You Call This A Vacation?

Playing Around in Prague

2010-07-07T17:13:00.007-05:00

I arrived safe and sound in the beautiful city of Prague. It is so lovely here, every street is cute and cobblestoned, and around every corner is an impressive looking gothic church. It would be so different to live in a city like this - though I think I think that about every non-North American city I visit.

I arrived last night after a pretty easy travel day (thanks to Jerry and business class aeroplan tickets!!) LOVE the business class seats that pretty much recline flat. And the airport lounges with free food and drink. So nice.

Leaving the airport, I took a bus, a subway and a metro to our hotel (easier than it sounds). The hotel is nice and modern, which is basically why I picked it. It's called the Red and Blue Design Hotel, with each room decorated in - you guessed it - red or blue. (We're in a Red room).

After I checked in, it was about 8pm so I headed back out to make sure that I stayed up until a reasonable hour before going to sleep. I walked down the major street near the hotel and checked out the big new shopping center around the subway station. Our hotel isn't in the main part of town, just a little bit away, so there isn't much going on right around it. After peering in a bunch of restaurants and looking at menus, I found a tiny cafe where a cute family was eating, and figured it was a good starting place to have dinner. I ordered smaszeny syr, which is basically battered, fried cheese. Yes, it's like my dream on a plate. It came with potatoes (apparently they could be served many different ways, I ended up with crinkle-cut fries), and mayonesa, which was actually a delicious fresh tartar sauce. Also, I had a nice sparkling raspberry juice. Not bad for about $4USD. I will try to upload a photo of the cheese soon, but you can probably imagine it - it's like a large, rectangular mozzarella stick. I couldn't finish it though, partly psychological (really, should one eat THAT much fried cheese in one sitting?), partly because it was just really filling.

After a quick stop at Tesco (a giant supermarket) for water, it was then back to the hotel to bed. This morning I woke up and had breakfast at the hotel (a decent buffet) and forced myself to go out and walk around. I was actually pretty exhausted from jetlag and the travel, so it was very tempting to just go back to sleep until Donald arrived. But I'm glad I went out, because it was is so enjoyable just walking around this city. Plus (a huge plus), the weather is awesome. It's quite cool right now, mostly sunny and not muggy nor rainy. Perfect sightseeing weather.

I walked from our hotel area (Smichov) up into Mala Strana (the are beneath the Prague castle) and then across the Vltava river via Karlov Most (the famous Charles Bridge) into Stare Mesto (Old Town). I didn't do much stopping/reading the guidebook/picture taking because I knew I'd just be doing it again with Donald.

I had lunch at a reastaurant that seemed a bit "off the beaten path" and had a lot of locals. I ordered a pork noodle dish that had no noodles. Sigh. I don't think Czech food is particularly tasty in general - hearty and filling, yes, but not really nuanced. (Yes, that includes the big slab of fried cheese I happily tucked into last night). And vegetables... hm... where are they? There is often one slice each of tomato and cucumber with your entree but that's about it. Let's hope I am proven wrong over the next couple of days!

I walked back over the Most Legii (a bridge south of the Charles bridge) and back to the hotel, where proceeded to wait for Donald's arrival (i.e., take a nice long nap). Donald came and we set out pretty much immediately for the Nove Mesto area, as we wanted to get tickets for a concert tonight. There is a summer music festival called "PROMS" on, and tonight they were playing Mahler. We go the tickets, then did some sightseeing around the concert hall. We went up the astronomical clock tower (probably the most commonly taken photo in Prague is of the clock), and walked around the Old Town Square. The concert was in the art nouveau Municipal Theater, which was recently renovated and is really quite beautiful. The concert was good, though I always wonder how people can fall asleep to something like Mahler, with all the sudden crescendos and accents.

After the concert we ended up at a microbrewery recommended by our guidebook. I'd gotten it into Donald's head that we should eat pork knuckle, a specialty here that I'd attempted to eat when I was last here 10 years ago. We got some (and picked it clean, all 1700 grams of it), along with some sour cherry beer (not bad!) and the ubiquitous dryish bread that is served here. (Again, bread, not a strong point of the Czech culinary scene.)

By then it was about 11 and we want to get up early tomorrow to tackle the Castle, so we came back to the hotel. Now it's a little studying of Prague history, and bedtime!

I'll try to post some pics tomorrow (I actually brought the camera cord this time...). It's nice to have a (Donald's) laptop and wi-fi! Hope you'll Czech out my upcoming posts! Hehe.

Now it's Eastern Europe or Bust!

2010-07-05T16:57:00.006-05:00

Tonight I fly to Frankfurt and then on to Prague tomorrow. Donald joins me on the 7th. We'll spend a few days in Prague, then 1 night in Cesky Crumlov, and then take the night train to Krakow. After 2 days in Krakow, we'll take another night train to meet up with Peggy and Jerry in Budapest on the 15th.

Brian arrives on the 16th, so we'll all have a nice weekend in Budapest before we get on the boat to cruise down the Danube, stopping at several cities/countries and finally ending up in Istanbul for a couple of days. It should be a wonderful trip with a lot of family time! Hopefully we will post while we're away, so keep your peepers peeled!

Living the Life in Hong Kong

2010-07-05T16:29:00.005-05:00

After my time in Vietnam, Hong Kong was pretty much 9 days of luxury. Through my dad, I had arranged to stay with my aunt Adele and uncle Bernard (my mom's brother) in their apartment in Jordan, a pretty convenient/touristy area of Kowloon. It turned out however, that their place was quite crowded (my cousin Kelvin had come back for the summer) and so I actually ended up staying in a hotel just a few doors down from them. It was really lovely, because I got to have a lot of privacy and freedom but they were just steps away.

Let's be honest. I spent most of my time eating and shopping. Sometimes with relatives, sometimes on my own. I spent time with aunt Adele, Uncle Bernard and their daughter, Adele (her name is actually Catherine but she likes to go by Adele!), who is 4.5 years old. She is incredibly smart and polite, and it was lovely to meet her. She has a really vivid imagination, and seems to have a strong moral code already. Adele and Bernard are very busy (he is a popular doctor there, and they are putting together a huge charity event) but they graciously made time to see me. We had several meals together, and even spent a day in China (just across the border, in Shenzhen). I was really humbled by their generosity and kindness.

I also spent some time with my Aunt and Uncle on my dad's side, and my cousin Milly. It was wonderful seeing them too. I have actually seen them quite a bit because they are the parents/sister of my cousin Michael, who lives in LA with his wife Valerie and kids Brian and Sabrina, and whom I spent quite a bit of time with while I lived in LA. In HK, I had some great meals with them (memorable pineapple buns, egg tarts, dim sum, and Thai food) and went up to Victoria peak with my aunt and uncle. (I will talk more about the food when I post photos, I promise!)

I was also able to see a friend from grad school, Mo, and his wife Qiao Bing while I was in HK, which was great. Mo was also a psych grad student at USC, where he met Qiao Bing (a grad student in Social work). She is now a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and he is working on some market analysis for his old advisor's husband. Small world! We had a dinner and a lunch together, and they showed me around the university which is a bit north of the city, on a hill, and quite beautiful. How fun it was to see friends in such a different context!

On my own, I did a little sightseeing - some temples, a nunnery, a pink dolphin boat cruise from Lantau Island. I guess I don't think of HK as much of a sightseeing place, more a center of commercialism. I'm sure that's unfair, and maybe I have some bias because I have been there before (last time was in 2005 for my grandfather's funeral). But don't get me wrong - I was happy to mostly just shop and eat this time around! It was pretty much exactly what I wanted after Vietnam. I'm not sure what it says about me - probably just that I like to shop - but I think in Vietnam because the country is much more poor, I felt funny spending money. In contrast, in HK where every mall has a Louis Vuitton, it felt much more... normal. Expected, even. Not that I spent THAT much money, but it was definitely fun to look! People would ask if I missed Brian or wished he was with me, and I would say, honestly, if he were here (in HK) with me, it would be a much different trip. I.e., not nearly as much shopping (but probably more eating!) and more sightseeing. That wouldn't have been bad at all, but I was really enjoying the trip I was on!

A note about food - I ate well in HK but it was definitely not on the level at which we attacked food in Japan. I guess because I was eating with relatives most of the time, I didn't really seek out specific places or even necessarily types of food. I had lovely Chinese pastries though (bakeries are all over the place, and everything is good!), several dim sum meals, and plenty of street snacks (fried squid tentacles in a paper bag, curry fish ball skewers, and pan fried noodle sheet rolls, to name a few). Oh, and probably the best wonton noodles I've ever had - chewy, toothsome, flavorful. So good.

By the end of my time in HK I was definitely ready to come home, but I also knew that I would miss the life of luxury I had been living! It certainly helped to know that I was coming home to my summer off and that I wouldn't have to go to work anytime soon, but it was a bit of a hard transition! Of course, it has been great reuniting with Brian, continuing to settle in to our new apartment, and seeing Chicago friends. Also, preparing for the next adventure in Eastern Europe!

Thanks for sticking around for the trip report on Vietnam and HK. I'll post when I FINALLY insert photos into the posts.

One night in Saigon

2010-06-30T16:30:00.005-05:00

So obviously I am back in Chicago while I'm writing this - my last couple of days in Vietnam were quick and then I had limited internet access in HK, so I didn't really get a chance to update the bjourn. I'll try to finish up about the trip and then post some photos, so here goes! **Ummmm I am writing this a few hours before my flight to Prague, so it is unlikely that I'll get those photos posted anytime soon. Sigh. At least I hope to finish writing about the trip before I go(HK post next), and then I'll go back and insert photos - hopefully - soon!

I forgot to mention in the last post that, on the way back to my hotel from the opera house in Ha Noi, I stopped in at a popsicle store - not just any popsicle store, but a very popular stall where people were mobbing a few ladies standing behind coolers filled with fruity popsicles. There were actually a couple of storefronts right next to each other, with tons of wrappers and used sticks littering the street in front. Heading home, I was emboldened by the heat, and pulled out a 5000dong note (about 35cents) and joined the fray. I basically just pushed myself into the crowd, smushing in amongst a lot of sticky, sweaty skin, and held out my money hoping one of the ladies would help me. When I made the much-coveted eye contact, I ordered: "mot sue dua" (one coconut). She gave me a taro one and I firmly shook my head. "Khong, sue da". She gave me the right flavor, and I extracted myself from the crowd triumphantly. It melted quite quickly on the way home, but I was pretty proud of myself!

The next day I woke up for my early flight to Saigon, but found that my flight was delayed a few hours. Rescheduled my transfers, then went back to sleep. I got in to Saigon easily, and then went to get my hair permed. I had intended to get a digital perm like what I have been getting (and loving) back in Chicago for the past year or so, but it ended up being...not so great. Let's just say it did not turn out like I had expected nor wanted. It was much cheaper than in the US, but I guess you truly get what you pay for. Anyway, after the perm I called the girls from Habitat - Sengmin and Cathy, and arranged the evening's activities. Sengmin picked me up at my hotel - she is adorable. She's a student in Korea but taking a bit of a break to work for Habitat in Saigon. Cathy is actually a Vancouverite who has been living in Saigon for the last 4 years, freelance writing for various charities. They both came to My Tho with us and worked on the build. I was pretty excited to spend my last night in Saigon with them.

We went over to Vincom Center, which is the huge posh shopping center downtown. Cathy and her friend were at Carl's Jr. (Yes, Carl's Jr. It is the first fast food burger place to open in Saigon - possibly the country - and it had just opened a couple of days earlier, so it has been mobbed. I only then realized that there were no McDonald's anywhere that we'd been. Apparently they do not pass the "local needs" test that is required of foreign companies that want to come to Vietnam, so they haven't yet infiltrated the country. Amazing!) Both Cathy and Sengmin talked about the things they miss in Vietnam - fast food, doughnuts, Starbucks, etc. I guess I actually enjoyed this about the country - that every restaurant was a one-off, not a franchised pre-fab. All the food is incredibly fresh, whether you're eating in a fancy, air-conditioned tablecloth restaurant or right on the street on a plastic stool. I can see their point, I guess, that after a while sometimes you just want the not-so-good-for you greasy stuff, or the coffee that you know will taste the same no matter where you are. (Who needs starbucks when you have Cafe Sue Da, the amazingly strong vietnamese coffee served with 2 tablespoons of condensed milk?? Mmmmmm. (On the build some of us wondered why we weren't losing weight. I'm sure it had nothing to do with drinking 2 or 3 of these a day...)

We ate dinner in Japanese cafe in the same building, then spent some time in the supermarket (also in Vincom Center), picking out Vietnamese specialties (coffee, tea, candies) for me to take as gifts. After that, we walked down to the Majestic Hotel and had drinks at a bar overlooking the Saigon river. Quite a nice way to finish my time in Vietnam!

Back to the hotel, I packed up and got ready to move on to Hong Kong. What an amazing 3 and a half weeks. Vietnam can be both beautiful and difficult. I am so glad I went there, but I am not sure that I need to go again (given all the other places in the world I haven't been yet). I am especially proud to have been part of the Habitat team, because I feel like we did some great work and forged some terrific friendships that I look forward to developing. In fact, a great couple (Andrew and Emily) live in Chicago and I hope to get to know them better on our own turf. I hope to see Michal and Basia, two teammates from Warsaw, in Krakow in a couple of weeks. And when I go to LA in September I will call up Farhan and Amin, two more teammates who live there. I guess building houses, and celebrating with dance parties and karaoke are pretty great ways to make new friends!

Having a ball in Ha Noi

2010-05-29T21:47:00.005-05:00

**Crazy, I apparently wrote this while I was in Ha Noi, but never got around to publishing it...**

Yesterday (5/29) went really smoothly, which was nice given that we did a lot of travel. The bus/ferry trip from Cat Ba back to Ha Noi was really easy (just like on the way there, but today we weren't all discombubulated because we'd just gotten off the night train. If you ever do that trip, I highly recommend the Thanh Luong bus company - only 180000d/person (about $9 USD) and it's really easy. Don't bother going on a tour just to get to Cat Ba!

We arrived in Ha Noi around noon, and cabbed to my hotel. I had found this hotel through my guidebook and some online searching, and it seems to have been a great find. It's not super cheap but again, I think I am past the backpacker/hostel phase, and I have to admit that I like the details, like good service, king-sized bed, etc. Beth was flying out in the afternoon, so she came with me and stashed her stuff in my room. We went for lunch at a wonderful place called Sohot, which had a really nice decor (lots of floral, damask, pillows, etc.) and actually quite good, seemingly authentic food.

After that it was basically time to say goodbye, so Beth got in a car and off she went to the airport. I was on my own! A strange feeling after 3 weeks of traveling with other people. Before I started on this trip, Beth and I had actually emailed a bit because we both knew the other was going to travel after the Habitat build. I was always too busy and hadn't done any trip planning, so we didn't really have any firm plans to travel together when we started the build. I kept thinking that it would be nice to travel with someone (if they were cool!), but that I would be just fine on my own. I'll just say that I am so so glad that things worked out the way they did. Beth and Casey were great travel partners, and in the end I am relieved that I wasn't on my own. This country has a lot of wonderful qualities, but it can be hard going at times, mostly because of the communication difficulties you encounter everywhere. I think I would have been quite intimidated and lonely had I been alone this past week, even though I think of myself as a fairly smart, intrepid traveler. Since we'd had a great week of travel after the build, though, I felt fine after Beth was gone. I'll miss her of course, but I was looking forward to having another go at Ha Noi.

So after Beth left I headed back out to do some shopping - I haven't really seen much that I want for myself (everything we get in the US is made here anyway, so there's nothing really unique! Kidding, but nothing much has struck my fancy except the big paintings I bought in Saigon). But I wanted to find some things to bring to my relatives that I'm visiting in Hong Kong. There really isn't anything here that they can't get in Hong Kong, so I know it's kind of silly, but it's one of those things you must do, and I didn't have much room in my bag to bring anything from Chicago. So I bought some things for them (and maybe a couple of small things for me ;) ) and walked around the old quarter again.

