My love of all things British absolutely requires that I post this Hovis bread ad by Ridley Scott.
Found at Very Short List.
Found at Very Short List.
Recently in travel Category
I'm going to Chicago for the weekend to visit a friend. Any suggestions on what I should be sure to do and see while I'm there?
I'm really glad that Adam is still committed to writing about our Japan trip earlier this year. My life has been a bit too nuts to focus on it, but it's something I wish I could do. Anyway, here's his take on Kanazawa: (Um, and look how sunburned I am!)
I remember the discrimination as well, though it was often tough to determine whether it was out of politeness or malice. In this particular restaurant, I seem to remember us being seated in this room because it had western-style chairs, so I think our hosts were trying to make us more comfortable.I find this happens a lot here. We visit "historical" places, however they are all replicas built to the original spec on top of where the original once stood. To me seems very fake and kind of sad. How would one like to goto the Colosseum in Rome and see a perfect replica of what once stood there? seems completely wrong and thats is what we saw today. Dinner was sushi which was very good even if we were not allowed to wit with the rest of the Japanese people, in our little section for "Americans" or "White people."
I'm spending a long weekend Baltimore to pretend I'm on The Wire. Actually, it will be my first non-working weekend/night/anytime in a while, so I'm looking forward to it. I won't have my Macbook or my Blackberry. YES. SERIOUSLY.
Here's what I've got on deck for next week:
*Suggestions for Gmail (because I shouldn't be so negative all the time)
* A Review of Mint (the financial tool, not the excellent webstats package)
Feel free to "pre-comment" on those posts. :-)
I loved our trip there earlier this year, but I didn't think I'd say a few months later that I miss it. But I do for some reason - it's a fantastic country.
I got into the Airdig beta today (I suspect it's fairly public by now). I've got a handful of invites. If you travel a lot and are interested, drop me a comment and I'll send you an invite...but you've got to promise to let me know what you think. See, there's a catch!
Of course, I just booked a bunch of tickets last week before I was on the site, but I'll be traveling a lot and am looking forward to giving it a try.
Ann, Kingston Lighthouse and the Hudson River cruise looks like *so* much fun and such a beautiful place. I think I'm going to try to head up there next spring and give it a try.
(Check out my first post on arriving in Tokyo!)
What can really be said about nightlife in Toyko? It's absolutely ridiculous and like nothing you've ever experienced before!
First of all, it's huge. In Roppongi (the nightlife area frequented by foreigners...to mixed reviews) there are bars packed in every space possible. Tokyo builds out vertically, so plenty of bars and clubs are on the 7th, 8th, 9th floors of the buildings. It's a little unnerving when you don't speak much of the language, but great fun.
We went out in Roppongi our second night in Tokyo. Our first stop was a gem of a place that I *loved* - the Jazz Cafe London. It's right at the main intersection of the club district, which is an odd place because it's this 20-seat basement jazz bar. It's fantastic. Nice selection of scotch and great jazz - what more could a guy ask for?
From there the night descended into madness. We stopped at Paddy Foley's - also the scene of the crime about 3 weeks later. Nice enough bar, but some tough-guy rugby players wanted to beat us up at some point. And Adam insulted the bartender - both times we were there.
We made our way from Paddy's to some western-themed bar. Not sure why we went in there; it was 2:30am and I think we were comforted by the cowboy hats. Huh? Anyway, we were only half-welcome there, so the bartender just decided to start playing darts. Eventually we got the hint.
So we decided to go back to the hotel, but not before Adam met a new friend:
Well, she wasn't so much a friend as she was trying to sell us services that we were not especially interested in. So we went back to the hotel, but decided in the lobby that we wanted to go to McDonalds. This shouldn't have been hard, as it was no more than 100 yards away, but apparently we made the lobby staff draw us a map (found the next morning in our room) to McD's. (Don't we still have this map somewhere, guys?)
But thankfully we made it! I'm not sure if the map helped or not, but we did met some new friends in line at McD's. I tried to take a photo of them, but it turns out it's a movie, so enjoy:
Friends in Tokyo from Greg Palmer on Vimeo.
From there the night descended into madness. We stopped at Paddy Foley's - also the scene of the crime about 3 weeks later. Nice enough bar, but some tough-guy rugby players wanted to beat us up at some point. And Adam insulted the bartender - both times we were there.
We made our way from Paddy's to some western-themed bar. Not sure why we went in there; it was 2:30am and I think we were comforted by the cowboy hats. Huh? Anyway, we were only half-welcome there, so the bartender just decided to start playing darts. Eventually we got the hint.
