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Mmmmm…hot tea on a cold day. Although it’s not quite as satisfying as the first cup of coffee in the morning, it is soothing especially after lunch.

It is the Monday after Thanksgiving and I have a full week of being a responsible adult (work). It is drizzling outside and it is 54 degrees in SF right now. It’s okay though. I have my desk chair electric blanket turned up and I’m sipping hot tea while looking out the window at all of the chilly schmucks scurrying below. I was one of those schmucks earlier, but now I’m cozy and I can look down on them and laugh..whahahahahaha…….ha.

This weekend was a combination of rushing and relaxing. My mom and Daniel arrived at 7:30 on Wed night and the gluttony began. When dining out, I have a hard time keeping myself from ordering a huge meal. Usually, I scale it back a bit or just snack at home. When mom, Daniel, and I get together, there is this inevitable conversation: well, if you order X then I’ll order Y and we’ll share. Inevitably, we end up getting a lot of food and enjoying all of it, plus dessert. This isn’t a bad thing, but doing this for four days straight is detrimental to my waistline.

Despite our overindulgence, I thoroughly enjoyed myself as well as each and every bite. I think our overindulgence reached it’s peak on Saturday when we were coaxed (tricked, in our inebriated state) to not order another round of margaritas but instead to order a pitcher. We finished it, Danny drove us home (sober DD responsible man that he is) and we passed out on the various sofas twenty minutes later. Danny woke us up and we continued to guzzle water and lament the pitcher idea.

The next morning, we slept in, went and got some breakfast, came home, took some motrin, drank some more water, and napped until it was time to go to the airport.

Besides the drinking and eating, we did get a bit of exercise which was not of the shopping nature. On Friday, Daniel, mom and I loaded up the car and drove up to Muir Woods, just north of San Francisco. It had rained that morning and everything was still dripping wet. It wasn’t muddy though, just damp. We all did an easy hike together and then Daniel and I hiked through the woods for about an hour before reuniting with mom at the car.

Afterwards, we drove up to Mt. Tamalpais for a fantastic view of the city and the shore. I’ve been up there several times but I never get tired of the spectacular scenery.

Next, we grabbed some road snacks, popped in a CD and headed over to Sonoma for a day of wine-tasting. I had booked us a room at the kickass Lodge at Sonoma. I’d stayed there once before with mom and it is truly a nice nice hotel.

We arrived a little late so we didn’t have time to do much wine tasting before the wineries closed at 4:30. After a quick stop at Valley of the Moon winery and a mad dash to get to Moon Mountain on time to pick up our festival gear (more on that later), we went back to our hotel to relax, put our feet up, pick out a restaurant for dinner, and take baths using the hotel’s complimentary spa goodies.

Dinner was so-so, but I got to drink some wine since I was to be the DD the following day. It’s best for me to be the DD anyway. Not only did I buy a case of my favorite wine the weekend before (David Bruce), I’m a self-professed lightweight.

We got up the next morning, ate a hearty breakfast, and cruised up to the first vineyard on our list, Ledson.

Just to clarify, I signed us up for a wine-tasting open house/festival at participating Sonoma wineries. Tickets were $20 per person and mom and daniel got souvenir wine glasses and lots of wine paired with snacks and dessert. I just got the food, but that was fine with me.

Ledson was gorgeous and packed. We ate, visited with the pourers, and decided that it was time to move on. From what I remember, we then went to St. Francis (my favorite for grounds and snacks), Blackstone Winery, Chateau St. Jean, Eric Ross Winery, Kunde, Landmark Vineyards, Loxton Cellars, Mayo and Wellington.

After squeezing in the last winery at 4:15, we got back on the road to head south to SF and then home. We hit bad bad traffic about five miles north of the GG bridge. Daniel put on a comedy CD to help keep our minds off the fact that we weren’t going to make it to a restroom for a while.

After crossing the GG bridge, things picked up a bit and we were back at my apartment in about 45 minutes.

We lugged our wine and luggage upstairs, changed clothes, greeted Danny, and headed over to Fiesta del Mar Too for the aforementioned margarita marathon. Heh, I just made that up. Clever, ain’t it?

….are up.

Monday 11/7: We slept in until 7:30 this morning. We didn’t have a big agenda for the day. We just planned to go to Shinjuku park and then up to Ikebukero for some shopping but then make it back to the hotel in time to catch our 4:30 train to Kyoto. The day was sunny and we could see the top of Mt. Fuji in the distance.

We got on the local train and made it to Yoyogi, one stop before Shinjuku, when everyone had to get off the train. Since we didn’t understand the messages, we decided to walk to Shinjuku park since we were relatively close to it. I only got lost once, but Danny didn’t seem to notice. It was warm. It wasn’t hot, but it was sunny and I wished I’d had a tank top instead of a sweater.