I bought a ticket to the Water Puppet show at 6:30pm (first class for $3), and had about an hour. I decided to get a snack, and then if I was still hungry after the show I could eat later. Really close to the water puppet theater there was a mob of Vietnamese people sitting on the sidewalk. (Well, on teeny plastic stools). They were all eating the same thing that was being made by a woman with a mobile stand, a small plate of what looked like a salad. The distinct smell of nuoc mam (fish sauce) emanated from their plates. I jumped in, and sat down. Immediately a young woman came up and asked what I wanted. I pointed to the plates of someone near by, and said "mot, mot" meaning, one (pointing to a salad plate), and one (pointing to a fresh spring roll). She ran away and a few minutes later I got my food. The spring roll was great, and the salad was pretty good too! Crunch green papaya, peanuts, nuoc mam, lots of herbs, bean sprouts, and some beef items. There was something like flat, thin beef jerky (I saw the woman snipping it with scissors), pieces that were more like bbq pork, and then some other really chewy ones that I didn't love. It was quite tasty though, and quick, and only 70000d (3.50 USD). I loved sitting right there, almost on the ground, eating with the locals. Other foreigners walked by and commented on how tasty things looked, but I think they were too intimidated so they kept on going. So fun!

The water puppet show was not that great, mostly because of course it was all in Vietnamese. And it had pretty low production values - so most of my laughs were at the fact that I could see the puppeteers' hands pulling back the curtains, etc. It was fun though, and the little kids in the audience seemed to really enjoy it. For $3, as Casey said (he went to it a couple of days before), who can complain?

After that I walked around, and had dinner at another place near St. Joseph's Cathedral. Hue beef noodles with some spring rolls. Since Beth, Casey and I had had a lot of "western" or french food recently, I was trying to think if I felt like I'd had enough authentic Vietnamese food. I'm pretty satisfied with what I've had - especially because that's about all we were eating in My Tho during the build. Not a ton of street food, but enough, and I think for the sake of my GI system, it's been the right amount. So I'm quite happy with my eating on the trip (whew!) And of course, Hong Kong is yet to come so the good eats will just continue on.

After dinner I walked around the lake to the Opera House, which was built by French colonialists modeled on the Palais Garnier in Paris. It is quite pretty, and is right in a really busy traffic circle so it was quite the urban scene. Can't wait to post photos of everything.

Totally relaxed in Cat Ba

2010-05-28T04:19:00.004-05:00

Our last day in Sa Pa was really foggy and quite rainy - still felt like a relief from the heat of Southern Vietnam! Casey and I went on a "trek" which was really just taking a minibus up to a waterfall, climbing up some stairs (quite a few) around the waterfall, coming down, and going back on the bus to a higher point, the Tram Ton Pass. Unfortunately visibility was about 2 feet from there, so we couldn't do the trekking bit that is supposed to be nice around there. We got back on the bus and headed home! The rest of the day was just running around, getting prepared for our night train back to Ha Noi.

The night train was much better this time, as the a/c was working fine for the most part, and the train was cool when we got on. Thank goodness! We arrived in Ha Noi at 4:50am, where Beth and I parted ways with Casey (sniff sniff). He was staying in Ha Noi for one night and then flying out of Saigon the day after - though he just told me via facebook that his flight to Hong Kong was canceled so he's in Saigon still. Weird! That's the same flight I take on Monday, so I hope it was just a fluke that his was canceled.

After saying goodbye to Casey, Beth and I cabbed over to the Ha Noi bus station and caught the 5:20am bus to Cat Ba. Well, after a couple of bus transfers and one ferry ride, we arrived on Cat Ba Island. This is a big vacation spot for the Vietnamese, and it's quite lovely. Many people like to take boat tours from Ha Noi that go into Ha Long Bay, because there are huge limestone rock formations ("karsts") that rise out of the ocean. I don't think all that many foreigners make it to Cat Ba (a little farther away), but from here you can sail to Ha Long bay or Lan Ha Bay, which also has those formations. We came here mostly because Beth really wanted to do some rock climbing, and convinced me to do it too (!) So we arrived on Cat Ba and, after our little splurge for a nice hotel in Sa Pa, we had every intention of being a bit more frugal. We checked into the Noble House hostel, showered, and even took a nap on the rock hard bed. AFter that though, we grabbed a nice lunch at the Green Mango restaurant, and walked down to Cat Co 3 Beach, which is the home of the Sunrise Resort... big mistake! We had been debating all week about whether we should just stay there, as it is really lush. Once we saw it, we were hooked. It is definitely more expensive than other options here, but it's not that much since, after all, we're in Vietnam. And we asked for and received a deal. Anyway, it's great, there is a semi-private beach, pool, plenty of a/c, and good food.

After moving here the first night, we went back into town to attend a trip planning meeting at Slo Pony, the climbing/touring outfitters here run by Americans. Actually, it is the first and only climbing company in Vietnam, started by someone who went to Beth's university. At the meeting, we found out that several other people were interested in a climbing trip, so we were all set. Then it was off for dinner (yummy fresh crab, and noodles) and back to our paradise for a good night's sleep.

We didn't do much in the morning - I spent a good deal of time on the internet getting my flight back to Saigon, hotel in Saigon, etc.) and then we met up with the climbing group at 12. They bused us out to the site, we had lunch, and then it was up the mountain we go! I've climbed a couple times (literally, twice) and quite liked it, but it was a while ago, so I was pretty nervous. Beth is a monster in terms of all things sporty/outdoors, so she was really amped. I did 3 climbs, and had some trouble with the first (we thought it was the hardest!), but still finished it. The other 2 felt like cake in comparison. The hardest thing is to stop on the way up and get stuck, because it is so hard to keep going. But lots of shouts of encouragement from below were awesome motivation! Anyway, it was a really fun afternoon - and I've got a ton of shin bruises and scrapes to prove it, and the group we went with was pretty cool. Beth did awesome. The guides even set up an advanced climb and she did it without slipping. She's a maniac! [I think I mentioned that she summitted Mt. Fansipan in one day, when usually it's at least a 2 day affair. Her guide didn't even want to take her at first. When she walked in to book him, he said that her skin was so pale, he knew she worked in an office so he didn't think she could make it. I guess guides also don't like to take women... But she did it, and was amazing. We just met a couple who had her guide for a trek a couple of days after. They said he was very impressed with her, and even HE had to take the day after off, because he was so tired! She's legendary in Sa Pa!!]

When we got back into Cat Ba town, we stayed for the next trip planning meeting, where Beth was 'convinced' to go Deep Water Solo climbing. This means that you go out on the water in a kayak or boat, boulder onto a rock, and start climbing. No ropes, no harnesses, nothing. If you fall, you technically should just fall into the water. Pretty awesome, but quite scary!! They got a good group together and that's where she is right now. I of course bowed out because I probably wouldn't even make it onto the rock! Instead I opted for a very nice, relaxing day, which turned out to be amazing. I signed up for a boat tour (wanted to see those karsts!) last night, and this morning it turned out that I was the only one! Luckily there was no minimum so I basically got a private boat tour for 4 hours. I was able to tell the captain that I wanted to sail further than they normally go, not to stop for kayaking (I would totally have done it with another person, but we heard lots of stories of people getting lost/sucked into caves so I wasn't super keen to go at it alone), and to only spend a little time on "Monkey Island." The trip was superb. Lots of sailing, lots of karsts, a little beach time (with a short mountain trek), some monkey sightings, and a trip to a floating fishing operation that was really cool.

After that, I came back into town, had lunch (squid cooked with garlic - yum, though they don't really believe in cleaning seafood here so I had to take out the backbone, etc. myself) and came back to the resort. I just got out of a 2 hour massage (yes, 2 hours). It was heavenly. The masseuse was in all sorts of crazy positions - lots of mounting, walking on me, etc. and cracked many things I never even knew could crack. But I came out in a heady fog of bliss. Ahhhhhh.

Tomorrow morning we have one more delicious resort buffet breakfast (seriously, we are truly enjoying this resort) and then it's back on the bus/ferry to Ha Noi. I have one night there, Beth flies out in the afternoon), and then I have one more night in Saigon before I head to Hong Kong.

What a trip this has been! I am glad we followed up the seriously hard work with some seriously hard play. And Vietnam is so affordable, it's been nice to travel pretty comfortably without worrying about pinching pennies.

Oh, funny note - I am keeping track of how many times people say something to the effect of "BUT, you asian?" as in, they don't understand why I am "western" but look like them. (I'm up to 16 now.) It really confuses them. And they also lose interest, because I guess I'm not as exciting as a caucasian or european foreigner. We in North America (and other countries) are so used to being part of a multicultural society, but here, it's really not like that. They don't see many foreigners in general, I guess, and in particular "western" asians? It's really interesting. I've also been asked if I am Korean, Singaporean, and Japanese (not Chinese though!). So the Vietnamese don't seem to be able to distinguish among asians that well, either!

Well... time to sit by the pool and wait for Beth to return. Life is so hard!

Chilling in Sa Pa

2010-05-24T03:09:00.003-05:00

Literally, chilling, because it's actually cool here! Not cold really, but very comfortable. We are in the mountains and it's such a refreshing change from the heat of the city.

The night train was a bit of an adventure. The cabin is very small (as expected), and at first the air conditioning wasn't working. Very scary flashbacks to a fateful night train that Paula and I took in Morocco during my Europe trip. Luckily, it started working again and then I felt fine (cold, even) during the rest of the night. The night train got us into Lao Cai at 5am, and then we were shuttled here to Sa Pa by about 7. We had a whole day just wandering around Sa Pa, which Casey calls "quaintly messy Swiss-Vietnamese". It's cute, kind of mountain village like Banff. Beth is doing a one-day summit of Mt. Fansipan (pretty arduous!) today, but yesterday we just wanted to take it easy. However, we ended up trekking around a mountain, which was more up and down than I thought. IT was really cool though, and of course we were rewarded with nice views.

We are staying at a really nice hotel (all three of us in one room!) called Chapa Garden, which is centrally located but a bit off the main road, so it's quite relaxing. We are also eating pretty well, so last night we had dinner in the restaurant of the Victoria Hotel, the fanciest hotel in town. It's still very affordable (I had a local smoked trout appetizer, and pasta with a local mushroom sauce for about $25). There is more French influence up here in the North than in Saigon, so we've had a lot of western food recently. Today I had some pho which was only $1, and pretty darn tasty.

It is definitely relaxing here, which is great. We spend another day here and then head back to Ha Noi (one more night train), where Casey will stay for a day and then head back to Saigon to fly home. Beth and I will go from Ha Noi to Ha Long Bay/Cat Ba island, where we want to do some water stuff (kayaking, touring the limestone caves), and some rock climbing. Then I have one more day in Ha Noi, one day in Saigon, then 9 days in Hong Kong.

It feels like I've been in Vietnam for a lifetime, and yet I still have so much more time on this trip. It's really been wonderful, but I'm certainly starting to miss creature comforts of home and being with Brian. Hong Kong will be great, because it'll just be relaxing and visiting relatives, etc. but I'm sure after a couple of days I'll be itching to go home!

Hello from Ha Noi!

2010-05-22T04:32:00.008-05:00

Now that the build is over (more on the last of it in a bit), I am traveling on with a couple of my Habitat teammates to points in Northern Vietnam. We flew from Saigon to Ha Noi this morning (on 2 hours of sleep...) and are taking a night train out to Sa Pa this evening... On the move!

So on Friday, we had the house dedications. We went to both houses, the unfinished one first, and heard some speeches, took some photos, and did a lot of crying (well, some of us did...). The owner of the first home cried a lot - I think he has a psychological condition which includes a lot of crying, but he seemed genuinely overcome with emotion at the ceremony. The second homeowner, whom we never really talked to on the site, said some words that really made me emotional, including the fact that we were a part of making his dream come true. The fact that that dream was simply to have a place to live is mindblowing to me. I am so incredibly glad that I took part in this, but it's important to remember that these are only 2 families out of so many that are living in substandard conditions. It's all been a good reminder to me to get back into volunteering, something I did a lot of when I was younger but have really neglected more recently.

After the dedications we had a little break and then took a field trip out to Xuan's (our fixer) aunt's house in the country. She lives on a farm, so we got to see rice paddies (dry at present but will become flooded soon for harvest in July), a pig and piglets, day-old puppies, and chili fields. It was really neat, a true, authentic experience, and Xuan's aunt was so gracious and cute.

Friday night, we had a big celebration for Erika, one of our teammates' birthdays. All build long, we have been eating well but we were in My Tho which is pretty small and less sophisticated than Saigon, so we did it up right in the city. We started out with drinks at a nice place called Temple, and then had dinner at a pretty upscale Vietnamese restaurant. Then we cabbed over to a club called Apocalypse Now and had an insane time on the dance floor. It's been a while since I've been out to a club, so it was really fun to get sweaty and dance the night away. We got back to the hotel about 2am, which was a little rough because my flight to Ha Noi departed at 6:30am...

So after the flight, we checked into a hotel just to have a place to stash our bags (pretty cheap between three of us). I'm travelling with two Americans, Beth who is an auditor in Sydney, Australia, and Casey, who is the director for the Governor's mansion in Sacramento (meaning he gets to plan parties and talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the kitchen). We then walked around the Old Quarter of the city for most of the day, having a nice lunch (smoked salmon eggs benedict, a nice change from all the Vietnamese village food we've been having. Don't get me wrong, I've loved it and will continue to eat it until I leave, but it was nice to have something a little different!) It is just as hot here as in Saigon, so it is pretty exhausting to sightsee, but I'm glad I got some of it done. I will have about 24 hours in Ha Noi later on, so I still have time to do other parts. The old quarter is interesting, as every street is kind of known for a different thing (street names mean things like "Cotton Street" or "Drum skin" though the meanings have changed over time). So we saw a street that had a lot of toy shops, one that had a lot of silk shops, some that had a lot of tin objects, etc. Pretty cool! And with all that stuff going on on the ground level, it can be so easy to forget to look up, but when we did we were rewarded with a lot of neat architecture (french influence, so it kind of looks like New Orleans, with balconies and shutters) and huge, super old trees. The old quarter used to be completely walled in until the mid 19th century, but it's mostly been dismantled save for the West gate, which we were able to see.

Hope to write more later, but now it's time to have some dinner and get ready to sleep on a train!

Last day of building, now it's just fun, fun, fun!

2010-05-19T06:00:00.008-05:00

First, happy 2nd year anniversary to us! I wish we could have celebrated it together, but we did talk on the phone and we'll celebrate together soon!

So we have worked 3 more days and finished one of the houses (the plan all along was to finish one, and leave some of the 2nd one for the next Habitat team to finish). It is so exciting! Where once there was just a plot of dirt, we have put up brick walls (stucco'd over), created two rooms, a roof, a veranda, and laid down tile. (Our team decided together to purchase tile for the 2 families - since otherwise it would just have been cement floors in one house, and half cement/half tile in the other.

I have really enjoyed the work. There is something about sweating through your clothes while shoveling rocks or laying bricks that is a refreshing change from the everyday (especially when you're like me, and basically sit at a computer all day). And of course, being able to help provide a home to a family that otherwise was sleeping on a wooden bed, pretty much open to the elements, is pretty amazing. I have mostly been working on one house (which we lovingly call "the Condo" or "Townhouse") where the owners are slightly better off than at the other house. They are getting assistance from Habitat for Humanity and the local government, and will have to pay back a loan for the building cost. I spent a few days at the other site, where the landowner is quite a bit more poor. We call that one the "Lakeside property" because it is right on a teeny pond, where they go to the bathroom AND do their dishes/laundry. (Unlike in North America, land ownership in Vietnam is over 90% - so even if people are very poor they often have a parcel of land, they just may not have the money to actually have a house on that land, so they will live out of doors.) It is really an awesome feeling to be a part of this project, and to see how much of a difference we have made.

