Airport Part 2

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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!"

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

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!

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...

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.