mmmmm powder

Okay this is a little narcissitic, but this picture makes me happy:


I'm off to Korea to see my mom and family tomorrow. I'm excited. Should have some good pictures to post after then.

Skiing in Hakkoda-san

I am way delayed on posting these...Chris enjoy :). Too much sushi eating and drinking of Godiva hot chocolates, I guess I just can't find time to post! Hee hee!

The Hakkoda-san tram. There and one short two-seat lift comprise the ski area. There are two official "courses," everything else is off-piste powder amazing-ness. The tram is about 12 minutes to the top. A season pass is about $450. In the two days there I only skied the front of the mountain but that alone was almost worth moving to Japan for a season. In the lodge I met a Canadian who found an ad for a WWOOF-ing position at the lodge and flew out like two days later. He doesn't speak any Japanese. He shovels snow, washes dishes and rides all day. I think skiing/riding is a universal language all it's own that unites people. I'm really tempted to take that job next season.

The snow monsters at the top of Hakkoda-san. Those are trees! Apparently they get about three times as big as that! That was also about the clearest it ever got up top. The wind cranks up there!
It was too much of a white out to take pictures on the run, so here we are at the bottom. Despite all the snow, it really hadn't started until about the time I showed up (lucky me) so there was no snow bridge over the creek.
I've never seen a forest so white, it was like this snow dream land. Unfortunately much of it is low angle like you see here. When that's the case, I hate to say it, but there really can be such a thing as too much snow!

What can I say I love trees :). The sun tried it's hardest to come out after lunch, but to no avail.
The Sansou lodge at the base of the gondola. The owner is the happiest man I've ever met and he owns the cutest dog! We had an incredible dinner of stewed crab and clams and such and the best sake I've ever had in my life!

A beautiful morning! Supposedly there was 35 cm of new overnight.


I know these are all really low angle shots. I wasn't going to stop on the steeper stuff (too much fun with the face shots), plus I was always in the back. So the only time I took pictures was on the traverse...again my thing for trees.

The second day we skied with Ted, who flew all the way from Sweeden to ski in Japan.
I'm not sure if this convey's it, but it was NASTY at the top where you get of the tram. That's not a snow cave, there is a building underneath there...somewhere.

I'm heading back up there this weekend, so maybe I will have some better pictures...I know I will definately have more snow filled stories!

Do these jeans make me look fat?

I went shopping today. I'm not much of a shopper, but I figured I needed to experience what seems to be the official pasttime of Tokyo. While I picked up a few good deals, and a few oddities (like maple syrup flavored tofu chips), it was mostly and exercise in killing my self esteem. I'm short, everyone I know except for this one girl in my house in college is taller than me. I feel like I giant here. In the GAP, they sell XXS shirts and size 00 pants. The largest size I found in there was a size 6. I picked up a new jacket and it was an large/extra-large. I even have trouble finding my shoe size (I wear a size 7). There are a lot of skinny girls here, but there are a lot of normal sized people too...I wonder where they shop?

This is the intersection outside of Shibuya train station. All four (or five, there might be a fifth street in there) lanes of traffic stop and then it's this melee of people crossing in everywhich direction. I don't think I've ever seen so many people crossing the street at one time.

I was in this one boutique looking at a skirt that was on sale for $320. There was this rasta version of "If I Were a Rich Man" (I'm not kidding you know, the one from Fiddler on the Roof?) and the lyrics were saying "The rich are richer while the poor are getting dumped." Kind of surreal. I'm not pointing this out as a unique feature of Japan, rather it's pretty typical of 1st world consumerist-capatilist thinking. I just tend not to hang out in big cities in the US (I've only been to NYC once, very breifly). I wonder what's makes them so fascinating when I'm in Asia? Because I can't understand anything anyone is saying, does that make it easier to sit on the outside and watch?

2 days 65 cm

Hakkoda-san in northern Honshu. 20 cm on Saturday, 35 Sunday morning and 10-15 more by the end of the day. This place is wicked deep. It was a good weekend. More later.

Dinner Time

"If you are ambitious, you WILL accidentally order chicken skin, liver, cartilege, squid suction cups or something with a fish head. Try some then move on."

e-mail from a co-worker giving tips on food in Japan.


