NEWS FLASH NUMBER 2: earthquake!

There was a fairly large earthquake off the eastern coast of Japan last night, about 1:00 am local time here. I actually woke up twice from the quake and then from an aftershock. As I was lying in bed wondering how serious it was and if I should get up and go outside, I counted slowly and got up to 35, if I remember right (I was pretty sleepy!)--in any case, it lasted quite a while! So, that's the strongest quake I've felt since I've been in Japan. BUT . . . there was no damage here, as far as I can tell (well, it shook a cannister of chewing gum off my desk, making a large noise that startled me; some of the pieces of gum were chipped, but I guess that can't be considered damage). Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.

NEWS FLASH

I have found . . . . . REFRIED BEANS!!!! Hurray!!!

I went to the imported food shop in the local mall and found cans of refried beans and frozen tortillas, both at a pretty high price. As you can see in the picture the beans were 396 yen, which is currently $3.77. The store (Kaldi Coffee Farm) is a chain, and I have actually been to one location that was MUCH larger in Tokyo, and they didn't have refried beans there, so I was surprised to see them here. So tomorrow I'm having taco salad, and if the beans are good, I'm going back to the store to get more (and if I buy a lot, maybe they'll keep stocking them).

Sakura (Cherry Blossom) Trip

As many people probably already know, viewing cherry blossoms (hanami) is a big part of Japanese culture in the spring. About a month ago, I took a trip to Tokyo, mostly for that purpose. I went to Ueno Park first, which is one of the most famous places for cherry blossoms in Japan. The trees were a little past their peak blooming, but it was still very beautiful. The park was extremely crowded, which can get annoying, but the cultural experience was definitely worth it. In one of the pictures, you can see blue tarps laid out on the ground; those are spots that are reserved for groups coming later to have a hanami party. I'm told that there are people who are paid just to stay in an area and protect it for the people who will come later in the day; I did see some people who seemed to be doing that. I walked down the main avenue where a large number of the biggest trees are, around the edge of the park, and then through the area that has a large pond with lilies in the summer. Guests that have visited me, you should remember the location of the panorama picture I'm including, but imagine the pond full of lilies, and it might look more familiar-in March there are still just brown stalks. (Paula, remember the spot in the park where you kept saying, "OK, no more pictures. OH! That's beautiful! One more picture. OK, no more pictures! Ooh, that's beautiful -- one more . . . . . ")

I'll continue the trip next time...

Ghibli Museum

In March, Mondo, Aiko and I went to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, a western suburb of Tokyo. Ghibli is a very famous animation studio in Japan that has produced some of Japan's most popular films. I started to become very interested in these films while I was still in the USA, and continue to enjoy them. Animated movies are frequently thought of as something just for children in America (with some exceptions, of course), but that is much less the case in Japan. Even movies that might have children as their primary audience are usually much deeper thematically and artistically than their counterparts in the US. If you haven't seen any of Ghibli Studio's movies before, I highly recommend them (especially Totoro). The museum showcases these movies, and has exhibits that show a short history of animation and the theory behind it through interactive displays. No photography is allowed inside, but I do have some pictures that I took outside the museum. Sorry about the strange shape of the photo of the outside of the museum; I stitched it together from six separate pictures, and the angles ended up a bit strange, but it was the only way I could get the whole building together. The giant robot in the picture with Mondo & Aiko is from a great film called Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

After the museum, another friend, Minoru, joined us. We went to a Mexican restaurant that was having a lunch buffet (hurray! Mexican food!). Later, we looked around the area near Tokyo Dome so I could check out a game store to see if they had any interesting board or card games. They had a reasonably sized assortment, but since many good-quality games currently originate from Germany, and the rules are then translated into Japanese for the market here, there wasn't much that would really be useful for me. (Shortly after that, I found one of my favorite games, "Ticket To Ride", in the local mega-electronics store here in Utsunomiya, but that will be another post . . . )

We took the train to Shinjuku, and we spent much of the evening looking around there. We went to an amazingly large bookstore and walked past Krispy Kreme, which is extremely popular. It's a bit difficult to see in the picture, but the line to get in goes all the way around the front of the restaurant, up the stairs on the side of the building, and over the top of a pedestrian bridge in the background (we did NOT bother to wait for donuts). Our last stop was the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo ( 48 stories) which has a free observation deck near the top.

Thanks for a very fun day, Mondo, Aiko and Minoru!

