Count the good luck charms in this photograph. How many do you get?

Sumo Groupies

Ohanami at the Park

Mitsuike Koen

Qatargas II Ohanami

Fuji-san and Hakone

Sisters at Fuji-san

Ohanami - The flowers are coming!

Aunt Pauline and Mother under a cherry tree at Zojo-ji.

Aunt Pauline and Mother at the red brick warehouses in Yokahama.

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Batter up!

I like the Carps this year.

Godzilla in Yurakucho

Oh Nooo....

See the new "Chili's" header? I took pictures of the Chili's Restaurant sign in Doha - Arabic on one side and English on the other - and pasted them together for the header. Neat and Texas Cool. Really sets off Godzilla nicely too.

Computer Controlled Massage Chair

When I first came to Japan I thought I had a pretty cool apartment - view of Tokyo Tower, Temple below my balcony, free breakfast on the 42nd floor, etc. but there were obvious things missing. Sure, I had a computerized toilet, thermostatically controlled heated floor, and a bath that turned itself on and off but some of the niceties of life in Japan were missing.

So I have recently taken advantage of my rental allowance and got a massage chair and a home theater system.

I hadn't got a chair before because the foot rests weren't quite long enough and to be honest I didn't find the leg part that comfortable. Then I found this one that has a rest that zooms in and out to fit me perfectly. Further, it has little pads that come out and massage the tops as well as the bottoms of your feet. AND, it runs up and down your back before starting to find your shoulders so it can knead them just right. Plus 4 user customized settings, heated pad for back, background music, arm and hand massager, automatic drink dispenser (just kidding), etc.

What good is this without a home theater? Mine was dated - probably at least 3 years old - so I got a new Onkyo which is apparently the Japanese brand to have. Note the four controllers on the table next to me. That's a lot of digital audio horsepower to handle, especially when all the directions and stuff are in Kanji. I finally have the radio and television working again, and will try to get the 3D hologram function working when I have the time.

Have a nice Easter and try not to get caught up in material things.

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Kamakura

Kita Kamakura

David and I made a cultural trip to Kamakura also. Here is a poem by the 13th century Zen Master Dogen:

In spring - the blossoms,
in summer - the cuckoo,
in autumn - the moon,
in winter - the snow;

All is in the clear and pure,
that's it!

I guess it takes years of reflection and meditation - David said he didn't get it.

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Shinto Shrine - Kamakura

Zen Garden in the rain - Kamakura

First Sakura of Spring - Kamakura

Ancient Buddha - Kamakura

Yebisu

Yebisu - OK, I admit it, they were at the Beer Museum. Yebisu is my kind of guy too. He has his own beer, likes to fish, is lucky for businesmen, etc. What more can you ask for?

David and Colin Spotted in Tokyo

Roppongi Hills

Shinagawa

Sharks at Tokyo Sea Life Park

Torii Gates at Yebisu Shrine

The last few weeks has been mostly work with visitors on spring break recently. David and room mate Colin seem to be enjoying the visit and both will eat about anything. They are making all the Tokyo hot spots in record time.

Paris, Firenze, and Doha

Two Princes - Prince Andrew of Great Britain talking to the Heir Apparent of Qatar at the "Stone Laying Ceremony" for the project I am working on in Ras Laffan, Qatar.

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A fishing boat known as a Dhow in Doha harbor along the corniche.

A shot from my balcony at the Marriott in Doha

The beach at Massa, Italy

Arc d' Triomphe, Paris - just down the street from my hotel. I also had a very nice meal at the Jules Verne Restaurant in the Eiffel Tower.

I had a good trip but it was really mostly work. I did snap a few pictures - the two above are from my cell phone - I don't think I'm ready to replace my little Canon camera with it yet. The best thing about this trip was the food. Wonderful food in Paris and Italy. I sat about 10 feet from the two princes at the next table at a dinner in Doha one evening. When Prince Andrew walked by I didn't even recognize him although he had a bunch of security with him.

Frank Goes Hi-Tech (in a fashionable, not nerdy way)

I was told the other day that you are a nobody in Japan if you don't have email on your phone by one of the younger engineers. I was definitely a nobody. My old phone was out of date - no email address, no ability to send pictures to others, no movie feature, no ability to play MP3 tunes, no access to the internet, etc. I had of course seen everyone on the train using theirs to control satellites in space, check the stock market, etc. but I barely knew how to turn mine on and off.

