Hiking Kintoki-yama

We're totally enjoying our time off. Saturday was rainy, windy and chilly, so we just relaxed and watched some TV.

The weather has been beautiful now for two days, though; so yesterday we went for a good, long bike ride just around Susono.

Today, we got a relatively early start and drove to Hakone via Gotemba (Rt. 138). Our goal was to get to the Kintoki trail-head and hike to the top of the mountain. We know all the backroads and short-cuts, so traffic was really not an issue, and we had all day to accomplish the task,
so we stopped to take pictures along the way.

These two shots are taken from an abandoned "windmill restaurant" in Gotemba, on the way to the trail.






These shots are from the summit. The hike itself was not long (only over an hour going up), but was steep in some parts and provided a good workout. When we broke through the trees at the top, we were rewarded with a marvelous view:

Golden Days

Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives...

In case you don't recognize it, that is the opening line of the long-running soap which I used to watch every day when I was very (very) young - "Days of Our Lives".

And how accurate that little sentence is. Another Friday evening has arrived, and I feel that I've been less and less mindful amidst the flurry of activity. A month has simply evaporated...

But this Friday evening is special - it marks the beginning of Golden Week! Golden Week is a cluster of holidays that occur around the end of April and early May, and Brian and I have the whole week off; many (most?) companies are closed for the week, in fact, which of course means a mass-hysteria of people on the highways making their exodus to some better place...

What will we do? We haven't made any real plans, but we may pack up the Pajero and head into some nearby mountains (thereby avoiding the crowds) and do some camping, hiking and biking. Other than that, a little R&R is in order, with perhaps some time to work on computer projects, and, certainly, some time to simply reflect and practice mindful living.

馬刺at 漁場 (Basashi at Ryoba)

A new employee has joined our company, and Brian and I took her to our new favourite izakaya (Japanese-style bar/pub) for dinner. Ryoba is quite a nice little chain resto-bar and we have been a few times for dinner (and a cold brew) after work since they opened a branch here in late February.

Whenever we go, we tend to order the same tasty (yet unhealthy) dishes: yakitori (grilled chicken kebab), kara-age (deep fried chicken chunks - pronounced ka-ra-ah-gay), and cheese-age (deep fried cheese sticks!). Last night, thanks to a fresh pair of eyes and the adventurous spirit of our new comer, we branched out a little and ordered sushi rolls (delicious!!) and, less usual, some "basashi", which is raw horse meat.

We'd had raw horse before, but still it is something of a rarity and therefore more special somehow. We just never really think about ordering this dish, and didn't even know that Ryoba carried it until I saw it advertised on a "hanging" menu above our table. When I mentioned it, our guest announced that she had tried it and quite liked it - and that was that!

Certainly raw horse and raw fish must be healthier than deep fried cheese...

Ieyasu's Horse...survival of a Lumix

On Thursday evening I took a stroll to Okazaki castle with the "baby Lumix" (a point and shoot LZ2). I managed a couple of (bad) photos of the castle, and this one of the statue of Tokugawa Ieyasu's horse.


And then the camera "died"!! I took this personally - that very simple little camera took great pictures. But suddenly it wouldn't focus; I could hear the motor spinning, it was trying to do something, but all that would happen would be an error message: "Please turn off camera and turn on again". This of course did not work. I managed to make the lens close, and mentally laid it to rest next to our dear Casio.

Brian to the rescue. I returned from my business trip late Friday evening. By mid-day on Saturday, he had dickered with the camera and fixed it! The Lumix will live to be blogged again:-)

Business Trip in Toyota City

I'm working out of town all this week in a town called Toyota City. It's not far from Nagoya (hence, it's quite far from Susono), so I'm staying in a hotel in nearby neighboring Okazaki city. Both Toyota and Okazaki have interesting histories. Toyota is the birthplace of Toyota cars (the town changed its name to Toyota after the Toyoda began mass-producing the awesome automobile); and Okazaki is famous as being the birthplace of Tokugawa Ieyasu (of the Tokugawa Shogunate). However, Shizuoka people take pride in the knowledge that Ieyasu's horse was buried in Shizuoka city!

So amidst this ancient and modern history I am spending my days and evenings. I had planned to get a few photos of Okazaki castle after work tonight, but the cold and the rain dissuaded me. Instead I went to a nearby mall, bought a 2 GB USB flash drive, made my way to a little Italian restaurant and, discovering that it was closed, found myself instead in a little local eatery.

I ordered the local specialty of miso-katsu (lightly battered deep-fried pork cutlets coated with miso-sauce) and a cold draft beer. It was a bit of a smoky place with some vociferous locals; naturally, I didn't exactly blend in!

Three older men who were drunkenly celebrating a birthday began chatting to me. They said Hello, I said Hello. A few minutes later the one furthest from me figured out that I wasn't Japanese! He apologised and said I looked like a Japanese but with a bad hair colour. Ha.

Well, they left soon afterward, insisting that as soon as I was done eating there I should join them at the karaoke bar next door. Naturally, I opted out of the karaoke - but the whole chit chat was good Japanese practice!

And so ends my hump day out of town...

A Few Thailand Photos

We also spent some time sorting through our many photos that we took in Thailand. Here are just a few of those taken on the island:

Fire-dancing at night- entertainment on the beach provided by experienced fire-dancers.


Me on my rented motorcycle - on this day we spent a few hours exploring (and relaxing on) the various beaches. This one in the background was particularly unpopulated!


