about this christmas thing

I've been thinking about what Christmas means to me personally. I'm not very religious, so the connection to the birth of Christ isn't all that significant to me. (Especially because if we want to be historically accurate, it seems likely that Jesus was actually born in the spring, or so History Television tells me.) Yet I still look forward to this time of year, and I really enjoy it when it comes.

I know the "right" thing to say is that I abhor the commercialism that surrounds the holiday, and I do to a certain extent, but not completely. (What I truly abhor is being around Polo Park in December. I finished my Christmas shopping at the beginning of the month and after that you couldn't pay me to go anywhere near there. Holy moly.)

Anyway, while presents are not the most important thing about Christmas to me, I still think they have a place. In shopping for Christmas presents, I end up spending a lot of time thinking about the people I'm buying for -- what their interests are and what they'd enjoy finding when they take off the wrapping paper -- and it invariably brings to mind good memories. And although I think of these people throughout the year, I usually don't concentrate on them and their interests in the same way at any other time. And then when they open the presents, I like to see if I'm right about them and what they'd like, and if I am, it's a bit of a rush.

And yes, I also like to get presents too. It's fun! And I appreciate the fact that someone else spent some time thinking about me in the same way. And that has nothing to do with the size or price of the gift.

So while I think the commercialism is out of control (these are the glory days for the Big Boxes and of all the things Christmas is not about, that's number one), I like the exchange of presents. (Brief digression: I think this "gift card" trend is for the birds -- it's a cop-out to not actually pick out a gift, and they seem like a bit of a cash grab on the part of the retailers when (a) they have expiration dates and (b) they won't refund unused portions, so if you buy a $17 gift with a $20 gift card, the store just keeps the extra $3 unless you find something else that costs exactly $3 or else spend more money. Bah humbug.)

To me, the most important thing about Christmas (and it's sappy, so live with it) is the time with friends and family. Some are people I see often, and some are not. But it's pretty special to me to have a chance to come in out of the cold, sit down, have a lot of perogies and visit with them. It was especially nice this year to see my mom all excited about having all three of her kids around for Christmas, which hasn't happened all that much in the past few years. And this year we aren't trying to cram in visits with everyone in the week that we're here before we head back to Thunder Bay, so it was a lot more relaxed.

Other things I like about Christmas:
- people generally being in a better mood than at other times of the year (particularly the dog days of March when winter seems like it's gone on forever and isn't showing any signs of letting up);
- seeing Christmas trees around town as a reminder that it's coming up;
- having a few days off between Christmas and New Year's (not so much this year);
- Twelve Meatless Dishes;
- making fun of kutya -- somehow I think my grandparents would understand;
- watching the World Junior Hockey Championships and discussing Canada's performance with strangers (it's a national bonding experience); and
- watching Christmas Vacation at least once. Love that Randy Quaid! I laugh just thinking about the part where he's standing in the street wearing a rather skimpy bathrobe and fur hat complete with ear flaps sticking out, drinking a beer and emptying his RV toilet into the sewer. And then when the snooty neighbours glare at him, he cheerfully explains himself by saluting them with the beer and hollering, "The shitter was full!"

And that's what Christmas is really about to me at this point. Someday, watching my own kids at Christmas I might think differently, but I'm not sure I'll change that much.

my desk is so messy...

... that I have to reach up, over and around stuff in order to reach my keyboard.

I read that the title for the last Harry Potter book has been released: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Sounds menacing.

thinking in nice round numbers

Last night Griffin was on one of his licking spurts. This was by no means unusual; he will settle in and start licking our hand, foot, clothes, or whatever for minutes on end on a daily basis.

Got me wondering when Griffin was going to pass the one-million-lick mark. Or had he?

