Back in Tokyo
We are back in Tokyo, celebrating New Year’s Eve with Mieko and Reynald. Discovered Algo, a very fun game for the geeks among us. And it’s fast enough for people with short attention spans. Looks like we have a winner here…
We are back in Tokyo, celebrating New Year’s Eve with Mieko and Reynald. Discovered Algo, a very fun game for the geeks among us. And it’s fast enough for people with short attention spans. Looks like we have a winner here…
We are in Kobe for a couple of days. The city fully recovered from the 1995 earthquake and the Rokko artificial island where we are staying developed in very impressive ways. Yesterday, we had a teppanyaki dinner with a live shrimp cooked in front of us. The twisting and screaming of the shrimp on the iron griddle was a little bit too much for May who settled on the beef, which luckily did not come alive on the dining table. The Koyo-Tei restaurant at the 21st floor of the Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel & Towers is a good place to get introduced to this type of Japanese cuisine. Today, we sampled the famous Kobe beef at Wakkoku. This locally-raised beef is massaged by hand and fed beer. I have just one thing to say: yummy!
For the past two days we have been staying at the Kanaguya ryokan in Yudanaka, which is located an hour away from Nagano in the Japanese Alps. A ryokan is the Japanese equivalent of a bed & breakfast, in a more luxurious way.
Because Kanaguya is also an onsen—Japanese public bath (sento) with natural hot spring water, it gives you the ultimate ryokan experience: we got a large room with tatami floors and a private shrine, rested in a couple of the onsen’s five private baths and enjoyed kaiseki dinners that are as entertaining as delectable when trying to identify the nature of the food being served. Raw horse meat and chicken broth served in a tea pot were firsts for both May and I, even though May passed on the horse meat.
But the best part of the stay was the ryokan’s building itself, with its pagoda-style architecture, eight floors and labyrinthine corridors. All of a sudden, it feels like we have been Spirited Away into the magical world of Hayao Miyazaki. Many thanks to Reynald A. for having made the reservation for us and to Sarayan and Totoro for having introduced me to the wonders of Studio Ghibli.
Today, we hiked in the snow for half an hour and reached Jigokudani Yaen-Koen were a community of 200 monkeys take baths in warm springs. Some cool pictures are on Flickr. May and I took the pictures with a Canon EOS 1D Mark II and the superb Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. We used May’s umbrella to protect the equipment from the snow. A webcam shows one of the springs.
Today we are staying at the Westin Miyako in Kyoto. This is definitely one of the best hotels I have been staying at. It stands perched on a hill overlooking the city and is surrounded by temples and shrines. Rooms are amazing and the bathroom gave us our first try at the famed TOTO Washlets. Without getting into details, all I can say is that I am sold. If you want to know more, CNET has a good review of their flagship model, the Washlet S300.
Once cleaned and rested, we headed to Moritaya. This restaurant has been operating since 1869 and offers the best shabu-shabu in town. They have private rooms, but a better option is to share one of the rooms that overlooks Kamo-gawa, Kyoto’s main river. Outstanding experience! Many thanks to Georg S. for making me discover this delicious Japanese dish.
Today, May got attacked by a hungry deer in Nara. She was eating a roasted yam while the animal tried to get a bite. Somehow May did not want to share that day. Yam too yummy! Against her injuctions, I did not come to her rescue and instead focused on taking this funny picture.
The first time I went to Japan was in 1991. I spent a Summer month traveling across country with a Japan Rail Pass and sleeping in youth hostels, capsule hotels, trains and train stations. The object of the trip was to take pictures of contemporary buildings. My favorite architect at the time was Tadao Ando. Fifteen years later, here I am, back in this country that shall never cease to amaze me.
May and I are off to Japan for 10 days. First vacations together in a long time. On the roadmap: Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagano and Kobe. Highlight of the trip: meeting the monkeys bathing in warm springs and throwing snow balls at each other. We will post pictures on Flickr if we manage to find decent Internet connections.
Following the advice of one of my investors, I finally upgraded my mobile device to the new BlackBerry 8700c with service from Cingular Wireless. The Intel processor makes it way faster than any previous model and the display featuring anti-aliasing and auto-dimming is a thing of beauty. The web browser is now usable and the device is even smaller than the 7290 I used before. A must for BlackBerry addicts.
Stereolab is back on the road again. March 2nd and 4th at The Fillmore in San Francisco, CA. And a new LP is scheduled for released on March 6/7. Joy!
I am now flying on a Cessna 172SP equipped with a G1000 all-glass flightdeck. It’s a completely different world! A moving map shows where you are, Mode-S transponders with Traffic Information Service shows you where the other planes are, a worldwide terrain and obstacle database tells you where you really should not go and an XM receiver gives you real-time weather information. General aviation finally made it into the 21st century.
Tonight, I was supposed to fly from Minneapolis, MN to San Francisco, CA through Denver, CO. For some reason, my reservation was canceled and turned into a direct flight from Las Vegas, NV to San Francisco, CA. I must assume that the airline expected me to walk from Minneapolis to Las Vegas, which would make for a great hike, except for the snow storm raging outside.
After much discussions, I am back onto a flight to San Francisco through Chicago, IL. For those who know anything about US geography, Minneapolis is actually located between Chicago and San Francisco, but I will ignore this detail for now, for I have more pressing matters to worry about: the pilot of my flight to Chicago is actually stuck in Chicago and the flight won’t leave before the time I am actually supposed to take my connection to San Francisco in Chicago. Everybody is following so far? Good.
I am now back to square one and have to get a flight on an other airline, for all other flights are either full, late, canceled or any combination of the above. This one is direct to San Francisco and paid for by the airline I was originally supposed to fly with, which seems to create all kinds of issues with computers. This gives me the opportunity of walking a couple of miles at MSP, which actually is a pretty nice airport if one puts aside its utterly stupid terminal configuration. After about five hours of work, I am now the proud owner of a middle seat ticket direct from Minneapolis to San Francisco. With a little bit of luck, I might even sleep home tonight…
No, this is not the Redwood Room bar at the Clift hotel in San Francisco (best mojitos in town), it is the Redwood Room pizza, pastas & live jazz restaurant in Rochester, MN. Excellent food (do not miss the artichoke dip), good music and very honest prices make for a great place to meet friends or have a very casual business dinner.
Very interesting book from Tom Kelley, IDEO’s general manager. Tom outlines ten canonical personality types that usually play a key role for any innovation process. One that I found particularly interesting is the anthropologist who keeps “bug lists” or “idea wallets”. I think that I will turn this blog into one of those, and here is the first entry: how come that in our day and age of ultimate automation, cashiers at Macy’s still have to stick a custom barcode on each and every product that goes through the register? It makes both cashier and customer waste time, it is prone to error, and it just feels utterly low tech. I must be missing something here…
George Clooney was good in Solaris and delivers again a great performance in Syriana. The plot is complex without being too convoluted. The depiction of recruitment methods for suicide bombers rings true, in a very sad way. But the real power of the movie is to bring confusion in the viewer’s state of mind. Should I feel anger? Fear? Guilt? And where is all this going?
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