -- much more economical than staying on the beach.

I'll post again once we've arrived and gotten ourselves situated.

More Language Fun!

2008-11-11T07:32:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I know I just posted, but this really couldn't wait. The Japanese language is rife with onomatopoeic phrases, one of which is 'Shyua', 'Shyua', for the sound you make while brushing your teeth. Robert is very familiar with this phrase; one of his morning cartoons features the "Shyua Shyua" song.

Robert also attends pre-school several days each week. One of his closest friends at the school is another boy named Kenzo. Kenzo is Belgian by heritage, his folks are from the French speaking part of Belgium (not to be confused with the Flemish speaking part of Belgium -- they aren't really on speaking terms), so Kenzo gets mostly French at home. Kenzo is also just learning to talk, and the reports we get from Robert's teachers basically say that Kenzo and Robert spend all day talking in a language that only they can understand.

While "Shyua Shyua" is the Japanese sound for toothbrushing, "Amagake" is the official term for brushing your teeth (or so I've gathered from Robert's show). So the other night I gave Robert his bath, got him dressed for bed, turned to him and said "Amagake?", and he looked at me and responded "Le Shyua!" before running into the bathroom for his toothbrush.

Robert's First Sentance

2008-11-09T00:34:00.001-08:00

First things first; it's been rainy here, so we did not get up to much mischief this weekend. Sarah and Robbie slept in 'till well past 9:00 this (Sunday) morning, so I decided to make a good old-fashioned brunch of fruit, waffles, & bacon. Robert came upstairs while I was cooking the bacon and as soon as he smelled it began excitedly jumping up and down in the kitchen next to me shouting "Bacon! Bacon!" and as he ran into the living room to make sure mama knew what we were getting for breakfast, he exclaimed "I Love Bacon!" -- his first complete sentence. I have never been so sure he was my son, nor so proud. :-D

Although we stuck pretty close to home, we did make it to Shibuya to purchase a fake(!) Christmas tree. I never thought I'd see the day when we didn't have a real tree, but as we have yet to see a true Christmas tree, we figured a false tree is better than no tree at all.

While shopping, I came across a couple of things that I thought were worth sharing. It's taken me 3 days to get these pictures off of my mobile phone, but at long last, I have finally managed it. Here they are. Enjoy:

First, spray-bottle covers:

If you get one of these babies for Christmas, well, you saw it here first.

Next up, if you've ever been out to the coast to dig razor clams, then you know what a fashion parade it can be. While cold weather gear is nice to have, and waterproofing is de rigueur, the perfect pair of high-heeled galoshes can really take your outfit to the next level:

Last but not least, here is a picture from this summer that's been living on my camera for far too long. This gigantic octopus is located between Ebisu station and my office at Prime Square Tower. There are some other playgrounds closer to home, but none of them attempt to tackle the oversized sea creature meme quite like this one:

Tokyo Disneyland

2008-10-31T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sarah, Robbie and I were supposed to head to Thailand last week, but work and expensive airline tickets conspired to keep us a bit closer to home. Instead of Thailand, we visited Tokyo Disneyland last Thursday.

Disneyland was celebrating Halloween, and the whole park was done up in theme: cobwebs, ghosts, and pumpkins abounded, not even the resident marching band was spared:

The band was really excellent. They (of course) played mostly themes from various Disney movies but the arragements were excellent, and the sound was tight. Robert had a great time watching and listsening to them -- so much so that he did not want to leave until they were through with their performance. We even caught them again in the afternoon on our way out because he seemed to enjoy it so much. I think we've got a future band nerd in the making -- not that he ever had much choice in the matter.

We rode a couple of rides, watched a halloween-themed parade, rode another couple of rides, ate some tasty food and rode a few more rides. Even on a Thursday the threat of rain in the forecast, the lines for the major attractions were 2+ hours long. Luckily for us, Robert didn't care about riding the "big" rides, (and probably was not tall enough for them anyhow) so we enjoyed riding some of the smaller attactions -- besides, the lines for those were only between 1/2 hour and 45 minutes long.

Right about the time Robert was winding down and heading toward a nap, the clouds opened up and it started pouring down rain. At this point we decided to take our leave of Disneyland, so we hopped the train back home. Door to door, the trip to Disneyland was not quite an hour, so it's definitely something we will do again. The world's only Disney Sea is also here in Tokyo. We will check it out before long too.

On Saturday we headed to the Ueno Zoo and visited the animals. On the way there, we ran into George Clooney -- or rather we ran into a billboard of George parking his Honda. Only in Japan. I can't decide whether the item in his hand is a remote ignition for the vehicle, or whether the car is a prop in some elaborate casino heist and he's got a hand-held detinator, ready to blow it to smithereens.

In either case, he appears to be trying to get some distance between himself and the vehicle in a big hurry.

Hakone Revisited

2008-10-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

Marika Bell came to visit from Singapore last week. We took the opportunity to play a bit of tour guide, went with her up to Hakone, over to Kamakura and around Tokyo.

I took Friday off from work and we headed up to Hakone on the Odakyu RomanceCar -- a limited express service to Hakone-Yumoto. Robert enjoyed watching the scenery out the window, and we bought him a package of cookie/crackers from the food-cart lady when she came by. Once in Hakone-Yumoto we transferred to the Hakone-Tozan line and switchbacked our way up the side of Mt. Hakone.

We stayed at the Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita, but in their Ryokan-style annex, rather than the main hotel -- tatami floors & futons for sleeping are a pleasant switch-up from Western style, and the room was great with plenty of space. After dropping our things at the hotel, we hopped the train to the Hakone Open Air Museum where Sarah and Marika enjoyed a relaxing foot soak in the museum's onsen:

while I enjoyed some art:

and some more art:

The next morning we completed the classic "round course" through the Hakone region, taking the train to Gora, transferring to a cable-car that took us up a steep incline to Sounzan where we transferred to a gondola. We had read that if you can get onto the gondola early in the day, you are often rewarded with spectacular views of Mt. Fuji. We made it to the Gondola around 10, but unfortunately for us, we were in the clouds and could see nothing but about 20 feed of cable off either end of the gondola. I guess we'll have to go back!

The first gondola ride came to an end at a place called Owakudani. There is a sulfer works there, and a lot of geothermal activity. The main tourist attraction at this stop is "kuroi tamago" or black egg. These are eggs that have been hard-boiled in the sulfur rich hot-spring water, turning their shells black:

The area where the eggs are hard-boiled is a bit of a hike up a hill from the gondola station, but well worth the trip. For the infirm (or unmotivated), there is a little gondola system going up the side of the mountain with just enough payload to bring down a few dozen freshly boiled eggs at a time, so you can purchase them without the workout. However, we made it up to the top to get the fresh stuff:

After eating our black eggs, we got back on the gondola and headed down to lake Ashi, but not before Robert displayed that he is not afraid of heights:

We ate lunch at a restaurant in Togendai while waiting for a pirate ship to come and ferry us down the length of the lake. Yes, I really did mean pirate ship:

After the pirate ship dropped us off, we visited a reconstruction of the Edo Checkpoint that existed along the Tokaido highway during Japan's Shogun period, then we hopped a bus back to Hakone-Yumoto and the RomanceCar to Tokyo.

Remember the cookie/crackers that I mentioned we bought for Robert on the trip to Hakone? So did he. When the snack-cart lady came by, he was out of his seat in a flash and over to her cart, pulling the box of cookies out of the side while she helped another passenger. It was so adorable that we couldn't not buy them for him.

Monday was "physical fitness day", a national holiday, so Marika and I went to see Daibatsu while Sarah stayed home w/ Robbie. He had preschool though, so mostly Sarah had a day to herself. I have a few pictures of the trip to Kamakura, but nothing that can top these pictures from our living room, so I will close with them.

Come on fingers, I know you can do this!

Fall

2008-09-27T07:02:00.000-07:00

Well, we arrived back in Tokyo to an empty apartment, quite literally. For our first several days in our place, we ate out for every meal & the whole family was sleeping on an air mattress with a single pillow and blanket.

I am happy to report that over the last couple of months(!) our domestic situation has dramatically improved. Our air shipment was delivered 4 or 5 days after we'd landed, and with it Robert's mattress, blankets, pillows, and the basic kitchen necessities required to prepare and consume food. Several weeks thereafter, we received the rest of our things from the US, and I am happy to report that we are now all moved in!