We counted -- Griffin's licking rate is about 75 licks per minute. His spurt last night lasted about 2 and a half minutes, so that's, say, 200 licks. (We're going for a ballpark here, so let's use nice round numbers.) And that was just his spurt -- there were probably another 100 or so miscellaneous licks throughout the day, between Andy, me, himself, the doorframe, the ice on the ground, etc. (He's not that discriminating about his hobby.) So let's just say that he licked about 300 licks yesterday, and call that an average day for him.

Griffin is now two years and three months old. That's approximately 800 days. So 800 days times 300 licks per day gives us a grand total of... 240 000 licks! That's like a quarter of a million!

So then Griffin went for a drink of water.

colder than a witch's... you pick the anatomy

I've always kind of prided myself on being able to put up with the cold. I think most Winnipeggers are the same way. It might be cold, we say, but it's a DRY cold. Just put on more clothes and go outside. Layers! More layers!

And yet, in the past few days I've been avoiding going outside because of the cold. Well, really because of the wind. That wind has just been nasty, and the only way to be outside is with every square inch covered -- and people look at you kind of weird when you wear ski goggles to walk the dog. Even in Wolseley.

Maybe I just need to get used to winter again.

the beast is slain

It's done. After two years and many, many hours in the lab Andy has finished his masters degree. Well, he still has a bit more work to do to finish up the thesis, but his defense was last week and it went well, so... he's done*!

It's going to be nice to have my fiance back.

random acts of missing

I think that in the process of moving we encountered some kind of Invisible Random-Stuff-Eating Monster, which is no doubt closely related to the Invisible Sock-Eating Monster that lives somewhere between the washing machine and the dryer. Somehow, despite our meticulous efforts to quadruple-check that nothing was left behind in any nook or cranny of our apartment, my car or the moving truck, the following items have gone missing.

- Andy's dad's bag, containing a few essentials that he brought with him when he came to Thunder Bay to help us move.
- My knitting bag, containing, uh, my knitting.
- A box of miscellaneous books.
- All of our fridge magnets (yes, I am sure they aren't still on the fridge at our old place).

The Monster is well-fed indeed.

sometimes i feel like i'm being ripped off

Venturing into the realm of the mundane today.

I was in Office Depot yesterday picking up a few odds and ends for my office. Nothing special, just basic office stuff like a stapler, scissors, that sort of thing. After standing in line to pay for these exciting purchases (does having just one cashier on a Saturday afternoon going into the holiday shopping season seem like a bad idea, or is it just me?), the kid gives me the grand total: a hundred and eighty-eight bucks. Hmm, I thought to myself. Did I grab the solid gold stapler or what?

Reviewing my receipt (and making friends with everybody behind me in line, as I didn't step away from the cash desk), I noted that one item had been rung up at $95.76. Odd, I thought, but the "description" on the receipt was too cryptic to identify what the item was. My best guess was some little sticky things you use to put stuff up on the wall without tacks.

I asked the cashier to clarify this, and he zapped the little sticky things' UPC code again. Sure enough, $95.76. "Uhh... maybe they're just really, really good," he offered. Turns out this was way beyond his authority to deal with, so the assistant manager was consulted. "Er," was her response. I guess she could have been a bit distracted by the angry looks the forty or so people in line behind me were shooting at us.

Anyway, I got my money back, though it wasn't a simple process. And they gave me the little sticky things for free.

Told you we're dealing with the mundane today.

so how did The Plan turn out?

I was just looking at my last post and finding that it was back in May. My, how things have changed since then... Let's review, shall we?

- Paperwork to work in Manitoba: check. Many trees sacrificed themselves in my quest for this but I am happy to report that it was not in vain.
- We found a realtor and have embarked on what I called "this property-owning gig."
- Andy is currently writing his thesis (it's become THE overwhelming activity in our house) and is defending in next week. After that, he's done! (Knock on wood.) At the moment he is mooing -- I think the thesis is getting annoying.
- We moved back to Winnipeg - together - at the beginning of the month. Turns out we were right about needing more than just a Golf and a Yukon. Remind me to tell you about our U-Haul experience sometime... (It was HORRIBLE.)
- Wedding plans are underway, though it's still a work in progress. The date is still 9 June 2007.
- Still no brother/sister for Griffin.

