NotaNotaBlog

Airport Part 2

2007-10-31T20:35:00.001-07:00

So here is how bringing that device through the airport went down. In all cases, the device was in a taped up brown box, inside a zippered up beat up looking duffel bag. Very inconspicuous right?? lol

John Wayne Airport (Santa Ana)

Put the duffel bag on the scanner. Duffel back goes through the scanner. Not so much as a word or a suspicion raised. We went through the John Wayne airport security on two separate occasions on 2 separate days of the week with exactly the same results. No one cared.

The scary part is I fly out of John Wayne a lot, and the ease with which it went through security is a little scary. Luckily though it is a smaller airport which would be a less likely target for a real bomb.

San Jose Airport

Put the duffel bag on the scanner. The security person scrutinizes it a little bit, and then asks to swab down the package with the bomb detector. They swab the package, asked what it was, and then let it through.

Not bad, at least they were curious and did a swab down.

Seattle Tacoma Airport

Put the duffel bag on the scanner. The bag goes through the scanner, and sets off the alarm! Security people ask what it is, and then open the box. They pull it out and swab it down. Meanwhile we are subject to the full pat-down search and scan with the wand. Then they put the package through the scanner again this time with all 8 security personnel crowded around the little screen watching it run back and forth through the scanner. In the end they deemed it safe, but not after spending a good 20 minutes checking out the device and asking us exactly what it was for and what it did.

Seattle has the best security of the 3 IMO. We did almost miss our flight because of the delay, but it's good that they paid attention because it really IS a suspicious package.

One day trip

2007-10-18T20:37:00.001-07:00

I recently took a one day business trip up to Washington and we had to bring prototype samples with us on the plane. Inside a dufflebag, inside a cardboard box, sealed with tape, we brought the following item through airport security:

Wanna guess what happened ? :D

Anyway, keeping busy I'm not quite back to blogging yet but this was a quick and interesting one :)

Anime Expo Part1

2007-07-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

A few weekends ago I went to the Anime expo. A majority of the people that go to the Expo dress up as their favorite Anime character. It gave me a great opportunity to try out my new Nikon D80 and see what I can take. So here are a bunch of photos from the morning.

We had anticipated the ridiculous lines that accompany every Anime Expo so we arrived early at 8:00am:

The convention doesn't open until 10:00 so we sat out front like everyone else and I took a bunch of pictures. Some Naruto Villains:

Not sure which Anime she is from:

The Wii always gets the attention!

This is the line to get in to the convention center. It stretches across the entire length of the center, around the corner, down the stairs, around the street, etc. It took nearly an hour for it to actually dissipate.

There was a single booth in the convention center for some Porn company. I have no idea what this has to do with Anime??? Lol

Shino and Kiba from Naruto:

A view out the window of the convention center:

Some people have really elaborate costumes!

More Pictures to come!

Keeping Busy!

2007-07-16T00:48:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks,

I wanted to post a bunch of pictures from Anime Expo, but I've been pretty busy lately. I'm doing some additional consulting work on my nights and weekends so there hasn't been enough free time to write a blog entry.

I'll try to post something soon! I need to finish my Japan photos too. We're almost there!

Miyajima Island Part 2

2007-07-03T00:24:00.001-07:00

To continue where we left off last time -- we had just gotten off the cable car which we thought took as to Mount Misen. Oddly enough, we saw a sign that said "Mt. Misen 1.5KM ----> That way." And it pointed down this path.

Ok we thought, so we had a nice little hiking path on the mountain. But we noticed that the path started going downhill. Here's a deer that we were following along the path:

As we realized we kept going lower in elevation we started to wonder where the heck this would take us. We looked up a little bit on the path and we noticed a building on a mountain far far away. We pointed and laughed, "Ha ha... hey maybe the path goes there!!!". We thought nahhh. it can't be! That looks WAY too far.

Look REAL closely and you will see a squarish building / structure on top. (Click for a bigger picture)

After a few hundred meters, we realized instead of going downhill that we were now going uphill, and STEEPLY too. I turned around to take a picture of where we started. You can see the building with the cable cars here. Notice that it is significantly higher up because we had gone so far down hill.

From here on out it was about 700 meters of walking up various flights of stairs and ramps. I wasn't quite prepared for this because i had brought several bottles of water, a sports drink, guidebooks, camera, and my 4 lb leather jacket in my backpack ( had to take it off since it got so HOT!). I would guess I was carrying at nearly 10 lbs on my back. At this point i was too busy climbing and forgot to take pictures!

Three-quarters of the way up we found a rest stop with a temple. After catching my breath I took some more photos!

There was a deer also taking a break here!

That's Yoriko standing under the stone structure on the stairs. The entire walk was effectively this steep.

Yahooo! Here we are finally at the top of Mt. Misen. Pictured below is the structure that I took a picture of earlier.

... And then we had to walk back haha. You would think it was easy because it was all downhill.. But remember that we have to walk back up the other side. The trail is kind of like a big "U".

Back at the other side we found some photo opportunities. Me and Fu were the monkeys!

Yoriko does not like her picture taken. Can you tell? lol. We somehow coerced her to pose for this one...

We walked around a little more around the island and here's a picture of a temple we saw. It was TALL!

Now this is a funny sign. 10 min. walk. 7 if run a little... WTF?!?!?! lol.

By the time we had walked up and down Mt. Misen, we were at the end of the day. The tide had actually dropped way down and you can see now that you can actually walk up to the gateway!!!

And so ends our time at Miyajima island! That was quite a hike we took. I wish I would have known so i could have dumped off all my junk at the hotel or in a locker :D ! Oh well!

Anime Expo

2007-07-02T00:45:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the Anime Expo. Wow I had a busy weekend so there was no time for me to write up a post. But, here's a funny one. We ate at the Great Steak and Potato company for dinner.

Unfortunately, they were out of steak. Oh and they were out of potatoes too. ???

Miyajima Island

2007-06-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Nearby to Hiroshima is Miyajima island. We had to take a ferry like the one below to get to the island.

This gateway out front is the symbol of the island. It actually stands on its own (it doesnt have any supports that go into the ground).

When we get off of the ferry we were greated by some friendly deer! There are wild deer wandering around the entire island! This one was chasing after me trying to eat my map while my friend laughed and took pictures of it.

Even though he had JUST seen me successfully thwart a deer from eating MY map, he lets a dear get a hold of his!!! Plus, he tries to get it back!!! Hahahah. He was NOT successful.

There are a ton of landmarks to see on the island. One of the most famous ones is this temple "Itsukushima Shrine" dubbed a national treasure of japan built in the year 593:

During that day the tide was low, so the temple area was completely dry. But during certain times of the day when the tide comes in the temple is surrounded by seawater!

There is a little stream that runs through the city area of the island:

We followed a few walking trails around the island. Here is some of the sceneary along the trail:

We were trying to decide what area to visit next as it was around noon time. On the map there was a cable car ride to "Mt. Misen". We thought, oh cool, we will go for a "Quick" visit to see the mountain. Little did we know that it wouldn't be quick at all....

At the end of the lift, we step outside to these little signs! Click for a bigger version so you can read the text. Apparently there are monkeys running around stealing your stuff!

There are lots of photos, so this post will be continued the next day...

"Do not tell a lie!"

