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:

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

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

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

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...

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

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.