Tomorrow is our house dedication day, where we dedicate the houses to the owners. I'm not sure what is involved, but I think it will be emotional for me. Even today, when we had finished work for the day (because the house was pretty much done), I got a little teary. It's not at all a feeling of, "I made this house for these people" but just a happy feeling that because of something I took part in, two families will have a home to live in.

The construction supervisor on our site is pretty awesome, his name is Mr. Chanh and I love him. He is very structured and organized, always has a job for you if you ask, and is a pretty darn good dancer. Today he took me for a ride on his motorbike, which was so much fun. [Everyone has a motorbike here, and traffic is really anarchistic. Everyone goes every which way, there are no stop signs or lights, and it's pretty common to have 2 way traffic in every lane. I haven't seen any accidents, though, so I am sure there is a method to the madness that I can't see.] We also have had a few local workers on our site, and I got to work a lot of with Mr. Yo, who was pretty fun too. He warmed up over the build and started teaching me Vietnamese, so I know the words for mortar, water, paint, dry mortar, and some others.

I wanted to mention something about the food we've been eating. Everything has pretty much been provided by Habitat for the last two weeks, and it's been quite good. Vietnamese food seems to have a lot of overlap with Chinese so it's quite familiar to me. Some of the others on the team are not so used to the "funk" that is fish sauce, which is used in so many things here. Also, the main meat is pork, and I think that is unusual for a lot of Americans. I am loving it though. Also, the fruit here is amazing! Everyday, we get a morning and afternoon fruit break. We've had amazing mangos, dragonfruit, rambutan, "num num hook fruit" (can't remember the vietnamese name, but it tasted like pumpkin pie filling and you had to be careful not to eat the seeds, as they have a hook in them that will shred your insides on the way down), huge lychees, papayas, bong bong (kind of a lychee), watermelons, and pomelos. So good! Such a nice change from boring Chicago winter fruits.

I think we are doing a photo exchange, so I may try to post some photos eventually. There are a lot of sights and sounds here, so much to take in.

Back to work!

2010-05-16T04:45:00.008-05:00

Aw man, I just wrote a nice long post and apparently it didn't save...sigh...

We just got back from a weekend trip down the Mekong river. We spent the weekend on little sampan boats, visiting the different islands around My Tho (Unicorn Island, Tortoise Island) and kind of being shuttled between different tourist spots (!) but it was pretty fun. We spent the night in Can Tho, which is about 2 hours away from My Tho, and from there we took a boat out to the floating markets around there. As with all tours we got a hard sell in a lot of places, but it was still really nice to be out on the water. Our hotel in Can Tho was pretty luxurious (they actually air conditioned the lobby! But sadly not the hallways, nor the elevators.) and the spa on the 3rd floor was a bit... full-service. Some of us have been getting massages in the evenings because they're quite cheap, and they've been quite normal, but apparently at this spa there was some inappropriate touching and rubbing, and questions of "do you want massage the baby?" Prostitution seems to be quite the problem in Can Tho (and I'm sure other big cities), even our tourguide seemed to be hinting that he could make arrangements if so desired. Yuck. I've heard plenty about prostitution in Thailand, but it seems to be a problem here in Vietnam as well.

On Friday before the weekend, we had a great day. We spent half a day building (laying more bricks! My bricklaying partner, Beth, and I got a very satisfying "perfect!" from our construction supervisor.) Then we went to a local school. We had pre-arranged this visit, and so people had brought school supplies and small things that we divvied up into packages to give to the kids. We got a nice intro to the school from the principal and some community leaders, and then went into a classroom where there were about 30 kids from several grades. They were so cute! They sang a song for us, and then we sang a song (can you guess which one? Yes, the Hokey Pokey is getting quite some play on this trip) for them. Then we gave out the packages. To be honest, the kids looked a little scared! As it is rude to open gifts in front of the gift giver in many asian cultures, the teachers had told them not to open them. Of course, when we left, they were tearing into them and showing each other. So cute! That was nice, and the teachers seemed to appreciate us coming.

That night (Friday) we celebrated the 50th birthday of one of our teammates. Our fixer, Xuan, arranged for us to have a dance party upstairs in a building that looks like a boat. Or it might have been a real boat, not really sure). I think it must be used for weddings, because we had a DJ, gobo lights, and even a stage. It was pretty awesome.

Tomorrow we are back at the build sites. We build for 3 full days Monday-Wednesday, and then on Thursday we have a house dedication ceremony, where we hand over the keys to the family. One of our houses should be finished, but the other was a bigger project and will probably be finished by the next Habitat team. How satisfying will it be to hand over the keys! It will be really nice to know that I had a hand in providing a family with a better place to live.

If you're interested in a health update, here goes: things have been generally fine except I've had a nasty case of heat rash, ugh. I think I just have to be really careful about the kind of sunscreen I use, and staying out of the sun of course. Stomach stuff has been ok except for recently, so I started taking some cipro (the antibiotic recommended for such issues). Everyone on the trip has been having troubles on and off (we're careful about water, but you never know) so it's funny how open we are about it all. Funny, and gross. Otherwise, I'm a-ok!

Missing home a bit, and of course my husband, but having a really fulfilling, fun time out here. After this week it's on to the next leg of my trip up to Northern Vietnam - more on that to come!

2010-05-12T06:10:00.003-05:00

We have been on our build for 3 days, and it's been amazing. Really hard work, but so satisfying and fun. I am on a team of 14 people, mostly from the US but also France, Korea, and Poland. We are working on two separate houses, about 5km away from each other. The two families that we are building the houses for are very poor, and are basically living on the land without much shelter, functional space, etc. It's really eye opening to think about how much we have, how much I take for granted. Even here, we spend all day on the build site, but we come back to our air-conditioned rooms and running water.

In the past couple of days I have done many things that I've never done before-mixing mortar with a shovel on the ground, laying bricks, tying rebar. It is about 39 degrees celcius, and the humidity is at about 70%. We try not to work in the sun for too long, and take tons of water breaks. At some points, we are sweating so much that it is just running down our necks/backs/legs, like someone is pouring water on us from above.

Last night the local community (we are in a town called My Tho) organized a "cultural exchange" for us. We didn't know what to expect, and it was pretty crazy. There were at least 100 people there, youth and adults, and we sat among them and talked about how we liked their country, etc. There were some speeches and then it basically turned into a karaoke night. We sang the Hokey Pokey to them and they sang all sorts of songs, including a pretty darn good rendition of a Backstreet Boys song.

We have been eating well because our local fixers are making arrangements for us. For lunch we get a box lunch on the build site (e.g. rice, chicken, vegetables) and for dinner we go out. Last night we had really good pho, or beef noodle soup. Delicious!

I need to get going but I will try to write more. I hope everyone is doing well (and keeping cooler than I!)

Sunday in Saigon

2010-05-09T01:46:00.003-05:00

This is my last day in Saigon (for now, will be flying out of here to Hong Kong so I'll probably spend another day in the city). Most of the Habitat team is here so we all went out today and had some tasty food (sadly, we tried to catch the "lunch lady" of Anthony Bourdain - No Reservations Fame but she wasn't cooking today. We did meet her though!)

It's still very hot but I think I'm acclimating, and just learning that you do not walk anywhere more than a couple of meters! Just grab a taxi, it's super cheap. Unless they scam you and take you out of the way (yes, happened to us, sigh).

Sorry for pictureless updates! I have been taking a few pictures but not as many as other people in the group, and I think we will just have a huge Picasa exchange site later on. There should be some great stuff. Some notables:

- SO MANY motorbikes on the street, and the complete anarchy that is traffic here. No accidents observed yet, though! And some pretty adorable kids riding in their parents laps.
- Fully exposed, probably incredibly dangerous electrical wiring on the streets. My roommate is an electrician and she is just incredulous at it all.
- Good food, so cheap. You can really eat well for next to nothing, it's amazing. I am very sad to be avoiding iced drinks, though, as they look delicious and would provide some much-needed refreshment!
- The Americans bombed the heck out of this country (not that I didn't know that before, but a visit to the War Remnants Museum yesterday sure emphasized it)
- Lots of pretty French colonial architecture
- No bahn mi (vietnamese sandwiches) yet, can you believe it? Soon, soon. It's actually *almost* too hot to be hungry. WHAT?? Yes, it's true. I don't have much of an appetite because of the heat. Sigh again.

I'm off to buy a plane ticket to Hanoi for after the build!

Safe and sound in Saigon

2010-05-07T23:13:00.001-05:00

Hi everyone,

Made it to Saigon late last night after a 15hr flight to Hong Kong and another flight from HK to here. It's reallyreallyhot but luckily cool (not cold) drinks are pretty cheap!

Not much time to write but I wanted to let you know I'm fully alive!

Michelle

Update and upcoming...

2010-04-22T20:16:00.009-05:00

I know I need to finish Japan bjourning (and yes, I will...) but I wanted to write a bit about what's happening over the next little while, because I'm pretty excited about it all. Here are some important points to touch on:

1) We moved apartments (duh!)
We really liked so many things about our old place, but we needed more space and moving northward, closer to Brian's work at Northwestern made a lot of sense given point no. 2, below. We are pretty much settled into the new place, and it's pretty great so far. 2bed/2bath, with garage parking, a balcony, and 2 lovely, ginormous walk-in closets. We'll post photos when things are a bit more set up, like last time. Excitingly, we have room for a dining area in the new place, so it has been nice to "eat like adults" once in a while, though I probably will still prefer sitting on the ground at the coffee table anyway. As my parents always said, I "eat like a beggar" and I am unapologetic about it! Very excited about the balcony too, as I have wanted a grill forever.

2) I got a new job, and even though I accepted the offer before Christmas, I don't start until the fall.
I'll be a management consultant, which is daunting and thrilling at the same time. I'm sure I'll write more about this later, maybe when it becomes "more real," but the process of deciding to leave academia and applying for/getting this job has been a small ordeal. In short, sometime over the last couple of years, I became less and less hopeful and motivated about continuing on the path I was on (toward becoming a professor), and eventually I decided to think about alternatives. I knew of consulting because a few of our friends and family are in the field (via academia, as well as more traditional routes) though I would say not many people in Psychology are very familiar with it. Well, more on that later, but for now let's just say I took a leap and somehow, thankfully, landed on solid ground. I feel really, really lucky. And I have to say that I couldn't have done it without a ton of support - from Brian first and foremost, but also from my advisor, family, friends, etc. Everyone has been so encouraging and helpful, whether it was just listening to me stress about it, or answering my MANY questions about consulting, helping me prep for interviews, or just being excited for me. I am so grateful.

3) I have finished up my postdoc, as of the end of April.
I'd been at UChicago for just over 2.5 years, which seems crazy when I think about it. The actual end of my job wasn't a huge deal, probably because there was such a long lag between my accepting the new job offer in December and leaving last month. My coworkers threw a nice little party, though, and I'll miss them! People keep asking me if I've started the new job yet, and I just laugh and say "no no, not until the fall." A coworker left a couple of weeks before me on a Friday to start a new job the next Monday, so waiting 8 months before starting is pretty strange.

4) I have about 4.5 months off, with lots of craziness planned.
For example, in about 6 hours I board a plane for Vietnam. I love travel, and especially "big trips." When I was applying for jobs, I said to myself (and anyone who would listen, poor Brian) that if I got a job, the first thing I would do was tell my postdoc advisor that I was leaving in April, so that I could have a lot of time off. I didn't really know what I would do with that time, but now it's pretty filled up and I'm excited for it all. Here's a quick rundown:

May to early June: 3 weeks in Vietnam including a Habitat for Humanity build and some solo travelling, then I fly to Hong Kong for 10 days. No, Brian isn't coming with me. I'll miss him of course, and it's too bad I won't get to share the experience with him (especially HK, since I'll be visiting with family over there that we haven't seen in a long time). He deserves a nice long vacation too, but it'll have to wait until later in the summer... Lucky for him, several of our friends are coming into town in May and he'll get to hang out with them!

June: I return from HK on a Wednesday, and on that Friday I fly to New York (where Brian will join me, he'll be at a conference when I get back from Asia) for our friends' marriage celebration. (And what a celebration that'll be, A&J!) The next weekend, I have a "retreat" with the women's organization of the consulting firm I will be joining. Then, finally some time at home until...

July: Early in the month I will head to Prague to visit my friends (who are moving there for a few years, how great is that?!) for about a week, and then join up with my in-laws, Donald and Brian for an Eastern European river cruise that takes us from Budapest through Turkey (our last stop is in Istanbul). Donald and I are hoping to stay in Turkey for a few more days afterward, which would take me into the first week of August. At some point in there I have to do some "pre-work" for my job, which they say is about 100 hours (eeps!) so I'll be lugging a couple of textbooks with me on the cruise. Seriously, they sent me 3 textbooks, on accounting, economics, and finance. Welcome to my new world!

August/September/October: I have a one day orientation for the new firm, and then a break until mid-September when I start a 3-week "mini MBA" course in, I think, Connecticut. After that, I have another break until mid-October when I have another one-week training, and then, presumably, I will actually start working.

Well, those are the brief details (is that an oxymoron?). But as I said, I am getting on a plane for a 15-hour ride in about 6 hours, so I should go and finish packing! I'll try to post a bit from Asia, but I'm not sure what my access will be like, especially for the first 2 weeks while I'm on the Habitat build. Would love to hear from you when I'm away, feel free to comment here or email me!

Happy 23rd Monthaversary!

2010-04-22T20:14:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the boring post title, but the day is past and let's face it, I'm out of fun ideas for now :)

Just wanted to make sure everyone knew we are alive. We've been quite busy in fact, moving apartments (from Lakeview to Evanston, if anyone cares or knows their Chicagoland geography) and so on. Follow me to the next post and I'll elaborate...

Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang

2010-03-17T18:29:00.005-05:00

Get it? Happy 22nd 17th!

Fitting, because I am in Ottawa right now visiting my awesome friends the Edwardses, and today I went to the very well done Canadian Museum of Civilization , where there was an exhibit on influential Canadian authors. (Mordecai Richler wrote a kids' book trilogy about Jacob, a boy who had to say everything twice because no one heard him the first time, in case you didn't know.)

Blackjack!

2010-02-17T23:47:00.002-06:00

Happy 21s monthaversary! Just slipping this one in.

I'm a terrible bjourner!

Don't worry Ben, we're alive!

2010-01-21T22:08:00.004-06:00

Sigh, I missed the 20th monthaversary post... (I do remember it in person, on the day - at 12:01am, actually - I just forget to post!) I think we'll be phasing this out soon, maybe at the 2 year mark?

Anyway, guess I was a little premature when I said I was baaaaaaack. BUT, time really has freed up for me lately and there are a lot of changes afoot, so I'm hoping to get back into this blogging thing. Soon. I promise.

Happy 20th monthaversary!

I'm baaaaaack!

2009-12-20T00:00:00.002-06:00

I know it has been a long time since I've actually written anything substantive here, but I am happy to report that I should be back in action pretty soon. The past few months have been busy, mostly with a super-intense job hunt, but that's over now (with really awesome, exciting results!) So the bjourn shall be revived starting with the completion of the Japan travelogue, which is seriously overdue.

In the meantime, HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all! We hope you are keeping safe and warm, and having lovely fun times with family and friends.

Happy 19th Monthaversary!

2009-12-19T23:57:00.003-06:00

Once again, a little late, but watching you watch "Heatstroke" (Winnie from The Wonder Years and D.B. Sweeney from the Cutting Edge try to save mankind) makes it all worthwhile...