2007-06-25T23:47:00.001-07:00

So last weekend we went to Sushi Gen in Los Angeles as a going away party for my friend Joe. He got a post-doc assignment in switzerland so he's going to be gone for quite awhile. It was quite an interesting night.

When we got there the restaurant was PACKED and the wait was 1 hour long! While we were waiting there was a party of people waiting to be seated. We heard a name get called, and they went into the restaurant.

Moments later, they were ushered back out of the restaurant, and I heard the host from the restaurant say in a heavy Japanese accent "Do not tell a lie!"

We were surprised to hear that, so we turned around to see what the commotion was.

This guy then proceeded to CHEW OUT the party that was waiting lol. He was like, "You cannot sit! Must wait until everyone is here! When sally comes you come tell me. Then you sit! You can sit Sushi Bar, or table! But do not tell a lie!! You wait for party." And he went on like this for a good few minutes!

After he left, one of the girls said, "Geez who is the customer here!?!?!?" Lol.... I guess that party tried to pretend that their whole party was there and get a seat. Apparently this other girl was over an hour late!

When they eventually called our name, two of our party was out in the parking lot in the car. The same guy came out and he said, "Are you all here!?!?!?" And we all looked at the floor and said ... "uhm.... yea, you see... we're all here but... Two people are in the car!"

And he was like, "OK!!! Four come in. Others must wait until party is here! Sit at other table!" Lol.

Wow what an experience! But I do have to say that the price was good. For $30.00 I ordered the Sashimi Deluxe plate. It's a Gigantic plate FILLED with sashimi. A picture is below. I cant believe how much fish was on there. I actually couldn't finish it!!!!! And for any of you who ate sushi with me you know how much sushi i can eat!

Below is a picture of the fried shrimp heads from the Ama-Ebi my friend ordered. He got it as an appetizer and I was jealous it looked so good!!! I actually considered ordering one myself. But when I started eating my Sashimi and realized how much there was, I was glad I didn't.

Here's a picture of all of us. Unlike SOME bloggers *cough* of whom i won't name -- I actually am in the picture!!!

Japanese noodle-pancake-like things

2007-06-21T23:05:00.001-07:00

After the BaseBall game, we visited this place. We were told it was a specialty of Hiroshima -- some kind of pancake like noodle dish. It was extremely popular as you can see from the line outside. We had to wait a good 45 minutes before we could get inside.

We ordered a little dish of scallops as an appetizer. These were fantastic! Yum!

And we ordered three of these pancake things, one for each of us. They were MASSIVE! We didn't realize how much food is in it. I was completely stuffed after finishing it. It was quite a unique food! It is a pile of crunchy ramen noodles, 2 eggs, various vegetables, topped with a sweetish-brown sauce, and a shake of green herbs.

The line did not diminish late at night. This is the line we saw on the way out. It got even longer!

There is a restaurant here in Orange County that serves this pancake-like item. However, you are supposed to cook it yourself. We tried this once, and it was the biggest disaster of cooking I have ever had lol. We didn't realize we had to put oil on the grill.. We didn't know how to mix the ingredients. Overall, we were clueless on how to prepare this dish.

In fact two Japanese ladies next to us felt so sorry for our ineptitude that they felt compelled to help us and explain how it was done. Unfortunately by that time we had botched it badly enough that it was unsalvegable.

So we ended up with a mish mash of partly mushy, partly undercooked noodles, runny eggs, overcooked vegetables, partly burnt and stuck to the grill dish. Oops... It was MUCH better when properly prepared :)

When we got back to the hotel room I saw an interesting site. This little clock in the room was doing this for a good ten minutes! I thought we were in a time warp or something!!! It's just a normal battery operated clock. Hmmmmnh!

Just a bunch of Carp!

2007-06-20T00:19:00.001-07:00

After the museum, we headed over to the baseball stadium to watch a ball game! Our team was the "Hiroshima Carp". Here is a picture of the stadium:

This guy kind of stood out in the field. I don't think he's Japanese???

I found that going to a Japanese baseball game is more entertaining than going to an American one. Why? Because there is much more audience participation! The Carp were last-place in standing, and they were playing against the first place team. For a home game like that you would expect empy stands and not much in terms of cheering.

But all the fans still come out and they cheer every play. Check out this video:

These guys are doing this, and various other cheers throughout the entire game! Non-Stop! They have a different cheer for throwing a strike, being at bat, getting an out, etc. It was quite facinating to watch!

How do they organize the cheers? By having a cheer leader instruct everyone what to do! He would hold up signs telling us what to say, when to say it, etc. A band would play behind us to give everyone a beat to keep in synch to.

For the seventh inning we were given a bag of balloons to blow up. I had no idea what this was all about, but here is mine! It's big... And Long....

Here is a video of what we did with the balloons:

You can barely hear it in the recording because the mic on the camera isn't good but all the balloons have whistles on them. When the balloons were released the roar of balloons flying through the air and the whistles was a fun experience!

Believe it or not, our team won by a huge margin! The fans were ecstatic as this was really an unexpected turn of events!

This was a fun evening event! I've gone to a few Angels games here in the past, and most of it the crowd wasn't nearly as animated / into the game. I spent most of the time chatting, getting food, wandering around the stadium, playing games on my cell phone, etc. Pretty much everything BUT watching the game.

But in Japan everyone loves their baseball, so all attention is on the game. Being in a crowd that is that excited about the game really adds to the fun!

Another type of Hell...

2007-06-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

Another ride on the bullet train took us to the south-western end of Honshu. The next city we visited was a beautiful, clean, modern metropolis with a series of rivers intertwining throughout the city.

This first picture is from a bridge overlooking one of these rivers offering a view of the shiny new buildings along the bank.

It's hard to believe that only 62 years ago on August 6th that this entire city was destroyed when the atomic bomb landed on it. This building is the sole remaining evidence in the city that an event of such magnitude occured:

The city of Hiroshima houses a memorial museum that reminds all the visitors of the tragedy that struck here. Below is a picture of the memorial grounds. Entrance to the museum was only $0.50, and it was packed with visitors.

Inside the museum, they had a map on display of what the city looked like after the bomb. The red globe in the center marks the location where the bomb was dropped.

There was a life-size Diorama inside depicting a typical scene of the survivors after the blast.

Below are the trousers of a junior high school student. They were melted when the blast took him from behind.

A tricyle that was outside when the bomb struck.

The cloud of debris from the explosion caused a black rain to fall throughout parts of the city contaminating everything in the area with radioactive waste. Below is a section of wall that has been marred by the black rain.

A pile of glass bottles were fused together from the blast.

Click the image below to enlarge it. Look closely at the staircase. You will notice a darkened area. Someone had been sitting on these steps and his shadow was burned into the concrete from the blast.

After going through the museum I fealt heavy with the knowledge of what these people had to go through. The detonation of the A-Bomb was a tragic event, but it certainly lead to the end of World War II. How would the war have turned out if the U.S. did not drop the bomb? How different would the world be if the Allies lost the war? Does that justify what happened to these people?

I was amazed though at how quickly they rebuilt the city. Everything is new, and you could not tell that this city was the site of an atomic bomb.

Going through this museum reminded me of an Anime movie that I once saw called Grave of the Fireflies. It follows the story of two children after the firebombing of Kobe during WWII. Both experiences serve as a great reminder of how terrible a war can be.

How About Some Furry Cock 'Ay?