The MHI guys took us out to dinner and ordered beers and a bunch of snacky dinner-ish foods to go with it. A plate of skewers came out, with skewers of beef, chicken, some kind of meat ball, what looked like some kind of fish cake, grilled onions and leeks. The onions looked really good, all golden and crispy, cut in big thick slices. I picked one up with my chopstick and popped it in my mouth. Just as I was thinking that it was a pretty firm onion, I bit down and winced. Kevin’s e-mail came to mind. Chicken cartilage. Tanaka-san looked at me and asked if it was good. I half smiled and tried not to look completely repulsed. You can't even take a huge swig of beer and try to wash it down. You have to keep chewing otherwise you'll choke. It sounds like the first bite of cruncy celery only it never gets softer…it just keeps loudly crunching and crunching. Later on I reached for the beef, then had a second thought. Suspicious, I asked what it was. Chicken liver. This in itself isn’t really that bad but the taste of any liver makes me gag. The whole plate was chicken: liver, skin, a wing (a real wing not the kind you get with buffalo sauce), cartilage and a few gristly chunks of dark meat. Lovely. That was only day two. Fish head's I'm used to, now I'm waiting for the squid suction cups. I'm really hoping that I can't top chicken cartilage.

Welcome to Japan

Today was my first full day in Tokyo. It was a long trip over, which was filled with four pretty bad movies (DaVinci Code, The Last Kiss, The Gaurdian and Little Miss Sunshine--oh wait that one was pretty good) and an absolutely terrifying landing--super heavy cross winds. I'm on the 31st floor of the hotel:
This is the Tokyo Metropolitain Government Building. You can see Mt. Fuji just to the left of it, but couldn't because of the light when I took this picture.

Today is a holiday, which is alwasy a nice way to start a business trip. Ken said it's coming of age day. Best I can tell it's a whole bunch of 21 year old women dressing up in kimonos and men wearning smart suits with hair done up more than the women (well the women had pretty fancy hair, but I guarentee some of those guys spent at least a half hour on their hair). The took over the lobby of our hotel this afternoon:
I took the afternoon and wander around. I was looking for a watch (I forgot mine) and ended up buying a fleece (because you know, I need another one of those) and a Tokyo guidebook (I actually do need that!). It's amazing how much Tokyo reminds me of Seoul....they have a lot in common, both large Asian cites of about 12million. But it's more the non-stop neon, and blinking and megaphones and noise and just pure endless insanity. It's ironic because when I was in Korea and I visited southern Japan (which is not Tokyo) I was amazed at how much Japan reminded of the US.

The author world food Japan describes Tokyo as "a Mad Max-meets-Blade Runner meaglopolis, a 24-hour neon cyclone that chases it own tail and spins ad infinitum with limitless human energy."
These pictures probably don't even do it justice, but for those of you who have been here or to Seoul, you know what I'm talking about. It's like New York on Animae steriods.

I love all the drink vending machines on every street corner here, but I like this picture for the girl's hat. The funny this is it wasn't even that cold. It's a great hat though.

I'll try to keep this updated throughout the trip. I'll probably really only have interesting pictures to post after the weekend. Sounds like I'll be busy during the week. Keep tuned!

Christmas in Connecticut

Chris and I flew to his hometown in Connecticut for Christmas. It was three days straight of meeting friends and family, eating obscence amounts of food (seriously one day I ate almost continuously over the course of 12 hours) and drinking copious amounts of Magic Hat and red wine. And my goal had been to at least maintain the same weight over Christmas...ha.

Funny, I just looked and I don't actually have any pictures from Connecticut. I'll have to get them from Chris and post later!

Our adorable cat Haley. She doesn't get very excited about the holidays.

Our Christmas mantel. We don't quite have enough ornaments for a tree, plus I felt kind of bad cutting one down (Chris and I haven't resolved the fake versus real debate yet), so I just used the trimmings from our cedar to make a wreath for the door and decorate our mantel.

Thanksgiving

A little behind on posting this, but I thought I'd share these pictures. The daughter of the host family I lived with in Korea came up from Oakland to visit over Thanksgiving weekend. We ate a lot and shopped a lot. You all know me, I'm not much of a shopper so shopping Thanksgiving weekend definately tried my patience. I did have a great time while she was here though, and she did endure a rather frustrating day of skiing for my benefit. It was great to have someone come out to show around Seattle.

Here are some photos:

Stuffing the turkey! We had 7 people over. Everyone brought such good dishes over that the turkey took a backseat. We had a lot of leftovers!

Kyung-hee helped me make pie crust and then she made the pumpkin pie! Her first Thanksgiving and her first pie! It was tasty.

Our first Thanksgiving in our new house!