We even have curtains & light fixtures. Evidently, Japan has standardized its light-fixture socket situation better than the US. When we moved in, the ceiling in our living room had a couple of strange looking sockets. We took careful measurements of them, then went to Tokyu Hands to try and locate a fixture that would fit. As it turns out, we had our pick as almost all of the fixtures in the store were compatible with our sockets. So without further ado, here's a picture of our living room & light fixture:

Now that September is almost over, the weather has cooled enough that it's pleasant to spend time outdoors. Robert and I have been exploring some of the parks in the area and getting a lot of mosquito bites in the process! There is a really excellent park near our place called "Himonya Koen". It has a nice playground, a petting zoo (dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs), pony rides for $1.50, and there are rowboats available for tooling around the pond that's in the middle of the park.

On another note, here's a picture of our son practicing to be on a Japanese gameshow:

We are a bit further out of central Tokyo than we were at our last place, but our apartment is still quite accessible; it is a 10-15 minute walk from Meguro station on the Yamanote train line, and just a couple of blocks off of Meguro-dori, the same street that our old apartment was on. I still ride my bike to work, but it takes a couple of minutes longer now -- 14 minutes instead of 12. Go ahead and cry for me if you need to.

Our new address is:

14-11 Meguro 3-Chome, Meguro Hills #202
Meguro-Ku, Tokyo, 153-0063

Here is a link on google maps: Ours is the upper right-hand balcony.

and we still have a telephone number in the US (thanks to Skype): 415-508-4025.

The next time we will be in the US is over Christmas. Right now it looks like we will be in Eastern Washington over Christmas and Lacey over New Years before finishing up in grand style with a vacation on the coast before heading back to Tokyo. We are also planning a trip to Thailand and perhaps Singapore in late October or early November.

2008-08-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the trip to San Francisco was excellent. I was able to catch up with many of my friends in the SF Bay area, but unfortunately not all of them. We will be back in the bay area permanently before long though, and we are looking forward to seeing those of you we missed.

Enough about me though, as the readers of this blog are quick to point out, a picture is worth a thousand words. With that in mind, here is the first 1/2 of our trip in more-or-less chronological order:

Our last day in corporate housing. I don't know whether to cheer or cry. We will miss the ladies at the front desk (and the maid service) but having an apartment filled with our own possessions? Priceless:

The deal I negotiated with my employer (if I mention their name here, my boss will get an e-mail tonight and have to schedule a meeting with me tomorrow that he and I would both rather avoid) included business class tickets for myself and my family at the initiation & termination of my secondment, so here is Robert, living it up with his own seat in business class:

Right before the flight left however, United bumped us all up to first class. Here is Robert with his own seat in first class:

I wish I had more stories about first class, but this is pretty much what Sarah and I did too. I guess that's really what you're paying for, the ability to sleep comfortably for 7 hours of an 8.5 hour flight.

After arriving in the US, we went to the Woodland Park zoo with our friends Gerry, Cammy, and Reed. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures to commemorate the experience. However, later that week, we went down to Portland to visit my Grandfather & Aunt Pam. Aunt Pam took us to the Portland Zoo, and do I have a great picture of that:

On Thursday, around lunch time, we headed West out of Portland to North Plains for a weekend spent camping with our aforementioned friends Gerry, Cammy, and their son Reed at the Northwest String Summit. On Thursday afternoon, after the sound check, Robert tried out a "big kid" swing for the first time:

Here we are back at camp on the first night, Robert is up to his usual tricks, taking candy from babies (or in this case, freeze-dried vegetables from a toddler):

For historical purposes, here is a picture or our camp:

Here's a picture of the ear protection that Robert would wear just long enough to get his picture taken. Luckily however, we had silicone ear plugs as well, and since Mom and Dad were wearing them too, we were able to convince him that it was cool to keep them in his ears...

Robert spent Saturday morning down on the floor, playing with a little hula hoop. After he tired of hooping, he decided to just stand back and enjoy the music:

2008-07-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

Well, where to begin? It's only been a month or so since I last updated the blog, but in that time my folks came to visit, we moved to a new apartment in Tokyo, headed back to the US for a bit of R&R, went to zoos in 2 different states, spent a weekend camping at the Northwest String Summit in North Plains Oregon, and went to San Francisco to sort through all of our things to decide what to ship back to Tokyo. All in all it has been a pretty busy month.

Since I've gone this long without an update, you are going to have to indulge me with this one -- it is going to go in more or less reverse chronological order, starting with this weekend.

I am currently in San Francisco, alone, and will be for the next week. On Thursday, Sarah and I left Robert with his Nana (my mother) and scooted down to SFO. We rented a mini-van and hit the local Ikea to load up on a few items we need for our apartment in Tokyo, since Ikea is about 40% less expensive in the US than it is in Japan. One bed for Robbie, several dressers, a couple of end tables, a love seat and one matching chair later, we were back home at 233 Central. We unloaded the furniture and cracked open "the room".

When we left for Tokyo we packed our guest room from front to back, floor to ceiling with the whole of our worldly possessions, then sublet the rest of our place to a friend who is currently in Colorado on a well-timed vacation. I wish I had a picture of the room in its full glory... if you can imagine the classic overstuffed closet, poised to dump its contents from on high soon as the tiniest item is disturbed, that's a pretty accurate description of the room. Unfortunately for us, our "closet" was 10' by 12'. We started into it anyhow, and basically exploded it across the rest of our basement into 3 piles: staying in SF, surface to Tokyo, air to Tokyo. Our air shipment consisted of some bedding, pots, pans, and utensils. Our ground shipment consisted of furniture, baby items (for when we have a second), clothes, camping & outdoor gear, etc. However, after the sorting, we were still left with a giant pile of stuff that we have already lived without for a year, and plan to live without for another 18 months. How much of it do you think we still need?

Anyhow, the movers came to take our things away on Friday and were through by mid-afternoon. Sarah and I celebrated by going to dinner and a movie; cocktails, calamari & salads at Jillians, followed by the Dark Knight.

We fell asleep in each other's arms and woke up to one of those San Francisco mornings that are almost impossible to describe if you have not experienced them -- the air is crisp enough that you ought to wear a sweater, but the sky, the sky is blue. Deep, perfect blue, without a hint of cloud in it. The sun is almost unnaturally bright, and the contrast between colors is incredibly sharp. The wind is out of the West at between 15-20 mph, it's warm in the sunshine, but a bit nippy in the shade. Not a hint of fog, no matter how far West you look, but it feels like an anomaly, an aberration sure to be remedied as soon as the powers that be take note.

The multitude of greens in Buena Vista park and the blue of the sky, coupled with the colors of the Victorians surrounding us on our walk to the Pork Store are almost too much before a first cup of coffee, but somehow we manage to negotiate breakfast, as well as a bit of shopping before it's time to get Sarah back to the airport and her reunion with Robert.

I hurried back from the airport just as fast as I could, strapped my cycling shoes on, and rode to the coast via Golden Gate Park. Riding South along the Great Highway, I could see a tenuous ribbon of fog heading East around the bottom of Lake Merced, and I gave chase. I managed to get into the fog at the boundary between San Francisco and Daily City, and it was everything I remembered it being. The fog had not quite made it down to the ground, but it was trying -- spilling over the low range of hills along the coast and cascading down their leeward sides like a fluid, evaporating as it advanced, but dissipating completely a few tens of feet above the ground.

After my ride I headed home and gave my bike a bath. Then I called up my buddy Tim to see what he was up to, and he told me that I ought to join him over at Dolores park for a movie night. Talk about the perfect ending to a great day! I hopped back on the bike and in about 7 minutes I was at Dolores Park sipping a beer with Tim¸ enjoying the evening and watching the ribbon of fog, no longer tenuous, wind its way around Liberty hill and down toward the financial district.

On Monday morning I woke up for work, and the fog was pervasive. The road was cold and damp, and I realized that although I do miss San Francisco, I am happy to trade it for Tokyo, if only for the next 18 months.

Rainy Season

2008-06-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been several more weeks since our last update, so let me fill you in. Robert has gotten his last couple of eye-teeth, it's starting to warm up and get humid, it's been raining a lot, and oh, and we had another earthquake -- a big one, though a fair distance from Tokyo.

My desk is on the 17th floor, and a buddy of mine and I were just sitting down to our desks to get a bit of extracurricular work done on a Saturday morning when we felt the floor start to sway, and the mini-blinds on the windows started slapping rhythmically back and forth from side to side. It was actually quite nautical; there was a creak in the ceiling keeping time with the slapping of the mini-blinds that sounded a lot like a mast under load, and there was the same sense of rolling you get when you're on a sailboat cutting through ocean swells. It lasted about 40 seconds too, plenty of time to figure out what's happening and just hope it doesn't get any worse. Happily for us, that's the worst we got of it. Unfortunately, the epicenter was over a hundred miles from Tokyo, so there was quite a bit of damage, though the main affected area is a hot-springs resort area and relatively rural.