2007-06-14T23:23:00.001-07:00

Ok I didn't have enough time today to go resize the photos from the next site we visited. So here is another food post!

This hotel we stayed at offered a Free Breakfast with the stay. Now judging from all the prior free breakfasts we had, I was expecting something pretty good. But when we got to the breakfast buffet we see this.

A tub of rice balls. Yep. That's it!

Not only do you get rice balls, you get to put your own seasoning on it like so:

And I asked my friend... "What is that (seasoning)?"

(Note: He speaks fluent Japanese and he didn't quite realize what he was saying in English.)

Him: "Furry Cock Ay".

Me: *COUGH* ... "What did you say???"

Him: "Furry Cock Ay..." (I give him a funny look)... "What????"

Me: "Did you just say you are putting Furry Cock on your rice balls?

Him: "Uhm... .... Yea I guess so!"

Me: "You're going to eat Furry Cock and balls?"

Him: "Yep... And it's good too!"

So... I had to make my own furry cock ay covered ball. And you know what? He was right!!! It was good! We even got seconds!

Apparently it is spelled "Furikake". It's a mix of various crushed peppers, sesame seeds, spices, and salt. They come in a wide variety of flavors and can be used to top all sorts of food. Would you like some Furikake???

To Hell With You!

2007-06-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

This is our ticket to Hell. Luckily it wasn't a one-way ticket!

This bus is headed straight for hell!

That's us, the two poor unsuspecting souls.

This is apparently the water they serve from hell. Look closely at the little letters below. It says Natural Mineral Water "from the Aso". I'm not quite sure I want water that came out of someone's ass-o. That's just nasty. But hey, I guess when you're in hell you don't have a choice???
Here is the Devil, watching over his dominion.

It's hot in hell!!! Look at all that steam!
Even more steam flowing from underground!

Apparently there are still some nice areas in Hell. To lure you into a false sense of hope.

This little pathway has GOT to be a trick!
It leads to a boiling mud bath!

This is known as the "Sea Hell". It is a boiling pool of naturally blue water.

Another boiling mud pit!

This is a pool known as the "Blood Pool". I thought it was more brownish than red, but OK!

And so our trip ends, and we return to the hotel. The next day is filled with memories of another kind of Hell....

The Temple

2007-06-12T22:27:00.001-07:00

My internet access at home has been flakey the past few days and I haven't been able to upload any photos to post. It suddenly worked today so I'm posting while I can :).

This next series of photos is from the same area of Japan as the previous post. A bus ride down the road left us at this temple gate. Inside it was not very interesting actually. At first I couldn't figure out why this would be a tourist attraction. It's just a bunch of old buildings in a foresty area. It was nice, but not that exciting.

But then we realised that there was a path leading down past the temple. So we decided to go walk down it.

We encountered this cool bridge which crosses over a small stream.

The path continues down towards the bottm of this stream. My friend was lazy and didnt want to walk so far downhill (since we have to walk back up afterwards). But I kept telling him, "ooh i see something i want to take a picture of" and headed a little further down.

A few more "ooh i need to take a picture here" led us to the bottom of the river bed:

Here is a view from the end of the river.

There is a little waterfall upstream:

Beyond the river is this moss covered path.

Which leads to a cave filled with rocks piled like so. What is this?

Turning around, there are thousands of piles of these little stacked rocks!

Inside the cavern is a little shrine where you can put in a donation and ring the bell. That's my friend Fu ringing the bell.
After we finished checking the area out, it was time to walk back up. Here's a view of some of the steps that lead us back to the top:

Along the road, we noticed something interesting. There are these stone steps that lead down. After about 7 steps there is... NOTHING!!!! That's right. If you walk down this stair case you will fall a few hundred feet down to your death. Scary!

This is for Cindy. She says I post food after my sight seeing stuff. So here was dinner for the night. We stayed at a traditional Japanese hotel (where you sleep on the floor with Futons.) This is the traditional Japanese dinner. It's a whole bunch of little dishes!
We had to eat up and rest.

Because the next day, we go to Hell!!!

I'm serious.

We really do.

We even had tickets.

The Lake

2007-06-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

Several hours on a train and a short walk later left us looking down this forest path. My friend told me that somewhere down there was a valley with a lake and a waterfall. Neat! We followed this trail for awhile which ended abruptly at a stair case that led far far down, but was blocked off with "Danger! Closed due to Typhoon" signs. Woooops!!!!!

So instead of the direct path down, we had to walk down this winding road. Since cars had to drive down, it wasn't very steep and just winded its way down. Grrr! Here is a photo of lowest curve of the road that kind of zig-zagged its way down:

After complaining of the 30 minute or so walk we had to take, we finally reached our destination and saw this beautiful waterfall running down this rock wall!

A little further down the road we finally get a view of the lake. Wow!!!

All that walking made me hungry, so we went to a restaurant there to have lunch. They were serving fresh fish from the lake and here's the meal that I ordered. Pay special attention to the item on the top-right corner:
That is the sashimi dish. But what they had done was take a freshly caught fish, cut it up sashimi style, then put the sashimi BACK into the fish, and put the whole fish onto the plate! So the fish was staring right back at me as I was picking away at its flesh eating it! Yikes!

Here's a picture after I finished eating the sashimi of the remaining fish:

After Lunch, we headed down to the lake. Apparently you can rent boats and go row across it! So we did! There was a great waterfall that we rowed to:

A little bridge crosses over this narrow part of the stream. Here's a picture of the bridge from far below:

And here's a picture from the bridge of the boats below:

I have to say that THIS was a scenic place! I was really impressed. The pictures really don't do the place justice!

Fortuitous Series of Events

2007-06-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

My carpool buddy and I like to make bets. The bet is always for who is going to treat who to ice cream that day. But mainly, it's just a good excuse to ditch work and get Ice Cream!

There's a new Costco (her favorite store!) opening in Irvine, and we had driven by the day before and noticed it was opening this week. I thought the sign said it was opening on the 9th (Saturday) and she thought it said it was opening on the 7th (Thursday).

We made a bet on who was right for Ice Cream.

So today we were leaving work late and I was thinking, "gee it's late and i have to go find some food to eat still, this sucks!" We decided since it was late anyway, we would drive by the costco to see who won the bet.

I mentioned... Oooh we should get Churros while we're there!!!! (They sell freshly baked churros at costco). But then saddly we realized, it doesn't open for a few more days :( So we knew we wouldn't be getting churros!

So we drive by, and oddly enough there are a bunch of police officers whisking cars into the parking lot with big signs that said "Costco VIPs enter here!" She gloated, "you see!!! It's opening tomorrow!!! Look at all these people already here." I said, "I dont admit defeat yet! I still haven't seen the sign yet!"

So we got to the store -- the parking lot was PACKED, and sure enough it was opening on the 7th! Damn, I guess I was buying next time :(. But then we wondered... what's going on with this Costco VIP stuff??? Can we sneak in????

So we walked up and pretended we had been invited. Just outside the door was a Coffee Bean and Tea leaf stand. They were offering free blended Mocha, Vanilla, and chocolate drinks! Neat! Even if we couldn't go inside we'll grab a free mocha!

So as we were wandering about, we figured why dont we just show our membership card and try to sneak into the store? So we kind of just strolled in through the door!

