Milking It In Vancouver

8 hour layover. Outstanding weather. Easy train ride from airport to downtown. Lunch at a restaurant in Gastown where we could understand every single item on the menu for the first time in about 3 or 4 months. Refreshing!

Now onto Toronto overnight, then back to D.C.

Yes, Champagne in Business Class

They look like urine samples, but they are not. Quite uncharacteristically, ANA (All Nippon Airways) uses these little plastic cups until you are in the air. Great flight, and we just arrived to a gorgeous day in Vancouver. Warm, not a cloud in the sky. We have about 4 hours to kill so we hopped a train to Gastown on the water where we will grab some dinner, then train back to the airport. MILKING IT!

Checklist for Departure

1. Have a six pack of PINO chocolate covered ice cream drops. Eat with toothpick. First discovered in Osaka. Yum.
2. Eat at another random restaurant in a back alley instead of the hotel.
3. Have some room service breakfast while packing. Butter! Oatmeal! We remember them and now long for home.
4. Enjoy the Park Hyatt. It really is a wonderful hotel and all the better since it was free :) We thought we would at least have to pay the tax, but no! Just our bills from the New York Bar and Grill. One night's drink and snack? 175. Ka-Ching. View, entertainment and ambience? Priceless.
5. Walk by another nice looking restaurant at the Park Hyatt in favor of street food.
6. Spot some more bad Engrish statement clothing. I just wish I had purchased some!

Check on all.
We are ready to go.

Homeward Bound

After almost 6 months, over 35,000 miles traveled, 10 countries, maybe 50 different accommodations and probably 30 flights with countless cars, trains, ferries, buses and bikes, it's good to be going home to our families and friends.

What To Do On A Friday Night In Tokyo

Yes, you guessed it. Karaoke at a pretty fancy place, 47th floor, great views, fantastic room. It's different here because most places you go with friends and rent a dedicated room. They also have places where you are with a group but I have never done them in Asia. Always the separate room and usually filled with 10 people from our office. Last night we only stayed an hour but we could easily have stayed for 3, even with just the two of us. So fun, believe it or not! If you were at our house for New Years about 10 years ago you would believe it, and I still have a DVD with Joni Johnson Walter leading a rendition of Freebird that I won't forget :)

A Tale of Two Cities

In Saigon, we were cautioned by everyone (our hotel, blogs, articles) not to use our iPhones on the sidewalk as they might be grabbed by someone on the street or on a motorcycle. So you had to lean into a doorway or always watch your back.

Let's go 180 degrees on that.

In Tokyo, people just leave their stuff right on their tables and chairs, without a thought. Right on the street, at about 6 pm rush hour. These hipsters (with the dyed hair) left 2 MacBook airs (the ones that are just bigger than iPads) plus 2 iPhones, a backpack, pocketbook, and expensive shades just sitting there as they went to the restroom. Japan is notoriously safe and nearly crime free. No wearing the backpack in front or other BS around here. Relax! Other parts I am sure have some petty crime but it feels safer than Reston VA (no offense Mel).

These Kids Are So Little!! And So Alone!

The subway stops, and the people on either side get up and leave. She remains sleeping. Two new strangers take the seats. It is amazing to see all these kids crossing busy streets, going through the subways, being swallowed up in huge crowds and ... no problem for them!!

Shimokitazawa Hipster Tokyo

Great area just 10 minutes in subway from Shinjuku. Below street art, street scene, video arcade with most awesome drum playing game evah, and Mother's, which is Gaudi style architecture transported to the interior a 10 seat bar in Tokyo.

Yes, Deep Fried Chicken Cartilage and ....

Horse meat, which we DID NOT have. Did I say horse meat? Make that horse meat sashimi. Yup, raw, raw, raw. Check the multiple menu options below. Also the chicken cartilage which is a very popular izakaya snack. Just how you would imagine. I mean what's the point? Why is this appealing? A few tries was plenty. Nice and crunchy as you would expect. No taste except for what it was deep fried in. We had 3 bites - total. At least there was no raw chicken which is available in many places. How about a nice big platter of horse and chicken sashimi? Get an OVEN for pity's sake!! And leave poor Mister Ed in the barn. But we did enjoy the izakaya atmosphere which is boisterous and loud. These places are basically after work gastropubs with the emphasis on pub from our perspective. Wish we could include a sound clip:).

Kurayami Matsuri @ Fuchun Okunitama Shrine

A wild week of craziness around this shrine which was established in the year 111.

