I finally sanded my awful job of mudding and even painted the wall! I may actually get all my stuff moved into my bedroom soon. I have to think about what I’m going to do with an old stereo cabinet my dad had. It is one of those glass-fronted cabinets on casters from the 70’s and I’m not sure anyone would want it. Instead of giving it to Goodwill (sticking Goodwill with it), I’m thinking of cutting it up and throwing it out.

And yet I did so little this evening, besides watching close to a dozen TV shows to catch up to what I missed while I was in Japan. Maybe I’ll get my rooms straightened out, my closets fixed, and maybe even some blinds for my weird new window. We’ll see.

I forgot what I was going to say when I posted some more burger reviews on the Portland Burger Blog. In summary, Castanga Cafe was good but not very exciting, and Pause was spectacular. But Castagna Cafe was full of people my age, and Pause was full of kids. What can you do?

I’m really racking my brain to try to figure out what it was I was thinking about earlier, but I can’t remember and I really should get some sleep. Ah, there it is! I was just thinking about how my performance at the gym is affected by mental state and I found that just knowing that I didn’t have to run around the block made it easier to deadlift 2 32kg kettlebells without stopping, which I was unable to do earlier, and row 250m 5 seconds faster than earlier round. I guess this just means I need to convince myself I can go harder again. I think I’d rather take a nap.

I successfully smashed my finger at the gym today. I wrapped it up with athletic tape and kept going, but it hurt and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I figured I could find a convenience care facility attached to a local ER and at least get it looked at. Best outcome would be if if they just told me I was a big wimp and sent me home. Much worse would have been if I had looked at it myself and it was bad enough that it made me queasy or pass out. I really wasn’t up to poking and prodding my own injury. That’s why I have a job and insurance, right?

I went to Good Samaritan, my neighborhood ER, but they just gave me attitude about how busy they were. The woman at the front counter told me she’d call Emanuel (where I used to volunteer 17 years ago) to see how busy they were, but instead she just asked how late the “fast track” was open. She told me there was an hour-and-a-half wait at Good Samaritan but Good Samaritan was the fastest ER in the area. She wanted me to just go to Emanuel or call them but my fingers were all taped up and I didn’t want to try dialing my cell phone. Off I went.

Anyway, the “fast track” at Emanuel was pretty fast, and I was out of there in an hour. They poked at my fingers (which still hurt), took some X-rays, called me a wimp (not really), and sent me on my way with this weird sock-like thing on my pinky. I won’t describe the tip of my pinky fully, but it’s pretty mashed. I guess they want me to put Neosporin on it and come back if it gets worse.

That’s not really the kind of excitement I was looking for, but just the kind I get. I hope I didn’t get H1N1 in the waiting area.

So now I’m home and am about to use my new Sonicare toothbrush that Amazon delivered, and of course the heads I have already don’t fit the new handle. Sheesh.

The wind is really blowing right now and I bet the storm they’ve been promising is on its way. Earlier it felt like it was in the 60’s and you could tell something was coming. So far there have just been a few gusts and no downpour. It’ll probably come in the middle of the night when my jet lag is keeping me from sleeping well (like last night). But there’s always the chance that the workout at the gym is going to keep me in a fairly immobile. Being away for two weeks coupled with my cold made things especially enjoyable tonight. We’ll see.

I have to figure out what to do with the man purse I got in Japan. When I’m there I usually carry around 2 cell phones, a digital camera, my passport, and my rail pass. One cell phone is a rental with a Japanese number so my friends can call me without making an international call, and the other is my iPhone for getting demanding text messages from my sister. In the past this meant stuffing crap in my jacket and carrying my jacket around even when it wasn’t cold out. Now I have a nice man purse that even fits my Kindle as well as the rest of my crap. It also smells nice.

Not real sure if I’ll have much use for it here, though.

Well, time to see if I can get some more sleep.

I still have my cough and I figured that taking it easy would be the best, so I didn’t do all that much today. Mudding is an annoyingly boring task that requires a lot of waiting for the sheet rock compound to dry, recycling a pile of old magazines just takes opening up the proper bin in Portland, looking for the closet rod just took rummaging around in the attic space, and dinner was whatever was in the freezer. All so I can get better and go to work tomorrow. Hooray.

I seem to have come down with Dr. Kawasaki’s cold. I figured I would, since Mrs. Kawasaki had it as well and we were in a car with her for days. I started coughing on Wednesday and I sort of thought it was because I was hanging out with my buddy who smokes, but that was sheer optimism on my part. So far my biggest symptom is my cough but things are starting to ache. My sister is sick too, but she’s completely down and sleeping all day long, so I guess I have it a lot better.

I got up at 7:30AM today, but I just decided to go back to bed around 9:30. I didn’t get up until just before 1PM, but I did get a bunch of things crossed off my to-do list. Online bill paying, trips to the hardware store to fix some doors and closets, and even getting someone to help me move some furniture. The last thing on the to-do list for today is to go to bed by 10PM, but I’ve blown that already. I’m jet lagged and I’m still only getting 6 1/2 hours of sleep a night. Thursday I got up at the equivalent of 2PM Wednesday afternoon, and I still went out to dinner with friends. Breakfast #2 on Thursday was fried chicken and waffles at the Blue Pig!