The earthquake triggered numerous landslides, so several hundred tourists were stranded at various hot-springs resorts in the area because access roads were destroyed. Oh well, if you've got to be stranded somewhere ...

We haven't gotten up to much mischief since Loki left several weeks back, but the Tokyo Calypso Customer Conference is tomorrow and my folks are coming for a week's visit this weekend, so I expect we will be up to no good sooner or later.

Speaking of "up to no good", Sarah, Robert and I will be back in Seattle from July 13th through July 18th, camping in North Plains Oregon on the 18th, 19th and 20th for the "Northwest String Summit", then in San Francisco from July 24th through 26th to sort through the boxes in our apartment and decide what is coming back to Tokyo with us. I am going to stay in San Francisco through August 1st while Sarah heads over to Yakima with Robbie, then we'll meet up for a friend's wedding on August 2nd, spend some time with Sarah's family, attend her 10 year high school reunion over the next weekend, and ultimately fly back to Tokyo on the 11th. If you are going to be in the same ~~town~~ state as us, please let me know, we would love to get together while we're in town.

Bed Head:

Hiroo Playground:

A Month Gone

2008-05-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since the blog has had an update, and even longer since I've pulled any pictures off of the camera. We have had an eventful month: we did some apartment hunting and a new apartment, and then our friend Loki visited from the states. We took the opportunity to play tour guide and visited the Kawaguchiko "5 lakes" area at the foot of Mt Fuji, went to Kamakura to see the Great Buddha, and just generally bummed around Tokyo.

Here's Robert hanging out at the park:

This is the Mt Fuji "express". It's the express because it does not stop at every station along the route -- it is not a fast train. That's all right though, since it just meant that we were better able to enjoy the scenery:

Speaking of scenery, here's a picture of Robert learning to navigate a pair of binoculars at 5th station:

And the shrine at 5th station:

There are 10 "stations" from the first station at the base of the mountain, up to the 10th station at the top. Each station is a tradtional rest stop when climbing the mountain. There is a road that terminates at the 5th station, approximately 1/2 way up the mountain. We took a bus up to 5th station, but we passed a number of cyclists on our way, so now I have a new goal: cycle up to 5th station. It looks like a fairly grueling climb, so I think I'll need to do a bit of training beforehand, and I won't be using my shopping bike, though that would certainly be more of a workout!

Our new apartment is a 3 bedroom with a couple of balconies, one of which is large enough to accommodate a BBQ and kiddie pool. The third bedroom is intended as a play room for Robert, and as a guest room... hint hint... the apartment also has a garage -- come to think of it, it's really more of a townhome than an apartment -- so I will be bringing my bicycles over from the US when we return in August. We will also be shipping many of our personal effects over from our place in San Francisco.

But enough about the move for now, though we are really excited about it; here are a couple of final pics. This is the Shinjuku district at night:

And our son, practicing his super-hero pose. I wonder who could have taught him such a silly expression?

This is the face that we make when Joe Zookeeper's wife (we call her Dear) discovers that there is a gorilla in her bed. I don't know what's up with the fork.

Tokyo Costco

2008-04-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally made it to Costco yesterday. Sarah and Robert have been once before, but this was my first visit. Getting there is a bit of an adventure, as it takes 90 minutes by train, and involves several transfers. Ultimately however we arrived, and it was a little slice of home -- well, a Costco sized slice, actually.

When shopping in Japan, you grow accustomed to not recognizing brands and having a difficult time understanding package labeling. Costco is refreshing, in that it's more-or-less just like its American equivalent, right down to the American brands and English labels. The biggest differences we spotted were that the largest package of "bulk flour" is a 3kg box, and the sushi selection is slightly improved:

There is a bit more emphasis on fish in the meat department, and a few other "ethnic" items sprinkled throughout, but on the whole, the Tokyo Costco might have been plopped down in Kirkland, San Francisco, or just about anywhere else in the US and the average shopper might not notice the differences.

Interestingly, and I can not remember if I've already blogged about this so please indulge me if I have, the only rice available is Japanese domestically produced, the largest bag available is 5 or 10 kg, and the cost is probably 4x what an equivalent quantity of rice would cost in the US (current global rice prices notwithstanding). It seems strange to me that for a people who consume as much rice per capita as the Japanese, rice would be so dear. However, I have it on good authority that this anomoly is due to there being no demand for rice in Japan that is not domestically produced. People here prefer to purchase domestically produced rice over imported rice, no matter the price.

At any rate, the biggest difference US and Japanese Costcos became clear shortly after check-out when we stopped for snacks:

Yes, this is an unattended shopping cart parking lot for newly purchased groceries, and the photo does not do justice to its scale. Details like these are what I enjoy the most about Japan.

And no post would be complete without a picture of Robert to keep the grandparents (and the rest of us) happy, so without further ado, here he is, sporting a sweater knitted by Sarah's mother:

The first Cherries of the year...

2008-04-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I took Robert out in the stroller after lunch today to see if he would go down for a nap. We wandered around our neighborhood, admired some of the late season cherries coming into peak bloom on the campus of a medical school near our place, and browsed the 100¥ shop. Robert succumbed, so we decided to grab a few groceries before heading back home.

It was shaping up to be a routine trip to the market, but that changed when we passed by a display of fruit on our way to check out. The display included a single box of cherries...

As you may or may not know, I used to work at a fruit stand at the Olympia Farmer's Market while attending high school and college. I spent 7 fantastic summers working at Sullivan's Homestead with a crew of exceptional individuals, and we sold cherries. Lots of them. Our boss purchased the cherries in Eastern Washington, one of the finest cherry growing regions in the country, if not the world, and trucked them back to Olympia to sell. During peak season, we would sell upwards of 3000 lbs of cherries per day, and every pound was hand sorted by myself, or one of my illustrious colleagues.

Sorting cherries for hours on end is mind-numbing business, so to pass the time we came up with some vocabulary games in order to keep our minds engaged, but I think it's probably fair to say that we spent most of our time gossiping about the crew members who weren't sorting cherries at that instant, and coming up with imaginative back-stories for the folks on the other side of the counter. The market was perfect for people-watching, and we were a crew of mostly high school and college aged kids, so there was never a shortage of dramatic happenings to be recounted.

Over the years, I became something of a cherry connoisseur. Our boss Sully (is every man who's last name is Sullivan nicknamed Sully?) chased cherries from one end of Washington to the other. Through an extensive array of connections, Sully was able to procure a steady stream of cherries from around the 3rd week of May, right through to the end of July, or even early August. Over the course of the season, varieties would come and go, and I had opportunities to sample them all: Burlot, Chinook, Bing, Van, Lambert, Ranier, pie cherries, Black Republicans, and probably a few more that I'm forgetting. And did I sample? Oh, did I sample! I imagine my bowels looked at the arrival of cherry season in much the same way as a soldier might eye an advancing army, with a combination of dread and resignation.

By the end of the season, you're so tired of sorting cherries (get up, go to work, sort cherries all day, go home, go to sleep, dream about sorting cherries all night, wake up, realize that you have to go to work and sort cherries all day, cry) that you're glad to be done with them, but by the time next spring rolls around, after spending a fall and winter devoid of cherries, I at least, am always impatient for the first cherries of spring.

Why am I telling you all this? So you can believe me when I tell you that as fond as I am of cherries, my passion pales to that of the Japanese. Today I saw a flat of 40 cherries on sale for 98 dollars -- almost 2.50 per cherry. Granted it is barely the middle of April, but these cherries didn't even have stems. Bah.

I took a picture with my phone, but it is being a bit recalcitrant at the moment, and I can not download the image to my laptop. I will amend this post with the image once it is available.

In the meantime, if you made it this far I applaud your attention span. My guess is that you are either family, you worked with me at market, or both. If you do have any favorite market anecdotes, please post a comment and share, I would love to read them.

Hanami

2008-04-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

Cherry blossom viewing -- Hanami in Japanese -- is serious business. The Sakura Zensen, or cherry blossom front, is tracked with the same care and precision that might be given to an approaching hurricane. The nightly newscasts run elaborate maps depicting front lines, percentages of blossoms, and expected peak dates.