The park was really nice. It was cool to stand in the traditional Japanese garden and see the skyscrapers in the background.

After leaving the park, we walked to Shinjuku station and got on the train for Ikebukero, another district in Tokyo. We sat on the train for no less than twenty minutes. They kept making announcements and I kept hearing the word “shibaraku.” I recognized the word but I couldn’t recall it’s meaning. I looked it up later and found out that it meant “a while.” After “a while” the train doors closed and we headed up to Ikebukero.

By this time, it was about 1pm and we were starving. Danny had mentioned that he liked yakisoba, so I was deadset on finding a yakisoba place and NOT eating at the convenient, and inviting, Wendy’s on the corner. After wandering for 30 minutes, I was braindead. Danny found a yakisoba place and we went in. The menu was entirely in Japanese. We recognized the section on soba, so I tried to order pork yakisoba. I misunderstood something about ordering; apparently there were more choices regarding my soba and I didn’t understand. As the waitress became increasingly frustrated, I had to shrug and say wakarimasen (I don’t understand). She sighed and I tried once more to say that we both want yakisoba with pork and that’s it. Basically, she could have given us squid soba and I wouldn’t have cared, I was so hungry. She seemed to understand or made up her mind to give us something, so she put in our order and I tried to relax. Ten minutes later, we had heaping piles of yakisoba in front of us. I slurped it down gratefully and the waitress smiled. I think I even managed to correctly compliment the owner on the way out. At least they smiled and acted like they knew what I was talking about.

With our bellies full, Danny and I went shopping for Engrish shirts. From what I understand, Ikebukero isn’t one of the trendiest spots in Tokyo, but it is a really cute neighborhood with more affordable stores. We found one, jeansmate, and bought a cool engrish shirt for Daniel. We were running a little late, but I didn’t worry. We would make it back to our hotel in time to get our bags and head to Kyoto.

I misjudged the time and we ended up only having 20 minutes from the time we arrived at the station to the time we had to be on our train bound for Kyoto WITH our luggage. We raced and thought we were going to get there on time, but either the guy at the turnstile told us the wrong track or I showed him the wrong ticket because we missed our train. Although this was frustrating, and a little scary, it was not a disaster. We had rail passes so the nice, and amused, ladies at the bullet train turnstyle walked us over to the ticket counter so we could get reserved seats for the train that left one hour later.

At this point, I was so proud of Danny. I’ve traveled a bit and finding someone who does NOT get mad at you for leading them in the completely wrong direction causing you to miss your train is rare. Despite his aching feet, he did not complain. In fact, he said it was good that we were postponed an hour because it gave us time to buy train snacks at the combini (convenience store) and for him to smoke before we took the 2.5 hour trip.

I stood outside the convenience store with our luggage while Danny went outside of the station to smoke. I caught my breath and tried to air out my sweaty shirt. I felt like a dumb American but I didn’t beat myself up over it. We were not the first and certainly not the last. Plus, we were smart enough to have a backup plan.

We made it to our platform with plenty of time to spare. Although the ride to Kyoto was after dark, it was perhaps the best train ride we had during the entire trip. We had green car passes. The green car on the shinkansen basically means first class. I’d ridden in the ordinary car before. While it is perfectly nice, the green car seats are bigger and much cushier. While you don’t get fancy meals, you get a comfy seat and plenty of leg room. We totally relaxed on our ride to Kyoto and thoroughly fell in love with the green car (greensha).

Our hotel in Kyoto was right by the train station, so it only took us about ten minutes to get there from our train platform. It wasn’t a new hotel, but it was much better than our hotel situation in Tokyo. We were upgraded to a double bed free of charge, we had a nice view of the train station, and we had free high-speed internet in our room.

After relaxing for a little while, we went out searching for food. By now, it was 9:45 and restaurants were closing. We found an Italian restaurant near our hotel and got some chow there. It was decent and not too expensive. My red wine was terrible, but for about $2, it did the job. We headed back to the room and crashed.

Here is the latest fashion update from Tokyo:

Women: denim skirts with dark leggings underneath paired with pointy flats or heels. For the more sophisticated set, get knee-length skirts in tan, grey or black and pair with high-heeled boots in dark colors. I also saw spike-heeled lace-up boots paired with super-mini denim skirts. Women were wearing outfits like this while climbing steps up to temples and train platforms. Oh, and don’t forget the shiny flip-phones with the half-a-million dangly keychain things hanging off of them.