Our new house is on a little dead-end street in Wolseley, and we're pretty happy with it so far. I've started work and my office is just a hop, skip and a jump down the street, which is so sweet. We've hooked up with friends we haven't seen in a while, met some of our neighbours (and promised to become much more sociable when the thesis is finished), and figured out where the nearest grocery stores are.

So far, so good.

the plan

We may be way off, but at least we have The Plan.

Everytime we come back to Winnipeg we start talking about how nice it'll be to come back, and this trip has been no exception. The big news on this trip is Lisa Cumming, our first niece! Pretty darn cute, and it's been a lot of fun to see Kirk and Miyuki turn into parents right before our eyes. See Kirk's blog at kirkandmiyuki.blogspot.com for more pictures. (Sorry, still no HTML support here. I'm lucky I can post pictures at all.)

So anyway, we've come up with a loose sort of plan for the next year or so, which is going to basically one big change after another for us. May I present... The Plan.

- I start doing paperwork so that I can work in Manitoba. Man, the trees they kill with all this paper...
- We start looking on the internet and talking to realtors and generally figure out this property-owning gig.
- Andy finishes his masters later this year - maybe as early as September, maybe not.
- He heads back to the Peg to look for a job and start house-hunting in earnest. Meanwhile, I hang out in Ontario, squatting from place to place and working like a dog, until all the Manitoba paperwork comes through. (I TOLD you it was a lot.) Should I not be in Winnipeg myself, I anticipate at least frequent visits.
- We buy a house and move our stuff. I moved to Thunder Bay in my Golf and my parents' Yukon; methinks we'll be needing a bit more than that to come back.
- Along the way, we get our act together and actually plan the wedding.
- Also along the way, Griffin might get a brother or sister! (A *DOG* brother/sister, just to be 100% clear on this.) We think it'd be nice for him to have company all day when we're at work, and two dogs can't be THAT much more work that one, right? ;)
- We get married 9 June 2007. Yup, that's right, we have a date! Honeymoon to follow.

We are currently accepting applications for the position of dog sitter within our organization during this event. Before you roll your eyes, the position is anticipated to come with a house to stay in and a car to drive. (Concrete details not yet available.) Other benefits include: many, many licks; incredible tail wagging; the most enthusiastic greeting you'll ever get in your entire life (it has been described as "an explosion"); and access to everything in the fridge/freezer/cupboards.

still haven't found what i'm looking for

(This was originally written a year and a half ago, the day before an exam for which I hadn't studied one bit, and I was feeling a bit... well, I wanted to feel cocky because it sure beat kicking myself for not cracking a single book. It was all bravado, though. Ultimately, the exam went fine and I ended up REALLY glad I hadn't wasted any time studying for it.)

I’ve been fortunate to find that I really enjoy my job, with the variety and flexibility it provides. But it’s not enough. Work is a part of my life, but it alone is not what will allow me to feel fulfilled and satisfied. I’m looking for something else too.

Part of it is relationships; part of it is new challenges and experiences. But a big chunk of it is understanding. I don’t understand what is going on around me, in an immediate, local or global sense, nor on superficial or deeper levels. I understand more than I did when I was 25, or 20, or 15 and that’s somewhat satisfying, but I’ve generated at least as much confusion as I’ve resolved. And I don’t know where to look, and I don’t know what the answer is. Come to think of it, I don’t even know what the question is. Do I need to know what the question is before I seek answers? I don’t think so. I think that the answer I’m seeking will be in the form of a Gestalt, and the question asked when looking at a Gestalt is the ultimate in open-ended questions – so open-ended that it’s more of a prompt.

Answers to the more straight-forward questions usually have at least two parts: first, the background and second, the specifics. Often, the background is left out on the assumption that the questioner knows the framework from which the answer comes. Usually it is the specifics that the questioner is looking for anyway. It’s hard to look for specific answers without specific questions, but maybe looking for background is a place to start.

