Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Smoking


I’m in Hong Kong today.

Recently my corporate travel deparment decided I should start smoking because, despite repeated instructions to the contrary, they insist on putting me into hotel rooms designated for smokers.

The problem with these hotel rooms is that everyone who stays in them smokes – creating the pleasant ambiance of an Atlantic City bingo parlor at 4AM. In my current room the smell is so overpowering I feel the wallpaper must have long since worn away, replaced only by a thick sheet of nicotine and tar. I’ll probably have to go on the patch when I check out.

After work I went on a quest to find Gillette “Fusion” blades for a friend in Shanghai. Since the blade refills cost about as much as the average Chinese worker earns in 40 years, they haven’t started selling them yet on the Mainland. Sadly, no luck finding them here either.

Here’s a photo I took this evening walking around Causeway Bay. The weather is nice here now. Cool, but pleasant and clear.

I’m taking the train to Guangzhou tomorrow. Then back to Shanghai tomorrow night.
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Hot, so hot




I was in Singapore last week for work (always work.)

It was hotter than the hinges of hell. 85 degrees at 10:30AM. So humid it was like wading through a vat of warm Vaseline.

My co-workers who live in Singapore were quick to assure me, “This is nothing. It gets much hotter.” Oy.

Here are some snaps walking back to the hotel from a meeting. Stick your head in a convection oven to experience the full effect.
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Killer party



Juan hosted a lunch for his creative team at his house on Sunday. We had Indonesian food and played a game called “Murderer.”

The rules seemed about as simple as a brain transplant. Everyone took a card. Depending on your card you were either a judge, policeman, murderer or a peasant. (I, typically, was a peasant.) Then everyone proceeded to scream at each other in Mandarin for two hours.

Since my Mandarin is limited to my address, ordering chicken dumplings and baby-talk names for the cat – I was quickly eliminated.

Luckily this gave me more time to stand around the buffet shovelling my face with beef rendang. The food was terrific.
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Conehead


Someone had, eh, minor elective surgery last week.

He didn’t like the conehead but it managed to stay on most of the time.
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Tuesday, January 09, 2007

New camera


I got a really nice new camera for Christmas.

Here's a photo from this morning. He's getting big.
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Monday, January 08, 2007

View from my window


Here's the view from my hotel window last Thursday morning in Beijing around 8:30 AM.

Despite presently having all of the aesthetic charms of Detroit in the 1970s, Beijing is developing a lot of cutting-edge architecture as part of the preparation for the 2008 Olympics. In the distance you can see the CCTV building under construction. When it's finished it will look like this.
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Comments appreciated

Charles wins the "Most Frequent Contributor Award" for 2006 on this website. The prize includes a no expenses paid trip to visit ME! Truly a prestigious honor.

Todd and my mother are a close second.

The race is on for 2007 -- so please leave a comment when you can. It will compensate for all the validation I never received in high school.

New Year's Eve




We went to the Meiji Shrine to bring in the New Year (along with a zillion other tourists.)

It was nice. We ate fish on a stick and toasted with sake.
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Tokyo





Wow. Tokyo is like being in a super-dense, clean, well-lit, not-too-distant future. Also, if the Machines ever rise up to destroy humanity, they surely will be led by the amazingly high-tech Japanese toilets – a wonder to behold. Our hotel’s offered an electrically heated toilet seat and the option to, ahem, “wash, blow and go.”

We had a pretty casual time. Walked around. Ate tonkatsu. Shopped. Juan took photos of “interesting surfaces” like pothole covers and concrete walls. On New Year’s Day we went to a shrine (or temple… someone please explain the difference) and said some prayers with all of the old people.

It’s only a two and a half hour flight so hopefully I’ll be back soon.

I've included a photo of a random street scene from our neighborhood, the futuristic Prada store (designed by the same architects currently designing the Olympic Stadium in Beijing,) a view of the Tokyo Tower from an observation deck, and Juan's reflection in a window in Roppongi Hills.
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Friday, January 05, 2007

Kyoto





The trip from Kyoto to Nara is quick – a bit more than hour on the train.

Kyoto is an amazing place. Beautiful scenery. Temples and shrines everywhere.

You can pay someone to dress you as a Geisha so we saw a lot of Japanese tourist women mincing around in kimonos, white make-up and those strange wooden flip-flops. (Second photo)

We stayed at another ryokan. Nice, but not as charming as the place in Nara. Our dinner included “cod milt.” (It’s better not to ask.)
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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Tanuki


Here’s a photo of me with some Tanuki in Kyoto – they’re an omnipresent piece of kitsch in many of the parts of Japanland we visited.

What’s a “Tanuki?” I finally looked it up:

(abridged)

“Tanuki statues are found everywhere around Japan, especially outside restaurants and bars, where the Tanuki beckons drinkers and dinners to enter. The beckoning Tanuki is most often depicted with a big round tummy, gigantic testicles, a flask of sake, a promissory note, and a straw hat.”

Also, according to this disturbingly unappetizing Japanese legend, “[Tanuki] can cast powerful illusions -- they can turn leaves into fake money or horse excrement into a delicious-looking dinner.”

I think it’s better to stick to one of those waving cats.
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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Kankaso




We stayed at a terrific ryokan (traditional inn) called Kankaso in Nara. It’s near the Todaiji Temple and surrounded by a quiet and lush private garden.

The accommodations are simple but elegant – just tatami and a table. The hostess serves meals in your room and pulls the table away at bedtime to lay out mats on the floor.

The first photo is our breakfast of rice, miso, tofu, grilled fish and some pickled vegetables. The next photo is an exterior shot of our room. The last is the main entrance.
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Todaiji Temple




On Christmas morning we got up early and headed to Nara to see the Todaiji Temple, the world’s largest wooden building featuring the world’s largest bronze-gilded Buddha and surrounded by the world’s peskiest deer.

It’s quite a site – one of Japan’s greatest treasures of antiquity infested with a bunch of tame deer mooching food from the tourists and shitting all over the place.

I lit some incense and prayed for the deer’s demise. Sadly, nothing.
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Osaka


Big. Modern. Crazy neon a-plenty. Despite being Shonen Knife's favorite town, Osaka doesn’t offer so much for tourists. We spent the first day walking around and had dinner at a yakitori place. On the 24th we made a vain attempt to find the Noguchi design store and then wandered among the throng of shoppers in Dotonbori. The weather was cold but clear.
For Christmas Eve we ate at a crab restaurant (see below.)
Here are some random street scenes.

Christmas morning


Here's the view from the window on Christmas morning in Osaka around 7:30AM.

We ate at the restaurant with the giant neon crab the night before. I wasn't much of a crab fan but I think I'm changing my mind.
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