A Second Attempt

Woke up at 5:00am today in an attempt to get to the Tsukiji Fish Market early enough to avoid the long wait for sushi. This time, we were too early, by some 24 hours. I should have read the fine print: Tsukiji is closed on Sundays.

Our consolation prize before heading home to crawl back into bed was a chirashi from a stall right by where we got our ramen yesterday. Not bad, but not quite as good as what I hoping for. And, well, you know the fish must have been at least a day older than it needed to be... :P

When we woke up for the second time today, we headed over to Odaiba. I'd thought that it would be fun to try out restaurants by the Iron Chefs, and at the top of my list was my favorite Iron Chef, Hiroyuki Saikai. Instead of going to his flagship restaurant however, I decided to try out his Bistro Cafe La Rochelle, which I'd naively imagined to be something comparable to Thomas Keller's Bouchon. I was sadly, sadly mistaken. It serves buffet-style French food, and I'm appalled Sakai-san would attach his name to this place. The food was totally dismissable, and about the best thing I can say about it is that they had some really good cherry tomatoes in the salad bar.

After the disappointing lunch, we made our way to Kapabashi-dori, a street filled with stores that specializes in kitchen and restaurant-ware. Everything from dishes, silverware and kitchen tools to chef's outfits and the plastic display models.

When we were done, we headed to a place I've been wanting to go to ever since I first heard about it -- Harajuku -- but was never able to go on a Sunday due to one scheduling conflict or another. Why Sunday? Because that's when the cosplay people come out to play:

After getting all the shots I wanted, we headed over to the Meiji Jingu, a Shinto shrine dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his consort, Empress Shoken. It was in the middle of a dense forest, that while very beautiful (as my wife assured me), was completely beyond my comprehension as my allergies just increased by a couple orders of magnitude. As several points I could barely see because my eyes were tearing up so badly.

We finally got out of there and things eased up a bit as we strolled down Takeshita Dori. We got as far as the Omotesando Hills where we spied a shop selling French macarons. Alas, they looked better than they tasted, and fell far short of the ideal.

Today was definitely not turning out to be a very good food day. Lesson learned: stick to Japanese food while in Japan.

So once again, we went and asked the concierge for advice: where do we go for good tonkatsu? (Something I'd been hankering for after reading Winston's attempts to make them.) Answer: Maisen on the 9th floor of the Tokyu department store. And she was right. As usual.

And because we had such a good time there last night, we returned to Sakura Onsen again, this time with two hours to spare - enough time to also get a massage. Bliss...

Sakur-a-choo!

We woke up at 6:00am this morning to eat some sushi at the Tsukiji Fish Market and we still weren't early enough. By the time we got there, it was a little over 7:00am, and it was a three hour wait for a seat!

There's a specific place I always go to for sushi here, and for the past couple years it's gotten extremely popular because it got listed in a few guide books.

Since the wife didn't want to wait around for that long, we decided to try again tomorrow and looked for breakfast in the outer Tsukiji Market. It's been something I've wanted to do anyway, but never got around to it because I always go for the sushi. We ended getting ramen instead, and wandered around trying out whatever caught our fancy.

After breakfast, the sakura hunt was on. First stop: Ueno Park. We decided to skip the museums there, so we didn't spend too much time at this park, but we did enjoy walking down the sakura-lined main avenue and wandering around the lake.

From there, we hopped on the subway and made our way over to Kudanshita, where we were distracted by all the food vendors along the path to the Yasukuni Shrine before making our way to our original destination: Chidorigafuchi, the north-eastern moat of the Imperial Palace, and Kitonamaru Park. After that, it was just a short walk over to the Imperial Palace East Garden.

Unfortunately for me, yesterday's allergic reaction was only a hint of the horrors to come, and by this point in the day, I was seriously suffering from teary eyes and a constantly running nose. My sneezes were also drawing same dark looks from the Japanese around me. I've been cursing myself for not thinking of bringing my allergy meds especially since I was here to see the sakura blossoms. *sigh*

So we decided to head on back to the hotel, where the wife had seen a pharmacy, in the hopes of obtaining something to get my allergies under control. But since we didn't really want to call it quits just yet, we went by way of the Tokyo station, where we did a bit of exploring in its bowels. Which may or may not explain this shot:

While at the Daimaru department store in the Tokyo station, we also picked up a couple bento boxes for a late lunch, which we ate when we got back to the hotel. The amount and variety of food available in the basement of Japanese department stores is just staggering.