Men: suit and tie, as expected. Nothing about the men’s clothes stood out to me. Other than the suit and tie outfit, some guys wore untucked collared shirts or trendy t-shirts.

Sunday 11/6:

I slept in until 7 the next morning and decided to join Danny at McD’s for breakfast. Although I knock McD’s at home, it is a good, cheap, filling and predictable breakfast abroad.

Before heading out that morning, I’d gotten a call from my former coworker greg who would be passing through Tokyo that afternoon on his way to northern Japan. We agreed to meet in Shinjuku around 12:30. Before meeting him, Danny and I wanted to go to Harejuku and see the wacky costumes of the cosplay kids at yoyogi park.

While the day before had been sunny, Sunday was kinda grey and cool. We hopped on the train and headed up to harejuku. I’d read that the kids hang out in yoyogi park, so we walked past the entrance to meiji shrine and around the corner toward the south side of the park. It was about 11 by then and we didn’t see any wacky costumes. The park was pretty - red and yellow leaves, fountains, and it had a kind of misty/foggy morning feel to it. There were a couple of homeless camps though.

We walked back to the train station and realized that we still hadn’t seen any kids yet. I yanked out my handy travel guide which said that the cosplay kids hung out on the bridge by the train station. Duh. Well, at least the park was enjoyable. We found the bridge which was more like a large walkway and saw the dressed up kids start to gather. There were a few goth-lolita chicks, some S&M type anime-looking outfits, and then some pure goths. There was also one white chick who looked like a demonic pippi longstocking. The whole scene wasn’t shocking. I guess I thought the kids would be dancing or fighting each other with cardboard swords, but they just stood around having their pictures taken while smoking. It was cool but not amazing. There were far more tourists than costumed kids.

After taking a few pictures, we walked down to Takeshita-dori, the trendiest street in Harejuku. It was packed by 11:30. I recognized some of the stores from my last trip such as Nudyboy. We didn’t have much time to spare before we met Greg, so we only went about half-way down the street. We spent ten minutes at ZenMall hunting for engrish tshirts. I got some great ones for about $9 each. Daniel will be pleased.

We rushed back to the train station and headed to Shinjuku. We were to meet Greg at Takashimaya dept store at 12:30 and then each half hour after that if we missed him. We didn’t get there by 12:30, so we wandered over to Tokyu Hands to shop. He spotted us downstairs at 1pm. It was great to see him. He and I had worked on projects together at my old company for many years and he had been my guide on my previous two trips to Japan.

We waited while he finished up his shopping and then we went searching for food. I like to think that I’m not a picky person but I”m afraid that I was in Tokyo. We didn’t find anything in the dept store restaurants (which also had long waits), so we wandered around outside until we found a little noodle shop with good prices. Greg gave me the rundown of work while Danny politely listened to our shoptalk. Greg also gave me some Japanese pointers and helped us phrase some questions we needed to ask the people at our hotel.

After leaving Greg, we started to head over to the park near Shinjuku (Shinjuku gyoen) but it started raining. Of course, we had forgotten our umbrellas. We went back to Tokyu Hands and got cheap umbrellas. Tokyu Hands is awesome. They have about 7 stories of general merchandise. It’s kind of like a mini-Walmart.

We got to the park around 4 and it was closed. It was either closing time or they were kicking people out since the weather sucked. It worked out though. We were pretty worn out from walking, so we went to a little coffee shop across the street called Bowls Cafe. It was a nice, cozy little coffee shop playing easy-listening japanese music. They only had a Japanese menu, so Danny and discerned what were a hot coco and a caramel latte and ordered them. Our drinks came out in large coffee cups with a big marshmallow on the side. I’d never had marshmallow in my latte before but it was really good. It was so nice just to sit there and watch the rain fall on the park outside. No one seemed bothered or even noticed that we were foreigners, so I felt really comfortable just hanging out and trying to get my marshmallow to fully melt before my drink got cold.

After this, we were going to go to west Shinjuku and see the skyscrapers at night, but instead we decided to head back to our hotel and relax a little before dinner.

Just for reference, it took us about twenty minutes by train to get from Shinjuku to Shinagawa, the station by our hotel. It is a short trip, but it seems infinitely longer if the train is standing-room-only and you’ve been walking all day.

That night, we wandered down the street in search of new restaurants. I wasn’t in the mood for yakitori or ramen, so I guess I thought maybe we’d find some quirky little cafe. We walked about a half a mile before noticing that there were no restaurants nearby. We turned around and ended up eating at the 24 hour pizza/spaghetti place in our hotel. This place wasn’t bad at all and they had an english menu. Although I had wanted to try something new, my growing hunger had won out. We went back up to our room, watched some Japanese TV and crashed.

