Popped across the street to check out the local Shinohashi Summer Festival. It is small, local, and basically lame. The kids seemed to enjoy it, but after walking up and down the few blocks looking for inspiration, we decided to just head into Komugi for some quality eats.
amy on the train
Met Todd and Amy at Akihabara station around noon and proceeded with the mission: backup solution for his digital photos, laptop replacement for Hiroko, and introduce Amy to the joys of Akiba. We nailed one, getting Todd a sweet external 120 gig HD, failed on the next, as Hiroko's old Thinkpad had secondary cache errors on the CPU and I had to beg them to trash it for me, let alone get any trade-in money for it.
And did Amy enjoy her afternoon out with the guys? She alternated between dead silence and giggling hysterics, she ate a bunch of sandwhiches and blueberry pie, and she was generally adorable and almost-three-ish.
meat @ barbacoa
Just basically too much meat. Garlic steack + grilled pineapple is the Food Of The Gods. After dinner I was so stuffed I walked home from Aoyama in a feeble attempt to burn it off. Needless to say it didn't help much.
stick this
Showed up at honbu and immediately realized it's the first Tuesday of the month: jo day.
A ridiculous number of people (12 at one point) jammed into the dojo to practice.
Admittedly, jo is not my thing, for several reasons:
I admit it's a damn good way to learn some fundamentals that we can all stand to work on; distance, timing, generating power from the hips.
A ridiculous number of people (12 at one point) jammed into the dojo to practice.
Admittedly, jo is not my thing, for several reasons:
- it's really, REALLY hard
- it's not a sword
I admit it's a damn good way to learn some fundamentals that we can all stand to work on; distance, timing, generating power from the hips.
license plate
Papa is the Prison Warden for the state of New Jersey. OK, that's a lie. He's actually in charge of re-engineering the Department of Motor Vehicles for the whole state. I think the idea is to use modern change management and leading technology to streamline the process of buying fake IDs online, or something like that.
He went to the prison where they make license plates and was given a gift. The joke is, his real CT license plate is exactly the same.
Reminds me of that old joke: What's the Secret Service codename for Al Gore?
Al Gore.
birthday summary
After work Hiroko and I had dinner at Lucky. It was typically dead and the mama-san who runs it was happy to see us, so we got free stuff (garlic potato salad!) and ate most leisurely.
Cruised home and took stock of my 33rd haul:
Cruised home and took stock of my 33rd haul:
- two equally silly electronic Hallmark greeting cards from my favorite mom and my favorite her twin sister.
- Five volume set (softcover) of Harry Potter. Yes, I know, so shutup already. I WANT to read them. Been a while since I read something fun in English. Loan Securitization documents don't count.
- Teku-teku Angel, in blue.
- Cool black Nike t-shirt from Masa declaring "The Legend Continues"
- Summer kimono and matching geta
cuttin'
Did some cutting in the basement with Elvis. Lots of silliness, and at least one decent yokoichimonji.
Check out the slide show, or even watch the video.
After cutting Miri fed us at Cravings, then Elvis went to work and Hiroko and I went up to the local kimono place, bought a killer obi for her, and dropped off my kimono for some much needed fixin'.
keith married!
Congrats to the baddest zen buddhist priest in Chicago, shown here completing the bonds of matrimony in Poland.
zest
We had our second and final dinner for all the summer interns at Zest. We took the whole top floor/roof with the nice outdoor open courtyard. Food is perfectly respectable, and the place is cheap. Summer interns seemed impressed enough; I think we've spent more money on summer intern functions (we invite all interns from all the foreign financial firms in Tokyo) than any other bank, and have good officer turnout. We had most of the executive management committee eating onion rings and chatting up the kids. After I wow'd the youngin's with my "What kind of container are you?" speech, I took a leisurely walk home through the soup that is Tokyo's summer night air. Shortly thereafter Hiroko came back from practice sore and tired. Naturally, I abused her because she was so sore she couldn't lift her arms enough to take off her own t-shirt, but unfortunately I discovered that she did in fact have enough energy left to punch me repeatedly.
birthday socks from parentals!
Birthday socks! Kinda long. And kinda green. But they sure are sporty!
mama with showgirl
Mama went to Vegas for the annual General Federation of Women's Clubs meeting.
Here she is with a showgirl (mama's on the left.)
sushi in ginza
Went to Ginza with Hiroko to do some random shopping. Ended up buying an absolutely killer summer kimono and a pair of geta. Also got widely assaulted by old women. At the geta/shoe area Old Woman Mrs. Chiba decided exactly what I should by; my opinion was irrelevant.