A short nap and some allergy meds later, we headed back out, this time to the Roppongi district. We walked around for a bit, saw the Maman (Louise Bourgeois' spider sculpture), and decided it was time for dinner.

I'd randomly picked a restaurant out of the guidebook we had, and as luck would have it, they were out of business. Instead of looking for something else around Roppongi, we decided to go to the Sakura Onsen in Sugamo. They had a restaurant there as well, so after dinner we both soaked for an hour in the glorious hot hot baths.

We'd "discovered" this onsen through our concierge, and was one I hadn't been to before. It's definitely my favorites in Tokyo at this time. It's much cheaper than both Oedo Onsen in Odaiba and LaQua Spa in the Tokyo Dome and have baths that go up to 42°C. The only downside is that they close at 11:00pm and don't have a steam room on the men's side. Oh, and the restaurant is only so-so.

All in all, a good day. The soak at the onsen was the cherry on top.

Baby Yanovsky

Whoo! Just got this from Ken:

Vasily Yanovsky, born April 2 2008 at 2:49 pm, weighing 7 lbs 6.5 oz (3.36 kg) and 20 inches (50.8 cm) in length.

Congrats Ken and Inna!

Hanami

While the wife went to work, I decided to visit Shinjuki Gyoen. We'd heard that with the weather being so warm lately the sakura had bloomed early, and I wanted to make sure that I got some nice pictures before it was too late as the wife wouldn't be free till Saturday. I got to the park around 10:30am; it was a beautiful day, and the sakura trees were more than accommodating.

That's not snow in the last two shots, that's the flower petals blown loose by the wind! The park is pretty big, and I spent more time there than I'd expected, so I just bought a bento box and had lunch under a tree like everyone else who were on their lunch break.

By the time I left, it was around 1:30pm, and I was driven out more by my allergies than the fact that I really did need to get back to the hotel to do some work.

For more pictures, check out the Picasa album. I was playing with a circular polarizing filter today, which is why the sky looks such a beautiful shade of blue in some shots but not in others.

Back in Tokyo!

The wife's working in Tokyo for the a couple weeks and convinced me (it didn't take much) to spend a few days with her here. The timing is especially good because we're just in time for hanami, or flower viewing (and almost always referring specifically to cherry blossom (sakura) viewing).

Even the runway that we landed on was lined with sakura trees, so we're off to a good start! Here's a shot of the street next to our hotel, the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel in Shibuya.

And with a room on the 33rd floor, we had an amazing view:

That green patch on the top of the roof of the building in the lower right is actually a soccer field!

Based on the advice of the concierge, we went to a nearby restaurant named (appropriately enough) Sakura for dinner and had a delicious meal.

Construction Day 55

With all the in-wall work pretty much complete, the house has been taken over by the insulation people as they pack the walls with UltraTouch natural fiber insulation.

We picked this over standard fiberglass insulation because of it's green properties. It's made out of 85% post-industrial cotton fiber (i.e. denim scraps from manufacturers) and is 100% recyclable. Even better for me is that it's VOC-free and formaldehyde-free, which should help the indoor air quality. As a side benefit, they should also work pretty well as a sound barrier.

With all the walls filled in, the rooms are really starting to take shape as you can no longer see from one end of the house to the other. The drywalls go up next and will probably take a couple weeks to complete.

Airborne Debunked

This winter it seemed like everyone was taking Airborne, an alka-seltzer style dietary health supplement that's supposed to boost your immune system. Even my wife, who's usually extremely leery of medication, tried them out a few times based on recommendations from her father.

Personally, I had my doubts, and it looks like my suspicions were right: the makers of Airborne just settled a class-action lawsuit for false advertising. The most interesting part? As part of their settlement they are offering a refund to anyone who has ever bought their product.

French Laundry

After trying to get a reservation for more than a year, we finally made it to the French Laundry last Saturday for lunch, where we spent five hours working our way through nine courses of oh-so-delicious food. I won't go into detail about the individual dishes; sufficed to say that they were all very good. My only complaint is that I liked C's dishes more than mine!

