Friday, October 31, 2008

Catch up for the year

This is my first blog, and so I thought I would recap a very busy year for me. As my favorite singer says: "No time to be void or save up on life... no, you gotta spend it all."

The year started with spending New Year's at El Capitan campground with Val near Santa Barbara. I chickened out and stayed in a motel and it was COLD!

We went camping again in February at the same place, and with the help of a new air bed, I actually camped for the first time since my kids were little... enjoyed the beautiful sunsets...


The waves....And the fires!




And don't forget, Satan's Dick!


FEBRUARY 2008

Next up, in February, Val, Kathy, Lindsay and I had a Pearl Jam fest at Lori Dunham's house north of Chicago in Lake Villa. We walked in the neighborhood:



Drove up to Lake Geneva in Wisconsin to see the ice fishing:


And watched many, many Pearl Jam videos, partying into the wee hours, and taking screen shots from Lori's huge screen TV:





MARCH 2008

Lawson software convention in Las Vegas. Stayed at the Venetian hotel:


While in line for dinner with 5000 other attendees, I ran into Pearl Jam's security guard, Jake, doing line control! We chatted for a few minutes and he told me that PJ was going to tour in the summer. It was surreal seeing each other out of context like that!

APRIL 2008

Eddie Vedder's solo tour! Conveniently planned 11 shows, 8 of them in California, with the tour ending the day before I was to leave for Japan. Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, LA and San Diego. By the time we hit LA, I was deathly ill with a cold, and I ended up skipping the second San Diego show. The shows were intimate, in small theatres, and Eddie told stories about and between the songs, which were really quite funny.



After the Santa Cruz show, Val and I drove up the coast:


























































APRIL 2008

My son, Eric, and I went to Japan to visit his grandmother, who is elderly and can't travel anymore. We stopped by Tokyo for 2 nights, and then the Mt. Fuji area for 2 nights before going to Kobe to visit her for 4 nights.

First stop was Harajuku, where young people gather on Sundays to display their extreme fashions...






















Check out the black makeup on the neck above and below... and several girls had tape over their noses... ???


















































































































































We also went to a Japanese baseball game... what a trip! By chance, we ended up on the Hanshin Tigers' side, which was jammed with fans all wearing Tiger clothes and carrying 2 plastic bats which they proceeded to bang all through the entire game while chanting songs. Then, during the 6th inning, everyone brought out these long balloons and blew them up, but didn't tie them. A song was sung and at the end, everyone let the balloons go! The home team's side of the stadium was mostly empty... and they all carried these umbrellas which they twirled around while chanting... No hot dogs or peanuts, but yakisoba, curry rice and dried squid were sold by vendors... The rules were the same, but what a different experience.

































































































































Some videos I took:















Next, on to the Hakone region, where the views of Mt. Fuji are said to be excellent... only what they didn't say was it's nearly always obscured by clouds... Still, I caught a view from my hotel window early the first morning:







And a close-up:




















Had a meal in the town we stayed in, Gora, and found the oddest menu...



















Needless to say, we didn't try "It boils guts."














We took a cable car up the mountain, then a ropeway (shown here) across to Lake Ashinoko, where we boarded a tourist boat to go to the other side.













On the way, we passed the Owakudani area, where sulphur steam escapes from fissures in the rocks, indicating the volcanic activity in the area... yes, that is a building and tons of tourists in the lower right...
















We had a great deal of fun at the top, where there is a change of cable car and shops, etc.











They had an engineer's uniform to try on for pictures!












One of the songs/bits Eddie did on his solo tour was a Barry White imitation, and there was a line in there "I want to lick you like an ice cream cone..."

So of course when I found these in the store here in Owakudani, I had to buy some for my PJ friends...













The tourist ships to go across the lake... I'm not kidding you...















First Mate Eric!
















The Hakone checkpoint, a guardhouse along the infamous Tokaido Highway, which connected Edo (Tokyo) with Kyoto. This is a reconstructed guardhouse originally built in 1619 to serve as a checkpoint along the famous Tokaido Highway, which connected Edo (present-day Tokyo) with Kyoto. In feudal days, local lords, called daimyo, were required to spend alternate years in Edo; their wives were kept in Edo as virtual hostages to discourage the lords from planning rebellions while in their homelands. This was one of several points along the highway that guarded against the transport of guns, spies, and female travelers trying to flee Edo. Passes were necessary for travel, and although it was possible to sneak around it, male violators who were caught were promptly executed, while women suffered the indignity of having their heads shaven and then being given away to anyone who wanted them.



















In fact, here's one of the peasants trying to sneak by the Samurai guard...























Some beautiful blossoms...















Our hotel had a big fireplace in the bar, and leave it to the Japanese to make art out of a woodpile...
















Here is Baa-chan, Eric's Japanese grandmother, at a shopping mall in Kobe. We went shopping for some clothes for Eric, and he ended up buying 2 complete outfits for work, including ties.
















Eric and Baa-chan on the bus.













Eric and Baa-chan in her house, showing off his new clothes..

















We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Himeji and visited the famous castle, the White Heron. They had volunteer guides and we got a woman who spoke impeccable English and knew pretty much everything there is to know about the castle and the era. The tour took over 2 hours, as Eric was fascinated with all the Samurai stuff and stories. It turns out that our guide had taken Bill Clinton on a tour while he was Governor of Arkansas, and a member of his staff told her he would one day become president...




View from the top. To get up there, you have to climb very narrow stairways/ladders, and the number of floors on the inside is more than on the outside, to fool enemies...











Some of the armour the Samurais wore. It was more important to be decorative than practical...










The grounds at the castle were like a maze, meant to delay enemies who managed to get past the moat. I'm told this is a scene used in famous movies:

















We met Eric's cousin, Shiho and her boyfriend, and they took us and Baa-chan to Chinatown in Kobe, where Baa-chan lives. Baa-chan had never in her 84 years eaten Chinese food!

















Typical food display with plastic food...