In early March, Starbucks began carrying their "Sakura" line of mugs and music. By the time I got around to taking a photo, sadly, they were no longer the featured display:

I am currently reading a great book called "Hokkaido Highway Blues", written by a fellow named Will Ferguson. After teaching English in Japan for a few years, Will took some time off and hitchhiked from the extreme southern tip of Kyushu, through to the northernmost point of Hokkaido, following the cherry blossom front the whole way.

We engaged in Hanami last weekend with some friends at Shinjuku Gyoen, one of the most famous areas in Tokyo for cherry blossom viewing. Predictably perhaps, it was a bit crowded:

This picture was taken toward the front of the park. Shinjuku Gyoen is a large park, and as we wandered through toward the back, we eventually did find a patch of grass near a grove of cherry trees to call our own. We sat down, ate our lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon chatting, sipping Kirin beer, and enjoying the cherry blossoms.

Robert had a great time running around and around the little glade where we were sitting. The Japanese ladies sitting near us gave him plenty of attention, of course, and he ate it right up. Sarah and I took turns chasing him down whenever he wandered off; by the end of the afternoon, we were tired, and Robert was so exhausted that he took a second nap and still went to bed early without complaint. Here's a picture of our little tree-hugger at Shinjuku Gyoen just before his second nap:

On Sunday afternoon, my boss hosted a get-together in the party room at his apartment building for his employees. He lives in Northwest Tokyo, about a 45 minute trip from our apartment, on a street famed for its cherry blossoms. The street is divided, with a wide median between directions. The median was planted with cherry trees many years ago, and has plenty of space for laying out blankets beneath them. Even though the trees were mostly spent, there were still crowds of people camped out beneath them.

Our First Visitors

2008-03-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

Sarah's folks came to visit us last week, and just left a few minutes ago. We all had a very good time. They arrived on Thursday, and took the "limousine bus" in from the airport to the Miyako Hotel Tokyo, conveniently located across the street from our apartment.

On Friday, Sarah gave them a walking tour of the district where we live, and on Saturday, we hopped the Shinkansen to Kyoto. We rode the 700 "Nozomi" series. We stayed at a Ryokan -- a traditional Japanese-style hotel -- in a room with tatami mat flooring. Breakfast and dinner were included in the cost of the room, and were served to us in our room. The experience was perfect, and very Japanese... Here are a few pictures:

First, dinner:

Then, a good night's sleep:

Our attendants/housekeepers came in and cleared away the remnants of dinner before laying out our beds. The beds were composed of two fouton mattresses stacked on one another, with a sheet tucked around them. Drape a down comforter over the top, and call it complete. Completely comfortable, anyhow.

Don't mock the ukata until you've tried the yukata... it makes great lounge wear after a hard day's walk through Kyoto's many shrines and temples:

We stayed 2 nights in Kyoto. I do not have a picture of our first morning's meal, but my understanding is that it was a very traditional Japanese breakfast: fish, eggs, rice, and some salad. Our second morning's breakfast however, was more Western-style, while still retaining an essential Japanese-ness:

Thanks to Sarah's dad, Earl, for these pictures. Now that we've got the description of our room sewed up tight, let's move on to what we saw while we were out and about. These are just a couple of highlights, but never fear, there are more on flickr:

Mt. Fuji from the Shinkansen window:

The outer gardens of Nijo Castle:

Some sort of flower arrangement in the garden behind a shrine. This may a form of Ikebana, but I don't think so. Oh, who am I kidding, I know less than nothing about arranging flowers -- it's what's in front of the bouquet that counts.

Kiyomizu-dera, the "clear water" temple:

Kinkakuji, the "golden pagoda":

Other than the trip to Kyoto, we stuck around Tokyo and I worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Thursday was a national holiday in honor of the Vernal Equinox. We had planned to take a day trip to Kamakura, but we woke up to persistent rain, so we decided to stick closer to home and visit Akihabara, "electronics town", instead.

Sarah and I had a great time visiting with her folks, but I don't think anyone enjoyed themselves more than Robert. He had a great time playing with his grandparents. Robert isn't quite able to muster the words "Grandma and Grandpa" yet, but he's making some valiant efforts. Robert is starting to say a few other things though, his repertoire currently includes: ball, moon, meow, baa, daddy, mama, moo, wow, and my personal favorites: uh-oh, and juish (juice).

If we happen to mention the "J" word in his presence, he immediately responds with a chorus of rather insistent cries of Juish! Juish! Juish! We try to give him juice no more than once a day, so we are learning to be careful not to mention it other than when we intend to come through with the goods.

Kitchenware Town

2008-02-23T04:43:00.000-08:00

Sarah, Robert and I made it to Kappabashi (Kitchenware town) last weekend. It was an entertaining way to spend an afternoon. There are a multitude of shops selling everything you would need to outfit a home or commercial kitchen, or open a restaurant. Here are a couple of photos:

This is the store where you can purchase the perfect sign for catching the eye of potential customers as they walk by, provided they can read Japanese -- not an unreasonable assumption here. Several of these signs read (in part) either 'Ramen', or 'Karaoke', and that's about all I can make out -- other than 'Open', of course.

This store sells the plastic food featured prominently in the front windows of many restaurants here. The "food" is very realistic looking, but also quite expensive. Many of the items in these display cases were well over $100.

And without further ado, here is this posting's gratuitous Robert picture. In Japan, one lives under constant threat of morphing into an anime character. Tragically, Robert's transformation has already begun:

Last week we stumbled on a new (to us) playground in the Hiroo district. I have heard Hiroo referred to as the "Gaijin ghetto", though it is actually quite upscale. It is a much quieter than Roppongi, its more famous cousin to the East. Hiroo seems like a very nice area, especially now that we've found the park! Sarah and Robbie had a great time on the teeter-totter (or shi-shaw in Japanese, if you'd rather).

We may move to this area once the lease is up on our current place in mid July. I was recently asked to extend my stay here in Tokyo and take on a new role: 'Product Manager for Derivatives Enablement, Tokyo'. The title probably sounds fancier than the job actually is, but it is a big promotion. The next couple of years will likely be challenging, but hopefully they will be a lot of fun too.

Sarah is on board with the idea of staying here through the end of '09, even though I know it's probably not her first choice. Sarah, you are a model wife, mother, and my best friend. Thank you for this. On a related note, Robert starts 3 day a week 1/2 day daycare/preschool at an international (i.e. English language (i.e. very expensive)) school just down the road on Monday. Wish him luck!

The annual 'Skipalooza' ski trip organized by our friends Matt and Mary kicks off in a couple of weeks, and with it has come the attendant bump in e-mail traffic to the mailing-list associated with the event. For the first time since 2004 we will not be in attendance and that's a real bummer for two reasons: not only has it been an epic snow year, but I will miss the thrill, the tingle of danger each time I take a drink, lest I shoot it out my nose like I did my coffee this morning while reading the following:


Matt: First the bad news. Lem and Satu have decided to join us in Utah after all, so unfortunately we'll have to share the house with them again this year. The good news is that this means you'll all be getting a cash rebate when we get to the house. Think of it as compensation.

...

So far only Rockett is coming to Tahoe for PPSW (Pre-Palooza Ski Week). But wait! Did you realize that the world Elk calling championships are being held here next week? You can't turn down sking *and* Elk calling, surely? We're talking the world championships for heavens sake!


Isaac: Last time I called an elk it just put me straight through to voicemail. I ended up having to text it.

Can you imagine a whole week of this?

Isaac's wife Wendy is a second-grade school teacher. As penance for stealing his material, I am including a link to a proposal Wendy has up on donorschoose.org to purchase new chairs for her classroom. Unfortunately(?) Wendy's project appeared on television recently, and now appears to be fully funded (I think I need to start checking e-mail more than once a week). Donorschoose is an excellent service though, and I encourage you to browse the available proposals. If any of them speak to you, please consider making a donation. And Wendy, if you put another proposal together in the future, will be sure to post it here.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

Thursday was Valentine's day. Before I write more about that though, I must confess that I my grammar freakery has gotten a bit out of control -- I just the last few minutes doing research on whether this post ought to be titled "Valentines Day", or "Valentine's Day". Counting the number of google hits for each search term indicates that "Valentine's" is more popular, but only just: it has 24,800,000 hits to "Valentines" 22,500,000.

As usual though, a trip to Wikipedia set me right. First of all, their article on Valentine's day includes the apostrophe. More important even than Wikipedia though, our very well educated friend Cammy blogged about "Valentine's" day, and evidently on the day of, too. Come on Cammy, there have got to be better things to do on Valentine's day than update your blog! ;-)

The final straw though, is that there are of course several Saints Valentine, and a feast in their honor was traditionally held on February 14th. Somewhere along the line though, we seem to have dropped the feast in favor of chocolates, cards, and roses.