Inside, the store was brightly lit and there were free food stands EVERYWHERE. They had Meatballs, Pasta, Hot Wings, Macaroni Salad, Vegetable Platters, Carnitas, Beef Stew, Refried Beans, Spanish Rice, Tamales, Hot Dogs, Pepperoni and Supreme Pizza, Chicken Bake, Spicy Sausages, Ice Cream, Cheese Cake, Chocolate Cake, Cream Puffs, Sodas, Coffee... It was a veritable BUFFET in there!!!

Boy did we chow down! Free food! So dinner was taken care of which was great! And then what did we spy out of the corner of our eye? They were giving out free Churros!!!!! SWEEET! I didnt think we would get any but there they were... and they were FREE!

On the way out we ran into the Danon Activa people, who were handing out free yogurt. So we each got three tubs of yogurt to go! Nice!

All in all, it was a cool surprise. Had we not made the bet, or left late and decided to verify the bet, we would have totally missed out on a free meal! And it was GOOD too. Costco sells some of THE best tasting food! Yum!

So today I lost a bet, but it was worth it!

Pension Day 2

2007-06-05T21:53:00.001-07:00

Another place we got to visit was the monkey show!!! Say hello to the lil monkey!

He can jump over stairs on his hands!

He can use Stilts!!!

And really BIG stilts!!! Wow!

After the little diversion, we were back at the pension for dinner #2. Keep in mind all the food below is included in the ~$80.00 a night room. Wow what a deal!

This time we started off with a little mixed salad with sashimi:

Followed by scallops with fried lotus root:

And a creamy soup:

Beef stew and rice:

Dessert was mixed fruit with sorbet. The fruits were just amazing!!!

The next morning, we got served an American style breakfast:

These pensions have to be one of the best deals in Japan!

A horse is a horse of course of course...

2007-06-05T10:56:00.000-07:00

I asked my friend, "ok what's up today?"

"We're going to check out some scenery. There's this really beautiful area here to see!"

"Cool!" I said.

So off to the train station. You know the train station is Ghetto when you actually have to walk across the tracks to get to the platform. All the real train stations have over / underpasses since trains come by so often you don't have time to get NEAR the track!

You also know you are at the Ghetto train station when there are no electric cables above it. Most of the trains in Japan are electric. These trains are Diesels!

The scenery on the train was nice. Here are a few pictures out the window. These are the horses that we ate.. *sniff*. I told my friend that I was sad for eating a horse, and he said he didn't care. I asked him, don't they look so cute there?? And he said... SO???

These are the cows that we ate. *Sniff*. OK I'll still eat them though.

So we finally arrive to where we wanted to go. And I saw this.

Uhmmm... Ok, is it me or did he just tell me that we were going to see some beautiful areas of Japan???? We ended up in a yellow field littered with horse poop, with a black lake in the middle. Uhm.... HUH???

So we look at the travel guide one more time. The pictures show this field lush and green and wonderful. What happened???? Oh we were here too early! It only becomes green by June!!!!! OOOPS!!!!!

But this made up for it. That's the horse I got to ride. He provided me with one of the best moments of the trip!

I asked my friend again... "Look at that horse. Don't you feel bad that you ate it???" He said, "Nope not at all". And I asked him.. "would you eat that horse? The one that you just RODE?" He said, "ok not this one. But I'll eat any of the others!" Boooooo....

On to the story. So throughout the ride my horse was always behind. Here's a picture through the horses ears. That's my friend Fu up ahead.

Near the end of the trip, we stopped to let the horses have a drink of water:

And then we continued out. Here is my friend Fu being really happy showing the Victory sign. That smile on his face did not last for long.

Another view through the horses ears. As you notice -- Fu is not in front of us. Where is fu?

Well BEHIND us of course. My horse decided he was going to run up ahead just at the last minute. What happened then? I heard this sound.

Tooooot... Toooot....

"Was the train driving by?"

Fffftttt. Tooooot..... BRRrrRRBbpbppbpbpbbptttttttt

"Hmmm what's going on????"

From behind me I hear, "AAAUUUGGHHGH!!!!!! DID YOUR HORSE JUST FART!?!?! O M G!!!!! *cough cough cough* AAauuuggh! This is HORRIBLE!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha oohhhhh that was a wonderful moment. I patted my horse on the neck and said Good Horse!!! That is payback for everything he said about eating the horses!!! LoL. My horse ROCKS.

He ran ahead JUST so he could lay a good one on my friend :D. One of the best moments of the trip!

Boot Camp!

2007-06-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today was another successful Boot Camp with Vanessa! This time I brought my carpool / lab partner from work with me. She was such a trooper because lunch gave her a bad stomach ache (she was doubled over in pain while at work and continued to have it throughout bootcamp). I told her to not go, but she wouldn't quit and ran through the entire boot camp without complaints! Yikes! She's way tougher than me is all I can say!

Thanks Vanessa for inviting me to come by. Doing the exercises SUCKS royally. But I feel really accomplished every time we finish! (Although I'm itchy all over now!) It's all worth it. Plus I get to see 'Nessa and that's always a bright spot in the day!

The Second Pension

2007-06-04T13:35:00.000-07:00

Another train ride and we arrive at Uchinomaki station. I'm finally starting to feel better now, thank goodness! Here's a picture at the station. The guy next to me is the owner of the next Pension that we went to. For $85.00 he picked us up from the train station (and took us back each day so we could go sight seeing), cooked us dinner, breakfast, and provided us a room to stay in. He did everything himself!

The pension was nestled in the middle of a beautiful forest. Here are some pictures of the road leading to the place.

A little bit further down the road:

And this is the pension itself:

I think Jordan wanted to see some beds!!! Here you go Jordan! This was our room. We were the only ones there so he gave us the largest room! It was massive with room for 5, a little living room area, and our own bathroom.
Dinner that night was great! It was also the first meal that I could actually taste after being sick. The first course is a salad dish pictured below. It was an extremely tasty salad of mixed greens, salmon, and sashimi meat. The meat tasted great. I thought it was beef at first, but after tasting it it was obvious that it wasn't beef. I later learned it was horse, which I really wouldn't want to eat :(! But it did taste good. This region we were in is apparently famous for their horse and cattle.

The next dish is the obligatory fish dish that comes with every meal:

Followed by a steak that came from the locally raised cattle. It was extremely juicy and delicious!

Dessert was some kind of pudding. Yum!

Loot!

2007-06-03T02:06:00.001-07:00

Last week I had dinner with Cindy to return her ahem... "Goodies" and I received some goodies in return! Cindy got me a whole set of Terra Cotta warriors. This was cool because I was looking for something to take pictures of with the new camera. So here are a few of shots. You can click them for larger versions:

One Warrior Standing Tall:

The whole group of warriors and the horse:

While I was taking this shot unfortunately there was a sudden gust of wind, which blew over the guy on the right :(. He didn't survive, but at least I got this pic!

Cindy also gave me a choice of shot glasses for the olympics next year. I got the Weightlifting one!

Thanks Cindy, these were sweet gifts! I had a lot of fun photographing them. Sorry one of the warriors fell off the shelf while I was taking its picture :(.

Still Sick...

2007-05-31T23:38:00.000-07:00

So the next day I was still feeling quite miserable. So I told my buddy that we should go somewhere that doesn't involve a lot of walking. He told me "no problem, we're only seeing 2 sight seeing things and it shouldn't be much walking". Cool, I thought.