Nezu Museum - Object of the Special Exhibit

These 2 screens are considered Japanese National Treasures, and they are something to see! Paint on gold leaf panels. The iris screen only comes out once a year, in season, and how lucky we caught it. The mountain stream in summer screen was also incredible as it has a really modern feel for something done in late 1600s/early 1700s. They are huge screens, each work has two 4 panels screens, so they take up the entire side of the building.

Hard to believe the colors could be so vibrant, but as with many of the old items we have seen, many have been meticulously cared for and often with a single family for generations. These were removed from Tokyo during WWII as were thousands of other precious works. The museums in many places we have been are different than many in the west because the don't seem terribly interested in partial reconstructions or fragments of ancient pieces that you can imagine being great. They collect the entire specimens in near mint condition. And that includes some really ancient things that you can't believe could survive the ages. So we have been lucky to see some real treasures on this journey.

John did confess to being just about museumed-out. I am just about there too.

Then yesterday we saw a sign for an interesting photography retrospective and thought ... well maybe we can handle at least one more!

Michelin Food Under $10

I know we've posted some of these before, but they are always fun to find in an expensive city like Tokyo. We ate lunch today at Nakiryu, the second ramen restaurant in Tokyo to get a Michelin star. The ramen was fabulous. Totally different from other ramen we've had, this was somewhat spicy, with ground sausage in it and covered with scallions and fresh cilantro. We're beginning to appreciate how good really great ramen noodles can be. They open at 11:30 and we got there about 10:45. There were already about 20 people on line and this tiny restaurant has just 10 counter seats. I wouldn't do this normally because it was an hour and a half wait, but we're on vacation so we figured what the heck. It was worth the wait. No English spoken here and you order from a machine inside the restaurant with nothing but Japanese on it. But there's always a way to make things like this work. Never let a language barrier stand in your way! The machine spits out a small ticket for each item and you hand them to the cooks. One bowl per person because so many people are waiting. $7.50 US per order. Loved this place.

The Nezu Museum, Omotesando

Small private museum with huge beautiful garden right in the middle of the city. Like most museums in Japan, photography is not allowed inside. Some are relaxing that as people sneak out there phones all the time ... I will post a picture of the star of the museum during Iris season. Note the irises in bloom below.

Purikura

https://do-ga.tv/en/video_details/list/256. 

Can't explain. Plus the photo booth instructions were all in Japanese so we just did the best we could.  Then the machine does whatever it's going to do. We decorated the first picture but have no idea how the others arrived where they did!!

Most popular with the young girls.  

Dinner at Eatrip near Harajuku

Beautiful garden and adjoining flower store.

Great atmosphere. Beautifully presented set menu (they love their set menus for lunch and dinner around here.) The smallest glasses of wine ever poured. When they finished I thought it was for me to taste. So I tasted and started to say "fine" but the waiter was long gone. That was the pour. Then we though it was included with the menu. Not so. Ouch.

They serve their meat rare everywhere. This was with a black garlic sauce and a horseradish cream. We also had a fish egg roll, a pasta course, another fish course and a strawberry galette with dill cream and elderflower ice cream.

As I Was Saying ....

Before I hit send too soon. John said "I'm so happy right now" which is a favorite Lambert quote when the good times are rolling.

Park Hyatt Tokyo

For the last 4 nights. Using the points from the Hyatt credit cards we signed up
for last year. What views even from the 45th floor pool. And the New York Bar with jazz at night is ... great. In the words of our friend Scott Lambert

Fashion Looks

Statement T Shirts. Fuzzy shoes. The mask and the school uniform.

We learned that the mask is not just a hygienic thing. Especially for adolescents, it can be a signal that they don't wish to interact with other humans.

Some of the rush-hour trains are so crowded I can completely understand wanting to have a mask on.

Just Because

They are gone now, but WOW were they spectacular.

Mori Art Museum

Harsha exhibit.

Tokyo Bike, Yanaka

Great day biking around one of the only areas in Tokyo that was not firebombed. Toyko Bike makes their own bikes and rents and sells them now with shops in London, New York etc. Perfect city bikes. Yanaka is their original place. After biking, you could do a sake tasting including a champagne sake which was pretty delicious.

While biking around Yanaka's famous cemetery and old buildings we stumbled upon a few art galleries including one run by an American named Allan West, who made beautiful screens but they were over $50K. Eek! So we had to run away, and just keep moving down the road. They don't look that great in our photos but they were spectacular.