Happy 18th Monthaversary!

2009-11-17T17:52:00.003-06:00

Oh dear, I appear to have missed our 17th 17th... Clearly, have been far too busy!

Happy 1.5 years of married bliss...

Happy Sweet 16!!

2009-09-17T21:59:00.001-05:00

You won fair and square today!

Photos from Japan

2009-08-24T18:07:00.002-05:00

I finally uploaded the last of our pictures from Japan to our Picasa site. If any of you are still interested, feel free to check it out.

If and when she has some more free time, Michelle will finish her day-by-day recap of our trip. (It's hard to believe it's already been over 3 months since we got back.)

I see no evidence of the freshman 15

2009-08-17T21:49:00.002-05:00

Happy 15th monthaversary!

Book Report: "Ambition and Delight"

2009-08-09T20:39:00.006-05:00

Henry Bourne was one of my most valued mentors in graduate school. I could always count on him to provide some much-needed perspective, and his advice was always clear and balanced, so I was extremely excited to read his memoirs, "Ambition and Delight". My expectations were pretty high, but I wasn't at all disappointed. I think both scientists and non-scientists would enjoy the book.

For scientists, it's inspiring to read about the rapid progress early in Henry's career when he and others elucidated how information contained in chemical cues traverses the membrane and induces cellular responses. At the same time, he explains how specific relationships and institutional elements helped him along the way (while others maybe didn't help so much) and provides plenty of insight and advice for success in academia. For non-scientists, he nicely explains the process of science, with its inherent frustrating and exciting elements.

The voice is undeniably Henry. There are certainly numerous humorous passages, and Henry is never afraid to point out other people's shortcomings, in addition to his own. In fact, my only complaint is that he is far too modest. He describes himself as an "ordinary" scientist, a label I find absurdly inaccurate. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend "Ambition and Delight" for almost all the readers of this blog (all four of you).

You can order your own copy here.

Me and you +14

2009-07-17T18:25:00.001-05:00

Happy 14th Monthaversary!

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 11 in Kobe

2009-07-06T23:51:00.007-05:00

On the train again...Just can't wait to get on the train again...

On May 12, we set out from Hiroshima, heading East to Kobe. Coming into the Shin-Kobe shinkansen station, we then had to subway to the main Kobe Sannomiya station. The hotel (another of the Toyoko-Inn business hotel chain, where we also stayed in Kyoto) was very close to Sannomiya, and in quite a bustling area.

I had picked two specific things to do while we were in Kobe: to see Himeji-Jo, one of the twelve surviving feudal-era castles in the country; and to see the Akaishi-Kaikijo Ohashi, the "Pearl" suspension bridge. We were staying in Kobe for 2 nights, so I planned to spend the better part of one day at Himeji-Jo and figured we would do the bridge at leisure on another day, then spend the rest of our time exploring the city. When we asked the tourist info center about the bridge, they were like, oh, you came all the way for the bridge? To see it? As if we were kind of crazy. When we later recounted our trip to Mina, she said the same thing! It's the longest suspension bridge in the world! (If you haven't figured it out from these posts, I am a big fan of bridges. I've loved walking on the Pont Neuf in Paris, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Millenium Bridge in London, and even driving beside that pretty one alongside the 134/2 freeway exchange just outside of Pasadena!)

So after leaving our bags at the hotel, we decided to head out to Himeji-jo. Depending on the type of train you choose, it is 25-40 minutes away from Kobe. We happened to get on a train that stopped at the bridge on its way to Himeji, so we made a quick decision to stop off and just go see it before continuing to the castle. Unfortunately the bridge info center was closed, so we just spent some time walking around the base of it. It is really breathtaking, especially on that day when it was quite foggy. It reminded me of the Golden Gate bridge, but much bigger and gleaming white. It spans the inland sea to reach Awaji-shima, the island that was at the epicenter of the 1995 earthquake that pretty much leveled Kobe. Luckily, the bridge survived unscathed, other than growing 1 meter in length! Technology is amazing.

So yes, we spent maybe half an hour at the bridge - it certainly didn't need a day :) Back on the train, we headed on to Himeji-Jo, and we started thinking about what we would do with our sudden windfall of time tomorrow, since we had freed up a whole day. The idea of taking a day trip to Osaka took hold, and I got excited because we had previously decided to skip it, thinking we wouldn't have enough time.

Anyway, arriving at Himeji station, we nibbled on some takoyaki and sushi on the way to the castle. The castle was breathtaking before we even got that close to it, as it rises quite tall from a hill. It is white and grey, imposing and elegant at the same time. It's a bit of a climb to the ticket gate, which I thought just heightened the anticipation. Our Eyewitness guidebook devoted a whole 2-page spread to the castle and grounds, which combined with some pretty decent English signage made for a satisfying self-guided tour. There were interesting bits like little windows for spotting enemies or pouring hot oil out of (to fend off said enemies). The castle never actually saw real battle or bombs, so it was in pretty good shape. We were allowed to climb all the way to the top of the main tower (6 floors), and the staircases were so tall and shallow. I'm sure people weren't that tall back then, so running around it must have been quite a challenge. We were on our way out when the security guard directed us away from the usual exit and said "Special Event." Excitedly, we followed and wondered if we were going to get to see a secret room (which were heretofore off limits) or a samurai demonstration. But nope, we just got to go through the smaller tower next to the main tower.

Himeji-jo, or the "White Heron"

Out the window of the smaller tower during the "special event"

We'd become used to taking our shoes off and carrying them around in provided plastic bags, but at the castle, they hired an army of people to clean and fold the bags.

Close to the castle are a few museums that are also architectural sights, so we went to check them out. Of note was the Museum of Literature (not that close to the castle - quite a hike in the heat!), designed by Ando Takao. Lots of angles and glass, circles and walkways and a concrete waterfall.

The beautiful Museum of Literature

View of Himeji-jo from the Museum of Literature, and pretty wildflowers!

After that, we decided to hightail it back to Kobe to try to make it up the Ropeway (cable car), which closes at 5pm. It was about 3:30, so we really had to pound the pavement. I lamented that we didn't take advantage of the apparently free bicycles that you can borrow from the Himeji tourist info center, when Brian somewhat tersely reminded me that he had suggested it and I had said no. Oops!

Back at Sannomiya station, we made it to the ropeway station in plenty of time. We got in our little pod and had a nice long ride up to the top, which really nice views of Kobe, the bay, and Rokku island. At the top is a cute herb garden that you can explore as you descend to the halfway station, but we just hung out at the top enjoying the cool breeze for a while, then took the ropeway back down.

View from the ropeway capsule.

We headed back to the hotel to regroup and figure out where to have dinner. We had heard about Kushiya, a restaurant close to the hotel that is - get this - all-you-can-eat-do-it-yourself fried food. Oh my. We were only slightly intimidated, but figured it had to be done. When we arrived at the address listed in the book, we couldn't find any signage. We went into the building that it was supposed to be in and got out on a random floor, hoping for the best. It was not Kushiya, but some other restaurant. I asked the server/host where Kushiya was (in my best Japanese) and after a few confused minutes, he got into the elevator with us. He actually got out on the street and led us about half a block away. He pointed up at another building and we saw that he had brought us to Kushiya! It was so nice of him, especially since it was his competition, we were astonished.

Inside the restaurant, we were seated at a table with two little wells of hot oil in the table. Our server was really sweet, and tried hard to explain the process to us in limited English. She showed us where the fresh food was, all skewered up, and then showed us how we were supposed to batter it up and fry it. They had all sorts of meats (chicken, pork, shrimp, whole smelts, beef, etc.) and veggies (asparagus, mushrooms, eggplant, broccoli) and even sweets (balls of dough, and even tayaki red bean fish cakes!) There was a small salad bar, an udon noodle bar, and several sauces for dipping. Delicious! You have 90 minutes to eat your fill (we didn't take it all) and get out. Our server (who said her name was "Husky" or something like that) was really sweet and checked to make sure we were doing ok.

Skewers, glorious skewers of food ready for the fryer!

All of the steps are captured in this photo: battering, breading, frying, and resting...

Aftermath (you were supposed to put all of your used skewers in a cup)... no, we didn't count them up. I think that would have been embarassing.

After that we walked around a bit and checked out Kobe at night. Much of it was rebuilt after the earthquake, so a lot of the buildings are quite modern.

The bright lights at night in Kobe.

A cool manhole cover near our hotel.

Then it was back to the hotel to figure out what we were going to do the next day on our unplanned daytrip to Osaka!

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 10 on Miyajima (from Hiroshima)

2009-07-06T23:49:00.002-05:00

On Day 11 (May 11th), we took an early train and ferry out to the island of Miyajima (another name for Itsukushima). The ferry takes a nice, circuitous route from the mainland to the island, so you have a lot of time to check out this sight:

The huge "floating O-torii"; its position in the sea marks the entire island as a Shinto holy place.

The O-torii dates from 1875, and is 16m tall. Not surprisingly, it is one of Japan's most famous sights. It is part of the Itsukushima shrine, which you come to soon after landing on the island. Because of its position right on the shore, the shrine itself is kind of built on 'stilts' so that it can stand the changes in tide. When we arrived in the morning, there was water throughout, but by the time we left in the mid-afternoon the water had receded and you could walk on the ground between walkways. you can actually walk out to the big torii at low tide, though we thought it was cooler when the tide was high and the bright orange paint was reflected in the water below. We considered coming back at night (but didn't end up doing so).

Itsukushima shrine, from the ferry

One of the walkways at Itsukushima shrine. I'm loving all the orange in this country!

Around the shrine, we were on the lookout for momji-manju, maple cakes that are basically the same as the tayaki fish cakes we had in Tokyo (pastry cake around red bean or other filling). The maple leaf shape is unique to the area, and we saw many stores with automated machines for making them that clanked and hissed and spit out perfectly formed little cakes.

Reminiscent of a krispy kreme, no?

After Itsukushima-jinja, we headed inland and upward to the main temple complex, Daisho-in. This temple was really interesting, the most accessible of all the ones that we visited over the whole trip, I think. First of all there was a really detailed English pamphlet (not the norm), but also pretty much all of the buildings were open and free, so you could enter and explore at your leisure. Miyajima is revered as a holy place, so holy that no one is allowed to be born there or to die there (I'm not sure how the logistics of that actually work). Some of the buildings housed what we thought of as 'shortcuts' to enlightenment - one contains representations of all 88 temples that make up an 88-temple, 1200km pilgrimage around Shikoku island - if you walk through this building, they say it is like you have done the whole thing (sweet!) Also, if you turn each of the metal cylinders that line the steps up to another building, it is like you have read the scrolls (Sutra buddhist text) contained inside each one - if only journal articles worked that way!

In one of the buildings, there was this amazing sand drawing (called a mandala) that took two Tibetan monks two weeks to create. They displayed photos showing the monks working on it - what intense concentration! They basically used scoopulas to pour the sand onto a platform in a really intricate design. Some of the lines of sand were a few millimeters wide - what happened when they made a mistake?

The mandala, made entirely of poured colored sand. Beautiful and intricate!

The grounds of the Daisho-in were scattered with tons of little statues. Some of them were really cute, and people would leave coins or small trinkets on them as offerings to the deities they represented.

The cute little statues say: Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil

After Daisho-in, we basically snacked our way back to the ferry terminal. We sampled some grilled oysters (yum!), strawberry shaved ice (pretty cool, as rather than pouring syrup on plain shaved ice, they shaved the ice off of a large block of strawberries frozen in ice), an oyster croquette, and these:

Yes, we got our momji! We sampled some of the plain ones, but were very excited to try this stroke of genius: deep fried red bean and cheese momji!

A few more photos from the island:

An adorable firetruck

Pretty red and green maple trees

Leaving the holy island, we ferried, trained, and bused out to Iwakuni, for the sole purpose of visiting the Kintai-kyo, or "Ribbon Sash Bridge." Originally made entirely without nails, this is a really picturesque bridge that has 5 arches.

The Kintai-kyo - just like in the paintings!

Our reflection in a park on the other side of the Kintai-kyo

After that, we bused and trained back to Hiroshima and ate dinner at the station again. When I went to sleep that night, I was excited that we would be moving on to Kobe in the morning, but sad when I realized that that meant that we had reached our western-most destination, and we were turning around to start the return leg of our trip.

Who says 13 is unlucky?

2009-06-18T06:29:00.003-05:00

Happy 13th 17th (yesterday)!!

The hotel I'm staying in (at a conference*) actually has a 13th floor - maybe only the 2nd or so time that I've seen that.

*My excuse for being a day late? Giving a talk tomorrow at this conference in Minneapolis, trying not to spontaneously combust before then!

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 9 in Hiroshima

2009-06-03T19:57:00.023-05:00

May 10 - After breakfast at the hotel, we started out for the train station to make our train reservations. About halfway there, I felt for the camera (which I had been keeping on the strap to my shoulder bag). To my horror, there was no familiar chunk of metal, no strap hanging out of the zipper pocket; the bag was empty. Panicking a little (so many pictures on there! So many left to take!) I gaped at Brian and blubbered unintelligibly. I quickly unstrapped my pack and left him on the sidewalk, running the route back to the hotel and scanning the sidewalk for any sign of the camera. I was also a bit worried about missing the train (not really a huge deal, since we were now on the railpass and could catch any one but you know, when it rains...). At the hotel, I searched the breakfast area (no luck), and then I got the key for the room we'd checked out of. After a few seconds of frenzied searching, I flipped the sheets onto the bed and found it, our beloved camera, lying on the ground. Phew. Sprinting back to Brian, we resumed the trip to the train station and made it in plenty of time. Can you imagine, having to finish the trip with disposable cameras?! (Or more likely, we would have wasted some time buying a new digital camera, but still.)

On the platform at the train station, finally, sweaty and gross. Yuk. At least Operation: Camera Recovery was successful.

After about 2 hours on the shinkansen, we arrived at Hiroshima Station and dropped our bags off at our hotel, which was only a few minutes away. Though the area around the station was nothing special, I loved how convenient it was. Since most visitors to the city go for the sites related to the atomic bomb clustered in Peace Park, there is a convenient streetcar that runs from the train station to the park. We rode the streetcar to the end, and alit right outside of the A-bomb dome. This is one of the buildings that wasn't completely demolished when the bomb exploded (at 8:15am, Aug 6, 1945. Yes, I have that memorized - by the end of the day, we had heard or read the time/date a million times!) It was pretty moving, since they preserved all the debris and twisted metal of the building.

The ruins of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the A-Bomb dome

View along the Motoyasu river. The A-bomb dome now resides alongside a beautifully rebuilt city.

We walked around the monuments in the park, and spent a long time at the Peace Memorial Museum. Here are some of the sights.

The Memorial Cenotaph, under which lies a stone coffin that holds the names of all victims of the bomb. In the background you can see the A-bomb dome, and between the two is the Peace flame, which will be put out when all nuclear weapons are gone (unfortunately, this won't be for a long time ).

The Children's Memorial, erected by Japanese elementary school children. On top is an image of Sadako Sasaki, the little girl behind the story of the 1000 origami cranes. She was dying of leukemia after the bomb, but thought that if she could fold 1000 cranes before her death, she would be granted one wish. There are conflicting reports about whether she actually finished them, but nevertheless she died and became yet another child victim of the bomb.

Near the Children's Memorial are a few small rooms where cranes from people all over the world are displayed. There must be a million of them, it is quite touching.

Some of the cranes folded by Sadako, in the Peace Museum

The Gates of Peace, a series of ten 9ft high gates that are inscribed in49 languages. 18 alphabets are used, but they all spell the same word: Peace.