Funny: Danny and I had twin beds. Sometimes, I would curl up next to him in his bed or he would come get in mine. One night, he fell asleep before I did, so I crawled into bed with him. I woke up a few hours later disoriented because I wasn’t in my bed, he was. It turns out that after I went to sleep, he had woken up really warm from me being next to him. So, he got in my empty bed to escape.

I sit and write this after my first day back at work. It was tough, but I survived it, being back at work that is. The trip was great and I’m sad that it’s over. Here is the first part of my extended recap.

Thursday 11/3/2005: 9:15am: After a quick goodbye to our less-than-concerned cats, Danny and dragged our suitcases toward the train station by our house. The sun was shining and the air was clear. Danny smokes for one of the last times before we board our 11 hour flight to Japan.

From the train station, we board the train to Santa Clara, about twenty minutes away, where we get on the free shuttle to the airport. After arriving, Danny smokes again. We then stand in a check-in line for over thirty minutes. This is at 10:30am on Thursday morning. There are only two people working the economy-class check-in line. The other two lines are for first and business classes. They are empty. After checking in, we go outside so Danny can smoke again. I only mention this because I’m really proud of him for not complaining or letting on in any way that not smoking for half a day is going to annoy him. We then go through security and make our way over to our gate. On the way, I grab a quick breakfast of coffee and cinnabon bites. Note to self, NEVER eat at cinnabon. The icing is disgusting and it’s expensive.

We are in the last group, so we watch as the first and business class passengers board. We both notice a mother and her four-year old son sitting a few rows over from us. The little boy is playing in what appears to be a soggy spot in the carpet where someone spilled their drink. We notice him because his mom is yelling for him to get up from the puddle. He is sitting on his knees on this dirty, wet carpet and is sneaking pieces of spilled ice into his mouth. It goes like this: mom says stop and goes back to talking on her cell phone. The kid waits until mom is distracted to shove as much dirty ice into his mouth as he can without her noticing. It is hilarious. And people wonder why little kids are sick all of the time.

We board our flight and settle into our tiny economy-class seats. I’ll cope with this. We have personal monitors and a window and aisle seat along the side. Things could be worse.

The flight passes without incident. Granted, 11 hours is a long time, but we both thought it went faster than expected. Despite the fact that a different little boy was sitting behind me and kicking my seat, I had a good flight.

We arrived at Narita on time. This was at 4:30pm there, about 11:30pm our time. Customs and money-exchange were easy. As soon as we got our stuff, Danny went out to smoke. We got shuttle bus tickets and began the 1.5 hour ride to our hotel.

Our hotel was pretty nice. It is a big tourist/business hotel in Shinagawa, south of the city center. For some reason, our travel agent has reserved us a twin room. When we asked to change at check-in, they told us there were no doubles available. We were too tired to complain, so we went up to our room, unpacked and then went to the 24 hour pizza/spaghetti place in the hotel for dinner. Despite my tiredness, I couldn’t help but notice that they had a menu item called “spaghetti with clab.” I passed on the “clab.” By the time we went to bed, it was 4am California time.

Saturday 11/5/05:

The next morning, I awoke at 5am. I knew this would happen. This is the only time in my life where waking up early is a bad thing. We got up, got dressed, and went looking for breakfast. Danny grabbed a mcmuffin at McD’s while I got a “cinnamon roll” at the coffee shop next door. I realized that I had made a bad decision when I noticed that the cinnamon roll was nothing but a white dinner roll with some raisins and icing on the top. Nasty.

At 8am, we met our tour guide in front of the hotel. Since I figured we would be out of it the morning after we arrived, I scheduled a morning tour of Tokyo. From our hotel, the bus took us to a bus depot where our group split up to board buses for the various tours we had scheduled.

Overall, the tour was pretty lame, but it required no thought and I got to see some stuff I missed last time I was in Tokyo. I was surprised at how warm it was. I didn’t need the sweater I had brought with me. In fact, I could have used a hat and some sunscreen. It was only in the mid 70’s, but it felt a lot warmer.

Tour: Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi park, Imperial gardens, Asakusa temple, and Ginza.

While we were wandering around the Imperial Gardens, I passed a guy wearing a tshirt that said “I love big dumps.”

They dropped us off in Ginza around 1pm. We found a burger place and managed not to mess up our cheeseburger order. We found out that fries do not come with ketchup. Interesting….

Next, we walked over to the Sony showroom. It was cool, but I didn’t think it was anything special. We went through it in about 30 minutes.

After wandering around Ginza for a while, we decided to figure out the Yamanote train loop and head up to Akihabara, or “electric town.” This is the cheap electronics mecca of Tokyo. After one failed attempt at getting the right tickets for the train, we figured out what we were doing and hopped on the commuter rail.