Friday I went out to Ringside with Il because he wanted me to meet his new girlfriend and stayed up late.

I really should try to get some sleep. Otherwise I miss things and weird things happen. Who put my picture on the women’s underwear bin?

I suppose that’s as close as I get to women’s underwear anyway.

I’ve been up since 2PM on Wednesday (looking at local time) and it’s 11:30PM now. I better get to sleep soon. I started out the day in Tokyo, did some shopping, headed over and now here I am. Breakfast at Tully’s in Tokyo, lunch from an airport convenience store, dinner on the plane, breakfast on the plane, breakfast at Blue Cow, and dinner at Castanga Cafe.

I better hit the hay before I keel over.

I got up this morning in time to cram a bunch of stuff into my sister’s little orange suitcase. She bought it because it’s quite cute, and I’m sure she was fearful when she lent it to my mother. My guess is that she was especially afraid that I would end up with it somehow, alone and in need of a bathroom. I’d have to roll her cute suitcase into a nasty, smelly train station men’s room, where it would be soiled for all of eternity. I guess I won’t tell her anything.

Anyway, I had breakfast with my mom and my aunt who were being silly as always, and we parted ways at Shin-Osaka station. They went off to the west, and I headed east to Tokyo. My aunt bought me a traditional bento to eat on the train, which I picked out. It turned out to be full of mushrooms, which I don’t particularly like. I’ll eat them, but I figure they’re wasted on a guy with tastes like mine.

In fact I didn’t like much of it, but I ate the whole thing. I got to Tokyo and it was pouring, and I needed to use the bathroom but that’s probably enough of that story. I made it to my hotel, which took longer than I thought, and was soaked with sweat. I knew I had to get to Akihabara so I dumped my crap and headed out. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring a map so I had to rely on memory to get there, which wasn’t so bad because it’s not had to find from Shinjuku. (Express Chuo-line to Ochanomizu, then the Sobu line one stop.) While I did forget to buy more Mac crap for myself, I did get the last item on my sister’s list: a plastic iPhone case with a hole for a Japanese strap. I even got her a dangly thing, I think, at the Glico store. Or at the Hankyu Tigers store. I can’t remember.

I rushed back to the hotel make sure my online reservations were done, and I got a call from Hiron who wanted to meet me in Akihabara. He’s an illustrator and friend of Chico’s who I end up talking for hours to about American TV shows. Chico went to high school with my sister. Anyway, I did end up meeting up with Hiron and Chico and they took me to an area of Shinjuku where they were a little afraid to go, to an Okinawan restaurant.

We had some interesting things to eat, including “sea grapes.”

On the way back I convinced them to go to Mos Burger for dessert, where Hiron had a kinpira rice burger (braised burdock root on a bun made of grilled rice formed into a round patty) and I had a Mos Burger because I love the things and I hadn’t had a chance to eat one on the trip.

So that’s about it for my last full day here. Tomorrow I head home!

I’m not sure how the morning got away from us this morning. We ended up just walking around for the heck of it. We were just waiting for noon, when my mom, my aunt, my uncle (their older brother), and their cousin from Tokyo were all going to get together for the first time in 20 years. I was there holding a seat down at the same restaurant we went to yesterday and I FORGOT TO TAKE ANY PICTURES. Sheesh. I had to listen to a lot more stories about the old days that I have no idea about.

I also helped my uncle get all the stuff we brought him back to his house. More family chit-chat, but I did see my cousin’s first grandchild who is about 13 months old now. What a cutie. Here’s a picture of great grandpa (my uncle), grandma (his daughter-in-law) and So-chan.

After I got home, it was off to see an old friend from my Mitsubishi days and we ate fried things on sticks and talked nonsense for a few hours.

It’s a nice way to pass the day, but I still have to get one last item on my sister’s wishlist. Sheesh. It’s off to Tokyo tomorrow and then back to the states the day after that. Two days of travel!

I lived in Osaka after I graduated from MIT for about five years and I liked it here. At the time I thought it was time to move back home, and it probably was, but I miss it too. I do remember always being broke when I lived here but somehow I managed to save about $12,000US which I immediately blew on trying to get into medical school. That was a bit of a mistake. I should have had more fun while I was here and I shouldn’t have wasted my timeAnyway, we’re staying at the “Hearton Hotel” which is a reputable hotel with a questionable name. This is not to be confused with the “Heart-In” which is a chain of convenience stores that are usually located in JR train stations.

One thing I’m going to miss when I get back is all the salad for breakfast. We pre-bought a bunch of breakfast tickets where I get all-I-can-eat breakfast buffet for ¥1000. Too bad I haven’t been that hungry in the morning for the past few days.

