Xmas Dinner ’09

Hope you all had a great Christmas. We had a nice small dinner, with nice large portions of prime rib:

Notice the full size twice baked potato for size comparison. My colon hates me.

Holidays in the States 09 pt 1

First off, happy holidays to all you guys out there who actually read this thing! After a nightmare trip back from Japan (that included missed flights, and maxed out credit cards) I finally made it into LA only 12 hours later than I had planned (with a stop in Hawaii for some nice weather). Of course the 1st stop was for some late night HAT:

Despite thr jetlag and lack of sleep for over 24 hours, we got up early and headed out to Horse Thief Mile. The guys over at RAD were cool enough to arrange a small event, and even helped me snag a ride for the car. Big thanks go out to Ryan @ Rad, Terry & Tony Pham for getting the car ready and letting me use it, and to John @ CTO for getting the tires taken care of for me. Tony’s fun car:

After driving that fun little turbo deal in the morning, Jefe let me polish off my remaining pair of DZ101 using his NB. Jefe recently snagged his FD licence at Irwindale and plans to hit Rd.1 at Long Beach hard, so thank you for trusting me to toss your car around! 340hp and similar torque with insane angle made for a FUN time:

As you can tell, I liked the power 🙂

More food was had; this time at King Taco:

Then some more later at Canters. Met up with Rogan, Flybert, John from CTO & Azndoc. Celery soda, Matzo ball soup, and a corned beef/pastrami sandwich:

and then some more grub. This time, some dope Chinese in Temple City:

and there is always room for some yogurt:

Saw Doc Brown’s house (Gamble House) from Back to the Future:

Then met up with the Uncle and Aunt down in Seal Beach for a nice dinner at Walt’s near the pier. Hawaiian Ono:

And then it was off to Chicago, via Minneapolis/St. Paul and into the fantastic weather.

HUGE thanks to B&N for your hospitality! Hope to see you guys in Japan sometime soon 🙂

Were I would rather be right now…

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so to make myself feel better, I enjoy the best flavor of Cup Noodle there is:

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Car arrives today however….

Sydney

This past week I was fortunate enough to head down to Sydney for a conference on virtual world education to meet with the fellow teachers we work with on the Skoolaborate projects. It was only a quick 4 days but we had plenty of down time to enjoy the beautiful city along with working out details for new projects and such. For the full set of pics be sure to check out the Flickr album. It was a decently long 8 hour flight down to the Gold Coast and then a quick hour further down to Sydney:

The 1st thing I did was grab a proper breakfast…plates like this don’t happen in Japan:

I’m not a huge “see the sights” person but I really liked the downtown area and the view of the Opera House. Pictures do not do this place justice:

See, I’m working…so I’m serious……

And of course business meeting = beer…..at least for us it did. I really liked the VB on tap. I’m sure its just run of the mill down there but good beer is good beer:

We had a few drinks at Bondi Beach…you can see how clear the water is. I wanted to go grab a board and jump in, but no time….

More real breakfast:

and real burgers:

We were also lucky enough to be in Sydney for a nice little thing they call a dust storm…something I guess never happens?!

Anyway, I celebrated the occation by eating a kangaroo for dinner:

Though short, it was a great trip. I took way more pics that I really ever do, so check those out on Flickr if you like. I’d like to get back to Sydney and see it at a more leisurely pace, along with a few other cities.

Miyazaki

After a ton of car stuff, it was time for some time away. Mayu and I flew down to Miyazaki in Kyushu for nice 3 day trip. We decided not to carry boards since it would just be a pain, so we rented while there, and to lug them around we rented a nice Hiace:

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And of course the hotel was as close to the beach as possible. We spent about 5-6 hours each day in the water. The waves were really easy for me to ride and there was almost nobody there so it made for a nice stress free surf. The view from the room:

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As you can tell the area has a real tropical feel to it, and from time to time it really reminded me of Hawaii in certain aspects

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Of course any trip of mine is complete with eating fine foods. Miyazaki is know for Chicken nanban, so I had to try that..twice.

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And of course being close to the ocean means delish seafood, nice and fresh

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Miyazaki is also known for it’s mangos. I though about buying a few…but at $70 each, I settled for this $15 mango parfait. Yea, the mango was amazing…

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It was a really nice 3 days, and I got a ton of practice in on the longboard. I’m really looking forward to getting back out sometime soon before winter sneaks up on us..

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But summer still wasn’t over….and I still had a ton of tires left to burn. More drifty next post!

Lets get this party started

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and I made some pancakes

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New Pepsi

Pepsi just came out with a new shiso flavor. I’m not a huge Pepsi drinker but I had to give it a try since one of my favorite drinks is the shiso based Tantakatan.

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I feel like I’m drinking shochu while at work….niiiiiice

Uliuli = full

Takatori just got back from the States so we met up for dinner at Uliuli for some dope Hawaiian food.

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We both got the huge “Mega” sized locomoco and were sadly unable to finish everything….tiz a shame…I know. Good times though and fun storied about his adventure around Cali and down to FD in ATL.

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Way too much food…

Went to grab some food last night at a place I’ve been a few times near Kyoto University, Aloha Cafe Uliuli. Had to wait until Masa got off work so we finally got to the place around 9 or so and by then we were all really crazy hungry. So we ended up ordering A LOT of food. Their Mega Aloha Loco Moco and the Big Island Burger were huge…and equally as good.

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In fact the Loco Moco was better than the one I had my last day in Waikiki. It helped that it had spam, pork, chicken AND a huge hamburger patty in the mix.

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The burger too, was amazing. Onions on top of a fried egg, two slices of cheese, a slice of pineapple between two hamburger patties all topped with 1/2 an avacado….yup thats serious

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Finished it all, including a 3rd plate that was some sort of spicy beef on a bed of lettuce and rice topped with nacho chips all drenched in some delish gravy. Yea…I didn’t need any breakfast this morning.

HNL It’s all over too soon

The last day we flew out of HNL around 4:30 in the afternoon so we had plenty of time to get a last few things done before we headed back to Kyoto. Got up in the morning and finished off the remaining spam musubi and random things left in the fridge before heading back to the beach for a final surfing adventure. I had to rent a board and I went with a 10′ hardtop…something I wish I had done much sooner. I liked the board a lot…but more on all that a bit later. For lunch we went to Lulu’s Waikiki as it happened to be just next to our condo…and I had yet to have locomoco the entire time we had been in Hawaii. They have a sign on the stairs (in Japanese) saying their loco moco in the best in Waikiki…bold statment…..

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So for one thing its kinda huge…and it looks amazing…so it must be..right? I dunno, I was dissapointed. The brown gravy they use is like the kind you find in Hungry Man salisbury steak dinners. It was just do dark and salty for my liking. But really it was good, I’m just being a loco moco nazi. The view from the place is also nice:

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After a bit of last minute shopping we were at the airport going through endless security checks. I actually had a problem with some of the macadamia nuts that I was brining back…like nobody ever carried those out of Hawaii before?!? Anyway, I had to get one last, wholly American, unhealthy treat before heading back to Japan….root bear float!

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/Paradise