Tim’s Ramblings

Some of the snacks at the Narita World Clubs Lounge. I later got a beer but that’s ginger ale. There’s mini panini sandwiches, a chicken sandwich, and some deep fried beef on a stick. They also have noodles, soup, cake, sushi, and a decent self serve bar. Yum.

Though I had a nice lunch with dad at a sushi joint here so I really only got this to take a pic and much on over the next hour and a little bit that I have left to wait before boarding.

Gonna be a loooooong flight…

…ran out of ideas… So today you get a shot of the apartment building across the way from my parent’s place. Their place looks almost exactly like this one. They live on the 2nd floor so it’s convenient.

Going home tomorrow. Woo! Even if it’s for just a week!

Oh…and it snowed in Tokyo today. It only ever snows like once a winter here. For the past 4 years starting in 2006 I have been in Tokyo for it. Today it barely accumilated let alone leave any trace… But the last 2 years it has been pretty nasty (for Tokyo standards…).

Somehow I don’t consider myself too lucky…

This is the “courtyard” of the hotel. The hotel is actually the top 4 floors of an office building. Starts on the 14th floor. But they opened up the middle like an atrium though we can’t access it.

This is shot from my floor tonight on the 15th floor. Kinda pretty. Tonight is my last night here. I check out tomorrow and spend the night at my parents before flying home on Saturday (only to do it again in a week…eeesh…).

Now…off to bed.

Got home too late last night to post so posting this morning before heading out.

Last night J and I headed out to Kawasaki for dinner and stopped by a bookstore (had to pick up 2 new comic books…). There I saw this.

A Japanese / Italian dictionary…the Hello Kitty Edition.

Really???

According to the label on the bottom it contains words for food, fashion to business and is a Hello Kitty version dictionary for women who wants to learn Italian!

…really? Isn’t that what a dictionary IS? Contains info of words for business all the way up to food and fashion? I flipped through and there was nothing inside to indicate anything that it’s a HK edition. Just a standard dictionary with a new wrapping.

The marketing person is a GENIUS!!

And the HK insanity continues…

Tonight was B’s last night in Japan before he goes back to the US so we had a nice dinner with everyone from the Japan office along with me, him, and J who just got in and will be here for a week.

We went to another yakiniku place. Very very tasty. Lots and lots of meat :) Following up on the whole “marbled meat” discussion, here is one of the plates of meat we got tonight.

First off, I need to say that it was incredibly tasty and incredibly tender. I mean…almost falling apart tender. I loved it.

Now. The reason why? All that fat. I mean…look at the marbling!! When you bite down you see white. Not pink. It was falling apart because the fat was melting.

So it’s really different. Beef fat is tasty. But yeah…it’s definitely something you won’t find too often in the US.

Still. Good to have now and again though. Can’t deny the fact that it was some pretty damn good greasy fatty goodness!!

Got myself one of those multi-memory card readers so I’m back!!

Start off with another long exposure shot. This time it’s the train tracks looking towards Shinagawa. The streak along the left is the bullet train.

It was the last clear night of my trip I think since starting today it’s been dreary and rainy and looks to be that way the rest of the time I’m here.

For anyone curious, this was an 8 second exposure at f/5.0 at ISO80. The tree on the right is a bit blurred due to wind but overall not too bad. This is pretty much direct from the camera without any other work done besides cropping and white balance correction. I have the RAW file so I hope to do some more work on this when I get back home and I’m back on my own computer. :)

My SD card reader on this damn laptop is not working! Something happened while I left it at the Tokyo office this afternoon while I headed out to a partner’s office since, when I got back to our office tonight, the thing had rebooted itself while in sleep mode and the card reader was no longer detected…

I tried to fix it but so far no luck… I’ll have to go get a card reader tomorrow sometime. Dammit… :(

So, no photo tonight, even though I got a really really cool 8 second long exposure shot!! Booo….

Today I went to my parent’s place to hang out and do laundry as well. I only really bring a week’s worth of clothes so it’s a good excuse to take a break over the weekend.

This time though, I had the last of the State Quarters for dad. I got him this State Quarter album 10 years ago back when it started (…I think it was through a TV ad…).

Inside is a map of the US with a hole for the quarters to go in. Dad was taking care of it until 2006 when my parents moved back to Japan. Since then, he has been relying on myself and my sister for the quarters. It wasn’t easy…the later it got the more quarters were out there… But today the book is finally finished since I managed to find a Hawaii one before I came to Japan!

All done!!

:)

Outback Steakhouse. In Tokyo. Mmmm. Woo.

:)

This here is probably the single hardest to find milk caramel in Japan right now.

It’s raw milk caramel from “hanabatake bokujou” or “flower garden ranch”. What’s so special? It’s handmade and melts in your mouth. …why is it so hard to find? Because the ranch is owned by a famous Japanese actor. It’ll be like trying to buy caramel made by hand at the ranch owned by Clint Eastwood or something. You can only really find this in the northernmost island of Hokkaido too so that makes it even harder to find.

Is it worth standing in line for hours for? Um…well…depends on your priorities I guess. But this was a gift so who am I to say no?

Oh, for the record, it’s very tasty and it really did melt in my mouth :D