So the first stop was this place, which is an old government site. It's a gigantic empty park to walk around in.
So we had to WALK across this park, which led us to this stream. According to the map there is a temple nearby we can see.

We had to WALK down this road:

And further down this road...

And even further down this road...

And more walking down the road... (This part was cool though cuz they had cherry blossoms along both sides of the road!)
After about a half mile or so we come to a sign that read "Temple, 2.5 kM ahead!" I was like.. Uhm.. I'm not going to make a 2.5km walk and then walk all the way back dude! I thought we weren't going to have much walking!?!?

He made some excuse that it looked like it was really nearby on the map. So we abandoned the temple , and got back on the bus and went to the next region.

.... Where I got to walk up these gigantic stone steps.

Which led to this very tall castle...

Where I walked flight after flight of steep, old-style wooden stairs. Did I mention I had a fever at the time and I was dizzy? Climbing the stairs was a challenge when i could barely walk straight!

I forgot to take pictures at this point except at the top of one of the buildings, I saw this cool hole in the wall. Apparently you are supposed to stick your gun out of this hole and shoot people as they approach! Fun!

This is the view from half way up on top of one of the smaller buildings:After all that climbing i was whiped, so it was back to the next hotel to recover. These past 2 days were the worst of being sick. After that I had a stuffed nose and a cough for the rest of the trip, which was OK so long as the sore throat and fever were gone!

I don't remember most of these!

2007-05-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

So the day after the Kobe Beef, the cold hit me full strength. I had a sore throat, runny nose, a fever, dizzy, tired, the works! It really sucked. Since we changed hotels daily, I couldn't just hang out at the hotel either since checkout is at 10.

So basically I had to suck it up and head out and see stuff. Many of these pictures I don't remember even taking because I must have just snapped them randomly while feeling miserable. I think the random nature of the photos reflect my state of mind :).

I don' t remember this statue, but I think I know why I took its picture. :D

I did remember this guy. We were at the Kawasaki museum and they had this robot on display. It would pick up a rubix cube that hand been randomly shuffled. It would literally "Look" at it (all 6 sides) to figure out how it was shuffled. Then it would solve it! Pretty cool.

Uhm... This must have been at the train station. How weird!

This was dinner. A hot pot. I ate it, but I dont know what it tasted like because at this point i couldn't taste anything! booo! I was told it was quite good!

While I was walking down the street I must have seen a sign for The Spaghetti Factory!!!! I didnt know Japan had a spaghetti factory. It's a great pasta place!

This is a photo of the garden in a temple we visited. I don't remember taking these.

This is the picture of the temple itself. That's my friend in the picture with the red backpack. He has a habit of walking right into the picture that im trying to take!

I think this bridge was also in the temple's garden. It was a nice place!

Next post: More photos of random stuff!

Kobe

2007-05-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

Our next stop was Kobe, home of the famous "Kobe Beef". Of course we couldn't pass up an opportunity to have Kobe beef while in the Kobe region itself! We went to the teppan restaurant pictured below. They were so popular that they opened a second restaurant across the street!

For those that don't know what Kobe beef is, it is a special type of cattle in Japan which is genetically predisposed to having a lot of marbling in the meat. In the U.S., the amount of marbling in a steak is the difference between USDA "Select, Choice, or Prime" beef. The more marbling you have the higher the rating of the beef.

There were 3 choices of beef on the menu. You had "Kobe Beef", or you had "Premium Kobe Beef", or you had "Ultra Premium Kobe Beef". Of course we decided heck, if we're here we are going ultra premium!

We knew it would be expensive when we realized that the steaks were weighed and charged in grams! We had 2 steaks, a filet mignon and a ribeye, each 260 grams. I believe the price came out to $115 per steak, which is aroudn $0.44 per gram. Below is a picture of the raw beef. It is the most marbled steak I have ever seen.

From here, the steak is cut up into sections. The trimmed fat is set aside for a later dish. The steak itself is cut into the individual sections each served in succession so you can taste each individual area of the steak separately. Below is a video of some of the preparation. You can see him cutting off different parts of the steak and moving the meat into different piles.

Then the steak is seared very quickly on the teppan grill, and served with just salt and pepper and a little fried garlic. This is the most tender / juiciest steak I have ever had!

The left over fat that was trimmed off from earlier is chopped up and used to make fried rice! That was some extremely tasty fried rice! Yum!

Needless to say, that not a single scrap was left on our plates once we were done. At $0.44 per gram even a tiny speck of meat could be $1.00's worth!

Now below is something interesting. Our hotel in Kobe had this oddity in the restroom. You know you pat on "After Shave" on the areas you had just shaved. So... what exactly are you supposed to spray "After Toilet" on????? HMmmmmmm..... I didn't try it by the way. (You can click the photo below for a larger version if its hard to read)

This was the last chance that I was able to taste good food because for the next few days I caught a cold. My friend had caught one earlier and i guess it was inevitable that I would eventually catch it too. It was a fantastic "last" meal of sorts!

New Camera

2007-05-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

My dad's friends at work recently purchased new Digital Cameras. They had been bringing all sorts of neat photos for him to see and he was impressed.

Apparently he has the same Monkey-see Monkey-do nature as Vanessa does because soon afterwards he brought home a ton research material on digital cameras, dropped it on my desk, and tried to coerce me into buying one.

I said, "Uhm, I already have a digital camera. Plus the one you want (Nikon D80) is $1300!" He said all his friends at work got one and he wanted one too. So he offered to split the cost with me on it. I had always been curious about these fancy cameras so I acquiesced. So this Sunday I bought this:

It's a Nikon D80 Digital SLR Camera. That means that it works like a professional camera in that you look through the viewfinder (not the LCD) to frame the picture. The viewfinder gets the picture through the lens via a complex set of mirrors so you see exactly what the lens sees. Another cool feature is that the lens is detachable so you can swap it out to suit your particular purpose.

Just as I had pulled the camera out of the box, my brother came over with my niece and demanded I took a picture of her for a birthday party card they wanted to mail out. Keep in mind I had no idea how to use the camera at this point so I set it on full auto, took her to our garden and started snapping away! P.S., I barely know anything about photography at this point, so comments are welcome ;) I think I have a lot to learn to really be able to use this camera.

This shot is using a big zoom lens to blur the background and achieve a "portrait" look.

Another cool part about SLR cameras is that they can take consecutive pictures really fast. Up to 100 shots, 3 per second. This was extremely useful because I just could not get my niece to stand still :) She ran around like a little tyrant while I tried to take these pictures! It's a miracle that any of them turned out!

When we asked her to stand still so that I could take her picture she threw up her arms and shrugged, "Sorry Uncle James that's not possible!" :D

The ability to take a bunch of pictures in a short period of time lets you catch a cool expression right when it happens. And you never know when it will!

I swapped to the non-zoom lens here to capture flowers in the background.:

I wish I had this camera with me when I went to Japan. Even though it is so much bulkier I think it allows for much better pictures than the compact one I have!

Saturday

2007-05-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I took Cindy (another Cindy, not the one you all know) and Judy up to the Wat Thai temple in North Hollywood :

Every weekend at the Temple they have a Thai food fair. When you get there you need to buy these colorful tokens that you can use to buy food at the shops:

Here is just one of the food stands. This particular place sells Mango and Sticky rice dessert. To the left you can see a whole bunch of umbrellas and tables where you can sit to eat. All along the corners of the courtyard are food stands selling authentic "street" thai food like: Satay, Noodle Soups, Chicken rice dishes, dumplings, coconut drinks, sausages, etc!

