ｑｕｉｔｅ ｕ～Ｎｉｋｋｏ

ｉ　write　this　FROM　a　free　internet　connection　in　NIkko，and　thekeyboardis　ｉｎｓａｎｅ．
we　ｍｅｔ　ONE］ｏｆ３ｗｏｏｄｃａｒｖｅｒｓ　IN　japan　ｗｈｏ　ｍａｋｅｓ　the　ｔｈｉｎｇｓ　ｕｓｅｄ　IN　ｔｅａ　ｃｅｒｅｍｏｎｉｅｓ　ａｎｄ　ｈａｄ　ａ　ｇｒｅａｔ　ｔｉｍｅ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｈｉｍ．

ｔｙｐｉｎｇ　ｉｓ　ａｎｎｏｙｉｎｇ．

ｂｙｅ

update: a few pics of Nikko, including the woodcarver guy. More to come after we get back from the baths...

arigato gozaimas

Update: the Italian brunch sucked, but the view was awesome. Tokyo is a massive freaking city - hard to believe actually.
After the meal, we got our bikes (did we mention we rented bikes? I am told that we did) and rode to Ueno Park, and walked around this shuk-like market, where the whole place smelled like fish. Ech.

Then on to Akihabara, the Electric District, where there are hundreds and hundreds, and dare I say, hundreds of electronics shops, all blasting lights, music and high-pitched voices onto the streets. The stores are many floors of anything and everything electronic-related, from cameras, mp3 players, transisters, LED lights, anime porn, wire - just total insanity. Exhausting.

Then we rode through the Sporting Goods district on our way to an Indian vegetarian restaurant (eating veg is a lot harder than you would think over here. Fish is everywhere.) The place was in Ginza, known as the 5th Avenue of Tokyo, all high-end shops and people. Pretty good food.
After dinner, we rode all the way back to home to Asakusa, about 45 mins or so, maybe more. It was raining on and off, so we got wet.
We're exhausted, tired and worn-out, and planning on taking a day-trip tomorrow to a place about 2 hours outside of Tokyo called Nikko.

night.

Sake Karaoke

Last night we had a true lost in translation moment as we had an amazing dinner with Zack's aunt's friend and fiance where they ordered everything for us, and we learned that the way to do it is to drink beer first and then sake. Then we did karaoke! It was really so fun. Now I am hungover but Zack's not becaue he puked last night after we got out of our $50 cab. We're going to an Italian brunch. I hope it's good.

Oishii

This morning we went to the fishmarket, where we almost got run over thousands of times by men (not one woman, I noticed) driving these wierd go-cart type cars with boxes on them and a bizaare steering mechanism where you stand up and turn a big wheel like you're on a ship. Then I dragged Zack to Daiwa sushi where, as the guidebook promised, the line snaked around 5 or 6 times but actually moved much faster than we expected--some guy from Dallas named Tony told us that some other person told him that the line would take an hour. I suspect the guy that told Tony that was in cohoots with the owners of the sushi place next door that Tony defected to upon hearing this. Sucker. I finished my sushi breakfast of champions (and Zack his Kappa Maki and miso soup) the same time that Tony finished his. We then took the subway back to our neighborhood with Tony and another Daiwa sushi line defector--Mark from Austria, who now lives in Germany. But we ditched them so I could get my sunglasses from the hotel. Once in the hotel, we had to fight the urge not to sleep, which we did.

I then convinced Zack that it would be a good idea to rent bicycles. Everyone in Tokyo was riding them all over the place, including old people who usually had at least one basket attached to theirs, and middle aged women who usually had at least one child seat attached to theirs (plus baskets). Zack resisted in much the same manner as he had resisted letting me drive the little electric car I convinced him we should rent in San Francisco. A fight ensued, but was resolved; I think what settled the matter was when he realized how ineffectively slow and rickety these bicycles were and that we weren't really riding at a much faster pace than we were walking.

We lit candles and got fortunes at the Shinto shrine next to our hotel. The way you get fortunes is by pulling a stick out of a box and then matching up the Japanese characters on the stick with the Japanese characters on this set of drawers and then opening the drawer that matches and taking out a piece of paper. Then you're supposed to tie the fortune onto these metal rods. I got a really bad fortune, actually, which I'm still upset about. Seriously bad. It said things like "People will hurt you. Sick loved ones will not be healed. Your lost articles will not be found."