Then, at the antique fair on the top floor of Matsuya Department Store (right after a fairly burly earthquake that made me feel sorry for the dude selling all that antique glass) I was surrounded and attacaked by no less than five Old Women. One demanded I remove my jeans whilst another wrapped my in a kimono and tied the belt so tight I couldn't feel my legs. In the end they wouldn't let me leave until I dropped the cash for the kimono, but it's all good because that kind of kimono is so rare, and to find an antique in my size simply doesn't happen.
After shopping we lined up at Midori Sushi under the train tracks and stuffed ourselves on good, cheap sushi and then took the bus home. Good thing, too, because many of the trains and subways were still stopped.
Hiroko wrote about this very same day in her blog, too!
distance, timing
If I could ever figure out two things -- distance and timing. That was a lovely sentence fragment, btw, and it describes perfectly my understanding of the two. That is, I have no clue. The whole concept of moving, closing, and striking, shoulders and hips, arms and legs, feet and hands, is still totally beyond me. I think I know what I should be doing, but I have no idea how to do it. Teaching is always fun when I start by showing the wrong way to do it, practicing with everyone, and then concluding with a simple question: anyone figure it out? I sure have no clue.
Big turnout for class tonight, and it was hot and humid, decreasing my move-alot motivation, so we paired up with bokken and took turns trying to reach each other from the neutral tip-to-tip distance of just-outta-reach. The end result was generally not being able to reach at all, or overstretching the upper body and getting way off balance.
In a feeble attempt to connect this movement to some actual iai, we did a few kata and I tried to tie in this movement-from-the-hips (what isn't?) from both standing and sitting. Not sure if any of it made any sense, but I had fun trying to figure out the near impenetrable. Seems like "getting it" is an asymtope: I can get closer and closer, but never actually arrive.
Big turnout for class tonight, and it was hot and humid, decreasing my move-alot motivation, so we paired up with bokken and took turns trying to reach each other from the neutral tip-to-tip distance of just-outta-reach. The end result was generally not being able to reach at all, or overstretching the upper body and getting way off balance.
In a feeble attempt to connect this movement to some actual iai, we did a few kata and I tried to tie in this movement-from-the-hips (what isn't?) from both standing and sitting. Not sure if any of it made any sense, but I had fun trying to figure out the near impenetrable. Seems like "getting it" is an asymtope: I can get closer and closer, but never actually arrive.
not funny any more
OK this heat is no longer funny. Supposedly the typhoon season is over. Which leaves me asking what happened to all the rain we didn't have.
Went to Jiyugaoka on a shopping mission (failed) and it was so hot we just went to the Tsutaya/Starbucks bookstore in Roppongi Hills and sat around in the cool reading silly magazines and wasting time until the sun dipped.
And what is up with this lack of daylight savings in Japan? I don't get it; for a country so concerned with high energy costs and use, that extra hour in the morning would mean it's not already blazing hot by 6am, and more light in the evening when folks are out and about means less need for lighting. Probably has something to do with the uniqueness of Japanese cows or some assine excuse.
Went to Jiyugaoka on a shopping mission (failed) and it was so hot we just went to the Tsutaya/Starbucks bookstore in Roppongi Hills and sat around in the cool reading silly magazines and wasting time until the sun dipped.
And what is up with this lack of daylight savings in Japan? I don't get it; for a country so concerned with high energy costs and use, that extra hour in the morning would mean it's not already blazing hot by 6am, and more light in the evening when folks are out and about means less need for lighting. Probably has something to do with the uniqueness of Japanese cows or some assine excuse.
kairi
Hiroko had to work, so I went to the dojo in the morning and then came by her office to play with Kairi. When I arrived Kairi was drawing pictures with Hiroko, but I soon took over and we proceeded to assault the office furniture, play with her colored bricks, and then we discovered the nubby exercise ball behind someone's cubicle. This provided us with hours of giggles as she attempted to stand up on the ball and I grabbed onto it and her and tried to avoid having her experience serious head trauma.
We finished up with a rousing game of hide-and-seek before heading back to Shibuya and saying goodbye. She was bummed and tired (no nap) but I gotta say, as far as four year-olds go, Kairi is the best playmate a dude could have.
We finished up with a rousing game of hide-and-seek before heading back to Shibuya and saying goodbye. She was bummed and tired (no nap) but I gotta say, as far as four year-olds go, Kairi is the best playmate a dude could have.
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