Deadly Deodarant

I've been in San Francisco all week for the annual Game Developers Conference (photo of our booth on the right). Lots of meetings, and it was a good show.

But today I ran out of deodorant, and not wanting to stink out my fellow passengers on the plane tomorrow, I went to a Walgreens not too far from the hotel. Crazy San Francisco... you know what I learned? At least at this Walgreens, the deodorant is behind locked cabinets!!! I had to ask for a worker to unlock the cabinet so I could get some deodorant. I half expected them to have me fill out forms and undergo a ten-day waiting period, or something. Weird. Maybe it's just not hit the national press yet, but has San Francisco undergone a recent rash of crimes committed with deodorant??? :-)

Snow Camping!!!

Andrew went snow camping while I was in Japan, and MAN am I ever sad that I missed out on that experience. You see a picture of Andrew here in a snow cave, where he actually SLEPT, but for more details, I'll point you to a blog posting that a friends of ours put up. More pictures and witty commentary can be found here.

Star Spangled Banner

I was out of the country for this, so I'm glad Michelle shot video of it. Back on January 30th, Brianna and a friend sang a duet of our national anthem, prior to a high school wrestling match. Posting the video here (click link, also viewable embedded below).

Special Olympics / Skiing

This morning we worked at the local Special Olympics Nordic events up at Bogus Basin, prior to the big statewide competition that kicks off next week. We had a lot of fun. You'll see a picture here of Christopher, Justin and Mom.

After those morning events, we went skiing up there, too. Today, we explored some trails that we hadn't been on before, and the scenery up there was absolutely gorgeous. Christopher had discovered these trails when he went skiing there yesterday with a friend, and he SWORE to us that they were easy trails. Well... he was about 95% right, but about the last 5% of these "trails" was quite a steep "bowl" - shall we call it. Steven's wicked face-plant-in-the-snow, tumble-for-many-many-feet crash, and my incredibly swollen knee tonight will tell you this portion of the "trails" was more than some of us could handle.

The view from these trails was absolutely gorgeous, as you'll see from photos herein. There are a total of 15 pictures on our Flickr account, too; please click here.

Good to be Home!!!

It's good to be back home. I even have been playing basketball with Andrew outside (it's HOT today - like 46 in Boise today!!!), and we've been playing with Shadow with a tennis ball. Check out his high leap, and look at those scary teeth going after the ball!

Foodium!!!

In Shinagawa station here in Tokyo, there's a restaurant named "Lounge Foodium" - I'm serious. Well... I can't tell you how wonderful it's been to be staying in this apartment while I've been here on this trip. I'm actually going to go home from a long trip and NOT dump 46 loads of laundry in Michelle's lap - I'm doing laundry here. And it's been so nice to do a lot of my own cooking. Heading home in less than two days, I've been carefully consuming the food I have left, but tonight I just HAD to go out to the grocery store, because fresh strawberries are now in season. Strawberries here are like no place else: hand-picked and every one of them PERFECT. Yum!!! And expensive, too: a small pack of them runs $5 to $10 (I got the cheaper ones).

Pictured here is my creatively concocted culinary creation (or not - it's really quite simple) from when I was cooking breakfast one day last week: bacon and eggs. However, I must admit that it was the first time in 20+ years that I cooked bacon in anything other than a microwave oven. Well... I'm gonna go fix myself a nice bowl of strawberries, then go to bed! Good night, everyone!

25 Years Later...

When I was 16 years old, my family hosted a student from Japan when he stayed in Whittier, CA (where I grew up - did I really grow up???) for three weeks. Yosuke Kamiya and I have remained dear friends ever since, and I have been able to see him many times over the years in the U.S., but mostly when I visit Japan. He's now married and has two cute daughters, Yumi and Yuki, pictured herein.

Yuki is very very camera shy, and she keeps trying to hide every time I pull out the camera. I just so happened to get this one good picture (good timing!). You can also see her camera shyness in the video, below. And for anybody who ever wanted to hear me speak Japanese, you'll hear me in behind the camera. I sound like a dork!

What's in a Name???

OK... someone in the Hotel Names Department didn't clear these names with a native English speaker. But it's reflective of the terribly funny English you find over here in Japan. "Hotel Avanshell" is probably meant to be the shell of Avan, but it sure sounds a bit hellish to me. And I'm not "salivating" to stay at the Glanz hotel any time soon!

Bike Ride, Anyone???

