Celebrating the Dirty Dozen

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

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?

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...

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!

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

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

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...)?