Here is a picture of the Satay. They have Beef, Chicken, and Pork hot off the Barbecue! My favorite one was the pork satay!

For my main meal I had a bamboo salad dish with a nissen sausage:

Another booth had fried bananas for sale. I love fried bananas!!!

Now comes one of the best desserts I have ever had! It is champagne mango over a bed of mildly sweet sticky rice drizzled with a little coconut milk. It may sound strange to eat mangos with rice, but you HAVE to try it! It is absolutely fantastic!

After the Thai temple we wandered around Los Angeles trying to figure out what to do. The girls mentioned that they had also wanted to try a chinese foot massage but were scared to go without someone to watch over them (some of the places are kind of seedy). So they decided that I would escort them to a foot massage place.

I have to say they are a great deal! The price is $15.00 for one hour. You get a back massage, a foot soak in tea, and of course the foot massage itself. Meanwhile you get to sit in huge, plush chairs and watch plasma TVs while getting your massage! The price was just really fantastic considering how expensive a massage usually is! I went it not expecting much (c'mon $15.00??) but I was really impressed with what we got!

Apparently it is getting really popular now because there were no less than 5 foot massage places in the same block/plaza that we were at! And all of them were bustling with customers. I heard that some of them might offer "Special" services but apparently not the one we went to :)

Off to Seattle! And a food-filled weekend

2007-05-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

I'm going to seattle for most of next week so I will not be able to edit Japan photos for posting! I did all sorts of fun stuff this weekend, so I'll write it up into 3 chunks and post them as I find internet access.

Friday night I went to Sushi Wasabi with Vanessa. Cindy had written about our last adventure there when we went as a group. As a reminder -- the special deal with sushi wasabi is:

1) You don't get to order.
The Chef decides what you eat, and he serves you whatever is freshly available that day. This means you better be able to eat anything or otherwise insult the chef! Jordan once you eat real sushi we'll have to take you here!!!

2) You get REAL Wasabi.
Since real Wasabi Root is so expensive, most sushi places give Wasabi that is actually green-colored horseradish. Others give you Wasabi that was reconstituted from a Dry powder. Here they actually get the REAL root and grind it fresh daily. It makes a huge difference!

The food was so good we ended up staying until closing time. I have to say that this is still the best sushi that I have had. This includes the sushi that I had in Japan! While I did get to try some new / interesting fish in Japan, the flavor and presentation is still better here!

Next post will be about the Wat Thai temple in North Hollywood!

Hakone Hot Springs!

2007-05-17T20:57:00.001-07:00

Our next stop was the Hakone hot springs! Below is a picture of the hotel lobby. Sorry I couldn't get any pictures of the hot springs due to all the naked people running around! So you get to see pictures of the hotel, room, and food!

The ettiquette for hot springs is that you must be nekkid, and it's a giant public bath. Most of them split the ladies from the men, although some share a common bath. As enticing as a shared bath may sound for us guys -- what we end up seeing in those baths are old ladies who are there to check out the young guys who are there hoping to find hot girls (who rarely show)! lol. OH well! So we stuck to the split baths.

Funny Story -- as I was coming out of the bath back into the locker room I was surprised to see a lady there in front of the lockers. I thought I had walked into the wrong locker room oops!!! So I ran out to check and make sure i was in the right place! I was! It turns out the cleaning ladies roam about both the men and womens locker rooms. After the initial surprise wore off, us guys had to oblige them with our special poses :)

Once again its a pretty good deal. Most hot springs are around $110.00 or so. This gets you the hotel room, unlimited access to the hot spring baths, taxi service from the train station, dinner, and breakfast in the morning.

Below is a picture of our room. When you first enter they set up a tea table like this. When you go to dinner, they remove the table and replace it with Futons.

After you have your bath you go to dinner in your bath robe!

Our appetizer was some sort of a green tea custard/pudding:

Another appetizer, snails and Tofu:

You can't have a Japanese meal without some Sashimi or raw fish:

The next course I think is Lotus root topped with vegetables:

After that an herb crusted salmon:

Some rare beef:

Soup! I forgot what the white thing in there was. Probably an egg:

Chocolate cake and Ice cream for dessert:

Breakfast was buffet style. They had 2 buffets. A Japanese traditional breakfast and an american breakfast. I forgot to take pictures of it, but it was quite yummy too!

Not bad for $110.00 huh?

First Pension

2007-05-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have the perception that Japan is an expensive place to stay. This is actually false, and you can get around Japan on a budget if you really know where to look! One of the greatest deals in Japan are the pensions. You can consider them like a bed and breakfast but you get so much more!

The price to stay one night is in this particular pension was $70. This includes the room, Dinner, Breakfast, and usually Taxi service to and from the train station!

Below is a photo of the first pension we stayed at.

Dinner is a multi-course french-japanese style meal. The first course that we had was salmon sashimi and prosciutto ham salad:

The next course was soup! It doesn't look like much but it was extremely tasty actually. I was surprised!

The next course is a pan-fried fish dish! As with all the seafood I had in Japan it was fresh and delicious!

The main course is unlimited rice, and steak from the local cattle:

Polish it off with a Jelly dessert in a cream sauce with mint and berries:

In the morning we get treated to breakfast! This is more american style with Scrambled Eggs, Ham, Hash Browns, Salad, Fruit, Orange Juice, Tea, and Bread!

So you get all of that, for the low price of $70.00 per night! Try to find that anywhere in the U.S. I have to say that the dinner alone is probably worth at least half the cost!

Izu, Home of the Wasabi

2007-05-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

The train ride took us to Izu. This is an area famous for the Wasabi farms. One of the main tourist attractions in the area is this big hill that you can ride a cable car up to and take a view of the whole valley.

Below is Kevin. Kevin is afraid of heights. Deathly afraid. Can you tell???

At the top of the mountain was a guy selling Mochis. These are made from Rice and are kind of like a sticky cake. They are pink because the flavoring of it is Sakura or Cherry Blossoms! (From the trees I posted earlier). It has a unique flowery flavor. We had to try one of course!

You can walk around the rim of the hill. I think it's probably a 1.5km walk. There is actually a "Bowl"in the middle like a volcano. Below is a picture of the bowl.

But if you look closely into the bowl... you realize that there's an archery range there! Sweet! I kind of wanted to give it a shot.

This is how you get into the bowl. You have to carry your arrows, your bow, down these stairs. And then when you're done you have to walk back up! It is a long way down! The group decided that they did not want to do this :).

Below is a picture of me at the top of the hill. Behind me is the valley and the coast line. The wind was blowing strong and it was COLD up here which is why I was wearing my leather jacket. The wind actually gave me quite a headache!

Another picture of the view from the top.

At the souvenier store we found "Hello Kitty Izu!". This is when I realized that every region in Japan had a specialized hello kitty that is for sale only in Japan, and only in that region. This particular hello kitty is supposedly holding a Wasabi root, and tasting it (which is why she has that funny expression on her face.)

But if you ask me, it looks like she's holding a giant green Dildo, Flipping you off, and squinting her eyes at you in disdain. What do you think??? :)

The Train! The Train!