We checked out the Tokyo National Gallery, which had a great overview of Japanese art in ten rooms on the second floor. Really beautiful stuff. Then we bought some prints in the giftshop. I still have a lot more shopping I feel I need to do here.

Speaking of "checking out," when we ate dinner last night at a restaurant that had no English menu despite the fact that the sign outside read, "We have English menu," a waiter said he didn't speak English that well but when I asked what kind of sashimi he had he said "I'll check it out." Zack said, "Unless this guy learned his English from 90210, it's pretty good." I still think that's hilarious, and I've been laughing about it since last night.

My dad gave this speech at KJ that said everything in Japan would be persistently similar but strangely different. So far that's true. I can't wait for more fish.

Japan : 3 : Miriam made a friend!!

We hope to make many more like her along the way.

Japan: Post two

we're here in our Ryokan (traditional style bed and breakfast), getting upacked and cleaned up, getting ready to go out.
It's really awesome, the neighbourhood is beautiful, and we're really excited.

here's a picture of our room.
going out for sake and other stuff, so that's all for now.

Japan number one

After a cancelled flight out of Boston, and being re-routed through Chicago, then a 13 hour flight to Tokyo, we're now on a train from the airport (Narita) to Tokyo proper.
We met a nice guy on the plane, and he's basically helping us get to Tokyo station.
It's pretty trippy so far - why can't we have a good train system in the US?
It's a bit rainy, kind of muggy, but at least it's not cold.
The cars are small, and there's more english signs that I had imagined.
Bamboo groves are cool - all along the way, we pass a bunch of them.
Lots of houses have the cool-looking roofs, just like you want them to.

This place really is just like a foreign country.

- Zack

too much email

i think i'll need to go on an email hiatus after the wedding.

there's just so many, and keeping them organized is a bitch.

wedding update

it's going to happen!

soon!

i have a suit, she has a dress, we have a rabbi.

and a sweet apartment in brooklyn, so that's exciting.

if you want to get us gifts, please do so.

wedding update

it's going to happen!

soon!

i have a suit, she has a dress, we have a rabbi.

and a sweet apartment in brooklyn, so that's exciting.

if you want to get us gifts, please do so.

I have never seen the movie Slacker

the Linklater movie, but I really want to.

Have you seen it?

I have never seen the movie Slacker

the Linklater movie, but I really want to.

Have you seen it?

and so it goes

sometimes I won't post for a long time.

other times, I will post sometimes.

otherwise, my times will be posted on time.

it's freakin' awesome here!

what a country!!

monday, late afternoon, a corner in downtown San Francisco

I had just left my class for the day. About 3pm, or so. Closer to 315, really. I wanted to go see the flagship Apple store, so I did. Only about a 10 minute walk up Market and there it was. Terribly unimpressive. I'm not sure what I wanted to see, but this store looks just like the Soho store, but not as nice.
Maybe you know that that's the deal, but I had no idea,
and was a little disappointed.

They also didn't have the new MacBook Pro, which was lame.

I called my mom who had spent some time out here in the distant past, and talked about that and different places around the city. That was neat.
I spent a good while calling different people that I knew, trying to find out if there was anyone I knew, even by a degree or two, who lives here, maybe to hang out a bit or whatever. I remembered that my cousin Sebastian lives here, and gave him a call left a message.
Meanwhile, I'd been walking down Kearny towards the water - maybe west? Up a huge hill, which I can't imagine having to go up on a regular basis. I saw a cable car go by and asked someone how you get on and all. I found where to get the one that went straight down this big hill to Fishermen's (man's) Wharf and after a short wait, got on.

Wow.
Hanging off the side of a trolley car that looks like it's from the 1800's, being driven by this guy pulling on huge levers that do I-don't-know-what. I will be finding out, cause I plan on looking it up. They do some cable grabbing, I know, but that's all I know.

Got off at the wharf, lots of tourists, it being President's Day, so it was crowded. Lots of seafood places, crappy stores, etc.
Looking out accross the bay is really beautiful. There's these mountains that are just incredible, and Alcatraz is right in the middle of the water. Old brick buildings on a hill surrounded by high cliffs down to the water.