Akihabara was insane. A lot of stuff in Tokyo is insane but this was especially frenetic. We went into a few stores, but it dawned on us that we weren’t going to find any great deals unless we wanted to buy a new cellphone or camera.

We got back on the Yamanote train line and rode it for about twenty minutes until we got to the station by our hotel. After that, I think we must have chilled out in our hotel room for a while before taking the train to Shibuya. Shibuya is kind of like Times Square in NYC. It isn’t as big but it is at least as bright. It is a very trendy spot and there is plenty to see. The only problem I have is that the streets are not in a grid and it is kind of hard for me to backtrack to my origin. We roamed around there for a while until we realized that we couldn’t find anyplace we wanted to eat. Also, Danny’s shoes were bothering him, so we bought him some insoles and went back to the hotel to install them before hiking anymore. It’s kind of weird that we were able to find insoles to fit Danny’s shoes, but we couldn’t find anywhere to eat.

Later that night, we decided to try the yakitori bar down the street from the hotel. I’d had yakitori last time I’d gone to Japan and I thought it was pretty good. There were a few locals at the bar next to us, but they got up and left after we sat down. I’m assuming they had just finished their meal. They didn’t give us dirty looks, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

The waiter brought us an english menu. I thought I was so cool because I could use the counter for “one” in Japanese to explain how many of each appetizer we wanted. It turns out later that I was ordering five of everything. The waiter spoke a little english, so he ignored my bad Japanese and paid more attention to my hand-sign for “one.” The food was okay. The only really bad thing was when we ordered grilled prawns. Instad of getting a few shelled and seasoned shrimp on a skewer, we got two skewers with two giant, whole shrimp, unshelled, with the heads on. Trying to peel the hot skin off those suckers was a pain, and then we had to dehead the little bastards and clean off the brain goo. We ate most of them, but I had to order another beer to wash the taste out of my mouth. Ugh…

yakitori: stuff on skewers - anything from grilled chicken to fried peppers

Coming up: The mad dash through the train station on the way to Kyoto……..

Why can’t I be fifteen again? That’s the last time in my life where it didn’t matter whether I slept until five pm and went to bed at eight am. If I do that now, I’m either a totally lazy bum or jetlagged. Actually, I’m probably a little of both. It doesn’t help that I caught a cold on the plane ride home. The only advantage to this is that I couldn’t smell the ripe kitty litter when I got in on Saturday. See, I DO look on the bright side.

Ugh…I hope I’m not getting anything worse. It’s needless to say that today is a sick day coupled with a quick trip to the doctorb. *call 1-800-doctorb. The B is for bargain!

I need sleep…

We made it back. It is Saturday afternoon here in CA, but we left Japan at 6pm on Saturday night and gained a day when we came back. This is good, but we’re totally disoriented. It is 5am Tokyo time and we’re still awake. Jet lag on the return is usually hard on me, but I’ll see how well I can hold up.

We had a wonderful trip; no complaints here. More details to come. Must…stay…awake (at least until night time).

It shouldn’t be hard to tell between them, but the Japanese have a particular way of making beans into desserts that makes the consumer a bit confused. I’ve read stories about Americans buying what they thought were jelly donuts only to find out that the donuts were filled with sweet bean paste. As disgusting as this sounds, it really isn’t too bad. Danny bought one such donut yesterday and we had a hard time deciding whether it was filled with beans or a thick, chocolatey paste. It was bean paste and what tipped us off was that Danny got a bean-skin caught in his teeth.

As for me, I’m really fond of some soft, triangular cookies filled with flavored bean paste. They are good. In fact, I’m buying more to bring home with me.

So, in one of my earlier posts I said that we were finding plenty to eat. In reality, we’re finding plenty of snacks to eat, but getting a meal has been a little more challenging.

Last night, I took danny to MOS burger, a Japanese burger chain. We got our burgers and, although they were cheeseburgers, they had some sort of chili on them as well. Danny doesn’t like mayo on his burger, so we were both a little concerned when we got these juicy, saucy burgers.

Danny: I really hope that that white stuff on there isn’t mayo.
Me: It isn’t. I think it’s some other sauce they put on there.
Danny: Okay (eats burger).

later….

Danny: That burger was alright. I’m just glad they didn’t have mayo on it.
Me: Actually, I think it was mayo, but I told you it wasn’t so that you would eat your food.

silence…..

Danny: My trust in you has been shattered.
Me: I’m sorry. Did you taste the mayo?
Danny: No, it was fine.
Me: I love you. *grin*