Road Trips and Hike Reports

Best moments or accomplishments: Landing at Haneda, getting a Suica card and taking the monorail into town.  The weather was wonderful, windows were open and it seemed so welcoming. Spending time with Yukie and seeing the Tokyo office Getting all the major work tasks done according to the schedule I very spontaneously came up with on my first minutes in the Tokyo office Being able to drive here surprisingly without stress Toughest moments or situations: Jet lag.  My body really hasn't adjusted even a full week later.  I'm waking up too early and going to bed too early. Being alone.  Not only am I physically alone, even messaging people in the US isn't really doable during much of the day. The time zone difference is just very tough to work with especially for East Coast US communications.  A lot of the things I find fascinating wouldn't be interesting to others and there are benefits to not having to negotiate every activity etc.  but the poignancy of things is reduced

Tonight I took another bath at the public bath and did laundry.  I bought some wine and a plate of spaghetti with seaweed from a convenience store.  The store person microwaved my meal for me (without me asking) and it was a pretty handy light meal to eat in my room. At the Tokyo hotel the washers and dryers were separate stacked units.  Here at the Sendai Almont, they place all-in-one washer/dryer units in the changing rooms for the baths.  In both cases, 110-volt clothes dryers are really disappointing if you are used to 240 V or gas dryers.  With this all-in-one washer I had to choose up front if I wanted short wash, short wash and short dry or long wash and long dry (larger loads) or dry only/  I did the long wash and dry and it took 2 hours but my very modest load (1 pair of jeans, 1 polo shirt, 1 t-shirt and maybe 2 pairs of socks and underwear) were super wet at the end.  So I went back down and did the 30 minute dry only cycle.  And the jeans are still pretty wet.  This was bas

The original goal when I chose Sendai as my 2 day adventure was to go hiking.  There are some appealing trails near Sendai and being North of Tokyo (as is Haneda airport) it would be somewhat easier logistically to return the car than driving around Tokyo tomorrow morning.  So this morning I headed out nice and early with plans to go to breakfast then on to a hike.  Unfortunately, rental car guy, annoying as he may have been, was right.  Sendai, outside of the expressway and the very biggest city roads, is snowy and icy.  I don't know if they aren't able to plow the side streets or it just isn't a priority or what.  There is only maybe 1 inch of snow in the deepest sections but some parts of the roads (and a lot of sidewalks) have a firmly packed, sometimes clearly icy texture.  The car was very nerve wracking to take up and (especially) down the little hills here in town and I knew going into the country would be foolish. So, by necessity, today became an urban walk about

It's 6:45 pm as I write this and there is just SO much to tell. Firstly, I finally slept well last night (Thursday night's sleep was ok too but the rest of the nights not at all good).  I gathered all the stuff I arrived with plus the many candy snacks I'm going home with and headed out of the hotel at about 7 am, a little earlier than I expected to be leaving. I thanked the front desk person for the wonderful experience and picked up the oh so vital for work itemized inventory.  One (of many) nice things about staying in a hotel in Japan is the lack of upcharges.  Every day I had 2 new bottles of water in my room, included.  Wi-Fi, just part of staying there no option or attempt to sell you 'premium' wi-fi etc. Getting to Narita was awful.  Though I was standing at a platform that said Narita on it, I guess the first train that pulled up was not Narita bound but at first it was going North and seemed right so I had settled in for the 60-minute long ride and only do

Thursday night's work went well and didn't involve staying up too late.  Plus I had a real dinner from the Hotel food court.  It was my first attempt at ordering from the ubiquitous Japanese ticket machine restaurant.  Basically you buy a tiny paper ticket from an automated machine representing whatever item(s) you are ordering. You either give the staff member part of the ticket or sometimes I think it shows up on a monitor automatically.  When the food is ready they call your number, maybe page you if they have pagers, and you go get your food.  I had spaghetting Bolognese style and a Caesar salad plus some red wine.  Very satisfying. Friday started with an early meeting with a California colleague to discuss the new backup system.  I did a number of IT clean up tasks and administrative work for the new equipment.  Yukie and I ate at a lovely French Bistro type place in the atrium of the office complex.  It was another chance to have a salad, something I'm really apprecia