So here is my new phone, with a picture of me on the screen. It of course has screens on both sides and cameras on both sides. That way, when I am video-conferencing I can switch back and forth with the other person between looking at me and looking at my surroundings (I am not kidding). If I am video conferencing, there is a tiny picture of me in the corner talking and moving around and a bigger one of the other person. Is that cool? If I strapped it to my wrist I could be Dick Tracy.

Text messaging is a really big deal here and it seems like everyone does it. It is cheaper than a phone call and a good way to pass the time. The phones have something called E-moji which are like sophisticated smiley faces to communicate emotions or concepts. Like the emoticons on instant messenger with more choices standard. "E-mo" is short for emotion and "ji" is a suffix for characters or alphabets in this instance so E-moji means Emotional Alphabet. People also use old fashioned ones like our sideways ones e.g. :-) for happy or :-( for sad. But they can be a lot more complicated, are upright, and can use the hirigana and katakana alphabets.

Here is a simple example:

(^-^)

Of course I can also assign different tunes to different people's ring, have their picture pop up when they call, send email message, record movies, access the internet, play games, use it as a calculator, a calendar, alarm clock, and as an electonic massager if I set it on vibrate. So I should be fairly up to date for another 6-8 weeks or so.

That's all for now. I start my trip tomorrow so I'll write email and post to the blog when I can. And if you need to reach me, my phone works anywhere in the world now. Catch you later...

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Yokohama Chinatown

A Gate into Chinatown

Palm Readers

Chinese New Years was this last week and there was a big celebration at Chinatown in Yokohama. There were fireworks and this weekend there was a Dragon Dance (I missed it - went and ate Indian food at an Indian friend's apartment instead). Anyway, Chinatown is very interesting - tons of restaurants. I also found some other good places to take visitors such as the doll museum, red brick warehouse shops, Yamashita park, etc.

The picture just above shows the palm readers. I think this must be a big activity at New Years just like getting a new fortune at the temple is. I have seen Japanese fortune tellers and palm readers before but not quite like this. These were lined up in a row and doing great business. Also, they were using magnifying glasses to see the palm better. Chinese palm readers must really be into detail.

I missed a couple of photo opportunities this weekend. I always carry my camera with me. But this last week I cleaned out my backpack to organize it. I was trying to find my camera and thought I'd left it out of the backpack. So I missed an opportunity to photograph the Tokyo marathon and also what looked to be a photography club in the park by the apartment.

There were about 100 people in four groups photographing these girls posing in the park. It wasn't a fashion shoot or anything like that. I've seen those here before and in London. I think it was a bunch of goofy guys in a club (gee - I wonder if they would let me join?). There weren't any women except the 4 girls being photographed. Anyway, I could have got behind the girls and photographed the guys looking silly but I missed it because I couldn't find my camera.

Turned out it was in my backpack hidden behind the umbrella. I thought for a while I had lost it. I have really enjoyed taking snapshots and would have had to have bought a new digital camera immediately if I hadn't found it. By the way, if you want to see some more snapshots just click on the picture of Yebisu at right. I will put some more over there from time to time.

This week's new food word is "nameko" - a kind of small button mushroom put into Miso soup. They didn't have my usual "shijimi" - small clams - so I tried the nameko and tofu. Tasty.

By the way, HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

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Important Discovery for Snack Lovers

Today I was talking to one of the secretaries about rice crackers - called sembei and / or okaki (I'm not sure of the difference - I get different answers depending on who I ask). I mentioned last month that my favorite is kuromame sembei - black bean crackers. Another favorite is the mixes like in this bag. Sometimes the mix will have peanuts, various small rice crackers, even tiny dried fish. So I described it and asked what it was.

"They are friends of alcohol" she said, meaning they are something that is normally eaten while drinking. "Tomodachi no arukoru" I said and she smiled. That's good, I've been calling them Japanese Beer Snacks. The real name is Kawakimono.

This leads to one of my pet peeves. None of my dictionaries consistently list all the same words if you go from Japanese to English and then English to Japanese. For example, I knew that a word for friends is tomodachi. I decided to look it up just now to make sure of the spelling. When I looked up friend on the English side it listed yuujin, mikata, etc. but no tomo (tomo is singular - tomodachi is plural). But when I looked up tomo on the Japanese side it says friend. I especially dislike it when my electronic dictionary does this since it seems like it would be easy to have consistent linked words.

Only an engineer, or maybe an English teacher, would spend time considering something like this. I guess it is harmless entertainment though.