I know that part of the background is in looking into history. Much of the way the world is today was shaped by what and who has gone before, and what I’ve learned so far has come in large part from here. But that’s only part of it, because how we think about and react to history is as important as what actually happened.

How do I find the answer? I suspect that psychology and philosophy will help me, and those’ll be the next places I look, but I’m not sure the answer is there either. In fact, I’m sure it’s not. I hope that by the time I’ve got what I can from these disciplines, I’ll have some idea of where to go next.

We’ll see.

film fest!

This weekend was the North of Superior Film Association 13th annual Northwest Film Festival (http://www.nosfa.ca - sorry, Safari doesn't support Blogger's HTML link button... yet), featuring such well-known box-office smashes as The Lost Embrace, The White Countess and Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. None of which we saw, however. Here's what we did see, with a few thoughts.

Cache: A French film with English subtitles. Not good, not good at all. A man and his wife start receiving videotapes of their house, they freak out, the man gets paranoid that it's revenge for something he did to a childhood friend in Algeria, and then he goes home and climbs into bed. Slow and boring (except for one hideous moment), with excessively long clips of the thrilling footage of their house. Woweee, a car drove by. I had a nice nap during this one; it was the first film we saw and kind of killed some of my anticipation for the rest of the festival. Fortunately, we perservered.

3 Needles: A film about HIV on three continents... Africa, where three nuns arrive at a missionary and realize that the type of help they intended to provide is not what's most needed... China, where a woman sets up a blood donor clinic with disastrous consequences, and a man whose village is wiped out wants to find out how it could have happened... and Canada (Montreal, to be precise), where a man becomes a porn star to support his parents but has to deceive his employers to keep working, and his mother ends up exploiting the situation to provide them with the only financial security they've ever known. Very good, well acted with just enough time to think about the stories.

Paradise Now: A film in Arabic with subtitles about the last day in the lives of two Palestinian suicide bombers. It's a very interesting contrast between the two men, who are passionately committed to their mission, and a woman who does her best to talk them out of it. It's a thinker, and an eye-opener for those not familiar with the longstanding conflict in the Middle East... or familiar with only one perspective on it.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold: A concert film from 2005, featuring Neil Young with 30 or so of his closest friends on stage performing his latest album, Prairie Wind, as well as some classics (Old Man, Harvest Moon, etc). Fabulous. The songs are powerful stories about life and its stages, and the film is incredibly intimate, with mainly close-up shots of Neil's face. I hadn't realized that Neil Young was such a devout prairie boy -- maybe because he hardly ever plays here. This was my favourite movie of the festival.

Brothers: A Danish film with subtitles. Michael is a stand-up family man who is a professional soldier, while his brother Jannick is an alcoholic bum who has just been let out of prison. Michael is deployed to Afghanistan, where his helicopter is shot down and he is presumed dead. Back home, Jannick steps in to help Michael's wife Sarah with her two daughters. Jannick and Sarah become close but are not willing or able to betray Michael's memory. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Michael does what he needs to do to survive until he is rescued. When he returns to Denmark, he is unable to confide in anyone about the atrocities he was involved in and lashes out at his family. This was an amazing movie... no big surprises or anything like that, but deep and well-developed characters (even the kids!) with a heart-wrenching, gut-twisting story.

The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico: A Canadian "mockumentary" about a country singer. This is just about the funniest movie I've ever seen, and I'm not even going to try to describe it.

I thought they did a nice job selecting the films that they showed (with the exception of Cache, which I firmly believe was critically acclaimed because all the critics fell asleep and were too embarrassed to say that from what they saw, it sucked). We saw movies we'd never otherwise see, and they were far better than pretty much any of the old-tv-show-turned-into-a-movie shows I've seen at Famous Players recently. (Okay, to be fair, there have also been a remarkable number of comic-book-to-movie adaptations as well, which have also been pretty much universally bad.) These movies were well-written, well-developed, well-acted, and pretty much never heard of outside of the film festival circuit. Man, that Guy Terrifico... I'm still laughing.

i like spring... or maybe i'm just getting my hopes up

Okay, so we're taking kind of a different tack with this post.