The museum is highly recommended - there is a lot of information about what brought about the bomb, what residents of Hiroshima were doing when it went off, and what happened after. There are lots of haunting images and artifacts, like watches that stopped at exactly 8:15, and remnants of children's clothing collected by their grieving parents. We watched a couple of movies about survivors in English, and there is an area where you can watch videos of survivor interviews. One thing I found quite poignant was a wall of copies of letters sent by Hiroshima mayors to every city where nuclear weapons tests have been conducted. There are far too many of these up there (there have been over 2000 tests conducted since 1945 - most recently, N. Korea conducted tests just a couple of weeks ago.) Not knowing much about it, I was surprised to learn that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty basically prevented countries from starting up nuclear weapons programs (good) but allowed those that already had them at the time to keep them (stupid, stupid). Obviously an overly-simplistic summary, but that's the gist. Kind of ridiculous.

Though we think of Japan as one of the bad guys in World War II (and certainly my [Chinese] relatives have some strong opinions), in truth, atrocities are committed on all sides in times of war. Regardless of whose side you're on, seeing the consequences of such an act of total devastation, the effects of which are still felt today, was incredibly moving. Especially since so many who were affected were civilians, innocent children. There were many stories of kids who were helping to build firelanes that day, and were terribly injured in the blast, but somehow dragged themselves back to their houses. How awful for their parents. Or to have to go out and search the streets for your child/brother/mother, and find a part of them strewn among the rubble and ash and fire. Or to think that your child survived unscathed, only to have them develop purple spots on their skin and die slowly from "A-bomb disease" within a year. Tragic.

We left the museum somber and starving, and decided to go on a hunt for the real-deal okonomiyaki. There is a building called Okonomi-mura which has several floors entirely devoted to this dish. Literally, when you get off the elevator on any of its floors, you are greeted by 5 or 6 identical stalls with a cook tending a hot griddle. We picked one and sat down. There was a baseball game on that day, so many of the chefs were glued to small TVs in their stalls. The local team is called the Hiroshima Carp - how cute is that?!

The menu was the basic pancake, with optional additions of thick or thin noodles, cheese, squid, or shrimp. I had one with noodles and cheese, and Brian had one with squid.

Our chef expertlytends to our mounds of cabbage and pork

The chef ladles out some batter and smooths it into a crepe, cooks some cabbage, pork and the add-ins, piles that on the crepe and tops it all with a thin disk of scrambled egg. He paints the egg with some of the ubiquitous dark, tangy sauce, sprinkles it with flakes of seaweed, drops a small pile of pink gari (picked ginger) on top, and shovels it over to you. We were given small metal spatulas to eat with, straight off of the hot griddle. Pretty tasty, and very filling. Different from the one we had in Kyoto, where all the ingredients were mixed with the batter, and pan fried together.

Part stirfry, part pancake, part pizza. All delicious.

In the plaza right outside of Okonomi-mura, we stopped to watch a dance 'show'. I hesitate to even call it a show, because it consisted of a handful of guys and girls dressed in sock-hop type outfits dancing to music from the same era, but in no organized fashion. We kept waiting for a routine or something (hey, their outfits matched, we figured their moves would too), but nope. It was just a bunch of people twisting around randomly. A couple of the guys really liked taking their shirts off. Apparently no one else was entertained either, because there was no clapping when the music finished. (Not very) Interesting.

Random dancing. I forget what the names on their jackets were... "Cool Kidz" or something like that.

After that we walked through some of the shopping area around there, and headed back to Peace Park to finish up some of the monuments in the North end of the park that we had missed earlier. As night fell, we took the streetcar back to the train station. There we had dinner at a restaurant that had really tasty Tsukemen, a noodle dish native to Hiroshima where the noodles and other toppings come separately from the broth/sauce. We had one with cold sauce (probably mostly soy sauce, but with a sweet, oniony base) and one with warm miso sauce. You could specify the amount of spice (on a scale from 1 to over 20) - we went with level 2, the recommended 'starter' heat. Because of the potential splash-and-spray that could come with dipping and slurping, there were paper bibs on the table and we were implored to don them when the food came. It was all very delicious and refreshing, and I wish we had eaten there again! I later looked up the restaurant, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it is a branch of Bakudanya, the restaurant that is thought to have invented this style of Tsukemen. Yay culinary serendipity!

All bibbed up and ready to go. Actually, these bibs were more like aprons - with a tie at the waist, too!

Mmmmm, cold refreshing and actually pretty healthy. The eggs in Japan were always this vibrant orange color, and seemed tastier than eggs at home

And off we went back to the hotel to bed...but first, more evidence of the cuteness that is Japan:

You might guess that this is the storefront of a comic
shop, or toy store... nope, it's a real estate office!

A Fortnight in Japan - Eating in Tokyo and Kyoto

2009-06-03T19:51:00.038-05:00

You may have noticed that the posts so far have really been more about the sights than tastes. You might be asking yourself, what happened to them? Were they too busy running around shrines and temples to enjoy the culinary wonderland that is Japan? Never fear, a significant portion of the trip was devoted to seeking out, consuming, and documenting the deliciousness that is everywhere there. I had written out a list of things that we wanted to eat, and we struck off every single item. We took pictures of almost all of it, and put them in a separate photo album on Picasa, all 196 photos. Definitely check them out if you want to build up an appetite quick! In this post, I just want to highlight some of the meals and snacks we had in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara.

Kara-age (fried chicken) buns at a bakery in a train station.
Japanese fried chicken is amazing, wherever you have it. Always
garlicky, flavorful, and crisp, even cold.

A typical vending machine at the entrance of a fast-food restaurant.
Put in your money, pick your poison, press the button and it spits out
a ticket that you give to your server. Genius!

Tasty, refreshing cold noodles in a lightly vinegary, sweet sesame oil and shoyu sauce.

Co-Co curry, a fast food curry restaurant found all over the place.
Huge portions of tasty, hearty curry and rice, with whatever you want
(here - fried chicken, and tonkatsu. We later had it with clams too.)

A huge bucket of fish roe for sale in a foodhall (sampling allowed).

Yesssss... Takoyaki... little balls of custardy batter with octopus
chunks. It starts out all liquidy, covering the whole grill, and then
the cook expertly pokes and flips it into these ball forms. you can
have it topped with mayo, seaweed flakes, bonito (dried fish) flakes,
cheese, and/or tonkatsu sauce. Beautiful.

Sushi at the Y100 restaurant on Pontocho Alley, Kyoto.
Scallops, mantis shrimp, and crab tomalley, all for about $6!

A bruleed egg tart in the shopping arcade in kyoto. It wasn't cheap,
but it was definitely creamy, sweet, and delicious.

Shabu shabu set up in Nara with a subtle, milky broth.

Beef and veggies cooking in nothing but buttah (in Nara).

Is your mouth watering yet?!

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 8 in Nara (from Kyoto)

2009-06-03T19:51:00.032-05:00

**New photos will be posted to our Picasa site in the morning, a Kyoto/Nara sights album as well as the food album, with (almost) everything we ate on the whole trip. A little intriguing, no? That's a lot of food!**

Though you could easily spend 3 days (weeks, years) in Kyoto, we decided that we wanted to make the trip out to Nara on our 3rd day in Kyoto. The biggest attraction there (literally) is the Daibutsu (big buddha) housed in the Todai-ji temple, but there are also other temples and gardens around (plus, lots of deer, if you like that sort of thing!)

Figuring we could make a half-day trip out of it, we took the train to Nara station and headed straight into Nara-goen, to the Kofuku-ji temple complex (some of the buildings date from 669 AD). There we saw a beautiful, tall pagoda and paid a few hundred yen to see a pretty large collection of buddhist statues in the Tokon-do hall.

5-storey pagoda at Kofuku-ji

Walking through the garden, we saw lots of deer wandering around and, more annoyingly, lots of deer crackers for sale. I had the same feeling as when I was in the Piazza di San Marco in Venice, watching the other tourists feeding pigeons. Ew. Don't people worry about rabies, or fleas, or other gross things that wild animals carry?

Fine. Here you go. Deer in Nara-goen.

We made our way to Todai-ji, where a bunch of other gaijin (foreigners) were milling about and taking photos. On the approach to the big buddha is, you go through the Great Southern Gate and immediately catch sight of the big wooden building (Daibutsu-den), the largest wooden structure in the world. In and of itself, pretty impressive. Throughout our trip, we kept marvelling at how difficult it must have been to build these massive structures without modern technology. Of course, having thousands of slaves...er... forced labourers... probably helps.

The Great Southern Gate, with Daibutsu-den beyond.

Big buddha lives here!

Inside the cool hall, the daibutsu is really a sight to see. Apparently, when it's time to dust him off, you might see 4 or 5 monks standing in his upturned palm. He has been through plenty of fire and earthquake damage and rebuilding, which makes him all the more impressive. It's worth making the circle around the the Daibutsu-den to see the other statues and things around, including a small hole in one pillar that little kids try to squeeze through. Apparently this reserves them a place in eternal paradise. No, we didn't try it. Our North American-sized bodies just wouldn't allow it.

Daibutsu, the big buddha. This picture doesn't really show the scale...

This side view is a bit better, compare the size of the man's

head at the bottom to the buddha's head!

Leaving the giant buddha behind, we went uphill to Nigatsu-do, a sub-temple with pretty good views of Nara. From there we walked south to Kasuga Taisha, Nara's holiest shrine laden with lanterns made of stone and bronze. Must be beautiful when they're all lit up!

Lovely patina on bronze lanterns hanging in Kasuga Taisha shrine.

Coming back downhill from the shrine, we stopped at the Shin-en garden, known for its wisteria blooms. Though it was a bit early in the season, there were a lot of the beautiful hanging tendrils in the well-kept garden.

Wisteria blossoms in Kasuga Taisha's Shin-En garden.
No desperate housewives to speak of.

Hoping to still do a few things in Kyoto, we ate lunch and got on the next train back. When we arrived, we decided it was time to check out the train station. Most stations are pretty utilitarian, but stunning Kyoto station is known for being pretty controversial. Sleek, modern and dark, the locals were not pleased when it was first built in the 90s because it contrasted so much with its more traditional surroundings. But people have come to appreciate its angles and open-air design, you don't really realize that it's not an enclosed space until you're standing in it. I was excited to check out the Astro-boy statues, garden terrace views, and especially the 10th floor, which was seductively named the "Ramen restaurants floor." (We were a bit disappointed that it was not, in fact, a whole floor devoted to ramen and only ramen - what the heck is an ice cream stand doing there?! Nevertheless, there were about 7 stalls selling ramen... guess that's ok). Not actually hungry, we just had a snack of takoyaki (with cheese... silly Brian was pleasantly surprised at the tastiness of it, but I knew it would be good all along).

The surprisingly airy interior of Kyoto station

Astro boy!

Our next stop was Nishiki (the market this time, not the restaurant!) an arcade of food stalls. Mostly pickles (a local specialty), fish and candies. Some were shutting down for the evening, but it was still pretty cool.

Pretty little candies

Big barrels of tsukemono (pickled vegetables) in rice bran

Nishiki leads to a regular shopping arcade, which we spun through and then exited to head over to Pontocho Alley. This is one of the two areas in Kyoto famous for geishas and red lanterns. There were lots of people sliding down the narrow alley, and every few feet to the right or left was a mysterious walkway that just begged to be explored. We stood at a restaurant window watching a chef spend ages rolling out noodle dough, but got impatient and never actually saw him cut the noodles.

Pontocho alley, maybe better back before it went all neon-y

We spent too long watching this guy roll and re-roll out the noodle dough.

For dinner, we stumbled upon a sushi restaurant that promised sushi for Y100 (about $1US) each, which sounded pretty darn good. Of course there was a bit of a catch, a Y350 surcharge (which got you a seat and an appetizer, and, to their credit, was pointed out to us for our approval on our way into the restaurant), as well as a minimum of 2 pieces per order. Not too shabby (scallops in Japan are delicious!).

After dinner we crossed the Kamo-gawa river to the Gion district, the other geisha area. I think we only saw a few geisha that night, though we saw many over the course of the trip. The buildings in Gion are of interest because they are old and wooden, but otherwise it was pretty quiet.

Gion district

Red paper lanterns all over Gion

Back in the direction of our hotel, we walked through the shopping arcades and streets in search of some shaved ice for dessert (something we had been talking about all day in the hot sun), but came up emptyhanded. Other snacks took its place, and soon our sore feet dragged us back to the hotel. In the morning, we would be on the move again, this time to Hiroshima!

Here's a fuzzy self-portrait of us in the pajamas provided by
the hotel (all the hotels we stayed at had either nightgowns like
these or a top-and-pants set for our use)

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 7 in Kyoto

2009-05-27T21:32:00.021-05:00

Our second fantastic day in Kyoto started just out of the city, at Fushimi Inari and would end in the western suburb of Arashiyama, with our dinner reservation at Nishiki Restaurant.

In the morning, we trained out to Fushimi Inari, where those rows upon rows of orange torii gates are found (Brian posted a picture in an earlier post). It is romantic to think, wow, those tens of thousands of gates have been standing there for hundreds of years, guarding an important religious pilgrimage. But the truth of the matter is that they are basically for sale to whoever can afford them, which buys both advertisement (most are purchased by companies, whose names are painted on one side), and blessings. They are renewed every 10 years - no lifetime blessings bought here! Though they are packed in quite tightly, we saw some empty post holes, presumably where a company let their blessing subscription 'lapse'. Still, they are a beautiful and iconic sight.

Torii avenue at Fushimi Inari

From Fushimi Inari, we headed back on to Kyoto on the train, stopping first at Tofuku-ji temple. Here we got our first glimpse at a zen rock garden, where the gravelly sand is carefully raked into forms around the carefully placed stones. You are supposed to sit and meditate on these gardens, drawing your own meaning from their usually abstract form. However, our schedule didn't really allow for such lengthy contemplation! Really though, I've never really tried to meditate, and I'm not sure I would be very good at it - too much noise always filling my brain!

Ripples in a gravel pond at Tofuku-ji

There was also a lovely moss garden at Tofuku-ji.

Back in the city, we took the bus to Tetsugaku-no-michi, Philosopher's Walk. We walked along the canal path heading north. A few weeks earlier, it would have been framed by delicate, overhanging cherry blossom trees, but when we were there it was peaceful and green. The path was quiet, with very few other people, so it was quite jarring to me when we reached the end and emerged at the entrance to Ginkaku-ji (the Silver Pavilion), with its tourist shops and cream-puff stand. Along the way, we had stopped for lunch at a tiny restaurant that basically looked like a woman's home kitchen. We had our first taste of okonomiyaki, a sort of pancake made with cabbage and thin slices of pork in batter. This would be a very different version than what we would later have in Hiroshima, which is known for their okonomiyaki.

Philospher's path, which runs between Nanzen-ji temple at the south end,

and Ginkaku-ji at the North end.

Okonomiyaki, what is often, I think erroneously, called Japanese pizza.

At Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Pavilion was not, as you might have thought, leafed in silver (though it was supposed to have been, they just never got around to it). It was actually under restoration while we there, and years of wear made it rather unsightly. Around it were some zen rock garden formations, most strikingly a meticulously raked gravel 'sea' that flowed around a stone cone representing Mt. Fuji. The cone is permanent, but the sea around it is apparently reshaped every day.

We got a glimpse of Mt Fuji after all, just on a much smaller scale...

After the Silver Pavilion we felt the need to upgrade metals, so we took the bus West to the Kinkaku-ji, or Golden Pavilion. Originally built in 1397 as a private estate, it was later turned into a Buddhist temple. Each of its three levels was constructed in a different architectural style,, but only the top 2 storeys of the pavilion and the phoenix that crowns it are, true to its name, covered in gold leaf. It is stunning and gaudy at the same time, especially since I prefer white metals to yellow ones, heh... Platinum Pavilion, anyone? It is probably really beautiful at night (if lit well), and in the fall when the maples around it are lush and turning red and orange.