(P.S. If you didn't already figure this out, all the links connect to information on Wikipedia in case you want to read any more about some of the things I mentioned.)

My second birthday in Japan

Thanks to everybody that sent cards and gifts. I'm including a link to a YouTube video that I made of some of them. The video doesn't include all the Internet cards and greetings I received (it would be kind of hard to video those) but thanks to everybody that sent those greetings also!
Here's the link: Birthday Cards

Mauricio & Kay (part two)

The next day we took a bus tour of central Tokyo (Mauricio and Kay, thanks again for inviting me!) I had never been part of an organized, "touristy" activity in Tokyo before, so it was fun to see things from that perspective (kind of new again) and get some information from a native expert. Our tour guide was great; so you can easily follow them in a crowd, most guides here carry a long pole with a flag on the end, usually something fairly traditional. As you can see in the picture, our guide's "flag" was a small, stuffed Pikachu toy-VERY easy to pick out in a crowd! As she was explaining, she had a good balance of contemporary culture, history and humor.

We visited a couple of the main temples, the gardens at the Imperial Palace, drove by the Japanese Diet Building (Diet as in Congress, not food, although we did have some good food for lunch...), drove through the Akihabara and Ginza districts, and ended up in Odaiba (Tokyo Bay) before returning to the hotel. Odaiba is the man-made island in Tokyo Bay that has a large entertainment and cultural district. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember pictures of Japan's Statue of Liberty that I took last year. Here's the same location with Mauricio, and also a view of the statue from the boat tour we took. The whole tour (on the bus and on the ship) lasted most of the morning and afternoon, and I was surprised at how much we were able to see in that short time.

Mauricio and Kay, I'm very glad you guys were able to visit and that we could spend some time together. Come back and visit again any time!

Mauricio & Kay

A couple of months ago, my friend Mauricio sent me an e-mail surprising me with the news that he and his wife, Kay, were planning to come to Japan for a trip. I actually thought he was joking at first (Mauricio, you do have a history of jokes and kidding people, you know!) but when he sent me back an e-mail with their schedule, I realized he was serious. So, not long after that, I happily greeted my friends Mauricio & Kay in Tokyo (about five weeks ago). We spent the weekend together, traveling to different areas of the city. It was great to see them, and fun for me to be able to show people around one of my adopted cities (even though I certainly am not an expert). We met up on Saturday afternoon, relaxed and caught up a bit in their hotel, and then took the train to Ueno Park and Shibuya.

The first picture is actually from the next day when we took a tour around the city, and I'll save that description for another post, but I think it's a great picture of Mauricio and Kay, so I started with that one. The next picture is in Ueno Park, not far from the zoo. The picture with the shrine and the video monitor behind it is near their hotel in Shinagawa. I thought it was an interesting contrast between an old image of Japan and a very modern one. The last picture is in Shibuya near the Hachiko statue. After walking around the district and being amazed by the energy and scale of the neighborhood, we were walking back to the train station. Near the entrance there was a group of people holding up signs (as you can see in the picture) that said "free hugs". I thought it was very odd, so of course, took a picture. Since then, I've checked online, and it's apparently a recent, semi-worldwide movement; check this link if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Hugs_Campaign

More later . . .

Nasu (Northern Tochigi)

About three weeks ago I took a trip to the Nasu area of Tochigi. I visited my former student, now friend, Hiromu. He had visited here in Utsunomiya a couple of weeks before, and we talked about getting together again in his city, so when I realized that I had a day during my spring vacation that I had no other commitments, I decided that would be a good day to visit. Hiromu and I made a plan, and on April 1st I took the train there. The shinkansen goes there and takes only 17 minutes, but costs about $30, so the local train taking 45 minutes and costing only about $8 seemed like a much better choice! Since I'm such a roller coaster maniac, and there's a fairly large amusement park there, that was on the list of things to do that day, of course. The weather forecast for Utsunomiya was predicting a warm, sunny, comfortable day.

Did I mention that it was April 1st? The weather was about to play a big April Fools joke on me...


After about 20 minutes on the train, I noticed that the weather was getting much worse-dark and cloudy. About 10 minutes after that, the train traveled through a small town where there was snow on the ground, which really surprised me. The closer I got to Nasu, the worse the weather got. Hiromu met me at the station, and as we were driving away from the parking lot, the rain slowly started to change to a mix of rain and snow. We decided to drive to the amusement park anyway, and see what the conditions were like, and well . . . . you can see the picture! I guess I didn't realize how much higher the elevation is in Nasu!

