wood hopper, donner

We spent the morning building a hopper for firewood

and taking baths
.
Alta is beautiful at this time of year, and it sometimes feels like you're in new england, what with the clapboard houses, apple orchards and turning leaves


We decided to get a little bouldering in up at the snowshed boulders at Donner. There's a project that I haven't been able to complete, and although I still couldn't send it, it was a good time in the crisp mountain air and sunshine. Here's Chloe looking warm:

From there, it was back to the cabin, picking some apples near the fire station (which are excellent)





and then home to the presidio

Alta

After a long hiatus, Chloe and went up to Alta this afternoon. We were both worried that the local rednecks had broken in again in our absence, but happily the cabin was intact and nothing had been stolen. Unfortunately, a bat was roosting behind the shutters again

And didn't seem to want to move even after whacking the window frame with a broom handle. Since it was cold and dark and we didn't really want to deal with a pissed off bat fluttering around us, we just let it stay there and, with the exception of the occasional worried look up at the window, ignored it.
We started a fire, walked down to the river and then went to sleep

Switching to blogger beta

I switched the blogging software over, so there might be glitches. Also, I've scanned in some of the japan photos and put them here

The presidio

five minutes walk from our apartment

newlab

it still puts a smile on my face when I drop my film off at NewLab and they ask me if I want it that night. Ahh the advantages of being near a pro lab.

Last day

Today was our last day in Japan. Chloe and I had breakfast with Gail and Kenji near the hotel and then said goodbye, since they had an earlier flight from Narita to China. Chloe and I decided to head to the Ginza to wander around before our 2:00 bus to the airport for our own flight to SFO, and ended up getting a little confused about which trains to take. We made it in the end, and with only a few wrong turns. Our first stop was the basement of the Mitsukoshi department store to find food for lunch. We made at least two full circuits of all the stalls



To yells of "Irashaiiii" -- what's the polite way to respond to this, anyway? Anyway, we ended up settling on some tempura and chinese food Bento. From Mitsukoshi, we went to the waffle shop, visited the Temple of Sony and headed back to Iidabashi. We walked down the street towards the Yasukuni shrine and found a little green space in between the buildings, where we ate our bentos

Soon we were on the bus, going over the endless sprawl in between Tokyo and Narita. The soundtrack was two american dudes behind us having a loud conversation about their MLM (multi level marketing?) business. Whatever it was, it must have been working since they got in the line for business class and we got in the very long economy line.

We looked out over the planes sadly as it sunk in that we would be heading back to the states in a few hours

Yasukuni, Yabu Soba, Imperial Palace, the Ginza, Kayoko

We started the day by ... sleeping in for once! This was a nice change after getting up at six AM the previous day to go to Tsukiji. We got picked up again by Kozo and Shitomi and went to the Flea Market at the Yasukuni shrine.

I selected two hundred yen rabbit tea cups, and Chloe found a pair of Japanese dolls for 500 yen. There were all sorts of things on sale: tea kettles

Masks and hatchets

Sword guards, etc. etc.
Here are kenji and Kozo taking a break

and us, with a crazy Japanese dude in his world war II soldiers uniform behind us!

The Yasukuni shrine is significant in that it is a source of some controversy, which stems from the fact that convicted war criminals are enshrined there (more on the linked wikipedia page). In addition to crazy world war II dude, there were these handsome fellowsfascist looking thugs

and later on, a parade of vans with loudspeakers


From the shrine, Kozo and Shitomi took us to one of the most famous Soba places in Tokyo: Yabu Soba.


When you place your order, a woman sings the order to the chefs! I have some video of this which I'll try to upload soon. While we were waiting, Kozo told us that the way to look cool (if you are a man) is to go to Yabu Soba alone, order a bottle of sake and Soba and eat and drink it alone. He added that this was cool during the week, but maybe not quite so cool on a Sunday! Anyway, the soba

was fantastic. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

After Soba, Kozo showed us another famous Soba place around the corner, as well as a famous sweet shop and then dropped us off at the imperial palace, where we wandered around for a while


then went back to the hotel to rest for a bit

and took the JR to Akihabara to buy rechargable batteries for the new Canon.

Akihabara always makes me a little crazy, but the people I'm with rarely have the patience for anything more than a half hour or so. Personally, I could spend days on end there, just gazing into the mesmerising blinking lights

Next stop was the Ginza again, where we went to a waffle shop

and Kenji and Gail went to Kenji's gallery in the Ginza to talk to the manager and owner. Chloe and I left to wander around the Ginza

And happened upon the Sony showroom, where I got a chance to look at some of the new super light VAIOs


which I covet. 2.8 pounds, built in wifi, standard ethernet, bluetooth, VGA port, multimedia slot, memory stick slot... this thing is amazing. The Ginza Leica store was around the corner, and I stopped in but wasn't impressed. It was more of a shrine than a serious photographic store IMO. Listening to some british guy coo over the way a tri-elmar lens looked "Oh it's just so beautiful" made me want to puke. It's a CAMERA, not an accessory to complement your Gucci shoes! Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for the legacy of the Leica M and the images that have been produced by them. That said, I feel pretty sure that Cartier-Bresson and Capa would be shooting digital today.