What I intended to blog about this morning though, is Valentine's day in Japan. Here, the Valentine's day tradition is for ladies to give the men in their lives chocolates.
When I explained this to Sarah though, and suggested we celebrate the Japanese way -- well, let's just say she was less than enthusiastic. ;-)

There is a follow-up holiday in Japan on the 14th of March called "White Day". On this day, guys are supposed to reciprocate & buy chocolates (generally more expensive chocolates) for their ladies. As you might expect, while celebrating White Day was a good idea too, it was not going to get me out of Valentine's day, and that's just fine. I am not one to pass up an opportunity to show Sarah how much she means to me.

Playing into her hand as well, earlier this week at work we had our annual compensation conversation, so come Thursday I was feeling rather flush. One bottle of '99 Dom Perignon, an 8 dollar cup of strawberries, a few Godiva chocolates, and take-out donburi (sashimi on rice) later, we had ourselves a wonderful, quiet evening at home. With Robert.

Change of Plans

2008-02-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

Well, we woke up this morning to a world of white outdoors. Evidently it began snowing last night, and it has not stopped yet. The sidewalks are covered in an inch or more of wet snow and even the roads are slushy. How convenient that today is Sunday! The wind is up, and the snow is coming down much harder than it did a couple weeks back.

We ventured down the road to Johnathan's (a Japanese Denny's equivalent) to have breakfast, drink coffee, and watch the snow fall out on the street from our perch on the 2nd floor.

We generally hit Johnathan's for breakfast once each weekend, and the same waitress always greets us. Robert, of course, has worked his charms on her -- she takes good care of us.

Our trip to Kitchenware town has been put on hold, but we will probably still head out this evening. We aren't going to let a little snow get in the way of our good time!

Robert is getting closer and closer to talking. Often when we say a word like "balloon", "cracker", "puppy", etc., Robert tries to say it too. It doesn't come out quite right yet, but it is good to know that he's trying.

Sarah's MySpace Page

2008-02-02T04:23:00.000-08:00

A link to Sarah's myspace page is now included at right. On an unrelated note, it snowed here a couple of weeks back. I don't think the temperature ever got below freezing, but we had oodles of great, fat flakes pirouetting lazily down out of a slate grey sky. The populace combatted the onslaught with umbrellas, and I must confess that I did the same -- certainly a first in my short life. An umbrella is definitely at less risk from being suddenly and catastrophically inverted during a winter snowfall, versus a summer typhoon, but it is still a bit odd to see sidewalks full of people contorted under their umbrellas to keep out of the gently falling snow.

There was not much accumulation, at least not here in the city, but it was very picturesque while it lasted. Several members of my team are from India, and this was their first experience watching snow fall in person.

While I'm on the subject of work, development on our project is nearly complete. We deliver in mid-March, and assuming all goes well between now and then, I will be taking on a new and expanded role in our Tokyo office. This will delay our permanent return to the US until the end of 2009, but it was an offer that I couldn't refuse. More details to come.

The weather since our snow has been clear and cold. There were a couple of days spent just below freezing, but for the most part, the thermometer has been stuck in the upper thirties/lower fourties.

As I think I may have mentioned previously, retail/wholesale businesses in Tokyo tend to congregate in "districts". For example Akihabara is the electronics district. Thtere are probably 9 blocks and many alleys full of electronics stores, some large some small, hawking every type of consumer electronic imaginable. Just past Akihabara, at Asaksa-bashi, is the wholesale bead district: here Sarah has spent several days shopping for glass and crystal beads. Imagine several blocks of alleys, crammed with shop after shop, each selling dozens or hundreds of varieties of crystal beads strung together on fishing line, and you will have some idea of the wholesale bead district.

Tomorrow during the day, we are planning to head to a new (to us) area: the wholesale kichenware district. I hear that this is where you can purchase the incredibly lifelike plastic food that is so prevalent in restaurant windows here, as well as Nabe pots, Ramen bowls, and the like. The latter items are what we are after on this trip -- we have had Nabe a couple of times since our arrival, and I can not get enough. I hope that purchasing the equipment to make it at home will provide the necessary incentive to do so.

Tomorrow evening, Sarah and I are taking our leave of Robert to head up to Shibuya, eat sushi, and watch 28 Weeks Later. Don't worry about Robert, our wonderful sitter Katie is going to take care of him.

Washington State

2007-12-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

Well, we made it back to the states for a bit of R and R over Christmas and New Years. While there, we clocked quite a few hours in the car. We spent our first week on the East side of the state with Sarah's folks in Yakima, our second week on the West side of the state with David's folks in Lacey, and most of our third week on the coast at the "Sandpiper Beach Resort" with Gerry, Cammy, and Reed, but that only begins to tell the stories of our travels. Here are a few pictures. For more, hit our flickr site.

From our base in Yakima, we headed North to Omak with Sarah's folks to spend a couple of days with her grandparents. Our route passed near Grand Coulee dam and I snapped a good picture of "Dry Falls":

Also while in Yakima, we headed down to the tri-cities to spend a day in Pasco with my grandparents and cousins:

We left Yakima bright and early on the 22nd, trying to scoot across the pass ahead of an oncoming winter storm. We almost made it. There wasn't too much snow on the ground when we went across, and the traffic was fairly light, but the snow was coming down thick and fast so we figured we made the right call in heading across early.

From our base in Lacey (near Olympia), over the course of the next week we headed up to Seattle with my folks to do a quick bit of shopping and enjoy a live performance of Jesus Christ Superstar, down to Portland to visit my aunt and grandparents, and over to Port Orchard for some sailing and beach-trip planning:

After that it was up to Snoqualmie to visit a friend from work, and finally to Sumner to visit with Sarah's brother Seth and his wife Abi:

After all that, we headed West to the coast and then North toward Pacific Beach where we spent several relaxing days at the Sandpiper Beach Resort with our friends Gerry, Cammy, and their son Reed. For the time of year, you could not have asked for better weather: brisk but clear, and with just enough breeze to fly a kite.

We had a fantastic time with them, as always, and it was with a bit of regret that we packed up our belongings and headed back to Lacey, knowing we probably would not be seeing them again for a few months.

After returning from the beach, we visited with a few more old friends, packed up our things and headed back to Japan. It is great to be back here, this place is really starting to feel like home: the dishwasher, heated floors, shower "room", king-sized bed, and assorted Japanese domestic gadgetry -- did I mention the king-sized bed? After spending several weeks sleeping on double beds, often with a bed hogging toddler to boot, getting back to our big bed was almost worth the 9 hour flight.

Robbie slept for the first 2 hours of the flight, but after that, Sarah and I took turns amusing him and doing laps around the plane. There were probably 7 or 8 babies/toddlers on this flight, and the flight attendants allowed the rear galley to be turned into an impromptu play area between meals, and that helped a lot. All in all, the flights over and back were quite tolerable. Which is good, considering we have a bit more long-distance flying to do over the next 12 months.

One strategy that worked very well was the "novel toy" strategy. Bring a "never been played with" toy along on the flight, and when worse comes to worst (as it inevitably will at some point), whip out the new toy. This worked very well for us on the flight over during a portion of the trip when the captain turned on the seat-belt sign due to the threat of turbulence.

Our first night back in Japan was blissful. Robert crashed out around 7:30, Sarah and I followed suit around 9:00. None of us woke up again until around 6. Jetlag? What Jetlag?

Monday night however; not so good. Robbie seemed tired and went to bed early (for him) around 7:30 again, but came into bed with us around 1:30. Around 2:00, he threw up. A lot. It was all over him, all over Sarah, the bed, the pillows, and _man_ did it stink. So we got him into the tub, cleaned him off, stripped the bed, started a load of laundry, and then we made a bad decision. We all snuggled up together in Robbie's bed and tried to get back to sleep. 4:30, more puke. Again with the all over everything, again with the stripping Robbie, the bed, putting in a load of laundry, and trying to get back to sleep -- back on the king size bed again, but on the bare mattress with towels under Robbie.

Robbie never did seem too distressed, nor was he running a fever. He threw up a couple more times over the course Tuesday, but was back in fine form on Wednesday. Initially we figured it was food poisoning, even though we couldn't figure out what he had eaten, but on Wednesday, Sarah came down with the same thing. No vomiting, but she had a heck of a body-ache and more-or-less slept all day so I stayed home to look after everyone. Sarah was better on Friday, though we are not sure we're quite through the woods yet; Robert threw up after dinner on both Friday and Saturday nights... ahhh parenthood.