I like spring. Why, you ask? It's only one season away from summer! It's summer that I'm truly partial to. (Or rather, it's summer to which I'm truly partial. Just for you, Dad.) Folk Fest, the lake, being able to go outside without mounting a major operation to get dressed, sandals (the ultimate in slip-on convenience)... what's not to love?

It's not that I don't like winter. It has its charms too. Bitter cold I can handle -- it just means staying inside when you can and more clothes when you can't. There are even fun things to do in winter. But ahhhh..... summer.

We've had several days in a row of mild weather, where it goes a little above zero in the daytime and a little below zero at night. We've even had some significant melting -- just enough to give Thunder Bay that "March" look: filthy snow and dirty slop. It's tempting me to think that maybe spring has sprung. Don't worry, I know better than that. Nobody remembers the March 1997 blizzard better than I. My arms still hurt from shovelling off the front steps, which were covered in snow deeper than my head. That's one of the few occasions where I've had to reach up, way up, to shovel snow. Hey, I even remember the May 2004 blizzard, even though it hit west of Thunder Bay and all we got was rain. (We went hiking in that snow a week later when we did Mantario. We pretended we didn't see the snow.)

But still... today it was 6 degrees and sunny. Oh, why, why do you tempt me so, you treacherous early-spring, you?

my first mac post

So my Mac got here today. Man, what a step up. I don't know what happened to my old computer, but after this one I have a better sense of just how far gone my old one was.

Now the trick is adjusting to Mac OS X, which though not completely different from Windows (it too uses a mouse!) has its own little set of quirks. It's sort of like getting into a car that isn't yours; everything is there somewhere, but it's not the same as what you're used to.

Let's see if Blogger can import a picture from a Mac.

Hmmm... not sure that went very well. Oh, wait, yeah, it went, but the picture didn't show up in my preview pane -- just the html code (which is all gibberish to me -- I quit computer science after grade 10). It seems to be here in the post though!

Anyway, this was us last weekend, tobogganing at Hillcrest Park in Port Arthur.

and along the same lines

For full size, see Doonesbury, March 5, 2006.

I've really gotten hooked on Doonesbury in the past year or so. Okay, sure, the strip practically writes itself in the current U.S. political climate, but still, Garry Trudeau has shown himself willing to take on some pretty serious topics (see, for instance, B.D. losing his leg in Iraq last year). I used to be pretty intimidated by this strip because of the enormous cast of characters, but I've slowly figured it out (with a lot of help from slate.com -- here) and now I think that as much as anything that lets the strip go in a whole bunch of directions, which keeps it really interesting.

one can only hope it doesn't come to this

In the current climate, who knows? It could happen.

1 March, 2006. To see full size, go to Non Sequitur.

good ol' murphy and his stupid law

So there really aren't a lot of TV shows out there that I like. Mostly what I watch is sports and Seinfeld reruns. Andy started watching Lost last year, and that's pretty good, but the show I actually got hooked on is 24. However, there's just no way I'm watching when it's on TV -- it's the kind of show in which missing an episode means not watching any further until you catch up. A swell marketing approach if I ever saw one.

So instead of spending a whole winter planning our Thursday nights around the idiot box, we instead rent the DVDs when they come out. (A big side benefit: no commercials!) Season 4 came out in December but somebody's little project called a "thesis" for some "master's degree" got in the way. So in an enormous exercise in self-restraint we waited until this weekend to even consider starting to think about maybe watching season 4.

