Update on Thailand Trip

I just bought a speedometer/odometer for my bike last week. I partially used the trip as an excuse to buy it. It will be very handy, though. Today was my first time really using it. I wanted to do a test run to get a feeling for what the trip was going to be like. We're planning on trying to do the 800 km trip in about 5 days. I thought 30 kph would be a good goal pace.

My ride was going well until I got to the river. Somehow, both directions I went had a really strong headwind and I ended up going about 24 kph for a lot of it. That was pretty demoralizing. The city was the easiest part, despite the traffic and lights, because there was no wind. Without the lights, I would have averaged about 35 kph. If we do the trip in 4 days, that will be about 7 hours of biking per day at a pretty good pace. I did 2 hours today, and I was already starting to get a little nervous about the trip within the first hour. I was getting tired, my back was hurting, my butt was hurting, my legs were tired. That's not a good sign. I need to start training more. I don't think I could do today's workout 3 1/2 times per day for 4 days in a row right now.

At least I'll have much more motivation when I'm there: http://www.braun-rentacar.com/add_images/similan3_2.jpg.

More Biking

I went for a ride the other morning as the sun was coming up. The weather was perfect for a hard ride. Unfortunately, I was too tired to really push it. Instead, I just played a couple of games. One is called, "Try To Find Your Way Home," and the other is called, "Don't Get Hit By the Huge Trucks." They're both pretty exhilarating. This was the first time I had taken a route home from a reasonable distance that I had never taken before. The more I get to know the city, the easier this kind of thing gets, but it still would be really easy to get lost. Especially since it was a cloudy and foggy morning and I couldn't necessarily use the sun for direction.

That game wasn't that hard. The other game was a little harder. Those trucks were trying to beat me at it. I'm only considering it a competitive game rather than a cooperative one because of the few trucks who don't seem to agree. One truck left me just enough room to pass by a parked car so that I would try to pass between the car and the truck rather than wait for the truck to pass by first. In the end, I won. I made it home in one piece.

I took another picture of the palace garden right next to our apartment before going home.

I also took a picture of ,what seems to be, another one of Tokyo's personal challenges to bikers.

That small gap is to prevent motor vehicles from driving on the path along the river, and simultaneously challenge bikers to ride through the smallest spaces they can without getting off of their bike. This one is actually not bad at all. I thought it was the first time I went through, but then saw the other ones along the path. The gaps on those are much smaller and have more little bars sticking out, trying to catch your feet or pedals as you pass through.

Trip to Thailand

After some planning, my friend, Erdem, and I have decided to take a trip to Thailand. We were going to go to Australia, but the tickets were much more expensive for this time of the year. We're going in the second half of December, which is when everyone in Tokyo is on vacation. This causes airline ticket prices to jump up dramatically. That part of the plan didn't work out too well, because what was supposed to be a $600 ticket to Thailand ended up being a $1200 ticket to Thailand. I think I just booked too late. Oh well, I'm really excited about the trip, anyway.

We're going to be biking from Bangkok to Phuket. It's about 500 miles. We're going to get to Phuket on the 20th and leave from Phket on the 27th. Hopefully, we won't have so much biking that we can't take some time explore. There are organized bike trips that do that route in about ten days with about eight days of biking. I think we should be fine. The hardest part is going to be getting my bike box from Bangkok to Phuket. I still have that part to figure out. I'll probably just ship it to a hotel and stay there for the last night. We have been planning to sleep in bivi sacks along the way, but it only costs about $15 / night to stay at an inn, so we'll see.

I'm really excited about the food. It's the perfect place to be for a bike trip. We're going to need extra calories with all of the biking, so we're going to have to eat enormous amounts of delicious Thai food. I just wish I didn't have to wait for two months.

http://www.beachbumparadise.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/thailand-phi-phi-beach.jpg

I almost hope something goes wrong so I don't have to leave.

My New Haircut

Before this weekend, I hadn't cut my hair in a while. It was probably about 3 months before leaving for Tokyo when I last got my hair cut. Since I got here, I've avoided getting my hair cut because I don't carry cash with me and I doubt the barbers take credit cards. It had gotten so long that I contemplated letting it grow indefinitely, partially inspired by my good friend, Dr. Shearer, and his mop-like hairstyle.

That could only last so long. Eventually, my anxiety-driven personality features will lay waste to anything that draws their attention. This weekend, that is exactly what happened. We had initially planned for Heather to cut my hair, but I ended up cutting it the moment I got my hands on some scissors. If it seems not so bad from this angle, just trust that there is an angle at which it will seem that way.