Obviously, the amusement park plan was canceled. Nasu is known for having many different kinds of museums. One that I had heard of before, and that Hiromu had never visited, is a group of three "trick art" museums. We decided that would be a good, unexpectedly snowy day activity.

The two photos with paintings in them are completely flat (2D) but have a strong 3D look because of the technique used where part of the picture extends beyond the frame. The other two photos use an optical illusion and a trick. (I'm not actually doing a handstand in the middle of an art museum.) See if you can figure them out!

After the museums, we went to an onsen, which felt really good after the cold, gloomy weather. Then Hiromu's father called and invited us to come and have dinner at their family pension. From previous descriptions that I had heard of pensions in Japan, and from the word itself, I expected that it would be something like a "B and B" (Bed and Breakfast) in America. I was very surprised; it's more like a small hotel! It turns out that in Japan, the word hotel is usually only used for structures that are four stories tall or higher. So even though this building has many guest rooms, and more than one floor, it's not considered a hotel. In any case, it's a wonderful place! Kuroda-san (Hiromu's father) is an excellent chef, and served us a delicious steak dinner, the best I've had in at least a year! As we were finishing our dinner, Hiromu's mother arrived and spent some time talking with us too. Kuroda family, thank you again for a great evening!

So, in spite of the snow, the day turned out great! (And I'll visit the amusement park another time. . . !)

Mount Kogashi

I'll post something more recent before trying to catch up on older trips and pictures: on Saturday my friend from church, Shouji, and I went to Mount Kogashi. It's about a half-hour drive into the countryside from Utsunomiya. (Previous visitors: it's a little further beyond the town of Oya where the huge Kannon statue is.) At the foot of the mountain there's a beautiful park with a reservoir surrounded by trees, including several sakura (cherry trees). They were still blooming when we visited, and that's one of the pictures I'm including. The other panorama photo is from the top of the mountain (or very large hill). The third picture is Shouji near the summit. Shouji, thanks for again for taking me-I had a great time!

Part three of Kappabashi--when we WEREN'T in Kappabashi

After leaving the Hanayashiki amusement park, As we were approaching the main area, we walked a few blocks to the nearby temple. a small group of geisha (or possibly maiko--click the link to Wikipedia for more info if you're interested) was leaving one of the buildings. That's not an uncommon scene here, but it made for a good photo in any case. One of my favorite pictures that I took while I was there is the cat sitting on the pedestal of the statue. There are quite a few wild cats at this temple, but I mean wild more in the sense of living on their own; the one in the picture was actually very friendly. At one end of the temple complex, there's a LOOOOOOONG shopping arcade that is frequently jammed with people--that was certainly the case the day we visited!

After leaving Asakusa, we took the train to the opposite side of "downtown" Tokyo in the district called Roppongi Hills. The last picture was taken on the observation deck of the Mori Building (where I went to the modern art museum previously). I posted pictures from that viewpoint before, but they were all night views--it was very cool to see the same view during the day.

Kappabashi's neighbor

Well, really the neighborhood next to the Kappabashi neighborhood, Asakusa. That didn't really make much sense. In any case, after visiting Kappabashi, Mondo and I went to Asakusa and visited Hanayashiki, which, as you can see in the picture, is the oldest amusement park in Japan! (if you count the fact that it opened in 1853 as a flower park.) It does have the oldest, continuously operating roller coaster in Japan, which you can see me riding in the second picture. You can also see that many of the other riders were children--not a very scary coaster, but fun from a roller coaster history point of view! Mondo didn't go on the roller coaster (not so creatively named "ro-ra-ko-suta-") because he wanted to take pictures of my coaster adventure (absolutely NOT because he is scared of roller coasters! Hmm.... uh.... well... ) (By the way, Mondo, you took a great picture!)

God blessed us with a coupon for free entrance tickets (good that day only) that was being passed out close to the train station which was great, because otherwise we would have had to pay about $7.00 each just to get into the park so I could ride one roller coaster. (Thank you!)

Randy and Diane, you can see the hotel where we stayed in the background of the third picture.


More later . . .