One of the things I like about Japan is the parking lots for bikes at train stations. Everybody and their dog rides their bike to a train station, parks it there, then takes the train to... (work, school, wherever). Saturday night here it snowed like crazy! I walked past this one bike parking lot, and check out the snow accumulation on these bikes! And YES... I actually saw someone out there riding their bike in this stuff. Hmmm... tire chains for bicycles... and untapped market here in Japan??? :-)

Kyoto: Sanzen-in Temple

After a business meeting in Kyoto earlier this week, I wanted to go check out some more of Kyoto. Having been to Kyoto many times, I've seen just about all the major temples there, so I wanted to go check something out that I had never seen before. So I went to the Sanzen-in Temple.

This is in the Ohara area, sort of in the mountains about a 45-minute taxi ride from downtown Kyoto. Depending on whom you believe, this was first built in either 767 or 985 (though it has been reconstructed a few times over) - at any rate, it's OLD!

Anyway... I thought it was really pretty, especially with snow on it. Check out the couple of photos placed herein, but for all 35 photos I've posted, please click here.

I really love Kyoto. Kyoto is where the capitol of Japan used to be until the late 1800s, and the area is absolutely steeped in tradition. Fun place!

Dang Weather Forecasters!!!

Wednesday morning here, I checked the weather forecast before heading out. It was about 7am, and the forecast indicated that it would start snowing in Tokyo at 1pm, six hours later. But ya' know???... them weather forecasters were WRONG!!! It didn't start snowing until about 1:15!

I say very much in jest, because back home, it seems like the weather forecasters can barely predict which MONTH it will snow in, much less which HOUR! Let's start importing Japanese weather forecasters!

Speaking of weather and snow, herein is a picture of Mt. Fuji. One of these days, I must actually GO to Mt. Fuji; every single picture I've ever taken of it has been from a shinkansen, humming along at 160+ miles per hour. So even if a little blurry, it still looks beautiful.

Tuesday night, some two days after we had that big snow storm on Sunday, I took this photo of three little snowmen someone had built in front of my apartment. These poor little creatures were melting rapidly and only about a foot high, but I thought they were cute. People around here get snow so infrequently that everybody and their dog goes out and builds snowmen. They're everywhere! It reminds me of the recent snowman posting that our good friend, Tami Christensen, put up from Shanghai.

Popcorn Papa

OK... this is just weird. I've previously talked about all of the weird flavors of popcorn you can find at theme parks in Japan. In fact... I'm not sure I've ever seen "normal" popcorn at the likes of Disneyland here. But at Universal City Walk by Universal Studios Japan, there is a store, Popcorn Papa, that sells THIRTY-TWO different kinds of popcorn. Man... they have Baskin Robins and ice cream beat by one!!! Probably the most interesting and certainly the most colorful is "Mixed Juice" and the weirdest would probably have to be "Tomato Salad." By far, the most gross ("most grossest"?) would have to be "Nori Wasabi." But by far, the biggest head-scratcher of them all is "Salt and Butter." Just downright puzzling!!!

Universal Studios Japan

This past Saturday, I went down to Osaka to check out Universal Studios Japan. I had never been there before, and I wanted to see if it's someplace we should include in our itineraries when I come here with my kids. Having been to the parks in Hollywood and Orlando, I wanted to see how the Osaka park differed. In truth, Osaka is very much the same: Backdraft, Jaws, Back to the Future, Terminator 2:3D, Jurassic Park, Shrek 4D, E.T. were all rides/attractions I've seen at Hollywood or Orlando (or both). I did Backdraft (love that attraction!) and Jaws just for comparison purposes (nearly identical, except for commentary in Japanese), but unique to Osaka are:

• Spiderman: The Ride. A 16-passenger car-on-rails akin to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but you're riding/flying through Manhattan, while Spider-Man and his enemies are battling things out all around you. Somewhat hokey, and especially with the 3D glasses on, very cheesy, but miraculously all entertaining at the same time. Hey... didn't I used to date a girl like that???!!! :-)
• Hollywood Dream: The Ride. A roller coaster that sends you screaming above nearly the entire park. Actually a very fun roller coaster. You also got to select from five musical genres (I chose "rock" with Bon Jovi) that blast through the in-seat speakers to make the ride more fun. However, it was about 40 degrees outside and on the brink of rain. Brrr!!! Or as the lady next to me said, "面白かったけれど寒かったです！" Now... I definitely DID date a girl like that!!! :-)
• Wicked. Osaka has a very cute little "Land of Oz" where you even get to see the Tin Man, etc., and in this land is a theater where they do a 35-minute pared-down version of the hit musical. From what I could tell, the entire cast was Japanese, except for the main witch. She was a very tall white chick (well... green with makeup) that spoke/sang excellent Japanese. The show was absolutely AWESOME!!! Now I definitely would like to see the real show somewhere!