Walked down along the water, saw the sea lions on pier 39. They're pretty cool.

Jumped on a trolley (not a cable car, a different thing) and took it down to Embarcadero. That's another thing about SF that I like - the names of places and streets.
Spent the next hour and a half or so walking down Mission St all the way back up to 21 and Mission. Interesting walk, I guess. It took longer than I thought it would.

Met up with Dara, and that was fun, seeing her here.
Went back to Jonas', chilled, and went to bed.

stay tuned.

Reader Questions: San Francisco Edition

so the most popular, interesting and only question I haven't gotten asked about my trip is, 'hey zack, what are you doing in San Francisco any way?'

my boss told me back in January that I had to do some training for the present fiscal year. It seems that everyone is supposed to take some career enhancement classes every year. Me and J had been talking about an SF trip for some while, and based on some almost plans we had, I got this SF trip approved - flight, training class, meal allowance, etc. Crazy.
sadly, J's schedule wasn't going to let her come at the same time.
Turns out, we have lots of miles and can get flights for 10 bucks a couple weeks later. We'll be going for about 5 or 6 days, vacation style, around the first week in March.

Anyway - so I'm here taking an Apple course, to teach me how to officially troubleshoot Mac desktops. They brand us on the third day at G5 o'clock.
I know a bunch of the stuff already, but there's definitely a lot that I've learned.
The class has six of us in it, me and these five stereotypes. Which, as I hate to think about, means I

The guy teaching the class loves him some Macs. Boy oh boy does he ever.
He knows a hell of a lot about them too. Not even such an old guy, seemed to me.
It gets a little tedious, but there's always the internet.

more san francisco, please!

OH YEAH! so jonas has this car that I drove when we went out for a lounge and pizza on sunday night.
It's a super fast car - a track-equipped(?)BMW M3. Now, I guess I've just never driven a car anything like this. Well, actually, this summer in Montana, we rented a Mustang for the day, and that was fun too. It was an automatic, but it was still very fun.
It's just a very intimidating car to drive. It's expensive, first of all. Wouldn't want anything to happen to it. That would suck. Then, it's also super sensitive and twitchy. I stalled out a bunch of times - yes,lame. I felt very embarassed every time. The hills don't hurt either.
The power that I could feel was just wild.
Well, I'm going to be driving out to the beach house on Friday and then to Muir Woods on Saturday for some hiking in the redwoods. Maybe a drive down Highway 1, depending on what happens. That would be cool.

san frantastic!

so I'm having a great time here in California.
First time in San Francisco, and first extended trip to California.

Got in late on Sunday night, about 1030 or so local time. I was tired from the weekend and the flight, of course. My friend Jonas had sent a car to the airport to pick me, and that was nice.

The ride was interesting, it was dark, but seeing the bay was cool.
I think it was the bay at least.

anyway, we got to the place and went up to the loft, walking through this killer courtyard with gardens and all. The loft is incredible - huge, open, and just awesome.
I missed a big party at the loft the night before, and the dj stuff was (and is) still set up in the corner.
The most obvious and striking feature of the loft are the original beams and supports. They are these sturdy-looking things, stripped of their paint in a very cool, raw way.
I guess it's not totally done yet, cause there is not a lot of furniture or furnishings, but what is here is really tasteful. go Jonas.

so - I was hungry and Jonas was all set to go get some food. Turns out we were going to meet these French girls in a lounge somewhere, and there was good pizza accross the street. I'll admit I wasn't so ready for a oom-tseh oom-tseh place, and we didn't end up staying too long. The pizza wasn't the greatest.

shaaaabus

we're making shabbos for lisa a friend.

how exciting.

amen

so what's new?

hm.

lots I guess -

ben and shira are in the far east for 4 months which is freakin' awesome

I'm turning 30 on the 18th

I'm going to San Francisco on the 19th for a week for an Apple training course - first time there and I'm stoked

I'll be going back to SF on March 3rd for 4 days for vacation with J

Wedding plans are coming along, got the invitations done, band is signed, things are moving along

What do I want for my birthday?