Is it really December Already?!?

2007-12-08T03:46:00.000-08:00

Well, as you can see, another month has slipped by, and I have been neglecting the blog. Robert came down with a nasty cold last week. He is pretty much through the worst of it, but Sarah is still congested and miserable. I haven't come down with anything yet, and I hope to stay healthy -- we are heading back to Washington State for 3 weeks, landing on Saturday the 15th. The jet lag will be enough without a cold.

Sarah and I bought bicycles a couple of months back, once the weather began to cool down. We even have matching child-seats. Sarah cycles around during the week with Robert, and I carry the load when we head out on the weekends. Tokyo is a very cycleable city. It has a few rolling hills, but is more-or-less flatt. Of course this statement is being made by someone used to cycling in and around San Francisco, so please bear that in mind. Also, the custom here is to cycle on the sidewalks, and perhaps because of this, the sidewalks are often quite wide. Many of the places we used to take the train or subway to, we now just cycle to instead. The trains and subways give a false sense of distance to the various localities, so it has been somewhat surprising to realize just how far we can get with a little bit of effort.

For instance, a couple of weeks back we rode to an antique market at a Shrine near Shinjuku. It looks to be quite a far distance on the map, but it was probably only about 4 miles away. One thing we have learned though, is to steer clear of stations whenever possible. The area surrounding stations is usually so packed with people on the weekend that you are forced get off your bike and walk.

Here is a bit more of a rundown on our bicycles, since as you may already be aware, I am an aspiring bike geek. We both purchased the cheapest (new) bikes we could find since we do not intend to bring them back to the states with us. And as you might imagine, Sarah had a larger selection of bicycles to choose from than me. I asked for the biggest they could get, and while it isn't quite large enough, it is fine for my purposes. We both ended up with Japanese shopping bicycles (often referred to as "granny bikes") and this appears to be the most popular style. probably 75% of the bicycles here, and there are a _lot_ of bicyles here, are of the granny variety.

We each have a shopping basket on the front, and a baby seat bolted to the rear rack, and 3 gears. Sarah's is a Chinese import, I believe, and mine is a Taiwanese-made Bridgestone. They are both steel-frame, have front and rear splashguards, headlights (more on them in a moment), and weigh in at close to 40 lbs!

Sarah's bike has a standard friction headlamp and rear reflector. My model on the other hand, perhaps because it was a bit more expensive (but still less than $400), has an LED headlamp that comes on automatically when it gets dark, powered by a generator integrated into the front hub. And, as if that weren't enough, the rear reflector contains a solar-powered, motion sensing LED blinker. This is Japan, after all.

Hmmm... maybe that's why these are called granny bikes. Something tells me the track-bike riding, bicycle messenger crowd down on Market Street wouldn't appreciate my solar-powered, motion sensing, blinking LED rear reflector.

Here is a picture of Robert and I getting set to head out for a ride:

Can you find my bike lock? When I first arrived in Tokyo, I thought that people were leaving their bicycles unlocked on the street. Come to find out that this isn't quite true. The bike lock is mounted on the seat-stays above the rear wheel. Click through to the high-res image, and you should be able to see it next to my left knee. Because the bicycle weighs so much, and because there is virtually no street crime in Tokyo, people generally do not lock their bicycles to anything when leaving them on the street, they just depress a lever which forces a bolt through the rear spokes so the bike can not be ridden, grab the key, and go.

Sunday Night

2007-11-04T05:05:00.000-08:00

Well, nothing too dramatic happened this weekend. We are having fantastic fall weather. There is a fresh nip to the air, and the maples are gearing up for their autumnal display of brilliant reds and golds. We went to an antiques market at a shrine in Harajuku today and picked up some Christmas gifts. Some day soon we will head back to Harajuku to get Robert's picture taken with some of the Harajuku Girls. I think they will want to pose with him.

Last weekend we had another tropical storm blow through packing 50+ mph winds. I knew it was raining, but it rains a lot here and I had not heard there was going to be a storm -- this should not surprise those of you who know me well. We needed some supplies, so I decided to brave the rain and stroll Robert and myself up to the grocery to resupply. Robert came through nice and dry, we have a clear plastic rain fly for the stroller, but I blew out another umbrella as soon as I left the grocery store and got soaked to the bone on the way home. I need a rain jacket. Have any of you seen mine? It has been MIA since our arrival.

Robbie is really at a fun stage right now. He likes to mimic whatever we are doing. A case in point, today at dinner I accidentally tried to breathe a bit of water and thumped my chest a couple of times as I coughed. Later, while I was bathing him, Robert got some water down in his lungs and he thumped his own chest while coughing it out. Too cute.

His mobility is increasing as well. Over the last couple of weeks he has become quite proficient at climbing up the ladder on the slide at the park near our house. He still wants to hold your hand while he slides down though -- it is quite a long slide, and very slippery. Here is a video we shot this afternoon, so I guess you can see for yourself:

There is not a whole lot else to report other than we found a really good baby sitter. Her name is Katie. She went to a small liberal arts school in Vermont where she double majored in Environmental Studies and Geology. But jobs as a geologist are hard to come by when you don't want to work for a company that is engaged in "resource extraction", so she and her boyfriend moved to Tokyo and took jobs teaching English. And babysitting. We have her coming over every other Saturday evening so that Sarah and I can go out and explore a bit of Tokyo nightlife. For our inaugural adults-only evening in Tokyo, we went out to dinner, then to a Keller Williams concert with my friend Andrew from work. Andrew is leaving Tokyo on Friday to head back to Sydney to be with his wife. She is due to be giving birth to their second son in early December.

Speaking of work, the project I came here for had its first release on Friday. Everything seemed to go all right, but we don't process our first trades until tomorrow morning. Wish us luck!

I finally had a chance to update flickr this evening too, so check it out if you need an additional Robert fix:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkbrides/

Tokyo Highland Games

2007-10-26T21:02:00.001-07:00

They say you can find anything in Tokyo if you look hard enough. Even if what you are looking for is a bit outlandish, say, something like, I don't know, a crowd of people where the European faces outnumber the Asian, you can understand the majority of the conversations you are overhearing, and there are lots of large men wearing kilts. And even though I was not one of the large men wearing kilts, I did feel right at home. For one afternoon at least, I was not a head taller than everyone, and my last name fit nicely with the day's festivities.

There were a group of men who were participating in the "heavies" competition, a combination of events including throwing large stones, heaving iron weights over a bar (pictured) and the caber toss.

There were a few food/beer/scotch booths scattered around the grounds as well as a stage set up for a Scottish fling dancing competition and other traditional music & entertainment. Last but not least, there was a tent with a couple of financial advisers who were giving out balloons. In Robbie's opinion, I think their baloons were what made the trip worthwhile:

Speaking of the trip, it took a bit more than an hour by train, and was a very enjoyable ride. We were on a commuter line paralleling the arc of Tokyo Bay, but from several stories above the ground. We had excellent views out across the bay, as well as back toward central Tokyo. As it turns out, the Ikea and the Costco are on this line, so it is likely we may make it back out that way eventually.

Mt Takao

2007-10-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

All right, it would appear that one of the great joys of not updating our blog frequently frequently enough, is that we can hit the archives of "fun things we've done but not blogged about yet" when we have not done anything interesting lately. And, while strictly-speaking that is not a wholly accurate statement, it does make good press. ;-)

It has been raining for the last couple of days, but things are supposed to clear up tomorrow. There's great weather up and down the West Coast right now though; I envy all of you who are outside enjoying .ie w5,hjnnn rgvv lm jbt l ;;;;;
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it. LOL, Robert just climbed up in my lap and made his first direct contribution to our blog. His typing makes about as much sense as his speaking at this point.

Well, I guess in all fairness, Robert is definitely trying to communicate with us now, he just can not speak yet. When he wants to go to the park during the day, he will bring Sarah her shoes, then go either sit in his stroller, or try and put his own shoes on. He has not had a lot of success with that yet, but he does enjoy wearing mommy's slippers:

So, from the archives, here is the day-trip Sarah, Robert and I took to Mt Takao in mid-September:

As you can see on the map behind us, there are several trails leading up the mountain. We took the "Biwa Falls Nature Trail" on the way up, the second one from the left, and it lived up to its name. The trail began paved, turned to gravel, then quickly faded into a dirt track full of large rocks & tree roots. At this point, the stroller became more of a hindrance than anything else, so we strapped it to my back and took turns carrying Robbie up the hill.

