Italia, here we come! Trip preview

Well, it's about that time - time to travel the world again!  This trip's destination is Italy.  I'm leaving later today.  There's a nice-sized crew of us going - seven people, converging from Chicago, Detroit, and DC! Although I already went there in 2006, you can usually count on Italy for great culture, food, and weather.

This trip will be another wild-and-crazy trek through Europe (see my Oktoberfest Euro-Trek articles).  Last time in Italy, I did a tour.  This time, we will be our own tour guides.  We will go roughly from south to north, visiting the following places:

• Rome (3 days): Our entry point.  Once the center of the world.  All roads lead to Rome!
• Amalfi Coast (1 day): Beautiful coastal resort area just south of Naples
• Florence/Tuscany region (4 days): Home of the Italian Renaissance, with lovely hill towns and wine throughout the area
• Venice (1 day): One of the most romantic places in the world, with its distinct canals
• Milan (1 day): Big city.  Flying back to the State from there. 

Determining what time of year to visit Italy is always tough.  Americans usually like to travel in the summer.  But I think Italy is a little less crowded and not as hot in the spring or fall.  We figured that going in April, just after Easter (not during Easter!), would be good.  But there's a wrinkle - they decided to throw a Beatification ceremony for the last Pope John Paul II while we're visiting the Vatican.  Beatification is step 3 of 4 in becoming canonized as a Saint in the Catholic Church.  Pope John Paul's ceremony will be the fastest ever done - sometimes it takes a couple hundred years before you get your props.  I appreciate the Vatican's desire to include us, but really, I would much prefer to see the empty seats in front of St. Peter's Basilica (see photo above) than a horde of 1 million+ believers in the Square.  Never fear though - I watched the movie Angels and Demons last weekend, to prepare for the experience.

Europe is full of royalty events this upcoming weekend.  In the UK, we have the Royal Wedding.  In the Vatican, we have Pope John Paul II's Beatification.  I honestly don't care for either event, especially since I was not allowed to vote for either position.  But hey, when in Rome....

You may be wondering why I lumped the Pope in with monarchy.  Not only is he the leader of the Catholic Church, he is also the king of a country.  Yeah, the Vatican is a tiny country today.  But it was once a larger nation called the Papal States, with its own military and everything.

When you think of Italy, it's hard not to think of all the history in that area.  U.S. history pales in comparison.  But what is ironic is that Italy the nation is actually 100 years younger than the United States.  What??  Yes indeed.  Since the downfall of Rome (about 1500 years ago), the Italy region became a bunch of different feuding city-states (Florence, Siena, Rome, Venice, etc.).  Later they consolidated into nations: Tuscany, Genoa, Venice, Papal States (see map above).  Italy didn't become a single nation until 1896.  The Vittorio Emanuele II Monument in Rome (photo above) symbolizes this reunification.  You can definitely see the regional differences as you travel around Italy.

But enough of history and politics.  We're on vacation, and it's time to relax.  Our first spot for peace and relaxation will be a day trip to the Amalfi Coast.  It's a little south of Naples, which is south of Rome.  I haven't been the Amalfi Coast yet, but it's supposed to be beautiful coastal region with pretty towns, cliffs, and coastline.  The photo above is from Lerici, near Cinque Terre, which is a completely different region in Italy, but should be somewhat similar in scenery.  The bus and ferry rides to the coast are supposed to be amazing.  We'll also stroll through some of the towns there: Amalfi, Positano (seen in the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley), and Sorrento (you know the song "Return to Sorrento"?).

Our next stop, Tuscany, is perhaps one of the most beautiful and interesting regions to live in the world.  It's full of rolling hills, vineyards, medieval towns, and sun.  Not to mention, the region is anchored by Florence, the capital of Italian Renaissance art and culture.  We are renting a cute apartment in Florence plus a rental car, which will allow us to meander about.

We plan to visit a few places in Tuscany.  Siena is a must - an medieval town with a beautiful city square (above).  We'll also visit Lucca, which I haven't been to.  We'll probably stop by Pisa for a quick "Kodak Moment" too. 

Did I mention food and wine??  Yes!!!  We'll visit a winery in the Chianti region for some Tuscan goodness.  Oh yeah, last time I was there, I wasn't much of a foodie yet.  This time, look for some food photos! :)  I may have to dump all my clothes and just bring wine back in the suitcase...