So we decided to go back to the hotel, but not before Adam met a new friend:
Well, she wasn't so much a friend as she was trying to sell us services that we were not especially interested in. So we went back to the hotel, but decided in the lobby that we wanted to go to McDonalds. This shouldn't have been hard, as it was no more than 100 yards away, but apparently we made the lobby staff draw us a map (found the next morning in our room) to McD's. (Don't we still have this map somewhere, guys?)
But thankfully we made it! I'm not sure if the map helped or not, but we did met some new friends in line at McD's. I tried to take a photo of them, but it turns out it's a movie, so enjoy:
Friends in Tokyo from Greg Palmer on Vimeo.
I promised that I'd blog to share some experiences from Japan, and since next week it will be a whole month since we returned, it's past time!
Land Ho!
After 13 hours on the plane (direct Newark to Tokyo = super long!), I was dead tired of flight attendants and confined spaces, so land was a welcome sight. I had an aisle seat, so no photos from the plane, but looking down on the countryside around Narita Airport you can see the difference immediately. No sprawl and lots of open green space surrounding clustered settlements.
Once we got through customs (everyone is so polite and efficient!), we made our way down to the train station under the terminal where a helpful Japan Railways (JR) woman helped us buy tickets for the train to Tokyo. As we're waiting for the train to leave, we see a crew coming through to clean and sanitize the train. Just like New York, right??
Into the Abyss
By the time we found our hotel (Shiba Park Hotel...pretty nice!), showered, and napped, it was time for dinner. Rather than stick to our neighborhood, we decided to venture out into Ginza, which is Tokyo's swank 5th-Avenue-like shopping district. All three of us immediately knew we were in the right area when we found Brooks Brothers:
After reveling in the glow of BB for a few minutes, we found a decent all-you-can-eat Shabu Shabu joint down a side street. They had an English menu but no English speakers, which turned out to work just fine. We could say "biru" (beer!) well enough to get by. We ate more than our fill of beef and pork (no fish just yet!), then headed back to a bar we spotted across the street from Shiba Park.
Simply called "Standing," it was a tiny joint that catered to the salarymen who worked in the Shiba Park neighborhood. The patrons didn't really welcome three Americans in their joint, but the bartender and waitress were super-nice to us (I can't believe we didn't get a picture with/of them!). We ordered a round of beers and of course...a round of sake.
With what little Japanese we know (ummm, none), we tried to buy the waitstaff a round, which eventually they understood (but, being so polite, never charged us for their drinks!). Here's the weird thing - the bartender placed sake glasses into small wooden boxes, then filled both the glass and the box. You drank the glass, then the box. Not sure if they were just messing with our heads there, but I'm thinking it was some variation of masu-sake.
Anyway, Shabu-Shabu + 4 or 5 beers + masu-sake + jetlag = TERRIBLE hangover the next morning. But I'll save that for later. In the meantime, check out this cool fire hydrant!
Into the Abyss
By the time we found our hotel (Shiba Park Hotel...pretty nice!), showered, and napped, it was time for dinner. Rather than stick to our neighborhood, we decided to venture out into Ginza, which is Tokyo's swank 5th-Avenue-like shopping district. All three of us immediately knew we were in the right area when we found Brooks Brothers:
After reveling in the glow of BB for a few minutes, we found a decent all-you-can-eat Shabu Shabu joint down a side street. They had an English menu but no English speakers, which turned out to work just fine. We could say "biru" (beer!) well enough to get by. We ate more than our fill of beef and pork (no fish just yet!), then headed back to a bar we spotted across the street from Shiba Park.
Simply called "Standing," it was a tiny joint that catered to the salarymen who worked in the Shiba Park neighborhood. The patrons didn't really welcome three Americans in their joint, but the bartender and waitress were super-nice to us (I can't believe we didn't get a picture with/of them!). We ordered a round of beers and of course...a round of sake.
With what little Japanese we know (ummm, none), we tried to buy the waitstaff a round, which eventually they understood (but, being so polite, never charged us for their drinks!). Here's the weird thing - the bartender placed sake glasses into small wooden boxes, then filled both the glass and the box. You drank the glass, then the box. Not sure if they were just messing with our heads there, but I'm thinking it was some variation of masu-sake.
Anyway, Shabu-Shabu + 4 or 5 beers + masu-sake + jetlag = TERRIBLE hangover the next morning. But I'll save that for later. In the meantime, check out this cool fire hydrant!
Oh this is a must-watch.
