As mentioned a couple days ago, Tokyo experienced some January temperatures in the 60s (upper teens by local Celsius measures). To celebrate, I took another of the Day Walks Near Tokyo. Walk #9 is called Tama River.

Most of the content in the book about this walk is too dated to be useful. For starters, the book (copyright 1992) states the Komiya Station (小宮駅) has only one exit. Sometime in the past 18 years, a second exit was added to the station, and, of course, that happened to be the one I took which left me instantly lost for the first of a dozen or more times during the day.

Eventually, I found myself in the neighborhood pictured in today’s entry. Parts of this neighborhood didn’t exist in 1992 (although much of the above photo probably did), but this area is along the route of the suggested hike.

There is now a firefighter training center near the Tama River (多摩川), and a group of kids were on a field trip to watch the action.

Did I mention the weather was lovely? You can see part of the kotatsu (炬燵) in this home, but the residents wouldn’t need to use it on this warm day.

Posted on January 27th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: hiking, japan pictures, people. Comments: None

The Sea Hag was our favorite restaurant on Phuket. We went two nights in a row. After the first night I took the above photo of Ellie enjoying the warm evening.

I made friends with this guy. He set up our chairs on the beach. Later on he noticed I was reading a book in Japanese so after we chatted for a while I ended up teaching him some phrases in Japanese that he could use on Japanese tourists. He practiced them every time he approached me the rest of the day, but I don’t think they were sticking too well.

Posted on January 21st, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: beach, ellie, people, phuket. Comments: 1

Baruto is making things very interesting for the January Sumo tournament currently being held in Tokyo. While he isn’t my favorite wrestler, he is a distant third to Takamisakari (高見盛) and Masatsukasa (将司) in my book, he has beaten two of the best (including yokozuna Hukuko (白鵬)) so far and is tied for the best record. I hope he keeps it up and forces at least a playoff on the final day of the tournament because I have tickets.

Today’s picture of Baruto arriving at Ryogoku, by the way, is not from the current tournament. I took it last September, during the last Sumo tournament held in Tokyo.

Posted on January 17th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: people, sumo. Comments: 2

On our last morning in Bangkok I took the elevator to the top floor of the hotel in hopes of seeing the sunrise over the Bangkok skyline. Unfortunately, the windows were dirty and the Bangkok air was quite smoggy (for the first time–a morning wind took care of the smog on the other days).

The top floor of the hotel looked quite a bit different from the other floors. These must have been some sort of penthouse suites as you had to enter through a seperate set of glass doors to get to the special rooms. There were also sculptures and other decorations that the other floors didn’t have.

A guard also “prevented” entrance to this exclusive location. I put prevented in quotes because in actuality the guard was sound asleep, curled up in the fetal position on the floor (just out of range in the above photograph).

We split town and headed for the airport with a cab driver who refused to turn on his meter. He wanted more than we paid with the meter for the same ride we had on the way in. I told him I would pay what we paid with a meter on the way in. He didn’t complain and after dropping us off and getting paid he left us with a smile on his face.

The above photo is what happens in the Bangkok airport while dad is checking in.

As I mentioned before, the new, Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok is really nice–both inside and out. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded had they cut a few corners on the airport and spent the savings on fixing the sidewalks in downtown Bangkok.

Posted on January 11th, 2010 under Thailand. Tags: bangkok, ellie, people, ryan, sunrise. Comments: None