One of the biggest surprises for me was the water they served. It's local water, but they're using Nordaq Fresh, a relatively new super-duper water filtration system that removes everything you don't want (impurities, VOCs, bacteria, etc.) but leaves everything you do (minerals, salts). And while you normally wouldn't think twice about water, the stuff they served made us all sit up and pay attention, because it was really, really good - clean, fresh and invigorating. Even better, it's local water, so there's no need to ship it from halfway around the world. I hope more restaurants start using this system soon.

When we were done with the meal, we even got a chance to check out the kitchen where all the magic happens. C. kept mentioning that it was smaller than she expected. One cool touch they had was a big LCD hooked up to a camera into the kitchen at Per Se in NYC.

Construction Day 44

It doesn't look like much has changed since my last update 19 days ago, but that's because most of the work's been happening either in the walls, the attic, or the crawl space as the electrician, plumber and heating guys has been doing their thing. The only major visible change is the patio doors and the new landing in the garage:

The good news is that we've finally got all the approvals we need from the city. In the process, we've had to (a) add two strong-walls in the living room, (b) convert the wall between the patio doors into the family room into a shear wall, and (c) convert two walls in the master bedroom into shear walls. While the first two were relatively straightforward, the last one required us to re-do some work.

Pleasure and Pain

We ended up spending Friday and Sunday at Snowbird and Saturday at Solitude.

Honestly, I was/am so out of shape that day two at Snowbird wasn't as fun as it should have been. By mid-day, my feet and legs were hurting and I was more than happy to call it quits when 4pm rolled around. While I had a few good runs here and there, and I definitely appreciated the fact that almost all their chairs were fast and had foot rests, I can't say I was too impressed with Snowbird.

Even their most interesting feature -- the $1.4M tunnel they built to connect the front of the mountain with Mineral Basin on the back -- was nothing more than a novelty since you have to stand on a conveyor belt the whole way (I would much rather just sit on a chair). Although now that I think about it, you have to stand no matter how you get to Mineral Basin since the only other option requires you to be packed liked sardines into a tram.

After the troubles I was having on Friday, I almost took Saturday off, but I decided to persevere since I really wanted to check out Solitude. And I am so glad I did. Saturday turned out to be my best day on the slopes. I'm sure the ibuprofen helped, but my body must have rallied because the aches and pains seemed to just recede into the background.

Despite the fact that there was only one high speed chair, and most of the lifts were doubles, I found Solitude so much more enjoyable because of the terrain. Specifically, the sheer abundance of opportunities to go into the trees and pretty much play in powder. And did I mention that it more or less snowed the whole day? I could easily have spent all day on just the Eagle Express and Honeycomb Return chairs. I only went off the summit into Honeycomb Canyon a couple times because you have to cut across the entire front half of the mountain to get to the summit again from either of these chairs.

I also had a bit of fun at their "family friendly" terrain park. I've been trying to work on my jumps for a while now but a few nasty falls early on has made me overly cautious. The kid-sized jumps here really helped me build up my confidence so that I'm more willing to hit the jumps faster, and knowing that I can land them will hopefully enable me to keep trying to get more height and distance.

For our last day, we had to decided between Snowbird and Solitude, and I decided to vote for Snowbird because I really wanted to give it another chance. It was Bryan's favorite resort, and I wanted to make sure Friday's pain wasn't coloring my judgment. And it turns out it really didn't. After Solitude, Snowbird just seemed dull. I ended up closing out the day in the terrain park, and I found myself a lot more relaxed after Saturday's "practice" at Solitude. My last few runs down Mid-Gad was definitely my best of the day.

All in all, this was a great trip. It was my first time in Utah, and all thanks goes to Bryan for organizing the whole thing. I think I'm going to have to make snowboarding in Utah a more regular thing. After all, it's almost as fast to fly out here (2 hours) as it is to drive to Tahoe (4 hours), the snow is supposedly more reliable, and it is much, much less crowded.

Park City

We're in Salt Lake City, Utah for four days of snowboarding and we kicked it off today at Park City. This place is big, with some great runs, and there was even some powder! Definitely the best bit of snowboarding I've had in the past couple years.

Time to crash now. Gotta get up early to go to Snowbird tomorrow.