From the Ginza it was time to go back to meet my cousin Kayoko and her husband for dinner.

They had scoped out the neighborhood around the hotel and found a great and inexpensive underground izakaya, and we ordered a lot of plates -- most of which were only around 350 yen! If we ever have the chance to stay at the Grand Palace again, I'll be eating there again. It was a good time and I was happy to see them again.

Later that night we saw that another typhoon was in the vicinity of Japan, but was thankfully moving east rather than west


yes, that says 35 meters per second, which is almost 80 mph.

Tsukiji, Ginza, Tokyo National Museum, Asakusa, Monja-Yaki

I've heard a lot about the fish market in Tsukiji, so I was determined to visit it during this trip. I have apparently been to Tsukiji when I was younger, but don't really have any memory of it. Here is what Bourdain says about the market (from A Cook's Tour):

I've written about Tsukiji in the past, and used up most of the superlatives I can think of. Just take my word for it: It's the Taj Majal, the Colosseum, the Great Pyramid of seafood. All that unbelievable bounty, spread across acres and acres of concrete, wriggling and spitting from tanks, laid out in brightly colored rows, carefully arranged like dominoes in boxes ... I am inadequate to the task of saying more. There is nowhere else. Believe me.

My parents have been going there for years -- before it became popular with tourists, even.

Anyway, we woke up early, had a quick bite to eat and then took the JR to the nearest station, and then a cab to the market. Like an utter fool, I decided not to bring my Hasselblad. The film I had (velvia 100) doesn't perform all that well under fluorescent lights, and Tsukiji has been heavily photographed before, but still... it would have been fun! Nothing, not even Bourdain's excellent description, can really prepare you for the shock-and-awe nuclear assault on all your senses. It's also pretty dangerous for the unwary outsider, what with the motorized go cart things speeding around in all directions and especially through very narrow alleyways. It really woke us up in a hurry to have to look in all directions every few seconds to avoid getting flattened.

Some ice:

squid:

???

tuna

shellfish

tuuuuunaaaaa


>


You might have noticed that most of the fish are packed in styrofoam containers. What happens to the containers? They are put into the foamcontainerator2000


We had sushi at a restaurant right next to Tsukiji -- almost in it, actually, and it was fantastic: some of the best hamachi and mirugai I have ever eaten.


After the sushi, Chloe got a dreamy look on her face which lasted for several hours afterwards and was accompanied by her periodically mumbling things like "that was really good hamachi"

We continued on to see the Ginza district: Here's Kenji dancing across the street:

me in front of the mac store:

a woman in a kimono


From here, we went to the Tokyo National Museum and saw all kinds of interesting things, like the ceramics displays, a mini-display on the Ainu, many scrolls and some Harunobu ukiyo-e. They were doing a workshop on how people sealed letters back in the Shogunate days, which Chloe and Kenji participated in. Now they know how to send letters to their disciples and foot warriors in style!


After lunch at the museum restaurant and more museuming, our family friends picked us up and took us to the ningyo-cho neighborhood, where we bought 250¥ rice bowls and some cool wooden chopstick rests. Here's the chopstick rest store:
We also went to several of the stores that sell the wax and plastic displays which Japanese restaurants typically have in front of them (go to Japan town in San Francisco if you haven't seen them before). They're extremely expensive, but usually amazingly real looking. Here are some selections:









From here it was a trip to the overrun but interesting Asakusa district and Sensoji temple.

They sold pudding along the way in a format that I haven't seen before:


Chloe got a headache at this point, and unfortunately we had to cut our dinner short at a monja-yaki place in Tsukushima, which was a shame, because we were about to get yaki-Ramen when Chloe got REALLY sick.



After Chloe was dropped off at the hotel, I headed out with Kozo to Shinjuku to check out the prices on a camera I had been eyeing to replace our Sony T3. Yodobashi had it for $50 cheaper than in the states, so I picked one up, and it will probably be where most of the shots on this blog come from, from now on. So far the blog has been produced on two digital cameras: the Canon Powershot G2 and the T3. The camera (Canon powershot 640) has so far been wonderful, and it's hard to beat 10 mexapixels and a lot of nice manual controls for less than $300.