djchall mom's blog

Euro quarterfinal (Maastricht-style)

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:59:49 -0700

Yesterday was the quarterfinal of the European championship between the Netherlands and Russia. Maastricht was very decorated for the occasion, and there were crowds of people who came in to watch at the many pubs and cafes. Sadly, the Dutch lost in overtime. Here are some pix:

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Bryn!

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:36:38 -0700

Thursday night a friend and I went to a gala concert at Wigmore Hall (London) featuring Bryn Terfel - his voice is almost too big for the hall, but it was great fun. First half English songs, second half Schubert and some Celtic standards like Danny Boy and All through the Night (in Welsh, of course). I took one shaky photo:

Bryn_Wigmore_June08

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Sicily and Stockholm

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:43:44 -0700

no time to write anything now, but I did put up lots of photos here.

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Bergen

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:04:05 -0700

I took a long weekend in Bergen,was very lucky with the weather because apparently it rains 280 days a year there. The trip there was the long one via train, mountain train, and a fjord boat (lots more here):

Snow_Fjords_May08-31

Bergen was great, very historic city, having been a major Hanseatic center since 1360, and a lot preserved due to relative lack of importance later. I took many photos. I also visited Grieg's home, which is on a lovely promontory overlooking a fjord and has a concert hall with a grass roof!

GriegMuseum_May08.jp-2

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New Oslo Opera House

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:34:37 -0700

Fortuitously, the new Oslo Opera House, which is right on the fjord, opened a day before I arrived in Oslo! I went to see it today - there were lots of locals having a look too, even though there was no performance. I bought a ticket to the opening concert, which is being performed several times between now and mid-May, but is mostly sold out - I was lucky to get a return. Here is a photo, taken from the bridge that leads there from the railway station (more photos here):

IMG_2049

You can walk all over up to the roof, to get a view of the fjord and Oslo:

IMG_2062

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weekend in Kyoto

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:40:40 -0700

Chris and I went to Kyoto for the weekend, a great trip, Here are the photos (a lot, especially because the cherry trees were beginning to bloom):

Kyoto photos

We even saw some geishas in a back street:

Kyoto_Mar08 (15)

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2008 MLB Opener in Tokyo

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:11:31 -0700

Chris and I went to the Red Sox - Oakland As opener to the 2008 season at the Tokyo Dome last night! As I was sitting there, I realized that it was the 50th anniversary (!) of when I became a baseball fan in 1958, when the then NY Giants moved to San Francisco. So it was an appropriate way to celebrate the anniversary, watching my other two favorite teams. Here is the Dome:

IMG_1724

There are a lot of photos at picasa, although my lens was not long enough to get really close. We had great seats in the upper deck between home and first base. The game was excellent, the As led most of the way, then the Red Sox went head 4-2, then the As tied it up and the Red Sox won in the 10th 6-5, thanks to a baserunning error by Emil Brown in the bottom of the tenth. Dice-K took a while to warm up but then struck a few out, and Okajima looked pretty overpowering. As pitchers were good too, although Houston Street gave up the game-winning two-run homer.

We were surrounded by Red Sox fans (two girls behind us had flown out from Boston just for the game, plus a fair number of US military from nearby bases), but Chris and I tried to root for the As, along with another nearby woman.

Before the game they presented flowers to the managers (only in Japan!) and an opera singer sang the Japanese national anthem. The last photo is Okajima throwing a fastball.

Here we are with Chris' friends from Six Apart.

And one of the best features of Tokyo Dome, the beer girl:

IMG_1735

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Takao-san

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:35:28 -0700

My mainline train, the JR Chuo line, goes out west towards the mountains, and one of the stops is Takao, where you can change to the Keio line and go one stop to the terminus at Takaosanguchi, the gateway to a lovely National Park area with good day hikes up Mt Takao. I could not resist that and went off there on Sunday for the day - needless to say, it was very crowded (as all the guidebooks say) with Tokyoites taking a day out, especially since it was the first warmish weekend, but it was still nice and peaceful on some of the trails.

View

A lot of the walk is along a ridge after you climb up (there is a rack railway, Ouchy-style, but I skipped it). Although in principle, one can see both Fuji and Tokyo from there, it was a bit hazy, as you can see, so I had to be content with hills and trees (not bad!).

Temple

Almost at the top, there is an elaborate temple complex, Yakuo-In, with lovely carvings as at Nikko. Many shops selling small good luck papers to offer or tie on the shrine, snacks, incense, etc.

Also (of course) the requisite statues with tiny red berets and bibs:

On the way down, I walked a less traveled trail through a steep ravine with huge pine trees, that reminded me of the Bear Valley trail at Pt Reyes:

Pines

You can see more at my picasa site.

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Sanko In

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:05:51 -0800

This week a friend and I went to a Zen Buddhist Nunnery for lunch, although we did not see any nuns - in the middle of the week in winter they apparently do not do much business. It is called the Sanko In, and is in western Tokyo. They serve shojin cuisine, which is very refined vegetarian Buddhist cuisine, from which kaiseki is derived, although kaiseki has fish and sometimes meat. The restaurant was founded by the former abbess Soei Yoneda, who also published a cookbook in English that is now out of print, although Amazon carries used copies - there is more information on her at this website.

Here is one course (bad photo taken by my motorola phone, on loan). The rolls are seaweed wrapped around a kind of yam, the orange thing is what they call pumpkin (like accorn squash), and then there is a kind of tofu and some mushroom. Yummy!

Shojin_entree

Here is the dining room (we were all alone!):

SankoIn

Although it is hard to see, outside the window were some lovely large bamboos. The nunnery has some lovely old buildings, but it is in the middle of suburban housing, as suggested by the account on the website above.

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Birthday at Hakone

nobody@vox.com(djchallmom) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:50:02 -0800

Some friends took me to the Hakone region yesterday for my birthday - about two hours outside of Tokyo, where you can see Mt Fuji and there is a lot to do - hiking, onsens, museums, etc. It was a great trip, we had a drive to see the view, visited a Shinto shrine (where there was a wedding going on), had a delicious 6 course gourmet French meal with a view, went for a 3 hour hike up a mountain and visited a beautiful indoor-outdoor Onsen (hot spring bath) for a soak on the way home. Definitely what to do after hiking. Here are some pix, there are more at picasa:

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