I wish I had taken a before picture. I think living in Tokyo is actually helping me be more self-sufficient. The small inconveniences involved with doing various things drives me to just take care of them myself. Anyway, my head feels much better now. And I think having one less oil-soaked item in the apartment makes it that much more fire-safe.

PS - I wanted to post a video of me calling out for Jager bombs, but I don't know if anyone would get it. If you would, good on you.

More Simple Stuff We Can't Use

What is it this time? The trash. We were very able trash-handlers back in the US. Here, we are handicapped. Here is the sign on the door of the trash room:

I assume this tells you the day and time that different types of trash are taken out. We haven't figured it out yet. Within the trash room, it's even tougher.

There are many signs and places for trash. This is only 1/3 of the room. I am fairly certain that we aren't using it appropriately.

I'll leave you with a quote delivered somewhat excitedly by Heather while in the trash room: "Is this stuff all up for grabs?" It probably wasn't as bad as it sounded, but I didn't find out what she was talking about, just in case it was.

Our First Day Out

We went to a small theater in Shibuya to see the movie, "Stolen" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071832/). It was definitely the smallest theater I've ever been to. We were sitting in the very back of the theater, so you can see just how small it is. The movie wasn't very good, not that I expected it to be. It was about how several paintings were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston, Massachusetts. She didn't seem to be a very interesting woman, the paintings didn't seem all that interesting, and the criminals involved weren't that interesting. The most interesting thing was probably the insurance company investigator's history with the Navy. They performed tests on him that involved putting him under UV lights. He developed skin cancer when he was in his 20's. That was the most interesting fact of the entire movie.

Shibuya is a huge shopping area. This city and area clearly has a lot of money. Below are two pictures of almost identical Ferraris that were parked within about 100 feet of each other. There are outrageously expensive cars all over the city all of the time. I saw a car from the same era as this one: http://www.yorkwa.com.au/Motor.Museum/images/1934MG-NE.500x210.jpg. It was just riding around on the street. I can't even remember seeing that anytime in the US.

This picture isn't very clear, but it was meant to show how much personal attention there is in a lot of the city. Every major store has an abundance of human help. You probably can't see it in the picture, but there are about 5 guys standing outside of this department store to hail cabs for people. In other stores there are people just holding signs to advertise the products next to them. That job would typically be done by a low-to-mid quality stand in the US. That alone would explain the high prices around Tokyo. We went into this department store, but didn't even come close to buying anything. The most basic kitchen utensils were about $30, and there's no spoon worth that much to me (barring some freak combination with something like a 20 in LCD screen).

I took a picture of a keyboard just to show how similar they are to ours. The only difference is that the keys have additional functions to type Hiragana.

This is just an unusual McDonalds product. I hope it's not something new in the US that I just don't know about.

This is a sculpture about 200 feet from our front door. It's nothing special, except that it somehow eluded our attention this entire time that we've lived here. How could something this big and yellow completely escape our attention? I was looking almost directly at it when Heather pointed it out. I honestly didn't even see it until she did.

This picture is just to show how many people ride bikes in this city (not how poorly I take pictures at night). These collections of bikes are everywhere in the city. Any place with a reasonable amount of people is bound to have many bikes parked near it.

We ate out together for our second time while we were out. We had Italian this time. It was delicious. It was about $17 for what would normally be a side dish in the US. I had a very small plate of orchiette and Heather had a reasonably-sized pizza. After that, we went to a bakery and had a couple of dessert pastries. One thing I would like to note is that there are bakeries everywhere. Between here and Heather's work (10 min walk), you can pass about 8 bakeries/dessert shops.

The last thing I would like to note is that many things that have faded into history in the US are still alive and strong here in Tokyo. Two things I noticed this weekend were the chain, Tony Romas, and the show, Alf. Amazingly, right after seeing the show Alf, I encountered a reference to the show that assumed your knowledge of it. I wish I could remember the reference, but it talked about aliens that like to eat cats. If I hadn't just seen the show, I wouldn't have caught it.

Our First Night Out

We went out this Saturday with Heather's new friend. She met her through a mutual friend. She's the one on the right in the picture. The guy in the background is Canadian, but I'm sure you already knew that. This is at the apartment of the girl next to Heather.

Afterwards, we went out to a bar in Shibuya. We stayed out until about 4am. That's the standard in Tokyo. Last time Heather went out in Tokyo, she stayed out until about 5am. Considering that, I don't see myself going out too often in Tokyo.