Coincidentally, this was also the weekend when we had a dog-sitter available, so we had to go somewhere. Plan A was Mexico, Plan B was Vancouver, Plan C was Montreal, Plan D was Lutsen. Ultimately we decided on Plan E, the White Fox Inn, a lovely little retreat about 20 minutes south of town where the deer (but no antelope) play. Once there, Plan A was to spend Saturday snowshoeing over their 15 acres of rolling hills and forest, but we were foiled by windchills in the -40s. I'm no diehard, I tell you. Plan B? You guessed it, season 4. We had considered the fact that they might not be equipped with DVD players, and we brought along Andy's computer just in case.

So... we settle in on Saturday for our 24 marathon, and fire up Andy's computer... and the screen is dead. Horrors! Andy monkeys around with it (by shining a bright light directly on the screen, we could sort of make out what was on it) for a while and concludes that whatever the problem is, it's not a simple matter of changing some settings. (Hey, Windows has been known to do far stranger things than just randomly change some display settings.)

So we leave our idyllic little inn with its fireplace and jacuzzi, and venture out into that fearsome -40 windchill to make an emergency trip back to town for my computer, which last time I looked was in... well, not perfect working order by any means (see January 29 post), but hey, at least we could see the screen.

Okay, so, a temporary little blip in the plan, right? Now we're back on track, ready to huddle for warmth in the glow of some terrorist plot just waiting to be thwarted by the heroic Jack Bauer. We take the ten minutes to start up my computer, pop in the DVD and... no DVD decoder. Turns out when I reformatted my computer (twice) I didn't bother to re-install my DVD program. Whoops.

ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! We consider our options: go back to town again to pick up either our DVD player or the software for my computer, or accept that maybe it just wasn't meant to be. Fortunately, a third option is available to save us from these twin hells -- the inn has internet access (wireless, yet!), so maybe we can get a DVD decoder off the net! Yeah!

Hmmmm. All the DVD decoders are like 15 bucks. Not really wanting to go that route, considering the same software is sitting at home in my office. Scouring Google for "free dvd decoder" doesn't get us very far either. Wait! There's one with a free 30-day trial! Score!

And that was how we saved the day. We got through the first three episodes that night. Andy's computer screen is still fried, and my computer still runs like molasses going uphill, but hey... at least Jack Bauer has a terrorist threat to deal with once again.

look what i made!

Socks! With stripes, even!

They were easier than they look -- the yarn was "programmed" (ie. dyed so that when you start knitting, stripes show up). Griffin thinks they're delicious.

i've had it

That's it. I quit, I'm throwing in the towel, I just can't take it anymore. I'm going over to the dark side -- I bought a Mac.

Windows has driven me to it. I've seen the Blue Screen of Death once too many times.

My computer woes began in the summer, when my computer's performance gradually began to deteriorate. Now, I'm by no means one who needs top performance from a computer. It's not like my usual habits involve much more than Word, the internet and occasionally Starcraft or Civ 3. But by the fall, it was the basic functions that weren't doing their thing anymore. I don't think it's too much to ask that it take less than 10 minutes to boot up. And that it take less than 10 minutes to shut down -- that is, when it shuts down at all. And programs randomly seem to just stop working -- for no apparent reason, they just won't start up. And also for no apparent reason, sometimes they start working again after a while. And then there's the crashing. The repeated, persistent crashing, followed each time by the 10 minute reboot, of course.

I tried to fix this. But two reformattings, one hardware diagnostics check, and several registry cleanings later, I quit. Reformatting made no difference (and it was a 2-day operation each time); according to the diagnostics the hardware is all working perfectly; cleaning Windows registry was useless.

I've had a couple of suggestions of other things to try, but none of them seem likely to make any difference. I'm not investing any more time into this, especially as it seems likely I'll be back doing it again in a few months anyway. Enough of this garbage.

Windows is dead; long live Mac OS X.

what we did in japan when we left tokyo

So, what did we do in Japan when we left Tokyo, you ask? We toured around the central part of the country by train. The rail system in Japan is excellent -- I don't think I'd ever rent a car there even if I wasn't terrified by the idea of driving on streets that are exactly four inches wider than the car. And they're not one-way streets, so what do they do when two cars approach from opposite directions? Curious, and best observed from afar, if you ask me. Anyway.

