Tim’s Ramblings

My view from the Narita Express train to the airport this morning. Once past Chiba station when there’s about 20 minutes left it goes into the country side with mountains and farms and a far cry from the megalopolis that is Tokyo. It’s a little bit relaxing drinking bottled tea and staring out the window as the scenery flies by.

…Virgin Atlantic always seems to have something cool. Like this image on one of their planes. …I want to ride Surfer Girl!

Need to start walking towards my gate in another 20 minutes or so. Then a long flight to Detroit…a RIDICULOUSLY long layover…longer than it would take to drive home…which I will not do since I don’t want to deal with driving in the snow while jet lagged…and then finally home… Can’t wait!

:)

I have no special photo for today… None. So for today you get the one more of transportation you don’t see me talk about often…the city bus. Convenient if you live pretty far from the train stations. Lucky for me, almost all of the places I need to go for work or otherwise is within walking distance. :)

I’m going home tomorrow though. Wooo! Probably only for 2 weeks…but home none the less! I look forward to it, snow or not! :)

..Yes. I am admitting to this. This is no longer embarrassing to me…I have come to accept the fact that I should not be allowed to wear white. Unfortunately, to make my life easier, ALL of my dress shirts are white..which means stuff like this happens… This is what happened when I ate sushi at a cheaper sushi joint (still better than anything in OH…) where the rice wasn’t molded well enough and it separated as I was bringing it to my mouth and half of it fell into the soy sauce…dammit… *sigh*…

Tonight though, we went to a Spanish restaurant. And what’s more Spanish than a paella? Well…let me just say it was absolutely delicious. And…well…this is the only photo I managed to get. After all, I was too busy eating!!

To get to the restaurant though, it’s off the main street and back behind tiny narrow alleyways packed with small but typically cheap and tasty restaurants. Tokyo is far more of a dining out city than most in the US since the average commute for most workers is about an hour and a half…so people will just eat out after work before going home. Mmm…

:)

Not much going on today. I’m just tired…only 2 days left but…Just beat. I can feel myself draining away… *sigh*…of course I’ll probably be back here for just a week in 2 weeks… Oh well. Time to finish strong.

So. On with the pics.

Went to a local cafe for a snack and to have a meeting with my coworkers here. They had this ice coffee where the ice cube was also frozen coffee. Yum :)

The local mall this evening. They do events and such with pretty well known celebrities and such here too.

:D

Looks like my camera battery will make it too. I’ve been very conservative with the photo taking and it looks like I’ll make it 2 weeks without a charger! Even more reason to love the Panasonic GF1. It’s such a great great little camera!!! And I loooove the 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens. LOVE IT!

Women’s curling. The nation of Japan had lots of hope in them…they were 4th…aaaand lost today :(

Today was apparently the last day for a particular model of the bullet train to run. This brought out the train photographers all over Tokyo as they converged at various locations where they can look over the tracks. This was right by Tamachi station this afternoon.

Lots of cabs outside of the hotel. The hotel is right next to the train station and by the bus stops so it’s a “hub” for cabs. This was at like 8pm…there’s even more later on at night.

:)

So. Today was a special day in Japan. It was 22/2/22. Or year 22 of the Heisei Era, February 22nd. Yup. Cool huh?

Anyway, on to the photos. These you can click on for a bigger version too.

First off this is just me having a bit of fun with a photo of the Maru Building right outside of Tokyo Station.

Dinner. A big big plate of sushi. Mmm.

And another dish. Cucumber roll with a huuuge serving of “ikura” or salmon roe on top. Yum!

:)

Not too many photo potentials today since I just went home to my parents to wish dad a Happy Birthday and do laundry and stuff. So…here’s the universal “rat with feathers”… Looks exactly like any other pigeon in the US huh? Yup…if nothing else there’s that in common…

(oh…just for fun you can click on it for a bigger version of pigeons…)

:)

Went to Tsukiji today. Got up at 4:30am and was off by a bit after 5am and go there around 5:50am. But even then we just barely got into the tuna auction room since they close it to the public at 6:15am. You can see all of the flash frozen tuna here. The fresh ones were already auctioned off. Each of these, especially the big ones of good quality, go for thousands of dollars!

(Oh, all these photos you can click on for a bigger version)

Once they are sold, depending on the load many of them are carried to the stand where they will be filleted and sold by workers in pull carts. On a separate note I really really like how this turned out. I know he’s out of focus and everything but…I like the feel of the shot if I may say so myself.

Here you see the workers using basically a long stick with a wicket looking steel hook at the end unloading the tuna to be cut into chunks.

In the end though, it ends up like this. My sushi breakfast at around 7:20am after waiting for about 20 minutes (while talking to some Germans who were there as tourists too). The fatty tuna you see up there (chu-toro) just melts in your mouth. Mmmmm. Funny thing. Just like before, when we were eating we realized that other than the 2 sushi chefs and the 2 ladies working at the store, I was the only other Japanese there. Ha.

More pics are coming from today but…it’ll be later. I was up at 4:30am today and we were off by 5am and I was pretty much on my feet the entire day until I got back to the hotel at around 8:15pm…needless to say I am dead tired. Tomorrow I’ll be off to my parent’s place. But I’ll post the Tokyo Tower and other pics later. I swear. Oh, and my battery is not at 2/3…got I hope it lasts for the trip…

So, McDonalds here is doing a “Big America” series of special limited edition burgers… Last month was the Texas Burger which I never got to try… This month it’s the “Hawaiian Burger”. Um. But it’s just a burger with a fried egg, cheese, bacon, and lettus with some odd teriyaki-ish sauch. How is this Hawaiian?? I have noooooo idea. I wonder what’s next. I…I don’t think I can eat an “Ohio Burger”…

My oasis while here in Kawasaki. At the other hotel in Tamachi it’s Lawson’s. Here in Kawasaki it’s the 7-11. Drinks. Snacks. Food. It’s great!

On a separate note…damn…only a bronze for men’s figure skating for Japan. Our snowboarder, after making such a big deal of himself in the media here, does a face plant… And our mogul skiier got 4th… Oh well. At least we got more medals than at the Torino games where we only got a single medal…but at least that was a gold in women’s figure skating. So. I guess once again our hope for gold lies with the figure skaters!

Still have a cough. Sucks. Anyway, after doing some work after getting back to the hotel a lot longer than I wanted to, I stepped out for a quick dinner. When we talk about a quick dinner in Japan it’s either the beef bowl or ramen. Soooo here’s the ramen. Sometimes it’s all about the topping. Good stuff :)

No matter how many times I see this it still cracks me up. My original Youtube video (search for “world’s shortest escalator” is still a hit with 184,629 views so far.

:)