Monday, July 30, 2007

Wrap up

List of favorites and curiosities.

In Mostar we saw a car parked on the sidewalk on the way out on a walk. On the way back, we saw the same car being removed from the sidewalk. I have a recurring fantasy where speeding cars, or cars which run red lights are simply plucked from the road by a giant claw and crushed. No hassle over tickets or re offending. Car gone. The giant claw would look something like this.

Mostar

Uh oh, a list of favorite things. I can hear the question already - how many of these favorite things will involve bicycles? A lot! Senior cyclists in Croatia at the market. How fabulous to be able to get around without a car when you're older. You stay fit, save money, interact with people more (even annoying tourists taking your photo), and can park easily.

I want to ride my bycycle.

Great public spaces. In Kosice in Slovakia the main pedestrian mall had everything. Shops,

Kosice

museums,

Kosice Tech Museum

a smooth path for cyclists and baby carriages,

00428

and of course the Dancing Fountains. Great public spaces like this are so rare in the US. Most US cites would have given most of the space over to the movement and parking of cars.

Musical Fountains? Coolest Thing Ever

Another great public space in Wroclaw, Poland. A small square,

Wroclaw

and the large main square. There was a man selling carved wooden figures, and a group of crazed football supporters singing songs while wearing their team blankets.

Wroclaw


Two words. Czech beer.

Ummmm...beer.

Fall colors and Czech beer. Beer stops that are marked on the hiking routes.

Beer

Mass transit that transported the masses easily and quickly. This photo of a bus lane in Vienna makes my heart happy. Look, no cars in the bus lane (except for one right turner in the distance.) What's so hard about this? Why are we in the US so resistant to moving people efficiently? Things that work all over the world are treated as pie in the sky notions here in the land of the automobile.

Vienna bus/bike lane

Also in Vienna, an add on bike lane under a bridge.

Bike lane in Vienna

Working bikes, or cargo bikes. We saw these all over India, Vietnam, China and Japan. The rider, or drivers, must have super strong legs as there were no gears evident on the bikes. But what a great low impact way to move cargo around. This one is at a train station in India.

Working bike, train station

Here is one in Hue Vietnam - delivering TVs by bike.

Hue street scene

And here in Kunming, China. Without disrupting the fan dancers with the sound of a loud engine this cardboard collector rides right through the park.

Kunming 020

In NZ and Australia almost every restaurant you go to has water in heavy cold glass bottles that they put on your table automatically. No fancy and wasteful bottled water, just cold tap water. So easy, so smart. So going to do that at home.

Friends have arrived!

Hotels all around SE Asia have a system where the electricity in the hotel only goes on when you put your door key in a slot by the door. That way, when you leave the room and take your door key with you, the lights and AC go out and no electricity is wasted. Simple and smart. No photo of that one though.

Sun umbrellas. Not such a good option here in windy SF, but a really good thing to keep in mind for use on hot sunny days. Millions of Chinese and Japanese ladies are on to a good thing with their sun umbrellas.

Give me shade

I adapted quickly to this idea, but I am more sun phobic then most.

Drum Tower, Xi'an China

My new bike umbrella attachment may send me flying down the street, or knock me over with our summer wind. But I love the idea.

Bike umbrella holder

Friday, July 06, 2007

Conveyor belt sushi

Some of the most stressful times we endured in China and Japan were when trying to get food. As you may have noticed over the year, we tend to avoid the easy tourist spots in favour of local restaurants. Sure, we could have found a KFC or Pizza Hut in a lot of the places we went to, but what's the point? (OK, we did go to a Pizza Hut once in China when we had reached meltdown stage.)

What's the secret to eating out when you don't speak the language? Picture menus!

Gotta Love the Picture Menus!

Or pointing to the plastic food in the window. But that's a bit awkward. Street vendor food is always pretty straightforward. The Takoyaki (octopus balls) were a big hit with Rich in Japan.

