A Bike Tour of Kyoto

ah, kyoto. whenever i'm here, i get bogged down with family and obligations and i never really get a chance to see much of it. as it happens, dad and i had a free day with nothing to do so we borrowed a couple bikes and rode them all over the city. it was fun!



first stop, the family plots where we paid out respects:


nest stop, a cluster of temples. dad does his best ninja-with-a-sword pose:






rode down this funny little street where a bunch of the shops had "ghosts" in front of them:






and found out that it was called ghost or monster street:


dad communes with the toast monster as he snacks on a confection:


a bike ride through the imperial grounds. you can actually see one of the daimonji characters on the mountain in the back:


dad finds a good souvenir:


old school alley ways with lots of ins and outs so people can escape and hide from outsiders:



yum! rice crackers:


strange shops with naked manniquins in front:


this gate way actaully proturdes INTO the buiildings:


pickled veggies:


dad's friends who own a sweets and rick cracker shop:




this was a fantastic river side park:



thanks for the bike tour dad!

cake fever

i love cake! and these were so cute and scrumptuous. just ridiculously over priced. Hence, just the photos. a couple of snaps from the new tokyo station cupcake shop in Gransta:




plus a couple more from the station in Kyoto:

Dad's adventures in Tokyo

dad and i went on several little "adventures" together.


dad checks out the food at the depachika:


he told this poor peanut lady that her peanuts were stale. didn't stop him from having a few samples though:


ridiculously overpriced oyster bar in shinagawa:


dad was amused with the fries and the free bread we had to get in order to fill up our bellies (getting full on oysters would have put us in the poor house!)


i too enjoyed the fries. it was a fancy joint. we looked soooooo out of place!


bye dad! have a good bus ride to kyoto!

Welcome to Tokyo Hiroshi!

Dad came for a visit to tokyo last month. we went to Uojin, my uncle's favorite restaurant in Ike. great food and good bevys. the boys got drunk VERY quickly:


dad's happy he got some for real sashimi:


my uncle's happy he got a new drinking partner:


here's dad drunk off his ass and laid out for the evening.



that's some good quality family time!

adventures in cornbread

we scored some fresh corn from a weekend farmer friend of my uncle's. since there is no way we can eat 7 ears of corn by ourselves while it's fresh, i decided to make corn soup. it was actually very nice (i was proud of myself) but it was a major pain in the ass to make. there was lots of corn and veggie remains left over from when i used a fine sieve to squeeze out the soup. what to do? i so made cornbread.

this is what was left from the soup:


additional ingredients:


yum! i love bacon:


nice and crisp!


mix it all up and throw it in a baking dish:


bake for a really long time (yes, that's my new oven/microwave! but no, it doesn't work as well as a real oven. plus its tiny):


and the finished product!


it wasn't great cornbread. the flavor was good but the texture was heavy. it turned out really dense but i suspect it is because i used the soup remains which were very wet. perhaps it will be better next time . . .