Another Shopping Adventure

We started off by going to get some money from the ATM. Heather's nearest ATM is here at, what I've declared, the "Prudential Center", or "Gaijin Central". The building in this picture is a Prudential building, I think. This is the only place I know of where it is almost assured to spot a white person. You might notice the 2nd floor of that building is a gym. That's where Heather works out. It's called WOW'd, or Work Out World. It's about $100/month and they require you to have a special pair of shoes that you keep at the gym and only use in the gym. You're also not allowed to wear those into the bathrooms. The level of cleanliness here does not quite match up with my own, although, it is quite nice.

Most gyms seem to cost about that much, so I am not getting a membership just yet. I have been doing body-weight exercises, biking, and running only. Anything more is definitely not a necessity.

As with WOW'd, there are many funny marketing strategies in Tokyo. I don't know if it's only when they are in English, but it can feel like living in a land of goofy people. It fits Heather like a glove. The store above is another example I saw on a detour heading to the grocery store. At least the name of the store Perfect Suit Factory is accurately descriptive as opposed to the many stores titled generically with "Sports", but only servicing one sport.

Shopping for food here hasn't been all that bad. Some things are more expensive than in the US, some they just don't have, and some things are cheaper or better. One example of an expnsive item is cheese. This is just plain cheddar and mozzerella, but it costs about $11/lb. It's one of the only items we don't get. Nuts are pretty expensive, too, and they pretty much don't have nut butters. Those are two delicious items we miss very much. Especially since they put in the fresh nut grinding machines at whole foods, one of which had peanuts mixed with chocolate chips. It's painful just thinking about it.

We did, however, just start cooking with curry powder after this trip to the store, so we can do without the chocolate peanut butter. We both love curry so much. This was the first time I've ever cooked with it, and it was way too good. It's all I can think about now. I just read about "curry addiction", and I think I have it already.

The other thing we decided to try was cutting up our own fish. The store is full of fish, but it can get pretty expensive. They have many different kinds of fish they sell whole, so we thought we'd try that cheaper option. This was about a 3-5 lb tuna that we bought. I don't know that much about fish, so I can't tell you what kind of tuna. This endeavor definitely didn't go as smoothly as planned, but we did end up with a pile of reasonably priced tuna. I give credit to sushi chefs. I am going to have to practice this a lot before this becomes a regularly viable option. It's ok, as long as I have curry.

Out and About

I've been wanting to post a video of what it's like riding a bike on the "highways" around here. It's great getting around by bike because the major roads are still very bike friendly. Even so, it can be pretty nerve-racking. At one point on this ride, I looked over my shoulder as I frequently do to see what's going on with traffic, and there was a huge truck about 2 feet from my face. It freaked me out and I jerked the handlebars a little bit, but luckily not enough to crash. There aren't many big trucks on the roads here, and even the biggest aren't as big as in the US. Something similar happened when I was in NC and that was much scarier because it was a full-size 18-wheeler going 50mph faster than me at the time. This was about 1/2 the size and going my speed.

Things you may notice in this video: There are police officers on many corners just standing around. In fact, one scolded me for crossing the street a few seconds before the walk signal changed. At least that's what I think he was doing. There are short steel railings along the sides of most major and some minor streets. The streets are VERY smooth and clean. There are NO potholes. It's really a biker's dream city. After Boston, it really does feel like a fantasy land. I'm going to be spoiled after living here. If you didn't know, they drive on the left side of the road in Japan. I am already very used to this. I thought at first that I might have a mishap with this, but it's already uncomfortable thinking about riding on the right side of the road. I'm riding kind of slow in this video because it's kind of hard to ride while recording, but you can see the cars aren't going much faster. I would say the speed limits here are lower in general, probably by an average of 20%. On these major roads, the speed limits are often only 30mph, but people obviously will drive much faster.

This was my first time in this exact area. It's called Ginza and is one of the most popular shopping areas. It's on the other side of the palace garden from where we live. Again, you may notice the extremely nice streets. It was about 4pm at this point, and the sidewalks were pretty full. They actually have police conducted lines for crossing the street around here. I wanted to get a video of people waiting in line to cross the street. It's pretty close to the opposite of Boston when it comes to pedestrians. People will almost never walk across the street without the walk sign.

I just threw this in because I thought it was a little funny. This is a typical gas station around our apartment. There is one about a block away, but I didn't realize what it was until after a couple weeks. And in case you're interested, I think gas is about $6/gallon here, but not sure.

I haven't been posting much because I try to post according to the pictures I take, but I haven't been getting out much and have forgotten my camera the few times I have. This is going to take practice, but hopefully it will become more second nature.