Toward the beginning of our hike (while the path was still paved), we passed a small shrine:

We were relatively slow-moving members of a more-or-less steady stream of people making their way up the mountain, and we passed almost as many making their way back down.

Biwa Falls were at about the 1/2 way point of the 3.3k ascent, and we saw several religious devotees standing under the falls, just as mentioned in this brochure.

At the top of the mountain were some flat areas for picnicking, several restaurants, an interpretive center (which would have been more interesting if we could interpret Japanese) and good views:

Robert slept through most of the hike up, so he was not too interested in sitting still during lunch. For the descent, we chose trail #1. This was a fully paved trail that passed through a large shrine complex that sprawled across the mountainside. The forest was not as thick on this side of the mountain, and we had some nice views looking back toward Tokyo and Yokohama:

There were a multitude of souvenir shops along trail #1, as well as a number of snack, drink, and ice-cream shops. To top it all though, there was a park that housed a troop of Japanese Snow monkeys. It cost a couple of bucks to enter, but as you have probably already guessed, we ponied up the ¥ and went in for a peek. There was a handler in the enclosure with the monkeys giving a talk. We could not understand him, but it hardly mattered. There was a female monkey just on the other side of a glass partition from Robbie, and he had a very good time touching the glass and following her as she moved along the edge of her enclosure.

Kodomonokuni (Children's Land)

2007-10-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I found a wonderful children's park outside of Yokohama called Kodomonokuni or "Children's Land" in English. This brings up an interesting point, so please bear with me a moment -- the link I provided above takes you Wikipedia, specifically to a web-page about the train line supporting the park, because that is the best site I could find on the park in English.

Here is the official website for Kodomonokuni. Note that it is in Japanese. I have been studying Japanese for several months now, and I still can't make heads or tails of it. Fortunately the good folks at Google have an automated translation service: Same URL, but now in English. It might not be perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing. Station names make some of the most interesting reading, because they tend be literally translated.
We live near "black eye" (Meguro) station, just down the line from "bitter valley" (Shibuya) station.

Kodomonokuni is a very large park by Japanese standards: 240 acres. It was originally a Japanese military storage area, continued as a military facility administered by the US following WWII, and was finally repurposed into a children's park in the mid-sixties.

There are facilities for children of various ages, but we focused on the "farm" area. It contains a large petting zoo, as well as a functioning dairy. They also had pony rides which Robbie and Sarah availed themselves of. And at the end of a very hot day, we were able to cool down a bit by purchasing ice-cream cones made with milk from the park's own cows.

Here are photos from our first visit:

In fact, we enjoyed our first trip so much that we invited our friends Andrew, Deb, and their son Josiah along with us for a second trip a few weeks later. Unfortunately it rained that day, so we more-or-less had the park to ourselves. The petting zoo was not open, but we were still able to see many of the animals from a distance. The squat little goats, for instance, were lined up head to tail at the edge of their enclosure under a 6" overhang, trying to stay out of the rain.

The sheep and cows came down to their fence to visit with us, even though we had no food for them, and we were able to see the prairie dogs, raccoons, geese, chickens, ducks, chipmunks, donkeys, pigs, etc., through a fence, as usual. Two of the main attractions however, were not available: guinea-pig and rabbit holding, and the pony rides. That settles it. I guess we will have to go back.

Here is a picture from our second trip, along with a movie:

More to come ...

2007-10-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

I apologize for having let the blog go for so long, this post may not be worth the wait... there is more to come, but not tonight. The application I am here to help develop just moved into UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and along with that, a lot of work. We just purchased our tickets home for the holidays. We are flying into Seattle on Saturday morning the 15th of December, and flying back out again on the 5th of January.

We will be spending the time leading up to and including Christmas in Lacey with David's parents visiting family and friends on the West side. After Christmas, we move East of the mountains and visit our family and friends over there for the balance of our trip.

We will be bringing gifts with us, to be sure, but If there is anything specific you would like us to pick up here and transport back with us when we come, just drop me a line.

Tomorrow or Thursday I will write more about what we have been up to over the last month; there is plenty to write about.

Tokyo Shopping

2007-09-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

All right, so it has been far too long since I last posted an update. We have not left Tokyo again since our trip to Kamakura, but we achieved a better sense of the scale of Tokyo during our trip to Tokyo Tower a couple of weeks back. In case you were not aware, Tokyo Tower is modeled after the Eiffel tower, but is 13 meters taller and just over half the weight.

The Tokyo Tower has two observation decks. The lower of the two is about 25 stories high, the upper, around 40 stories. It costs approximately 8 dollars to get to the lower deck, and another 7 or so will get you to the upper deck. Because it was not a particularly clear day (and due to the length of the queue for the elevator to the upper deck) we did not pony up the additional cash to get us to the top, instead contenting ourselves with views like this:

Perhaps I will eventually become numb toward Tokyo's scale, but it hasn't happened yet. What strikes me most about this picture is the high-rise buildings along he horizon, way off in the distance. They are still Tokyo.

At the bottom of the tower is a tourist area with souvenir shops, restaurants, and a trained Japanese Macaque that performs tricks to amuse the crowd. I probably do not need to tell you that Sarah was quite taken with the monkey, and even Robert appeared to enjoy the performance.

There was also an aquarium on the premises, as well as a smallish amusement park for toddlers:

Other than our trip to Tokyo Tower, we have been keeping it pretty close to home though we did attend several local food/drink festivals such as the Azibu-Juban festival seen below, and Brazil Day. These festivals are an excellent excuse to go for a walk, eat some tasty but bad for you food, and down a couple of overpriced beers while doing a bit of people-watching.

The next two Mondays, September 17th and 24th, are public holidays here in Japan, and now that the weather is beginning to cool a little, we plan to try and try and get out into nature. We found a promising looking book called "Day Walks Near Tokyo". It details a number of hikes on the outskirts of Tokyo and beyond, and we are itching to try a few of them out.

Oh, and in closing, we experienced our first Typhoon on Thursday the 6th. It was pretty wild. I left the office on Thursday with a friend; we were going to meet up with Sarah and Robert, then head over and have dinner with his family. Even though the full gale-force winds were still several hours away, I was only able to keep my umbrella pointed safely into the wind for about 30 seconds before a gust from an unexpected angle caught it, inverted it, began to tear the webbing from the frame, and finally bucked several spines. My friend (his name is Andrew, incidentally) managed to keep his umbrella together a bit longer, but eventually it suffered the same fate as mine.

Perhaps I should back up a moment -- Japanese really seem to like their umbrellas. A lot. Perhaps they appeal to the Japanese sense of practicality, of cleanliness and self-reliance or it could just be that during August when it is 90+ degrees and raining, the last thing you want to do is don a rain jacket, but at any rate, umbrellas are ubiquitous. Every commercial building has a rack just outside the entrance for wet umbrellas, and every convenience store has a display of umbrellas for sale next to the checkout stand. When the weather report indicates a high chance of rain, everyone, and I do mean everyone (excepting us clueless gaijins of course) brings their umbrella to work with them.

So we ate dinner (an Australian take on Thai food -- and excellent by the way -- well worth braving a tropical storm for) made it back home, and as we were getting to sleep the wind really began to howl.

Tokyo seems to be built to withstand Typhoons. There were no reports of major damage, no flooding nor injury that I heard of. But there was some detritus. Evidentally Andrew and I were not the ones foolish enough to take an umbrella out into a hurricane. Ruined umbrellas adorned everything: sidewalk railings, hedges, gutters, they poked up from garbage cans, stuck out from under parked cars, and blocked drains. All in all though, it was kind of a fun experience. One thing you can say for tropical storms: at least the rain is warm. :-D

August in Tokyo

2007-08-19T04:50:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting for a while, it has been very hot and humid here lately, over 90 degrees with humidity to match, so we have been sticking pretty close to home. There is plenty to see without leaving the city though, and many interesting districts are just a short, air-conditioned subway ride away. Yesterday we went to Ginza, and as soon as we made it up to street level I had one of those "gosh, we really are in Tokyo" moments:

Ginza is a high-end shopping district. Every luxury brand I am aware of (along with many that I had never heard of until yesterday) all have stores in Ginza. We did a lot of window-shopping, ate lunch at a TGI Friday's to see if it was the same as a TGI Friday's the US (it is, by the way), and passed by a bonsai store with an apple tree out front (you can see the TGI Friday's banner behind the bonsai):

Robbie and Sarah also posed for a picture with what I can only assume is the physical manifestation of an animated Japanese cartoon character:

After we took this picture, we went to the Ginza Baby Gap to find Robert a couple of new outfits since he will soon be out of his 18 month clothes. At the Baby Gap, Robert threw his first tantrum.