More Takoyaki (octopus balls)


Set meals were always a nice break too. When someone just brings you a bunch of food, puts it in front of you, and leaves. This was a Buddhist guest house we stayed at in Koya-San. It is vegan Shojin temple food, like the restaurant "Medicine", in SF.

Japan_0191

The tempura and the sesame tofu were particularly great.

Japan_0190

Hands down though, my favorite dinner in Japan was at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Kyoto. So low stress. You just sit and watch the sushi go by and pick up the plates you want. You order beer from the roving waitstaff and they count up the number of plates you have in front of you and you take your ticket to the register to pay. When they bring you a beer they bring you a yellow plate to put on your stack to show you had a beer. Or in our case, a few beers.

Conveyor belt sushi.

There is soy sauce and big boxes of pickled ginger in front of you, and if you don't see what you want you can request it from one of the many sushi chefs. We went to the same place twice, that's how much fun it was.

Conveyor belt sushi.

The second time we went, Rich was having a silent eat-off with the two growing teenage boys to his left. They eyed his stack of plates when they sat down and then proceeded to eat so much sushi it was amazing. Even at only 137 Yen (about $1.25)per plate two teenaged boys can do some serious damage. The two of us ate about 22 plates of sushi, together. The boys must have done about 35 or 40 between the two of them.

Rich thinks he's ahead

When you travel you occasionally go to a place and wish you had a specific friend there. A friend who you know would just love whatever it is you're doing. At the sushi place, about twenty plates in, Rich already had eaten all kinds of things that we couldn't identify and had never tried before, he looked at me and said "Know who would love this?" "Leif" We both said in unison. Leif is a friend through my brother who once came through SF for work and we had a fun sushi fest with him at Godzilla Sushi. Leif is great because he'll try anything, and like Rich, can eat a lot. At conveyor belt sushi I stop eating a lot sooner then Rich and sit there picking at pickled ginger while he keeps saying - oh! That looks good! and plucking more plates from the conveyor belt.

Conveyor belt sushi.

And about the wasabi - anyone who's been to sushi with me knows what a pain I am - the wasabi has to be on the side because I don't like wasabi. I thought. Turns out I don't like the green horseradish passed off as wasabi in the US. In Japan the wasabi is real wasabi and tastes different. To test this new theory we went to a wasabi farm and even ate wasabi ice cream.

Wasabi ice cream

The wasabi grows in gravel beds in cold running water under shade tarps.

Wasabi farming

The root is grated or ground up and the stems are made into pickles.

Wasabi farm

I'm now a big fan of wasabi. So is Rich.

Wasabi worship

Oh yeah, we're actually home in SF now. Looking for jobs and an apartment. There's no place like home.

We Made it Home!!!

Monday, July 02, 2007

Beautiful Japan

My favorite things about Japan? Well, that's an easy question - almost everything. But the top of the list would be the people.

Hiking buddies

Great people that we met and got to know, like our new friends Takeshi and Kaoru. And all the people who were just so nice and patient with us. People offered to take our photo more in Japan then anywhere else in the world. And they got in the photos with us.

Making friends

From cute young women in Osaka, to business men in Masomoto out for dinner and beer after work. They were all super nice, even though we could only exchange about five words. These guys came to our rescue to make sure we got draft beer, and not bottled beer.

Yakitori buddies

Here comes the predictable part - wait for it - some of the most fun we had was while riding bikes.

Nicest dog owner ever

Kyoto River path

The casual atitude towards cycling was so refreshing. We've really run the gamut on this trip, from countries where cycling is dangerous and not fun, with mandatory helmet laws and the sense that it is just not safe, to Japan, where kids in child bike seats rarely even wear helmets.

Home from school

And families ride home together after dark.

Heading home at night

Bike rental shops don't offer helmets to you when you rent a bike, but they do offer you sun hats.

Wasabi farm bike ride

Makes sense to me. I'm much more worried about skin cancer then hitting my head after falling off my bike. I was pretty envious of the casual bike culture. How fun would it have been as a school kid to get to and from school with your friends like this?

Going home from school.

Rush hour