Brianna may want to go when I bring her to Japan, just to see Wicked (although since she's seen the entire Wicked stage performance, perhaps not). Wicked itself is worth the cost of admission! And speaking of which, admission was about $50, but the park sells a limited amount of "Express" tickets, which allow you to jump to the front of lines. My book of four cost about $27, but you could buy books of up to seven, for more - this worked out really well. Look out, Disney's FastPass service... Universal has found a way to monetize people wanting shorter lines!

To see all 30 photos I've uploaded from the day, please click here.

If You Wonder Where I've Been...

OK... so here's a pretty funny story. It involves trains, and I have no pictures of me in a train or on a train platform in Japan, so I've included one of Justin, actually, from when he and I were here in April of 2005.

For the trains here, you can either buy a ticket for each train ride you take, or you can use a pre-paid card, and that card just has money taken from its balance each time you swipe the card to get in/out of a train station. The "Suica" card is probably the most prominent of these cards, and I've used a Suica card for years.

When I was here in December, I plopped down about $50 to recharge my Suica card, as the balance was getting low. However, on this trip, the card readers would not accept my card. I've been too busy to deal with it, so this evening finally went to a ticket office to see what was wrong with my card. The nice young lady put the card through a special reader, and the reason the card has not worked is that they show me having gone IN to Shinagawa station back on December 21st, but have no record of me ever going OUT of the system!!! So... if you wonder where I've been, I supposedly have been wandering through the Tokyo train system for the past six weeks or so! I feel like Tom Hanks in that movie, stuck in the JFK terminal for forever. Instead, I was stuck in Shinagawa station. :-)

She cleared the anomaly on my card, and it's working again.

Snow in Tokyo!!!

Indeed... it has been a very strange thing to see so much snowfall in Tokyo this weekend. Given all the snow that China has had, and that the U.S. midwest (and Idaho!!!) has had, I'm just waiting for the global climate change enthusiasts to start warning against a global cooling period (like they did in the 70s), and we better pull out all the stops to warm the planet up!!!

I had been down in Osaka and Nagoya this weekend so missed the Tokyo snow down there. However, the picture I've included here is one that I took from the Tokyo shinkansen platform as I got back in town tonight. It was getting dark, so this was the only picture I could get (I had to switch trains in Tokyo to get to my apartment, and it was dark when I arrived). Most of the snow had been melted by rain, but doesn't it look cold?! (it is!!!)

From a report in the U.S.A. Today:

Rare Tokyo Snow Strands 10,000 at Narita Airport
A rare snowfall in Tokyo left nearly 10,000 passengers stranded overnight at Narita airport after about 50 international flights were cancelled, the airport authority said Sunday.

The season's first snowfall in the greater Tokyo region measured 3.5 inches in the center of the capital on Saturday, the heaviest accumulation in eight years, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

At Narita airport, some 40 miles from downtown Tokyo, 51 international flights were cancelled as airport workers were unable to remove snow from runways quickly enough.

More than 90 other flights were delayed for a night, leaving passengers stuck in the terminal, an airport public relations official said.

"A total of 9,690 passengers were stranded overnight at the two terminals. We provided blankets and extended the time for air-conditioning and lighting to accommodate them at lobbies," the official said.

"We also opened special paid waiting lounges for free of charge."

At Tokyo's domestic Haneda airport, some 100 flights were cancelled on Saturday, disrupting the travel plans of some 14,000 passengers.

At least 125 people have suffered broken bones and other minor injuries in Tokyo after slipping in the rare snow by midday Sunday, fire officials said, while 200 others were reported hurt in nearby prefectures.

It usually snows lightly only a few times a year in the Tokyo region, located on the warmer Pacific side of Japan's main island.

Coastal regions have experienced Japan's deadliest winter in more than two decades, with at least 102 deaths recorded by Tuesday, with many of the victims crushed by snow or falling from buildings while clearing snow from roofs.

Most of the dead have been elderly people. The death toll is the highest since 1983-1984, when 131 people died in snow-related incidents.