We spent a day in Miyuki's hometown, Kawagoe. This is a town about 30 km northwest of Tokyo, considered "out in the country" or "out in the sticks," depending on your point of view. Part of Kawagoe is still built along traditional lines (left); the banners are up because they were preparing for the town festival that weekend. We went to the festival, where hundreds of people came out despite pouring rain. We spent a large part of the night huddling out of the rain at the Buddhist temple.


We also went to Kyoto, which is a three-hour shinkansen (bullet train) ride west of Tokyo. Kyoto was great -- if I was going back, I'd base my trip out of Kyoto instead of Tokyo. Kyoto is the "Cultural Heart of Japan," with hundreds of temples and shrines. Many were damaged during WWII but have been rebuilt in the traditional style. Here's a rather small temple (right), which I like the look of. At least, I think it's a temple. For all I know it might be a maintenance shed.

Of course, there are also spectacularly huge temples as well. This (left) is at Heian-jingu, also in Kyoto, which we visited at sunset on a beautiful day. (This is only one small part of the entire place.)

Also, Kyoto is where you look for geishas! We tried one night but didn't find them (not surprisingly as they are noted for being elusive, which I think is part of the appeal). We did see one woman dressed up as a geisha, but given that she was right outside of a photo studio, I have doubts about her authenticity. Whatever, she looked cool.

Also, Kyoto is where we got engaged. We were at another temple (Kiyomizu), which was incredibly crowded with kids on field trips. Looking to get away from the throngs for a bit, we found a little path, which turned out to lead up the mountain behind the temple. Out of curiosity, we wandered up, and up, and up through this beautiful forest. Reaching a clearing, Andy felt that he should run down and tell the others where we were, and when he returned (looking like he was about to drop after running all the way back up), he had the ring! (I said yes.) We continued the rest of the way up the mountain, where we found... a helicopter pad and another throng of school kids. It was kinda surreal.

so what did we do in japan, you ask?

Andy and I went to Japan this October with Andy's brother and sister-in-law (Kirk and Miyuki) and mom (Catherine). It was Miyuki's grandmother's 100th birthday (!), and since Kirk and Miyuki were going, we tagged along.

We spent our first week staying with Miyuki's family in Kawagoe (a "small" town 30 km northwest of Tokyo) and taking the train into Tokyo pretty much every day. Armed with our trusty Lonely Planet, we hit several of the districts in Tokyo:

Central Tokyo: The Imperial Palace (you can only walk around part of the grounds, and the palace itself isn't visible -- see left), Ginza (very very expensive shopping), the Sony building (a showcase of their new stuff), and Tokyo (train) Station, which is something to see in and of itself. And Godzilla, who we caught attacking a building.

Akihabara: Electronics central. In Canada we have large department stores with maybe part of one floor devoted to electronics; in Akihabara the whole floor is devoted to just one type of electronics, like mp3 players or cameras. And it's one department store after another.

Asakusa: The Shinto temple Senso-ji is here, which you enter through Thunder Gate (Kaminari-mon). Between the gate and the temple is like a mile of tourist shops (Nakamise-dori).

Ikebukuro: An entertainment district. Here Kirk introduced us to the wonder that is the dai-jokki (large beer). It was our first night in Tokyo and we also hit an arcade (six floors of Sega games, including The Typing of the Dead and a taiko-drumming video game).

Shinjuku: This is the big entertainment and shopping district. Here we went to Tower Records and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices (ie. City Hall), which has an observation deck where you can really start to appreciate how big Tokyo really is. Urban jungle in all directions, as far as you can see.

Harajuku: Here is Takeshita-dori, where one can find all the 'Engrish' shirts you could ever want. For example: "Listen is the floatable of my progress." Very deep.

Next post: what we did in Japan when we left Tokyo!