Kinkaku-ji, reflected in the Mirror Pond. It's much shinier in person.

We were a little worried about time (dinner was at 6:30pm and it was about 4), but to Brian's consternation I decided that we would run up to Ryoan-ji, another temple complex that was pretty far NW. Otherwise, it was unlikely that we would make a special trip out to it the next day, and we didn't want to miss it. So we bussed out there, to see Japan's most famous zen garden. On the approach, you walk alongside what seems to be a lantern depot, with stone lanterns of all shapes and sizes, which was pretty fun. The zen garden has 15 stones placed so that no matter where you stand (within the viewing area), you can never see all of them at once. This garden was very abstract, definitely needed more time than we could give it to truly appreciate it, I think.

Found in the lantern depot, one cute statue

Rock garden at Ryoan-ji (the picture does it little justice;
this is just a small part of the large garden).

We rushed back to the hotel (the biggest difference between the bus and the metro is of course that the bus is dependent on traffic, so it took longer than we wanted) and changed for dinner. We decided to take a cab - our first and only cab ride in Japan - for fear of being late. We had a bit of a mixup which involved the non-English speaking driver heading in the wrong direction, a lot of one-word broken English and Japanese, and a call to the restaurant (the driver put ME on the phone - what good was that?!?!) In the end, though, the driver figured it out, we relaxed, and arrived at the restaurant early. Whew!

Nishiki Restaurant specializes in kaiseki, the Kyoto cuisine which uses very fresh, seasonal ingredients. Two geishas met us at the door and led us into our private tatami room, with a view of the Hozu-gawa river. They didn't speak English, but we were soon joined by one who did. She was our server the whole evening, but unfortunately, we didn't get her name - she was really sweet and took care to explain each of our dishes to us. Soon after we sat down (cross legged on the floor), the courses started to arrive. Since it was a 10 course meal, I won't post photos of all of it, just some of the standouts. (You can see the complete set of pics on the Picasa site.)

Because of the complaints that we aren't in any pictures... here we are,
happy to be have made it and to be eating such beautiful food in a lovely setting.

Crispy tofu - the outside of this was so delicate, it almost shattered when I broke into it.

A bunch of different small portions served in a beautiful lacquerware box.
The unassuming broad beans in the middle of the top compartment were
wonderfully tasty, sweet and creamy. The bottom compartment was
actually a drawer that pulled out of the box.

Our server explaining all the little dishes in the box.

Brian's favorite course, a grilled mackerel-type fish topped with grated daikon in a light broth.

A whole deep-fried mini-eggplant, stuffed with a thick, sweet ginger-miso sauce.
Delicious and rich - I actually opted not to finish the whole thing
since this was only course number 6!

As you can guess, we were stuffed and very pleased at the end of the meal. Everything was quite flavorful, fresh, and lovingly presented. We were quite glad that we had chosen it as one of our few splash out meals, as it was another experience - like the previous night's cooking class at Emi's - that gave us a very unique and personal experience. Nishiki is one of the more affordable kaiseki restaurants in Kyoto, and it was perfect for us.

A short after dinner stroll (ok, we got a little lost finding the bus stop), a bus ride back to the hotel, and we quickly fell into a deep, satisfied food coma.

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 6 in Kyoto

2009-05-26T21:42:00.026-05:00

Early on the 7th, we left Mina's (goodbye, home sweet homebase!) and made our way to Tokyo Station, where we would pick up a Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. We had purchased 7-day Japan Rail passes before we left Chicago - they are unlimited passes only available to tourists, so you can't buy them in Japan - but we weren't going to activate them until we were leaving Kyoto. So while we were in Tokyo, we had bought tickets for the fastest train available, the N700 Nozomi. Woohoo superfast trains! It's a shame that rail travel isn't as easy or advanced at home, because it was pretty pleasant (and so much less hassle than plane travel!)

The front of the train - different models had different 'noses,'
and it even looked like the headlights were made to look like
nostrils. Everything's so cute in Japan!

I'm thinking, "let's get this show on the road... onwards to Kyoto!"

The ride between Tokyo and Kyoto is about 2.5 hours, so we bought some food for the train. All train stations have a lot of food for purchase, but I think the Shinkansen ones in particular have a lot of bento boxes for sale - food sets that have several different small dishes, usually a rice dish, prettily prepared in a cute box. We got one that ended up being a Japanese take on Chinese food:

Beautifully packaged bento for the train

Arriving in Kyoto, we quickly stashed our bags at our hotel (a Toyoko Inn, part of a huge chain of business hotels in Japan. These are great and highly recommended wherever you go; they are small but affordable and consistent. Breakfast is always included, as is internet access) and were on the move again. We had a busy plan for our 3 days in Kyoto, so we didn't want to waste any time! Again, the rain was falling hard, and we were armed with umbrellas, but the day would prove to go by in a bit of a blur because the rain made it kind of a challenge to really enjoy seeing the sights.

Kyoto, once the capitol of Japan, has gotten quite used to its status as a tourist destination, and is pretty user-friendly for foreigners. Though there are two subway lines running through it, the extensive bus system is really easy to navigate. All major sights are easily accessible by bus, all stops are announced and signed in English, and we got a very helpful map available at the info centre in Kyoto station with every stop listed. All this, and an unlimited day pass for 500Y ($5), = smooth busing.

We took the bus to Kiyomuzu-dera, one of Kyoto's famous temples. Our plan was to make our way North through the smorgasbord of temples and shrines that flank the Eastern part of the city. On the way to Kiyomuzu-dera, we stumbled upon the cutest little ceramics shop. Foolishly, I didn't buy anything, thinking that there would be a hundred more like it along the way (there weren't - turns out this was kind of a gem in terms of actually having handmade, unique pieces, as opposed to the standard tourist crap you can find everywhere). But not to worry, we got back there and I ended up buying a couple of cute pieces.

Storefront of the cute ceramic shop on the way to Kiyomizu-dera

I'll just post a few pictures from the sights that we saw on that walk, as there isn't really a need to explain much about them. Like I said, the rain made it a bit of a blur. At some points, we weren't quite sure what we were looking at, or we would arrive at a place that we thought we had just visited... Stupid rain!

A huge statue, the Ryozen Kannon - a monument to WWII soldiers.

A pretty little path in Maryuma park

Gate to Kiyomizu-dera, through a sheet of rain

Gate and pagoda at Kiyomizu-dera

A huge San-mon (three-gate) that we actually got to go up and
inside - access is apparently only allowed for a couple of weeks during
the year, lucky us! There are a bunch of kannon statues in that top level

A "tree" at Heian-Jingu. It kind of looks like it's full of cherry
blossoms, but the blossoms are actually paper tied to the tree, on
which people have written prayers and blessing requests

We made a special effort to get to the Murin-An gardens, and were very glad when we got there. it is a meticulously cared-for little green oasis, worth a spin through.

Pretty Murin-an gardens

On the way there, we had checked out the hard-to miss giant orange torii. Can you imagine having this in the middle of the city? Right over Michigan Ave, perhaps.

Giant torii near Heian-jingu

We also stumbled upon this cute shrine dedicated to rabbits, where people go to pray for... any guesses? Anyone? Blessings of childbirth (and probably, conception). I guess Japanese rabbits are just as...prolific as American rabbits!

Rabbit sculpture at the washing area of the Okazaki shrine

As night started to fall, we made our way up to the Kyoto University of Art and Design. There, we were meeting Emi Hirayama, with whom I'd made arrangements for a private cooking class. I found her through the Rough Guide (and her own website), and had emailed with her before we arrived in Japan. Kyoto has a distinct style of cooking which is very pure and simple, involving the freshest, seasonal ingredients and simple preparations such as simmering, grilling, and steaming. Emi invites you into her home and shows you how to cook whatever you want - in this case I had asked her to show us some dishes with yuba (soy bean skin), fish, chawan mushi (egg custard), and sweets.

Emi picked us up at a bus stop and immediately I loved her. She was very sweet, and had closely read my emails before our arrival ("How do you like Chicago? You are a PhD, what do you study?") Her English was very good, but she would say a sentence in Japanese first, think for a second, and then translate it into English. It reminded me of the time that I was talking to Brian's grandfather in my laboured Mandarin at dinner, thinking hard about each sentence before I spoke aloud, and he basically announced to the table that my Chinese was... very laboured :)

Anyway, we spent 4 lovely hours in Emi's little kitchen, cutting, peeling, mixing, and, best of all, eating. Each course used similar flavors - dashi (soup stock made from kombu seaweed and dried bonito fish flakes), mirin (cooking wine) and soy sauce. We ate more than enough, and then had fun making the little mochi balls with cinnamon and green tea. Mochi with cinnamon? Brilliant!

Brian rubbing down on some veggies

Me filling the rice mold with green pea-sticky rice to make a
gourd shape. We liked this so much we bought a couple
of rice molds later on!

The banquet (clockwise, from upper left): bamboo shoots in miso,
chawan mushi with shiitake mushroom, eel, and shrimp, yuba-wrapped fuki greens,
rice with green peas and ginger bud (note the lovely gourdy shapes), grilled sawara fish

Fresh green tea and cinnamon mochi balls, ready to
be dressed with red beans and soybean powder

Emi's class is highly recommended, for a personal take on Kyoto. (Oh, and remember how the Tokyo tourism office wouldnt' make recommendations for us at a Kyoto restaurant? I had emailed Emi while we were still in Tokyo and asked her if she would make the reso for us, and she did. So nice.) At the end of the class, as we were saying goodbye at the door, I kind of leaned in for a hug - that's how awesome I thought she was... But there were no hugs, I didn't want to force myself on her because I wasn't sure of what is customary. Brian laughed at me for this, because he knew exactly what I was thinking when he saw me lean in with misty eyes...

Us and Emi

After that lovely, filling meal, we rolled ourselves back onto the bus and back to our hotel. My feet were wet and achey from the distance we covered, but it hardly mattered after such a great day!

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 5 in Tokyo

2009-05-26T19:55:00.009-05:00

**Brian has posted an annotated album of our Tokyo pictures on our Picasa site, found here. We'll post up albums after we finish posting about each city, so you're not totally inundated with pics! We put the food photos into another album, which will go up soon as well.

May 6 was our last full day in Tokyo. Having dumped the Mt Fuji trip, we finished up some areas that we hadn't seen (leaving Ueno and Asakusa for the day or so we would have on the way back to Narita). Again, we woke up to a cloudy, overcast day with sprinkles of rain threatening a repeat of the deluge from the day before. We were smarter today, though, and borrowed two of Mina's umbrellas before we headed out.

That's me, with the orange umbrella under the big wooden torii leading to Meiji-jingu

We began at Meiji-jingu (jinja/jingu = shrine), which has a lovely approach path. There were several weddings, or wedding portrait sessions around the shrine on this day, probably because it was a holiday. It is hard not to stop and stare when you come upon one of these wedding processions, as they are beautiful and the attire worn by the bride and groom is much different than the usual western wedding. Some examples:

This picture was about 20 minutes and 2 arrangers in the making...
the fold of the kimono had to be just so.

Wedding procession at Meiji-jingu

While we were waiting for the first procession to pass, a man was getting his son to take a picture of him with the procession in the background. Brian nudged me and said, "is that Brian Grazer?" and yes, yes it was. He's a big producer, of the film A Beautiful Mind and favorite TV shows of ours Friday Night Lights, 24, and Arrested Development. We didn't talk to him, but I did manage to catch a photo of him on the sly (check it out in the Picasa album).

Next, we checked out the Yoyogi National stadium, a gymnastics stadium built for the 1964 Olympics. Designed by Kenzo, it (and the smaller stadium next door) resembles a big ark. On this day there was a very long lineup of young girls in gymnastic uniforms sitting outside, probably a meet going on. (Side note, people here are great about lining up for things, even if it's just to get into a store when it opens, or, most appreciated by us, to get onto the subway trains.)

Yoyogi National Stadium

We then took the subway to Ebisu station to check out the Japanese Metropolitan Museum of Photography at Ebisu Garden Place. In some cases, "u" is not pronounced so it actually sounds like "Eh-beese." Anyway, we paid for two exhibits, the first on historical Japanese photography (meh, a bunch of faded old daguerrotypes). The second one was a phenomenal display of recent work called Nomachi's Sacred Lands. Beautiful, emotional pictures of people and landscapes in Iran, India, Africa and the Andes. The exhibition only ran until May 17 (I feel very lucky to have seen it!) bu you can check out the work on Kazuyoshi Nomachi's website.

For lunch, we bought nigiri sushi from the department store in Ebisu Gardens Place, a huge box for about $12, and a big cream puff. Loving the price of sushi! (We had first checked out the fancy Joel Robuchon complex of 3 restaurants on 3 floors, where we were told in not so many words that we were not properly dressed to eat there... but decided that a lower-brow lunch would do the trick.) A quick, dizzying ride up to the 38th (restaurant) floor afforded us some more nice views of the city.

Seriously, about $12! Mmmmm

Though the rain was coming down heavily, we were foolishly emboldened by our umbrellas. We trekked a long ways to the Meguro Parasitological Museum. Yes, this is a showcase of bugs and worms and other gross things. The kind of thing that gives you the willies but is impossible to turn away from. It was actually really busy, and Brian remembered that one of the guidebooks said that it has surprisingly turned into a popular date destination! Most impressive by far was this, extracted from some poor guy's...um...nether regions:

Um... 8.8m long... tapeworm... extracted... ewwwwwwww

After we finished cringing and shuddering, it was pouring (hello) kitties outside, so we re-thought our plan to walk around Naka-Meguro, the area near Mina's house. We walked too long to a store she had recommended, unfortunately named BALLS. I was really, uncomfortably wet, and didn't particularly enjoy squishing around what was otherwise a very cool store, with mod, stylish home furnishings. After that we were pretty fed up with our drippiness, and decided to just go home and warm up. Given how hard we'd been going for several days, a couple of hours off of our feet sounded pretty good... After a couple of hours of resting up, we had noodles close to Mina's house and called it a night. We packed up and got ready for our next adventure... Kyoto, here we come!

Gratuitous picture of adorable little schoolkids on the subway. The
pack on the very left has a little rain guard on it!

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 4 in Tokyo

2009-05-25T21:32:00.012-05:00

On Tuesday, May 5th we woke up to a cloudy, gray sky (a change from the nice, sunny mornings we'd been seeing). Rainjackets in our bags, we headed out to Shinjuku-gyoen. The garden was quite pretty, with large ponds full of jumping carp and a Taiwanese Pavilion. We briefly met a woman from Japan who was hanging out in the garden, and was interested in where we were from, how long we were staying etc. It felt kind of weird and we hurried to get away from her, but afterward I felt really bad. She was just being nice, probably enjoying practicing her English, and we were so, what, cynical? Xenophobic? Ugh, I vowed to be more open from then on.

Taiwanese Pavilion, Shinjuku-gyoen

We had a tea ceremony in the Rakutei teahouse in the garden, which was a bit disappointing. We paid via the vending machine outside (definitely not traditional!), slid the wooden screen door open and sat down. A woman came out with two bowls of green matcha tea (traditional) and two little sweets. We were left alone to drink and eat, so it didn't feel all that special. I think in a more elaborate tea ceremony, the host actually makes the tea in front of you (which involves whipping the tea powder into water), so I guess we got an abbreviated version. The sweet was interesting, kind of a chalky, not-sticky mochi - similar in texture and moisture to the inside of a moon cake, if that rings any bells.

