When girls wear t-shirts with messages or interesting designs on them, and I read those messages or appreciate those designs, do they think I'm checking out their rack?

Posted by at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I headed back to the autocross course again for the first time in years. Even though I planned the event at the request of my coworkers, only Derrick made it to the track this time. That's OK though. It was still fun. I'll see if I can lure a few more down next month.

Since it was the first autox for most of the people involved, we went to the norcal UFO autox in Marina, CA. They put on an extremely laid back and very fun event. If you've always wanted to try auto racing but weren't sure how to get started, I highly recommend this club's monthly events. Everyone there is extremely friendly and easy going. They even have free loaner helmets!

Anyway, it was also Winnie's first autocross so we drove down in her Corolla. Surprisingly Derrick also brought a Corolla. To boot, we arrived late so we drove out of class. We drove with the ESP / OSP class. This means that we probably has the slowest cars there and we were racing in a class with some of the fastest cars there!

Our lap times were pretty bad. My best was a 78, Derrick scored a 72, and Winnie managed to squeak out an 87 second lap.

Even with terrible times (which may be topped next month by the promised showing of Wendy in her Prius) it was still a blast. I missed racing more than I thought. With my new metal and carbon fiber fabrication skills courtesy of the tech shop, my improved financial security, and a much faster car than before perhaps this is the beginning of more than just a return to Marina. Who is up for a cheap track day at Thunderhill?

Posted by at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This just past weekend we took a small excursion south via high speed rail. We headed out of Tokyo on Friday to visit Winnie's cousin Amy who teaches English on a small island called Oshima. On the way back up we visited Hiroshima for a few hours.

Oshima is a sleepy farming and fishing town. It's populated mostly by retirees looking for a more laid back place to call home with a nice island view. Transportation is also all by car. In other words, it's about as different as you can possibly find from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. It made a great break. To save time writing, here's another bullet list of some highlights:

• We finally played pachinko. This was also the first time that Amy played! We lost all of the money we intended to play with after only a few minutes. It's only marginally more entertaining than slot machines in Vegas.


• Amy drove us around touring her island. The views were great.


• We ate at a local tourist trap called the mountain bandit restaurant. They had good chicken on a stick.


• Went shopping at a nearby city and bought all sorts of stuff from the Mr. Max (a big box store). We also inspected the pets they had available: from a wild chipmunk that appeared to be going crazy to $150 dung beetles that only live a few months.


• I found some Fugu, a local specialty, at the supermarket and ate it. I did not die.


• Very yummy sushi converyer belt for dinner on Saturday.


• Amy took us to her favorite Jamacan Rastaraunt that serves food from a truck and procides dining in a bamboo shack on top of a cliff.

Amy joined us for the short detour to Hiroshima on the way back to Tokyo. Here's another bulleted list.

• We saw peace park and the atomic bomb dome. We took many photos, including one taken by a Japanese tourist with all three of us. He asked us to smile for the photo, but smiling with the dome in the background somehow seemed inappropriate.


• We shopped more! I'm still unable to find any engrish tee shirts, but I found some other interesting ones.


• We ate another local specalty: okonomiyaki

That's all! Time for another day of fun before it rains.

Posted by at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going into the trip rain was predicted almost every day. Luckily the previous four days were completely rain free. It had to arrive some time, though. Today brought moderately heavy rain for most of the day with a mist filling in the gaps between showers.

What do you do when rain strikes down on you? Head to modern climate controlled enclosures: shopping malls. After purchasing our train tickets for our excursion to the south, we hit up another shopping district: Shibuya. We bounced around a couple of malls and sat for a few minutes at a Starbucks perched above the pavement watching the ballet of umbrella toting pedestrians in the large five way intersection below. After scrambling through that mess a few times I finally understand why transparent umbrellas are so popular here. Visibility is important in such crowds!

After our coffee we hit up one last shopping mall called Shibuya 109. This was apparently the popular mall with the youth. Here Winnie made her first real purchase. She bought a pair of shoes. I mostly people watched and tried not to laugh as the school girls dished out money at the cell phone beauty parlor.

Burnt out on fashion malls we took a quick breather to dry out at home base and headed off again to the nearby electronics district of Akiabara. Exploring another part of the district turned up store after store crammed with figurines and dolls of anime characters. We even found a half dozen maid cafes and three stores devoted to (expensive) manufactured cosplay costumes. During this exploration we also made a breakthrough: we successfully found not one, but two businesses based on their street addresses.

As the night cooled down we grabbed a couple of rice bun hamburgers at Mos Burger and headed again to the hotel. We had planned to spend a few minutes playing pachinko, but Winnie passed out again aborting such plans.

With this day over, our biggest chunk of time in Tokyo has passed. We will be heading out of town for the weekend to visit Winnie's cousin Amy and following that up with a couple day trips to nearby cities. A couple more days bumming around Tokyo and that'll be it!

Anyway, time for me to crash.

Posted by at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we woke up early again. This made it easy to get our money's worth from our 1000円 all-you-can-ride subway passes.

After a quick breakfast of breakfast burgers at a burger joint Lotteria in the subway station, we started the day with our second attempt at the East Shinjuku walking tour. It was fun to wander around during rush hour, but sadly nothing was open other than a couple hollow buildings. Nothing seems to open until about 10:00am. We may have to return to check out the high tech toilet showroom.

After we finished with Shinjuku, we headed on over to Harajuku for another walking tour. It wasn't Sunday so there were no eccentric teens to gape at, but we did get a taste of the culture. It's an odd dichotomy kind of like Sausalito except with more interesting architecture. There was a mix of upper class huge spenders shopping at pretentious stores (most of them US and EU brands) combined with the poorer youth that rebel through atypical fashion. It kind of makes sense too since most Tokyoites seem to spend just about their entire lives in a uniform of some kind: from the navy uniforms of elementary and high school to their dark business suits of adulthood.

With this tour completed, we grabbed some baked goods and headed off to the peaceful nearby park of the Meiji Jingu Shrine. We found a snack counter and supplemented our baked goods with some takoyaki. Once full, we explored the shrine for a few minutes before heading back to the train station for our dinner reservations at Ninja Akasaka.

Ninja Akasaka was quite campy, but very fun. I recommend it to anyone who visits. I'd explain more, but that'd ruin the fun!

Once again full of food we set off for one last sight: the Tokyo Tower. We didn't go to the observation deck, but just snapped some photos from the ground and people watched a bit in the mini-mall underneath. The highlight of this people watching was a school field trip. It was already almost 8:00pm and they were all there! Do they ever get to go home? Also, it appeared that they only visited the tower to purchase things from the gift shop as they all quickly left most of them with shopping bags in hand.

Winnie has passed out. I guess I'll pick it up again tomorrow with an early visit to the imperial gardens.

Posted by at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)