This lizard was quite large, and we saw him twice on the same day, just hanging out near the stairs to our second-floor (very nice) room:

Another Weekend Come and Gone

It's easy to get caught up in the fast-pace of our day-to-day lives - everything is about immediacy, and there is never enough time in the day. In such an environment it becomes habitual to think about everything that you haven't done, hanging on to your perpetual "To Do" list. This weekend, I choose instead to look at everything that we have done (of course, there is a lot undone, but I'm not interested in that!).

Sometimes individually and sometimes together, we have:

• participated in yet another "nomikai", drinking party (and I am now very much looking forward to at least a week of self-imposed detox!)
• visited for the (thankfully)last time my urologist (with a clean bill of health!)
• dropped off the dry cleaning
• did groceries, including some healthful choices like salmon and asparagus
• cooked curry
• got a key made
• picked up a letter at the post office
• shopped for some DIY and car tools
• removed the window rain guards from Brian's car
• shopped for some summer-time window blinds to replace the soul-destroying, spirit-suppressing heavy curtains in my kitchen and tatami room
• bought a new "carpet" made of igusa -some sort of grass-for the TV room
• effected all interior changes!!
• had a fabulous bike ride

and

• even got in a few hours of downtime, watching "Medium".

And though all things must end, it is the present that is to be enjoyed and for the next few hours I plan to do nothing else!

Out and about

We're going to a meeting out of town today and will be having dinner with many co-workers. Because beer will be invovled (a nomihodai - all-you-can-drink - in fact), we will be spending the night at our favourite hotel in Shimada: The Route Inn.

Should be fun...but I am looking forward to some down time this weekend!

Running Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy 6.1

Despite being very busy with other multiple projects, I'm still finding time to play with my Ubuntu Linux system. I took a leap and installed Beryl, a cool desktop thing on my pc, and now have this cool 3D desktop - notice that my desktop is actually a cube and I can have different windows and apps open on different sides of the cube:

(The video is awfully long, so just watch a little).

Weekend Ride!

With our two weeks in Thailand and various business trips at work before and since the holiday, we hadn't ridden our bikes in nearly a month, so our ride on Sunday morning was that much sweeter.

We took our Single Speeds up to "the fire road" which runs along the ridge of the mountain from Mishima to Gotemba. We have to ride uphill about 8 km (about half-way to the Hakone Skyline)to get to the fire road, which is a great workout especially with no gears. However, once there, we get to enjoy a traffic-free rolling road that offers many down-hill options - off-road, farmers' road, or real road, whichever you prefer.

Due to Saturday's rain having caused wet conditions, on Sunday we opted for one of the narrow, paved but deserted farmers' roads that is surrounded by trees. Coming down was, of course, lots of fun - my Gary Fisher Rig is still going strong, and Brian has never loved a bike as much as he loves his Clockwork. Of course, no ride is complete without a photo or two, and we stopped to take a photo of the signs for later kanji lookup.

New Blogger Albums

So, as I was about to post the last post, I finally took some time to scroll down a little on the "Dashboard" page to see what was new. You can link video clips and add new news headlines to your blog; and, even better, if you're on Blogger, your blog now has a photo album associated with it.

Together with Picasa, Blogger is creating albums for all users, and you can now see all your blog photos in one place when you want to. To see your album, log in to Blogger, scroll down a bit and click on the Picasa Web Album link. Sign in there using your Google/Blogger account and you should be able to see your album.

This isn't exactly new, so you may already know about this. However, if, like me, you are so excited to blog that you don't much bother to read all the fine print on the Dashboard, perhaps this is news to you, too:-)

Shaken by Shakken

As I said - too much going on. I'm usually on top of things like license renewals and visa extensions; but, somehow, I completely let my shakken slide. This is a car inspection that has to be done every two years, and letting it expire would cause untold headaches. Luckily - last night as I was driving to my Japanese lesson I remembered that I had wanted to check the expiry date. I knew it was April, but when exactly? Perhaps April 16th? Or maybe the 23rd? No, of course not. It had to be April 6th - the following day.

So at about 7:15 a.m. this morning (April 6th!), I called the little dealership where I bought the car. I was expecting an answering machine that would maybe inform me of his hours - instead, Mr. Hara himself answered the phone, and told me to bring my car in at 8:30 a.m.

The shop is close to my apartment as well as my office, so it was easy to drop off my car, pick up a daisha (loaner car), and make it in to work comfortably before 9 a.m.!

I get to pick up my car again on Monday.

As soon as I have some time, I plan to put all our expiry date items in a database for easy reference...but for now, I have to get ready for a welcome party for two new people at work.

Too much and not enough

As you've noticed, we haven't been blogging very much recently. It's not that we haven't got anything to say; on the contrary, there is really just too much!

Being away from home and work for two weeks was great - but now we are playing catch-up, both officially and socially. Last night we went to a large dinner party with friends and colleagues at (you guessed it!) the Gotemba Kogen Mugibatake. Here is a teaser photo from that:




We haven't had time yet to really edit and compile our photos from Thailand yet, but we will likely spend a lot of time working on that this weekend.

On another positive note - Brian was not liable for any of the fraudulent charges on his credit card and in fact he has already been reimbursed by the credit card company. As for the pick-pocketing - it looks like our insurance may cover that; Brian very wisely went to the police station and filled out a report immediately after the theft. With this report, we may be able to claim most of the cash that was taken. Our missed flight, however, is our own cost to bear!