2007-05-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

This was my first long train ride in Japan. We were on our way to Izu. We picked up some Bento lunch boxes for the ride. Below is the one that I got. Yes, those are disposable lunch boxes. Aren't they kind of intricate??

Here's what was inside. Yes it's kind of jumbled up because I started digging through it before I realized i should have taken a picture first :) Oh well. You have fish cakes, fish, bamboo, mochi, plums, rice balls, some meat, carrots, and condiments! It was quite good!

Below is a picture of my friend's lunch box. They sure spend a lot of attention to their presentation! Everything from the Bentos to Snack foods come wrapped in fancy packages.

This is Kevin's lunch. He went for a burger and sandwhich! Boooo!!!!

This is the view out the window of the train! There's so much water in Japan that many of the train rides had scenic vistas of the ocean, lakes, streams, or rivers!

Below is a picture of a small bay that we passed by on our way to Izu!
The next trip post will be about Izu! Home of the Wasabi!

Maxwell Dropped the Bomb

2007-05-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Vanessa treated me to Honda-Ya, a Japanese Yakiniku restaurant. We had all sorts of yummy dishes there. It was great! Thanks Vanessa! :)

Afterwards we went to her place and measured the living room since she wanted to get a new TV. I also finally got to meet her kitties, Maxwell and Angelina! They are such cute kitties. They are sooo spoiled!

I'm mildly allergic to cats. So at first I just watched them from a distance. But as usual I can never resist a cute furry pussy so I had to play with them! Surprisingly enough I did not seem to have any reaction to them at all! Even with Angelina shedding all over the place! Sweet!

The highlight of the night was when we were sitting at the table. Behind me I heard Maxwell munching away at his dinner. As soon as he finished I saw him dart into one litter box, and then run into the other litter box. Their litterbox has a huge dome on top of it so it's almost like a little house with a hole in front.

I saw his guilty little head poke out of the hole, and I looked at Vanessa who had a funny look on her face. "OMG He's going to drop a bomb!". And oh did he drop the Bomb haha, that kitty must get a lot of fiber in his diet because the smell was impressive!!! I just started laughing while Vanessa bolted for the air freshener and proceeded to run around the room spraying it for 30 seconds straight!

That left us with the wonderful aroma of lavendar air freshener and cat turds... Which for some odd reason made me think of strawberries???? Who'd have figured!

So Vanessa, it was fun playing with your pussy cats -- Even though one of them dropped the bomb! Thanks for Friday, I had a great time!

Introducing... Cindy's Turd Song

2007-05-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

I took the day off today, and while I was waiting around in the Morning I decided to concentrate on recording the Turd Song. I actually got it done! Well, it's not as well recorded as I like my stuff to be but it's a joke song so I figured being a little lazy is ok. It's short, but sweet! :)

You can download it here! You can right-click "Save-As" to save it to your hard disk if you want.

Yes, that's me singing. Sorry you'll have to put up with my voice cuz I can't find a singer for my music :) Oh well!

I had rearranged the lyrics a little to make it fit the song, so here are the words:

Yo turd, my lovah,
thought you were gone forevah,
but then I turned and whoa mama,
my ass got taken ovah…

(Chorus)
My biggest mistake in my life,
was when i flushed you down away,
How could I have done you that-a-way,
my turd............
my only turd!

(Repeat)

Just in case someone tries to steal or sell our work (lol), this music is (C) Cindy and James 2007. :)

The Ramen Nazi

2007-05-07T22:35:00.000-07:00

I never really liked eating Ramen in the U.S. I guess i've had too many bowls of "Instant Ramen" or "Cup of Noodles" as a kid that it tainted my opinion of Ramen.

After Ueno park, we decided to have Ramen for lunch. This is a picture of the poster outside that shows what it looks like inside the place. You sit in a "cubicle" of sorts to eat your Ramen!

The atmosphere kind of reminds me of the "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld. You go in, get your food, enjoy it, and get out. No putzing around allowed!

I didnt want take many pictures inside because I wasn't quite sure if I should be doing it or not. But it was so unique I had to grab at least a few shots!

It was really dark, and i was being surreptitious by not using the flash. I'm surprised these shots turned out. Kudos to Panasonic's image stabilization. For you photo people these pictures were taken using 1/8 sec shutter speed all hand-held!

To the right is a picture of the cubicle. You have a little water spout to the left if you're thirsty. The little bamboo thing in front slides up and they pick up your meal ticket (I'll explain this later) and slide your meal through here.

The red curtain is always there -- so you can not see who is serving you your food. Apparently you are supposed to concentrate on the food and eating, and not be distracted by anything else!

To the left is a sign which is attached to every cubicle. Check out the pictures in Red. No smoking! No Cell Phones! And definately NO TALKING! :)

They really go out of their way to make this a personal / individual kind of thing. This posed a problem for us non-japanese speaking tourists. We have 1 guy in our group that speaks fluent Japanese. Usually he orders everything and does the communication.

Because of the way the seating is done, and because there is no talking, we were not allowed to communicate with each other. The ordering was slightly complicated as well because you can choose: How thick you want the soup; How well done you want the noodles; if you want pork or not; if you want green onions or not; How spicy you want it, etc. You really can customize your meal to your taste!

This is how the line works. When a cubicle opens up a little light turns blue on this wall. When that happens the next person in line can go in and take his seat. I.e., you can't choose who you sit next to.

Everything is written and communicated in Japanese and since you can't see the person serving you it's a little hard to communicate :)

You order your food through a machine like this.
You even pay the machine, and it gives you tickets which
you give to your server.

This is a close-up of the Ramen! It was fantastic!
The soup really made it special, but the noodles were
hand made, fresh, and al-dente. If they had Ramen
like this in the states I would eat it often! :)

It's Coming...

2007-05-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

That's right. "Cindy's Turd Song" is coming! I wasn't kidding around when I told Cindy in that chat that I had picked up my guitar and started writing the music for it.

Vanessa was over and I played it for her today. She was laughing the whole time, and she gave me a GREAT idea to play it on Cindy's voice mail so she can hear it first thing as a "Welcome Back!" to the USA and the Blogger world. Thanks Vanessa! I think Cindy's going to love it.

But then I realized that all you other bloggers won't be able to enjoy the turd song. That is... Unless I recorded it!

So I'm putting together a recording now. It'll take a few weeks for me to get all the instruments written and recorded, but when i'm done I'll post it for download.

P.S., Happy Birthday Vanessa! Well it's not really her birthday but I just got her a special belated birthday present!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

2007-05-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

After the fish market we were scheduled to visit Ueno park. This is a famous park in Tokyo where they do "Hanami" or flower watching.

April is the month when the Sakura, or Cherry Blossoms, bloom. This happens once per year. After it blooms the flower petals will float to the ground throughout the day covering the ground in pink, or white flower petals. Once all the petals fall (they all fall in less than 1 week!) the tree is left bare for the rest of the year.

It's the national tree of Japan, so april is a special month. People come out to sit under the trees, have lunch, drink sake, and enjoy themselves.

Unfortunately for us the first day of bloom it was raining quite hard, so the petals that would normally be blanketing the ground were wet and smooshed. No one was out sitting under the trees either!

Since the sky was cloudy the pictures didn't turn out too nice. Plus it was hard taking pictures with one hand while holding an umbrella in the other! So this time around i didn't grab too many pics. Here is a shot of one of the trees.