My aunt (my mom’s older sister) is out from Yamaguchi Prefecture and we were also joined by Mrs. Takanaka, my sort-of-aunt, (my aunt’s late husband’s younger sister) and we had a traditional Japanese lunch at the 16th floor of the Daimaru department store. Here’s the plastic display outside of the restaurant.

And here’s my lunch.

And here’s my mom’s lunch.

We went to Yodobashi Camera again to do some shopping for my mom and everyone else (not for my sister this time) and I thought I’d get a picture of the sign in one of the elevators:

Oh, and before I forget, my mom and I decided to kill some time by having a cup of coffee. A tiny cup of coffee. A tiny $7 cup of coffee.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting to Maeda Cycle, where I spent a few hours talking with Kozou Maeda who runs the shop. It doesn’t sound like the financial situation in Japan is all that much better than it is in the states. I got back and had dinner with my mom and my aunt and there’s my 12th day here.

One of the reasons we were at the Kawasaki’s so long was to see their daughter Sho, but Sho’s daughter Kei caught the H1N1 influenza and Dr. Kawasaki forbade the rest of their family from coming just in case they were still in the contagious incubation period. Dr. Kawasaki is a bit paranoid and makes everyone coming to his house use an alcohol hand cleaner and gargle with some awful tasting stuff. It didn’t seem to help him much, because he has a cold now that he can’t seem to shake.

Sho and her daughter Yuu were going to stay overnight, but since that was nixed by Dr. Kawasaki Sho, her husband, and her daughter Yuu got in their car for a quick visit at the mall. Dr. Kawasaki was even against this idea but no one was showing any signs of the ‘flu and we all figured that just being out in public exposed us to all sorts of people who have come in contact with the ‘flu. They made a 3+ hour drive down to see us and we ate at the incredible sushi-on-a-track restaurant in the mall. On the plus side of all this nonsense, I hadn’t seen Sho’s husband since he came to visit us in Oregon sixteen years ago and I got to see him again because of this crazy car trip.

Here’s a picture of all of us with the facemasks that Dr. Kawasaki insisted we wear.

We got back to the Kawasaki’s house and I crammed all my crap into my suitcase, which required kneeling on the bag. My sister requested one of two Uniqlo puffy jackets, and they got her both of them and boy do those take up a lot of space. We rushed off to catch an earlier train than we were initially planning to take and had no troubles getting to Osaka a little early.

We wandered around looking for dinner and went to the restaurant floor of Yodobashi Camera where there were long lines for a lot of the restaurants, including the omuraisu restaurant we were looking for. Omuraisu is fried rice wrapped in egg like an omelette, and both my mom and I hadn’t had one in years. Plus this was the first chance we had in ten days to eat a meal that didn’t include a pile of sashimi. My mom had an “SS” (super small 2-egg) omuraisu with mentaiko. I had an “S” (small 3-egg) omuraisu with a pork cutlet on top and hayashi rice sauce. Hayashi rice, or hashed beef, is an interesting flavor I haven’t tasted since I was working in Japan that is kind of like burned or carmelized ketchup. Anyway, it was pretty good.

After dinner we bought the usual silly t-shirts from my favorite Japanese t-shirt shop and I got a few for myself and a couple for my sister.

I just realized I haven’t gotten anything for my brother-in-law. I wonder what he wants.

It was another beautiful fall day here and maybe even a bit too warm. Most everyone is wearing long sleeves and fall clothing even though it was in the 20’s today. I’d say it was probably in the low 70’s if we’re talking about degrees Fahrenheit and the weather report said it was 75°F. It was another rest day though we did go shopping a couple of times. The mall near the Kawasaki’s house has most everything I would want to buy, though that’s not going to stop me from going shopping for other weird crap in Osaka and Tokyo. I have to make my pilgrimage to Akihabara after all, to the gadget stores under the train tracks.

I’m not sure of how much I really weigh because I’m usually using rickety old bathroom scales, but I do know that the expensive-looking scale at the hot spring that I went to on my third day here said I weighed 75kg in the morning (just over 165lbs). The bathroom scale at the Kawasaki’s says I weigh 76kg or so but the bathroom scale at home said I weighed 163lbs the last time I checked. That was when I was going out for cheeseburgers with Sean quite regularly, so I’m not sure what it all means other than that it’s increasing my mistrust of bathroom scales.

Of course, I have been sitting around a whole lot and spending most of my non-sitting time eating. Plus I’ve been drinking more than I usually do.

The only disaster of the day is only one in my mind. I’m expecting that my trustworthy contractor left the windows open since before the recent rain/windstorm and my even more trustworthy sister hasn’t gone to check on the house yet. When I left on a Wednesday, she said she’d check on the house on Sunday. I knew that didn’t mean four days in the future, but whatever Sunday was just before my return home. Apparently the contractors left the outside light on for some reason as well and I’m not sure what else they’ve done. I’m hoping they refinished the stairs, because that’s what they were supposed to do while I’m gone. I’m not going to worry about it now, because there isn’t anything I can do about it until I get back anyway. If it’s really bad I can just sell the Uniqlo jackets I’m bringing back for her on ebay or something. That’ll pay for some light bulbs, anyway.