Kappabashi

A few weeks ago, Mondo and I went to Tokyo to hang out for the day. We spent time in Kappabashi, Asakusa, and Roppongi. In this post, I'll focus on the first part of our trip in Kappabashi.

Kappabashi-dori is famous for two things. The first is "kappa", a mythological creature
from Japanese legends that has a plate shaped head and loves to eat cucumbers (and children)--yeah, very strange, if you're interested, here's a link to the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_%28folklore%29
The second is kitchen supply stores, including ones that sell the food models that are displayed in front of many restaurants in Japan. It might sound like an odd combination (well, I guess actually it is a little odd) but it was fun and interesting. The pictures are two famous buildings with appropriate themes for the neighborhood, a kappa statue (there are MANY lining the streets all over the district) and a food sample store. Click on the food sample picture if you want to see how realistic the models are. They really are amazing . . . and expensive.

I'll continue the trip in the next post.

Japanese Burritos!

As I've mentioned (several times!) before, one of the only food items I miss here in Japan is Mexican food. When I visited America in December/January I had planned on bringing back cans of refried beans, which are nearly impossible to find here. I realized that could end up making my suitcase MUCH too heavy, so I decided to bring back dry pinto beans instead, so I can make my own refried beans. Yesterday and today I worked on my first try.

Cooking the beans was the easy part; time-consuming, but easy. They turned out pretty tasty. I experimented with different seasonings and ended up adding red chili powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I finally found a grocery store that sells a brand of salsa that's made locally, so it's not too expensive. For sour cream (which is rather difficult to find here) I substituted plain yogurt. The hardest part was tortillas. I have seen them here (only frozen, not fresh), but they are crazy expensive. I thought about what I could use as a substitute, and finally realized, since I'm in Utsunomiya (which is considered to be the gyoza/pot sticker capitol of Japan) I should use gyoza wrappers! They're not too different from tortillas, except for their size. I had originally thought that I could make very small versions of rolled burritos, but quickly realized that would be impossible. My compromise: put beans and cheese on a gyoza wrapper and then top it with another and fry both sides. So they ended up more like what some people call tostadas, but they were delicious anyway.

Maybe next time I'll splurge and buy real tortillas-it would definitely save some time . . .

America Vacation 2007 (and 2008): San Jose

(Note: I've tried several times to upload pictures, and it's not working tonight, so I'll have to add the pictures later. Update: the pictures are finally uploaded, but smaller size than usual. As always, click on a picture for a larger version.)

On January 2nd, I flew from Portland to San Jose, California to visit family and stay with my cousins. I stayed much of the time at Elaine & Tim's house and also visited Vic & Mary's place (uncle & aunt). My other "grew up through childhood together beloved cousin", Paula, (sister of Elaine) also spent an extended weekend there with us.

Elaine picked me up at the airport on a beautiful, warm, California afternoon with the greeting, "enjoy the weather today-a storm's coming from Alaska tomorrow!" So we made as much as we could of the weather that afternoon and early evening. We went to a nearby park and played Bocce (an outdoor, Italian version of bowling-very fun!) and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we went to San Francisco to take our "What's Up Doc?" movie location tour. In spite of the beginning of the arrival of the storm and the rain it brought, we had a VERY fun time finding and taking pictures of locations from our favorite movie (our meaning "Elaine & I"-Tim,thanks for putting up with our craziness!). I have several pictures of that part of the trip, of course, but I'm going to make a whole separate entry for that adventure, possibly on my auxiliary blog. I'll keep you posted, so to speak.

Even though the weather got nasty (with wind so strong that it knocked down trees and cut the electricity at Tim & Elaine's house for several hours), Paula braved the storm and (thankfully!) arrived safely Friday evening. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hanging out and playing games including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and various new and old card games. I also showed pictures that I'd taken in Japan during different trips with visitors. Paula and Caitlin had to return home at the end of the weekend, and fortunately the storm had mostly passed through by then.

Other fun activities included playing a variety of funny Wii games ("Now what do I do with this controller?) and listening to old 45s of disco songs (you know, 7-inch 45-rpm records, those little records that only have one song on each side-they used to sell them so that when you heard a song on the radio that you liked you could just buy . . . oh, never mind . . . ) I had Mexican food three times and In-N-Out Burger, hurray!

So again, Elaine & Tim and Vic & Mary, thanks for hosting and for rides from and to the airport, and Paula, thanks for making a long drive for a short time to visit while I was there!!!! I had a great time!