We actually lucked out for the 3 weeks we were there. We started in the warmer region and progressed through colder regions each week. The trees bloom later when it is colder -- so we ended up seeing the trees in full bloom for all 3 weeks of the trip!

I actually have better pictures of the sakura coming up in the later posts. But, I'm posting in chronological order.

This was the last week for some of the people in our group. So they needed more bags to carry souvenirs home. We found this bag shop in the park where you can get them for about $10.00 each!

Now, i saw this sign on a bag. It's written in Japanese and I was instantly drawn to it! I can't quite figure out why, but I wanted to buy this bag :D.

I pointed it out to my Japanese speaking friend and he said, "What? I don't see anything weird!"

Is it just me???

Hotel Trettio

2007-05-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Most people have the impression that Japan is expensive. But with a little investigation you can get around for a very reasonable amount of money.

Instead of staying at the big hotels (For $200-$300 a night) The first few days in Tokyo we stayed at Hotel Trettio. The price was great (around $75.00 a night). Although, it was tough to find since it was tucked away behind several alleyways! (There are very few street signs in Japan so you have to get around via landmarks)

To get there you have to find this temple:

Then you make a right down a little alley:

Follow this alley around a few turns like this:
The staircase to the hotel: (we climbed a LOT of stairs carrying our luggage)
(Had to steal this photo from the web cuz i forgot to take a pic of this myself!)

Here's the hotel. It is really does seem out of place here if you compare to the other photos above:
(Stole this photo too!)

Inside things were really old fashioned. Take a look at the Key that they gave us. Apparently this was the only key, because we had to return it to the front desk everytime we stepped out:

Each room came with a toothbrush and a Razor. I couldn't help but laugh at the caption below. "Have a good shaving for your fresh life!". My life is much freshened after using this razor!

Say Hello to My Little Black Friend!

2007-05-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

So imagine a girl goes on a trip far way ... to let's say China.

She has some items in her possession that could be embarassing for her should she not make it back and her parents find them when they search her home.

So she begs you to keep these items in safe keeping for her until she returns.

What is one to do?

Why... Take pictures and post them on the Internet of course!!!! DUH!!!!

Click to see:
Say Hello!

Don't mind the Tuna. I think Cindy will get it! Hi Cindy!

The First Morning

2007-04-30T00:44:00.000-07:00

The first day I arrive, we decide to go to the Tsujiki fish market. It opens early in the morning so we woke up at 5:00am to get there on time! That was quite a feat for me for anyone that knows me!

The fish market is a gigantic warehouse. Imagine an area of a couple walmarts. Except all the merchandise is seafood! Inside there are carts, weird drum-cars (see the video), and people running around like mad to bring the daily catch in.

1. View from the center of the market

2. Doesn't he look friendly?

3. A bunch of little Fishies!

4. Tuna is Expensive!
5. Lobster! Yummy!

6. Shrimp to throw at Jordan!

7. Clams!

Here is a short walk-through video I took in the market:

After the fish market we decided to visit a sushi bar next door to have breakfast! Mmmm Jordan and Flat Coke this is what you can enjoy if you come visit us :)

We wanted to get the freshest items so we told the Sushi chef to order the items for us. We got a few items that we never had before. Here's some of the selection we had (I didnt take a picture of all of them):

1. Sweet Shrimp (Ama Ebi)

2. Another type of Shrimp

3. Sea Urchin!

4. I think it's Clam...

5. The salmon was only $1.50! Cindy would love it!

6. Baked Eel. Jordan can Handle this!

7. Don't know what it is!

8. I think it's squid tentacles!

Everything tasted great and was super fresh! I forgot to take a picture of the Salmon eggs. But for anyone that's had them before in the U.S. they are usually extremely salty. The ones here were not salty at all and they were great! It may be because they are fresh and don't need to be preserved? I'm not quite sure why.

We had quite a few items that we weren't quite sure what it was. This won't be the last time that happens either!

So... Did this post make you hungry???

You know you're getting old when...

2007-04-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

Ok Jordan, heres another post for you! :D

You know you're getting old when you go and have some drinks on Friday and you don't get carded when you're used to getting carded every time.

Then, on the weekend you go to Del Taco for lunch and you get the senior discount!

What's going on here?!?!?

Beginning with the end.

2007-04-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

So I've been handing out all sorts of gifts recently, so I figured this is a good time to post this. After this post will be the real pics from the trip! So here is a picture of all the junk that I brought back with me from all over Japan:

I didn't realize I had actually collected so much stuff since i bought items here and there and just shoved them into my suitcase. Since I had a small suitcase i really dont know how i managed to squeeze all this in. The funny part is I now realize that i bought a bunch of stuff for people but didnt pick up very much for myself. I started giving out the stuff and now the shelf is nearly empty! Oh well!

Here's a closeup of one of the gifts i got for my coworker. I got him a Fukin' washcloth:

It went something like this:

Me: Hey G, heres your gift. I got you a Fukin' Washcloth! *Chucks the washcloth on the desk*
G: Geez! What?
Me: And its not just Fukin'. Its 100% Fukin!
G: ??????
Me: Look at it!!!
G: LOL that rules!

(.. Later on)
S: Hey G, what did James get you from Japan
G: A FUKIN' Washcloth!
M: Geez, if you didn't like it you should have told me! No need to be so vulgar!
G: "No Look!"
S: LOL. It's *IS* a Fukin' washcloth!!!

I have a big, black, uhm.. Appendage.

2007-04-27T01:06:00.000-07:00

... And it's not a finger, a toe, an arm, or a leg.

So I went out for a bite to eat with Cindy today. Actually, I had already eaten dinner. But Cindy was going to skip dinner so I insisted that she eat and I went to meet up with her and ate a second dinner. Maybe I shouldn't have because...

After dinner she thrust upon me what felt like a long, black, rubbery appendage. It was BIG. Like it was LONG and WIDE at the same time... At least along with it was some gooey liquid. That helps take care of the sting.

She also gave me uhm... a longish item with a hook on the end leading to an egg-shaped bubble. Hmmmm....

OK. So Apparently... It still has batteries in it!

I also received what feels like a round, flexible object about an inch in diamater kind of like a ring.... What the heck would she do with THAT?????

Theres a long, bullet-shaped item, but unfortunately it seems impotent. I guess it must be getting a little too old.

Ok this is SO wrong. I hope no one digs around in the trunk of my car.

CINDY YOU BETTER COME BACK ALIVE!!!!

Sneaky Previews

2007-04-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

There are some really cool people out there that demanded I did this little thingy (you know who you are!!!) So, for you cool people: this is for you!

For anyone that doesn't know what's going on -- I took a trip to Japan three weeks ago, and I'm going to use this to share the photos I took.

You might ask, "What exactly will I see here?" Well here's a little preview. We will be exploring questions such as:

What is this Woman doing?

What is going on with this statue???

What are these monkeys doing???

What is THAT?

Why is Hello Kitty giving us the finger?

I'll talk about these, and other fun things that I ended up seeing in Japan!

I will probably start off a little slow since i have a lot of photos to organize (and im still waiting for photos to get to me that other people took). Plus, a certain person will soon be away for 2 weeks :( and we wouldn't want her to fall too far behind!

But I figured I should set this up now and give you all a little preview!

Hope you all like it!