If you were not previously aware, you should understand that Robert has a thing for balloons. On a lark, we bought him a mylar balloon for Valentine's day, and Cupid must have gotten him with an arrow because he was smitten by this balloon. Robert was about 9 months old, not even crawling very well yet, but he would sit with that balloon, tug its string, and laugh and coo as it bounced and jiggled in the air. Over the week and a half or so that it held its helium, it was quite literally hours of entertainment of the very highest caliber.

Several months later we were in the checkout line at the grocery store, it must have been early June, and Robert pointed toward the ceiling. I had never seen him point at anything before, so I looked toward the object of his desire and what could it be? A "Congratulations Graduate!" balloon, of course! And because it is never too soon to begin practicing spoiling your child, I immediately grabbed it, purchased it, and we took it home with us for a second week and a half of buoyant, bouncing, helium-filled, mylar wrapped fun.

We have not seen any mylar balloons since we have been in Tokyo, but at the Baby Gap there was another toddler with a green helium-filled rubber balloon attached to her stroller. Robert soon spotted that balloon, and he wanted it. He was out of his stroller walking around the store and began stalking the green balloon. Soon he began crying, then wailing because he could not toddle fast enough to catch up to the balloon. A clerk came up and asked if there was anything she could do to help. When I explained that my son was a balloon freak, she nodded sympathetically and then disappeared. The balloon stroller lady had left the store by this point and Robert was inconsolable. He was casting about the store, looking for that balloon, and crying miserably because he could not find it.

Generally, if Robert is crying and we pick him up, that's the end of it. He almost never cries when we hold him -- unless we are trying to get him to sleep of course. This day though, even being held was no comfort to him. Suddenly however, he quit crying and began to squirm. I turned around, and the clerk had returned with an orange helium-filled balloon! She slipped its string around his wrist and it was as if she'd thrown a switch. His tears dried up, and he showed off all 8 of his teeth in a big wide grin as he played with his new toy.

We thanked her, made our purchases, and headed back home again with a very happy little boy. The balloon lost its buoyancy overnight, but not its magic; Robert has been dragging it around the apartment off and on all day.

One final note regarding TGI Friday's. We decided to take a meal there to see how it compared to a stateside TGI Friday's, mostly because shortly after our arrival we discovered a Denny's near our apartment and decided to have a breakfast there one Sunday morning. For those of you who have known me since school, you are probably aware at there was a point in my life when I felt about as strongly for Denny's as my son does for balloons.

I figured that Denny's is Denny's, so was caught completely off-guard by the selections awaiting me once I opened the menu. They were, uhm, ethnic: soups, salads, rice, grilled or boiled fish, noodles, etc., were the major categories of breakfast selections. You could get a side of eggs, of course, but the "Grand Slams" and "Moons Over My Hammy" were missing in action, no short stacks of pancakes, biscuits and gravy, or hashed browns greeted the eye, and I dare say this Denny's staff had never heard the term "covered and smothered". Of course, 覆われ、窒息させる (according to translate.google.com) doesn't roll off the tongue (certainly my tongue, at any rate!) quite as well in Japanese as it does in English.

Perhaps that is why we Americans tend toward heavy? If only it were more cumbersome to order that our pile of pan-fried shoestring potatoes come replete with country gravy and cheddar, but I digress...

As the final blow, Japanese Denny's have a different blend of coffee. It is stronger and more bitter than in America, just like most coffee you will find here. And, adding insult to injury, it is served in a proper china coffee cup with saucer; no classic Denny's mug, jumbly-lettered or otherwise.

So I ordered myself a bowl of vegetable soup with a side of toast for breakfast, sipped my coffee, and drank in the strangeness of it all. I have not yet been back to the Japanese Denny's, but I probably will at some point -- it appears to be part of the cultural experience. TGI Friday's on the other hand, we can probably hold off on until we are in the states.

Oh, and as a final food-related note, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to eat at the "Seattle Burger" we found last weekend in Akihabara:

It was good. They were playing the Beach Boy's Greatest Hits, and we were the only people in the restaurant. Robert was asleep in his stroller the whole time; Sarah and I each had cheeseburger meals that probably cost about 8 dollars each. We could have had the ¥1,890 Teriyaki burger, barely visible on the upper left-hand side of the photo. It would set you back about $15.60 at the current exchange rate of 114 yen to the dollar, but it looks like one heck of a burger. Maybe next time.

Kamakura!

2007-08-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

Today has been a great day from start to finish. To begin with, the French Toast breakfast was tasty, as expected. Once we cleaned up from that, about 9:00 am, we hopped the train for Kamakura and spent our day alternating between dazzling sunshine and dimly lit temples. The temples were surrounded by meticulously maintained gardens (buzzing with Cicadas), and intricately carved stone and wood sculptures.

We enjoyed the finest lunch we have yet had in Japan, a traditional "bento-box" style with cold noodles and dipping sauce, tempura vegetables, rice, and a sort of sweet-rice jello with ground sweetened peanut for dessert. We found it in an unusual location along the walk into Kamakura, just around the corner from a more traditional looking tourist cafe. It is a good thing we were too hungry to make it around the corner!

Unintentionally saving the best for last, we visited the "Great Buddha" at Kōtoku-in known as Daibutsu. Photographs do not do it justice, the statue is massive. And, for ¥20 (about 20 cents) you can go inside the buddha and peer up and out at the sky through windows in his back.

The end of our walking tour was Kamakura's beach, and it was packed. Granted the temperature was probably hovering around 90, with humidity to match, but the number of folks on the beach was staggering. Waikiki beach in Hawaii is the only parallel I have. There was a steady sea breeze, and dozens of sail-boarders were out, taking advantage of it.

On the return trip to Tokyo, we rode the Eno-den along the coast to Fujisawa station and hopped a JR express back to Meguro station and home.

Robert really seemed to enjoy himself today. He watched all of the people at the temples, enjoyed playing with our waiter at lunch, and several ladies in the afternoon who wanted to take his picture. His favorite moments though, were certainly at the the temples. Many of them had broad, flat, stone-paved areas where we could let him out of the stroller to toddle around for a while. All of the sunshine, toddling, and commotion eventually took their toll though, and he slept the whole way back to Tokyo.

Edogawa and the Fireworks that Were.

2007-08-04T07:51:00.000-07:00

We went out to Edogawa this evening for a second and more successful attempt at viewing a summer fireworks display. While still in Tokyo, Edagawa is definitely not as urban as the central parts of Tokyo that we have become accustomed to. I have some pictures and video that I hope to post tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning (after a French-toast breakfast that I have been looking forward to all week) we are heading to Kamakura, a beach resort town on the outskirts of Tokyo. It is about an hour's train ride, hopefully Robert can maintain his composure. With luck, we will have pictures and anecdotes to blog about tomorrow.

Goodnight.

Asakusa and the Fireworks that Weren't

2007-08-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

We trekked out to Asakusa today, (Sunday the 29th of July). It is on the other side of "central" Tokyo from us, in that it is on the far side of the Yamanote line. The Yamanote line is a rail line that runs an oval circuit around central Tokyo measuring approximately 7km from East to West, and 12km from North to South. It would take around an hour to circumnavigate it, but I digress... we intended to see the annual Sumida fireworks display, but as it turns out, they were on Saturday. The English language website where we read about them got the date wrong.

The trip as not wasted though, as the Asakusa district is home to a number of shrines and temples. Here are a couple of photos:

As we continued past the shrines, and dusk began to settle, we happened upon a neighborhood playground and decided to let Robbie out of the stroller for a while to play. He is a relatively good sport about all of Mommy and Daddy's galavanting around and exploring their new environs, but he has recently learned to climb, and now he thinks he should climb everything: the couch, the chair, the bed, the kitchen table, Mom, the bracing pole in the train, Dad, and even the playground climbing wall.

When we arrived, the playground was deserted. It had rained earlier in the day, and the swings, slides, and other toys were all still a bit damp, so we dried our way around the playground and Robert had an excellent time. Once we were through, we walked back to the station via Sumida river where the fireworks had been the night before. For the most part, the infrastructure was still in place from the night before, when an estimated 900,000 people had come out to watch two separate fireworks displays, each over an hour in length. By the time we arrived, all that remained were barricades and roped off pathways, somber in the gathering dusk, a visceral reminder of the thousands that passed through yesterday, keeping us on the main-line through the riverside park, back to the JR station and home.

A Quiet Friday Night

2007-07-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

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!

Arrived

2007-07-19T05:51:00.000-07:00

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