Tea ceremony elements at Rakutei, Shinjuku-gyoen

Leaving the garden in search of lunch, we came across a restaurant called Tsunahachi, a tempura bar of some renown. Tempura is obviously widely available in Japan, but this restaurant is a bit higher-end, because you sit at a bar where the chef actually fries up each piece for you to order. Hello, personal deep-fry chef! We were seated at a little bar in the back, and expertly guided toward the set menu which comprised tempura fish, shrimp, prawn, eel and veggies, with soup and rice. Delicious! Full on our set menus, we watched covetously as the people next to us ordered very fresh scallops, scooped right out of the shell.

Our tempura chef, placing some fried goodness on my plate

Our next stop was one we'd been looking forward to for a while, the Isetan foodhall. Now, to this point we'd been in several foodhalls, and been suitably impressed. As I mentioned in a previous post, these are the bottom (usually 1st or 2nd basement) floors of Japanese department stores, filled with prepared foods to go. There are always sections of sushi, cakes, fried foods, and hot items. And everything is nicely presented, of course. We don't have anything like it at home, and boy, do we wish we did! But back to Isetan, which had been touted in every guidebook we'd seen as the "king of foodhalls." We walked in and it was truly a sight to see. We tried to take pictures, but they just don't do justice to the selection, beautiful presentation, and the general busy-ness of the place. It was packed with people buying snacks or perhaps supplies for dinner. We didn't actually buy anything because it was not really cheap. It was enough just to look!

Stages of tamago(egg omelette, the kind that is often used in sushi) making

The rain had started falling while we were inside (I think God was crying with joy at the beautiful foodstuffs), so we donned our jackets and went to find the intersection that includes the Studio Alta building. It wasn't very impressive, just another big intersection full of huge, loud TV screens. So jaded, so soon - There goes another famous intersection, *yawn*

Studio Alta building, Shinjuku

We then made our way SW of the station in search of some more cool architecture. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is a huge blue and grey complex that consists of 2 towers and a half-circular columnade. It was built to resemble Notre Dame, with Japanese accents (though we didn't quite get that part, other than that the facade kind of looked like a giant computer chip). You can go up to the top of either tower for views of the city, so we did that as a welcome respite from the rain. It was here that we made a big decision about the trip - no visit to Mt Fuji this time around. (It is apparently notoriously shy and so you need a perfectly clear day to see it. With the rain coming down pretty hard and probably continuing to fall into the next day, we figured that we didn't want to waste our last whole day in Tokyo, not to mention a bunch of money, going out to it if it wasn't going to be rewarding. So that was that).

The Kenzo-designed Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

Back out in the pouring rain, we looked for "yakitori alley" (or "piss alley," as it is more crudely known) which is supposed to be a small lane of teeny yakitori (yakitori = chicken skewer restaurants) establishments near Shinjuku Station. We gave up after a few minutes, our attention spans probably being curtailed by the rain falling in our eyes. Instead, we got back on the subway and made our way to the neighborhood of Ikebukuro.

A cool art piece in Shinjuku Station

Off the subway, we beelined it for a ramen shop, Ramen Jiro, that I had heard about on rameniac.com. Unfortunately, the line was longer than 10 people and the wait would have been in the rain. I was sad, as rameniac had given this ramen shop a rare 10/10 rating, but my spirits and stomach quickly rallied when I saw that a different ramen-ya (ya = store/shop) listed in the Rough Guide was pretty nearby. We ran over there and saw a thankfully shorter line. It moved pretty fast (it seems like people really tend to eat and run here), though we were still soaked by the time we were seated. I began to realize that my supposedly waterproof (not water-resistant) rain jacket was, in a word, not. Luckily it wasn't terribly cold, or I would have been really miserable!

The ramen went a long way toward making us forget about how wet we were. I'll just show you a picture:

Restorative ramen at Mutekiya, Ikebukuro

Full and re-energized, we backtracked to the station and went to the Japanese Traditional Crafts Centre, which was really a glorified gift shop, but a cool one nonetheless. It showcased (and sold) artisanal items, one of the requirements for the "craft"designation being that they are used in daily life. So there was beautiful washi paper, ceramics and lacquerware, kimono fabrics, etc. Too expensive for the most part, though I spent a bit of time trying to convince myself that we really need this lovely, 315 dollar bowl, so I should buy it. (We don't. I didn't. I kind of regret it.)

Next we left the station again and ran up to a store called Tokyu Hands. We had already been to another branch of this earlier in the day (up by Shinjuku), and I wanted to go to this one to see Nekobukuro. What is that, you ask? First, Tokyu Hands is an amazing store. With many branches, they all have no less than 8 huge floors filled with stationery, housewares, camping equipment, kitchenwares, woodworking supplies, art and design supplies, luggage, etc. etc. Like Muji, but not quite as cool, more supply-y than product-y. Another heaven, and a destination for me as I was looking for some specific screenprinting supplies (found them!). So that alone made me love it. This branch was also blessed with Nekobukuro, which is a part of the 8th floor where you can pay a nominal fee (around $6) to go in and play with the 20 or so cats they keep there. Yep. Apparently this really appeals to kids (duh) and adults whose apartments are too small for pets. Odd and fascinating. We didn't go in (being the non-animal people we are) but we definitely checked out the cute entrance.

Nekobukuro, the ultimate in surrogate pet-dom

Heading back to Ikebukuro station, Brian remembered seeing some fish-shaped red-bean pastries (tayaki) being freshly made when we had gone through the station before, and we decided we had to find them again for dessert. Now, this is not necessarily an easy feat given that Tokyo train stations in general are huge and mazelike, and Ikebukuro in particular is the second-most busy station in the city (in fact, the world, according to Wikipedia!). 2.71 million people move through it per day! Wow. Anyway, amazingly, we somehow found the fishcake stand, and watched as they made our red-bean and custard cakes from scratch.

The magic of tayaki, Ikebukuro Station

Happily, we decided we'd had enough for the day, and headed on home. Rain or no rain, we were loving Tokyo for all of its crazy, cute, dizzying, and decidedly tasty quirks.

A Fortnight in Japan - Day 3 in Tokyo

2009-05-24T23:11:00.017-05:00

One thing we knew we had to do in Tokyo was to visit the Tsukiji Market, where much of Tokyo (and other places in Japan) gets their sushi and sashimi fish. Because of the holidays that were going on during the time we were in Tokyo, the only day that the market was open during our stay was on Monday the 4th, so there was no doubt about our plans for that day! Brian already wrote a bit about it and described our big adventure there, when we ~~stalked~~, uh... met Alton Brown and had a great sushi meal, so I'll just add a few more photos and descriptions.

Tsukiji is basically divided into the warehouse part, where things get offloaded from trucks, the wholesale market, where unimaginable amounts of fish and seafood get bought and sold every day, and the retail/restaurant part, where visitors like us stand in line for an hour to eat. The warehouse part is crazy busy, with little trucks and forklifts zipping around without much concern for dumb, awestruck camera-toting tourists. You really had to watch yourself, or this would be the last thing you'd see:

Vehicles rushing around Tsukiji Market

Lineups for all the sushi restaurants were really long the whole time we were there. The restaurant we went to had a relatively short line when we got there, but it also grew pretty long:

Brian being patient on the outside, seething with sushi-lust on the inside

And finally, the wholesale market was seemingly endless rows of stalls selling much of the same:

Terrific tuna

Fantastic fish

Awesome octopus

A little ways away from the fish market is a more general market where other types of food are served and sold, along with other things. While Brian was in line at the restaurant, I happened upon this scene, and I stood there gawking and taking pictures for a few minutes:

Big whole tunas on the ground

After the fish market, we walked around the outer markets a bit, and they were incredibly crowded. We got jostled and pushed, and once again I regretted being so short! Next, we walked to the Shiodome neighborhood, a modern business-y area filled with skyscrapers. We checked out the Advertising Design Museum of Tokyo, housed in the Caretta Shiodome building (it was ok, not too exciting but it did have some fun retro ads). In the same building, we took the elevator up to the 46th floor (which has a bunch of restaurants), and got some nice, free views of the city.

The three bluish low buildings in the middle of the photo are part of
Tsukiji Market

Next, we decided to visit Odaiba, a small island SE of the city that is served by a monorail. Sights, which include a manmade beachfront and souped-up boardwalk, are clustered around monorail stops. It all felt cute and contrived, which led me to keep calling it a "weekend leisure destination" even though many people work and live there.

First stop for us: Tokyo Big Sight, a big convention centre with a giant saw out front, and inverted pyramids in its design. When we got there, we were very curious as to why there were streams of girls and women coming out of it. A little further investigation revealed that there was a manga (Japanese comic) convention being held there, which apparently is very popular among females.

Tokyo Big Sight

On to a complex named Palette Town, next door to the Toyota Design Centre, where they have every Toyota model on display (and available for testdrives), most of which are not available in the US. They were demo'ing some of the robots they have developed to help people with disabilities (this seems to be quite a priority for their R&D department), but we couldn't take part since you needed an International Driver's License. Boooo!

Cutting-edge technology by Toyota, to help those who
aren't very mobile.

In the same complex was a huge arcade filled with lots of pachinko* machines and all sorts of arcade and simulation games, even large mechanical animals that you could ride around. We played a game of "double table tennis" which consisted of us running around in a big circle banging on buttons. Fun!

Stick a hundred yen coin in this guy and you could be in your very own rodeo.

Double Table Tennis... we definitely need one of these in our apartment

Further along the monorail line was the MeSci science museum, that looked neat but had a line that snaked around too many corners, so we passed. The Fuji TV building is a futuristic, grid-like building with a large ball floating in the middle of it. Think Rambaldi's Device from Alias (though disappointingly, it isn't red).

Fuji-TV building in Odaiba

Lastly, we walked through Deck's Beach, the fake beach and boardwalk that reminded me of Santa Monica pier, but with a huge shopping complex attached.

Back in Tokyo, we metroed over to Harajuku (yes, where Gwen Stefani got the idea). Right off of the station we hit Takeshita-dori, which was crazy-full of young adults hopped up on shopping fumes. Some of the girls were dressed up in the lolita costumes that were sold in many shops along the street, but mostly women were just really dressed up. Casual wear is definitely in the minority around Tokyo (my sensible shoes making my tourist status all the more painfully obvious!)

Elbow to elbow with Tokyo's youth culture

After we slogged our way through Takeshita-dori, we checked out Design Festa Gallery, an eclectic contemporary arthouse recommended by the Rough Guide. It was interesting, with every (small) room displaying a different artist's work, and some of the artists even being in the room with you. Cool, but not what I would normally think of as the Rough Guide's normal cup of tea.

The exterior of the Design Festa Gallery

As it started getting dark, we continued down Omotesando-dori, a street known for high-end stores and boutiques. Really in search of our next meal, we found Maisen, a restaurant that is famous for its katsu (katsu=fried breaded pork cutlet). The prices on the menu outside (which was all in Japanese) were a fair bit higher than your usual katsu-and-rice dish, but we didn't know why. Tired and hungry, we decided to follow the old, sometimes-true adage, "if it costs more it must be better" and head on in. Once seated, the english menu told us why things were a bit more expensive; they use Kurobuta, or "black" pork instead of regular old pork. At 3 times the price of the regular pork (and being deep fried, anyway), we weren't really game, so we just had regular tonkatsu-don, along with another set menu with several dishes. Yum!

Katsu-don with egg @ Maisen

I should note here that during our whole trip, meals were a highlight. Not only because we love food (and it was all good), but because it gave us a chance to rest our feet! We were going so hard all the time that sitting for a while, eating yummy food and gulping down ice water was really very enjoyable.

After our katsu dinner, we kept walking down Omotesando and came upon the beautiful Swiss-designed Prada building, all glass and steel diamonds:

Prada Building. So cool on on the outside,
who needs the 'stuff' inside?

We also checked out the gaudy Cartier building beside it, and a few others around.

Maki Fumihiko's Spiral building, on Aoyama-dori.
They sure like their cones here!

After that, it was time to head back to homebase for some zs with another terrific day in Tokyo under our belts.

*a difficult to grasp gambling/plinko/loud/flashy game that has the same kind of hold on people as slot machines. They are all over Tokyo, except since gambling is illegal, you win small silver balls instead of money. You can turn those balls in for 'prizes,' or go next door and collect money from a supposedly independent establishment, while everyone around pretends not to notice.

A Fortnight in Japan: Day 2 in Tokyo

2009-05-24T17:01:00.026-05:00

Waking up on the second day was a little bizarre. It took me a minute to realize that I was lying on a futon mattress on the ground (which is common Japanese practice)... in an unfamiliar room... in Tokyo!! Once that set in, I was up and ready to go. Our days in Tokyo (for most of the trip, really), were jampacked, as we wanted to sightsee until our eyes hurt and eat until our bellies burst. (Note, we will soon have our complete photo albums up on our Picasa site - for now I'm including highlights, but there you'll get a play-by-play of, among other things, all the food we ate! Stay tuned...)

So for Day 2 we decided to chart a course that went through central Tokyo, beginning with the Roppongi area, through Akasaka, the Imperial Palace, Ginza, and ending up in Akihibara.

We arrived in Roppongi around 9:15am, which was really too early to see much. The main 'attraction' is Roppongi Hills, a huge, multi-structure complex of stores, housing, theaters, and restaurants. Coming from Canada, which has such a relatively small population, it is amazing to me that a city can support something as big as this (let alone several, as Roppongi Hills is just one of many such complexes around Tokyo). Anyway, it wasn't that interesting because everything was closed.

So, we moved on to the National Art Center, which is a beautiful building with a wavy green glass exterior designed by Kurokawa Kishi. It has no internal pillars, just two big inverted concrete cones. We didn't actually pay for any of the exhibits, but spent some time in and outside the building, and bought a curry bun from the cafe for breakfast.

The beautiful undulating exterior of the National Art Center of Tokyo

From there, we walked into Midtown, to the 21_21 Design Sight building, designed by the reknowned Ando Tadao. Two small, angular glass buildings rise up from (or descend into) the ground, housing temporary, single-theme exhibits. As far as we could tell, the exhibit had something to do with pottery, but we chose to move on to make sure we could catch all of the sights we had planned for the day.

Brian, checking out how he sizes up at 21_21 Design Site

In adjacent Hinokicho Kyoen (Kyoen/Gyoen/Koen/Goen = garden), there was some kind of group exercise/relaxation session, which lots of people stretching (and snoozing) on mats in unison to some guy's instructions. From here, we got a good view of Midtown Tower, the tallest building in Tokyo. It was your average skyscraper (we were meh about it, since it kind of pales in comparison to the Sears Tower (814 ft vs. 1450 ft!).

Next, we walked through the Akasaka neighborhood to see the Hie-jinja (jinja = shrine), scoping out locales for lunch along the way (and snacking on some super cheap sushi rolls from a tiny store.) The path up the hill leading to the jinja was supposed to be lined with red torii (torii = gate) but, to our disappointment, wasn't! The shrine itself is notable because it is the site of one of Tokyo's biggest festivals, the Sanno Matsuri, in June.

The big stone torii leading to Hie-jinja

After a stop for some udon noodles and a mysterious, dry powder-coated ball of red bean-stuffed mochi (my motto for the trip was "you never know until you try!" We later found out that this ubiquitous coating is dried soybean powder), we metroed up to Hibiya Station. The train spits you out at the corner of the Imperial Palace grounds, which is surrounded by a huge moat. In old times, the moat served the usual defensive duties, a protective, military function. Now, however, it brings an appreciated measure of peace to the city, an artificial river running through its center. The stone walls of the the Palace buildings rise somewhat imposingly above the moat and walls, with cool lookout towers peeking out.

A lookout tower at the Imperial Palace

You can't actually visit the Inner Palace grounds (unless you arrange for a tour that's in Japanese anyway), so we just walked around a bit. Families were picnicking in the grassy areas, but much of it was covered with gravel. Further to the NE is the Imperial Garden which was quite pretty, although we were in between cherry blossom (April) and iris (June) viewing seasons, so it wasn't as scenic as it could be.

