Our First Visitors

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

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

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

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

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

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?!?

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.