I don't want to write too much.  Basically work has been exhausting.  Working with people from the US West Coast means starting before 8 am.  Doing IT things when it's less likely to bother people means doing it from 6 pm until whenever it's done.  And I've not slept particularly well on any day I've been here. By the end of today we'd accomplished not just the bare minimum that was planned but also a big optional item.  And Yukie and I walked both to and from the office.  I left the office very early, about 2 pm but what had been hoped to be a 2 hours break before starting evening tasks shrunk to barely 1 hour when I remembered another task that I needed to start and at least have partially complete or it would mess up my evening work plans.  Still, today was shorter and less stressful than all the other days so I have high hopes I'll sleep well. I've had a variety of food in the past few days.  The lunches have all been bigger than I expected or needed

I won't drone on too long today. The first day going into the office was good. My coworker, Yukie, is also visiting from the US and she is a delight.  We chatter on endlessly, she seems to enjoy talking about almost anything.  Since I otherwise am saying as little as possible here it's refreshing to have somebody who can and will converse easily. We headed to the office at about 8:30 am, prime commute time. The number of people getting on and off the trains, up and down the escalators and especially marching into the Gate City complex where the office is was overwhelming.   The office is in an immense mall/office space thing that is the size of a Vegas resort.  2 Tokyo office coworkers joined us for lunch and we went to a lovely Chinese restaurant.  We were seating at a large round table that could have seated 7 or 8 and the room we were in only had 2 tables. The layout of having many rooms each with a handful of tables was interesting.  The menu was setup in 'sets' mea

Conveniently for blogging, it's Sunday here.  but for my body and mind it's the end of a very very long Saturday. I got in 1 more brief nap on the plane and then had another chicken curry since everybody seemed to be eating something and there wasn't much else to do.  Other than having some storage space and air vents I'm not sure what would really help a flight that long.  Maybe the return flight will seem better or maybe not.  I was glad to get it behind me.  Interestingly, the anxiety and weirdness I felt about not being able to figure things, looking like a jerk or whatever was on my mind almost completely evaporated when I got off the flight.  The airport (Haneda for my flight today) has an unbelievable number of helper employees who just direct people walking and check to make sure you have your passport out or your QR code from the multi stage paperwork you certainly should have done before arrival etc etc.  There were 3 pieces between getting off the plane and i

Finally, my long talked about, much prepared for trip to Japan is here.  Brian and I drove to Buffalo last night (Friday).  On the way we had a really good dinner at 99 Brick Oven in nearby Lancaster.  Despite being in Lancaster by 5:30, my first choice restaraunt, Frank's Grille was packed and didn't even have any available parking spots.  99 Brick Oven was packed also but we were able to street park and get on the waiting list. I had a lovely beer while we waited.  I had a seafood platter which is not something I would normally order but the woman next to me at the bar where we waited for a table had it and it looked great.  Grilled Haddock, scallops, jumbo shrimp, macaroni salad (a common side dish in Western NY), vegetables and coleslaw.  It sounds huge but I was hungry and no individual component was overwhelming.  This was the first time I had Haddock that tasted like anything.  I've tried Haddock about 3 times before and it always seems tasteless.  This was well sea

Where to start this story...  This hike starts at a gorgeous overlook right off of NY-15A.  The Nature Conservancy built 'Rob's Trail' a few years ago and it leads from the trailhead down hundreds of feet to the lake level of Hemlock lake.  We've done the Hemlock Lake hike about 3 times, once with our friend Gene .  We even tried doing this connector trail one other time but it was a very hot and humid day and to be honest, my mood was so awful that I should have just stayed home that day . Originally we were going to head relatively far from home for a 6-mile-long hike with modest elevation gain.  Brian suggested we revisit this lake to lake trail closer to home which was a good idea since we spent plenty of time in the car Saturday.  The first quarter mile of the trail is shared with the Hemlock lake trail (called Rob's trail).  Then there is a split and the Canadice Lake trail heads back towards and eventually crosses NY-15A before going down towards Canadice lak