Pretty Japanese maple leaves

From the Palace we headed East into Ginza, a busy area known for good (mostly expensive) shopping. Our first stop was the beautiful Tokyo International Forum, a steel and glass building that looks like a huge ship. Just lovely, all angles and light. There was a big Bach festival going on, so it was alive with a ton of activity.

The big glass hull-like ceiling of the Tokyo International Forum

We hit up the Tourist Info Centre nearby to see if they would make a reservation for us at a restaurant in Kyoto (they wouldn't), and got a bunch of pamphlets and info for things we wanted to do. It was oddly situated though, on the 10th floor of a random building near the Ginza train station. (General note - tourist info offices were a great help along the way, very friendly and chock full of useful maps, tips, and sometimes, even coupons. They are usually situated in or very close to the main train station in each city.)

We then went into the SONY building and looked at some gadgets (it's basically a showcase for current and upcoming technology). Back out on the street, there was some kind of demonstration going on. We heard its rumblings even when we were at the Palace, and saw lines of riot cops standing in formation at subway entrances. Too bad we had absolutely no idea what it was about!

Chuo-dori (dori = street) is the main shopping street in Ginza, with the usual high-end stores like Tiffany, Apple, Louis Vitton, and a bunch of Japanese department stores. It was a particularly pleasant stroll because they had closed the street to cars, providing some relief from the usual crowding on the sidewalks. It was still busy though:

Chuo-dori, in Ginza

I had a short list of stores to check out - a couple of fantastic stationery stores with handmade washi papers and cards, and a bakery. I also made sure that we visited the flagship branch of Muji, a store that I first encountered when I was in London in 2003 (now there are several branches in NYC). Back then, I remember that it sold stationery and some clothes, maybe a bit of furniture. This Muji, though, was so much more than that. All those things, plus bikes, gardening stuff, luggage, etc. And all of it was cool, nothing tacky. My kind of heaven!

Muji was right next to the Tokyo subway station, so we hopped back on the train and headed up for Akihibara, also known as "Electric Town." As the name suggests, this is an area where you can find all sorts of electronics, from MP3 players to phones to computers and accessories. We weren't in the market for anything which was good given that we had actually heard that prices weren't cheaper than in the US. (When I was in Hong Kong in 2004, we went to the equivalent area there and there were actually pretty good deals to be had.) It was a huge blur of neon and blinking lights, though, with sales people shouting from each store. (General note - sales staff are ALWAYS talking, shouting, hawking here... it would never fly in the US!) Akihibara is also known for "maid cafes," where girls dressed up in elaborate lolita/maid costumes *serve* you (we don't really know the details, never really bothered to find out!) Such maids were all over the street, handing out advertisements for the cafes and generally classing the place up.

A bad photo of some of the costumed folks we saw

Not looking for a specific gadget, our No. 1 mission was to find Jangara Ramen, a noodle house that I had seen on the appropriately named website, rameniac.com. We love ramen (I dearly miss Daikokuya, a terrific ramen restaurant in LA), and it was one of our primary missions to get some of the good stuff on the trip. Trying to find the restaurant was a huge endeavour, though, given the nonsensical arcaneness of Tokyo's address system. Addresses are a series of numbers identifying building , chome (area) , and block numbers in a given area, but not every map has these numbers identified, and the buildings themselves *might* have a teeny, dark plaque with its number on it. Argh. So, even armed with the address, I began to doubt that we would ever find my beloved ramen after we spent about 15 minutes scratching our heads and hesitantly walking around. My feet hurt, I'm getting a headache from all the beeping and yelling, gimme my ramen, dangit! I even had my phrasebook out and was ready to ask someone, but feeling a bit shy. Ramen Jangara wa doko deska?

So, Brian to the rescue. He carefully reread the section on addresses in our guidebook, and kept a keen eye out for building plaques. Suddenly we found a map stand that identified the block numbers, and, just when I was about to give up in frustration, we turned a corner and found it! Luckily, I had looked it up on the internet that morning and taken note of the store's blue and yellow logo, so I recognized it immediately. I was SO glad and so very proud of my very bright husband! After all that, we were rewarded with this:

Mmmmm, miso ramen with chashu pork, cod roe, bamboo shoots, and an egg

After filling up on tasty delicious noodles, we headed back out and decided that we just had to check out the "Taito" building, with its familiar space invaders-alien logo beckoning us in. Each floor of the 6 storey building had a different focus, the first floor comprising a ton of those grabby-crane games. The toys you could win ranged from the usual innocuous stuffed animal to PSP consoles, to some very sexy-looking barbie-like dolls... Rrrrrrrrowr. Another floor was filled with nothing but those sticker-photo booths! And of course, there were a couple of floors devoted to big, noisy arcade games. A vertical circus for the 21st century.

Taito game station, a multi-storey arcade in Akihibara

Tired, full, and overstimulated, we decided to hop back on the train and head home to Mina's. Once again, sleep came pretty easily, and after some planning for Day 3, we were snoring within minutes!

A Fortnight in Japan: Day 1 in Tokyo

2009-05-23T20:55:00.020-05:00

It is hard to believe that we've been back in Chicago for exactly one week since we were in Japan. It feels like we are worlds away from the busy intersections we crossed, the hushed temples we explored, and the ramen shops where we slurped away.

Since we got back, I have been journalling and Brian has been annotating the hundreds (erm... thousands?) of photos we took. Each picture reminds me of the surreal, awesome sights, sounds and tastes we experienced, so different than anything else we know and any other country I've been to so far. We'll try to recount our experiences without running on and on, though every day we spent there could fill volumes! Let's begin...

After literally being up all night packing (and still feeling rushed and forgetting some things!), the taxi picked us up at our apartment at 4am. Still dark out, we spent most of the ride in silence, exhaustion and anticipation alternately filling my mind and rippling through my body. At the airport, we went through the motions of checking in and getting through security, and I got the rush of excitement that always hits me at the airport when I'm going somewhere or picking someone up. We're going to Japan!! A quick stopover in Dallas, and all of a sudden we were settled into our 12 hour flight to Narita. (When you fly to Tokyo, you use the NRT airport, which is about 60km NE of Tokyo). A few naps, one viewing of "Taken" (not really worth it) and a couple of compartmentalized meals including bad sushi later, we landed at NRT. We were told to stay put until the health officials had come onto the plane and screened us for swine flu. A few young Japanese men in plastic suits boarded the plane, one took a bunch of thermal images with a large camera, and we were soon cleared to disembark. In all, that probably took half an hour, but it felt like the longest part of our travels so far. We're on the ground, we don't have H1N1, let me out!

At the airport, we used the ATM and the internet - I had forgotten to print out the combination to the lock on the mailbox holding Mina's housekey, where we were staying... hehe - and got our express train/subway card combo tickets. It was pretty easy to get out of the airport, once we figured out where to buy the tickets, and suddenly we were on a comfortable train speeding toward Tokyo.

Arriving at Shinjuku subway station, we transferred to another subway line, traveled three stops to Shibuya, transferred to another train for three stops, then dazedly attempted to find Mina's apartment building. (Mina is a friend from high school who has been living in Japan for several years. I had bothered her on facebook for advice about our trip, and she offered to let us stay at her place - even though we hadn't seen each other since 1996. So incredibly generous! Coincidentally, she was out of town on her own holiday, so we got her place all to ourselves. Luckily, we did get to meet up with her on the last night of our trip - more on that later!)

After dropping our bags at her place and taking a few minutes to sit and take it all in, we wanted to press on and fight off the urge to sleep off our 25-hour travel odyssey. We didn't want to go very far, for fear of having to try to interpret this in our tired and disoriented state, so we just took the subway back to Shibuya and decided to walk around and find something to eat.

Coming out of the subway station, we were immediately assaulted with sounds, lights and people. The intersection right outside of the station is a common image of Tokyo in the media (e.g., it was shown in "Lost in Translation") and it was every bit as mad and chaotic as it is portrayed. We just stood at the corner for a few minutes, mouths agape, taking it all in. Am I really here?? I felt like I was scuba diving underwater, with schools of fish deftly swimming past me and voices from people on the street and from the huge TV screens above unintelligibly blurring together. It was the epitome of sensory overload.

This picture doesn't really do it justice - I'm too short, and should have held the camera higher! There are about 100 feet between us and the building straight ahead, and the intersection was FILLED with people.

Only slightly daunted, we picked a direction and threw ourselves into the thronging crowd, which moved surprisingly easily in every direction. The ultimate mission was to find food, and to that end we wandered in and out of food halls (in the basement storey of every department store, where tons of counters sell every kind of edible - more on that later) and looked at the plastic food display models in front of dozens of restaurants. Unusual for us when it comes to food, we were plagued by indecision. Finally, after wandering up and down several blocks, we found an izakaya (a Japanese pub, basically, but with more emphasis on food) that had been recommended in our Rough Guide book. The staff spoke very little English but had an English menu, from which we ordered a beef stew, chicken wings (for which they are known), and chicken gizzards. Not a bad start to our eating adventures!

Mmmmm... deep fried gizzards!

After that we walked around a bit more but were pretty tired, so we made our way back to Mina's and fell into a very satisfied sleep.

Celebrating the Dirty Dozen

2009-05-17T19:02:00.006-05:00

A year ago today, we had the most awesome day of our lives. It is so hard to believe that a whole 12 17ths have passed since then! It has been a good year, capped off with our travels in Japan.

Happy one-year anniversary, my dear!

Ah, memories... (photo by Jen)

P.S. Yes, we are back in Chicago, returning to real life. Many pics and posts about Japan to come your way shortly. I am just finishing up my personal journalling and then we'll get on with it!

Random Japan Pictures

2009-05-10T07:46:00.008-05:00

As promised, a photo of our sushi breakfast as Tsukiji fish market. We each had a combo plate, containing outstanding botan-ebi (spot prawn) and uni (sea urchin) amongst other things. The anago (second from the left on the bottom row) was a first for both of us: salt-water eel (as opposed to unagi, which is fresh water eel) with sprinkling of pink salt. Everything was so good, we chose to order a few additional pieces: toro (fatty salmon), oh toro (the fattiest tuna), and hotate (scallop) were all as great as you would expect. We also noticed something on the menu we've never seen, so we had to order it: kujira (whale).

It was...interesting, worth trying, but not something I would order again. The texture was not as pleasant as other sushi fish (a bit more like meat than fish), and there wasn't much flavor. After breakfast, we explored deeper into the market, where there were literally hundreds of stalls selling all manner of seafood. Definitely an exciting experience.

We're already nearing 1000 pictures, so here's a couple interesting ones to tide you over until we have time to write more:

Virtually every department store in Japan seems to have an enormous "food hall", typically covering the entire basement. In addition to groceries, there are dozens of stalls selling almost any kind of food you can think of. By far the most impressive we've seen was at Isetan in the Shinjuku neighborhood in Tokyo. I guessed that they had at least 1000 employees covering the assorted stalls. One meat counter seemed to specialize in what I assume was Kobe beef. 12,600 yen/100 g works out to about $570 USD/lb.

After four full days in Tokyo, we spent three days in Kyoto and Nara, which provided an extreme change of pace, especially since we focused on the older areas heaviest in shrines and traditional gardens. At Fushimi Inari, there is a literal avenue of torii, the red gates shown below. They say that there are over 20,000 gates. We took their word for it.

Finally, here's a picture of Michelle standing in front of a 15 m buddha statue at the Todai-Ji temple in Nara. They say that when they clean the statue, you can see up to 5 monks just standing in his hand.

Is That Alton Brown?

2009-05-04T08:05:00.004-05:00

Our stolen wireless connection is a bit spotty, so we're going to start with uploading just this one picture. Make no mistake, our first two full days in Tokyo have been amazing, but one thing has made Michelle giggle like a schoolgirl, so let's start here.

This morning we visited the Tsukiji central wholesale market, where they have the famous tuna auctions at 5 AM. We were not able to get up that early (and we had conflicting information as to whether or not we would even be allowed to watch the auctions), but we did arrive around 8 AM. The level of activity was off the charts, and there were long lines for all the sushi stalls. At one point, we saw a parade of Americans (ie, "white people"), which we assumed was a tour group. But towards the back of the group was someone that looked pretty familiar. I wasn't sure, so I pointed him out to Michelle, and sure enough, it was Alton Brown (host of Food Network's "Good Eats" and "Iron Chef America").

So we stalked him. And got a picture.

He was actually very nice ("Hi, I'm Alton, I'm from Atlanta"). Apparently, they're filming a special in Tokyo, but we're not supposed to say anything about it. (We really don't know anything.)

We did wait in line, and had some great sushi for breakfast. Stay tuned for more pictures...

Seven ELEVENs sure are popular here in Tokyo...

2009-05-02T03:20:00.002-05:00

OOPS! I forgot to post this (bad me! I guess I have the excuse that I was out of town...)

Happy belated Eleventh 17th, hubby of mine!

Konichiwa!

2009-05-02T03:09:00.003-05:00

We made it safe and sound to Tokyo! I am writing from our super generous friend Mina's apartment in Shibuya (she's not here, she's on her own vacation in the Phillipines). It is about 5pm here, which means 3am in Chicago, on Saturday morning. We left our house at 4am on Friday morning for the airport. Yes, that means we have been traveling for 23 hours. But we're here and SO excited to start exploring! (And eating, of course!)

It looks like we have internet at least while we are here in Tokyo (for the next 4 days) so we should be able to update you and hopefully even upload photos of our time here. And I *do* want to write more about New Orleans since I've never been before, so stay tuned for more commentary to go with the pictures.

Ok, think we'll hit the streets in search of some adventure with a side of noodles. Hm, it looks like you may actually call this a vacation :)

P.S. Here is our itinerary, in case you want to follow along:

May 2-6: Tokyo

May 7-9: Kyoto (maybe a day trip to Nara)

May 10-11: Hiroshima (+ day trip to Miyajima)

May 12-13: Kobe

May 14: Koyasan

May 15: Tokyo

May 16: Back to Chicago

Weekend in New Orleans

2009-05-01T01:53:00.006-05:00

Things have been pretty hectic for us in the last few weeks, so please accept our apologies for the spotty blogging.

We are in the middle of many travels for both of us, as Michelle had conferences in Banff and New Orleans. I joined Michelle in New Orleans toward the end of the conference, and we had a very enjoyable couple of days. Not surprisingly for us, we didn't have much planned in the way of sightseeing, but we did manage to eat a lot. Check out our Picasa Page for pictures and comments. (For the record, we don't normally take this many pictures at restaurants, but Michelle insisted since we were "on vacation". I think she originally wanted to write more, but we just haven't had time.

It's been less than 2 weeks since we got back from NOLA, but we are heading to the airport in less than 2 hours, on our way to 2 weeks in Japan. Stay tuned...

Love me TENder

2009-03-17T12:09:00.006-05:00

Hehe, Happy 10th Monthaversary! And Happy St. Patty's too!

P.S. Winning is sweet...

P.P.S. We booked our flights for our belated honeymoon/1st anniversary trip... Here's a hint as to where we're going...

Any guesses (from those of you who don't already know...)?

Alinea - Courses 19-24

2009-02-28T18:41:00.007-06:00

19. Sweet Potato - bourbon, brown sugar, smoldering cinnamon

Picture from Flickr (thefleeg)

The elements of a sweet potato pie were skewered on a smoldering cinnamon stick, and deep-fried like tempura. Although Michelle tasted a bit of baking soda or baking powder in hers, this was a tasty bite. I wasn't able to taste much sweet potato, but I suppose that's not unlike real sweet potato pie. Warm, crispy, and comforting, just like (somebody's) mom used to make it. Kinda.

20. Bubble Gum - long pepper, hibiscus, creme fraiche