I haven't been to Venice yet.  I'm very excited to see it.  But I've stayed at the Venetian in Las Vegas many times.  I can't imagine the real Venice to be much different, no? :)  Unfortunately, we will only have a day to spend in Venice, so our experience will be short.  I've watched the movie The Italian Job a few times though, so I think I know what to do...

Our final stop and return flight is in Milan.  Milan is a big city, Italy's business capital.  I don't think it's well-known for landmarks or anything.  But I hope to meet a supermodel there and marry her.  Maybe buy some clothes I can't afford.  The highlight will be catching a football match featuring Inter-Milan, the 5-year reigning Italian League champions.  I have never seen a football match in Italy before - should be super exciting!  Though I hope not to get trampled by hooligans...

Stay tuned on my blog and on Facebook for more photos and commentary! :)

All is good in the world again: I finally got an iPad 2!

 

When the iPad 2 was released in March, I wasn't that excited.  Yes, it's a newer, better product, but was it worth shelling out another $600?  No way.

But a few weeks later, everything changed.  My parents came down to visit.  I let my mom use my iPad to check a few things on the Internet.  I didn't think much of it, since she had used various laptops, netbooks, etc. before.  But with this device, she had fallen in love.  She immediately became an Angry Birds addict.  She was on the iPad all day during that visit.  After that, I decided to part ways with my iPad.  It became a retirement gift for my mom.

My good deed for my mom created a void in my life.  What to do?  No little tablet thingy to play with on the couch, in bed, at the coffee shop, etc.  Time to do some shopping.  I had looked at some of the other tablets on the market.  The Android-based Motorola Xoom looked like a strong candidate.  Gearheads could probably argue for hours on which tablet is better in terms of hardware/OS/features.  But iPad blows away the competition when it comes to apps.  I could care less about the specs; I just want to be able to do cool things with my tablet.  Hence, I decided to go with an iPad 2.

Getting an iPad 2 was a pain in the neck, however.  It's been over a month since they released it, but supply is still very low.  You usually have to get in line at an Apple store around 8am or earlier, to hope to get one.  No thanks, I'm not waking up for that.  And although they advertise it at Target, Walmart, and Best Buy, these stores hardly carry any.  You could order online, but it'll take you 3-5 weeks to get one.  Maybe I should have done that anyways.  But just last Wednesday, I called up the Apple store on Michigan Ave. in Chicago a little before noon, hoping to find out about a shipment the next morning.  Surprisingly enough, the dude on the line told me they had a few iPad 2's currently in stock.  I hopped on the bus and arrived there 15 minutes later.  No line, no hassle - and I suddenly had my hands on a 32GB black wifi iPad 2!  Praise the gods!

To celebrate this momentus achievement, here is my Flava Flav hip hop pose, with an iPad clock around my neck. This goes out to Dan S., who originally came up with the idea :)

If you are curious, here are some of my favorite apps:

• Angry Birds: Forget World of Warcraft or Call of Duty.  This simple little app would be my vote for the game of the Decade!
• TD Ameritrade's iStockManager: Powerful, fast, responsive app for stock trading.  It puts a lot of info at your fingertips for trading, and it's easy to use.
• Netflix: Netflix streaming movies + iPad app were a match made in heaven
• Air Video: Allows you to stream videos from another computer.  This gets you around the 16/32/64GB limit of your iPad.  I have many gigs of TV shows and movies on my main PC's hard drive.  I installed Air Video Server on that PC (works on Mac too).  Then I run Air Video on the iPad to stream movies over wireless from the PC.
• Dropbox: Sync files between your iPad and other machines.  Apple tries to force you to use iTunes for everything, even though it sucks at managing anything besides music.  Ideally, iOS should have its own file manager like Windows Explorer or Apple Finder.  But no.....
• Keynote: Great way to display Powerpoint presentations, even thru a video projector.  Now I take my iPad to present at customer meetings, rather than my laptop :)
• Piano Accordio: The main app that sold me on the iPad originally.  It may be the most playable music instrument app on the market today.
• Pro Keys: Piano/keyboard app.  There are lots of these, but this one is pretty solid.  I used this app the other day in my "New Wave Ensemble" class, in which we played some David Bowie, The Cars, and The Replacements.

Happy Lunar New Year! Welcome to the Year of the Cat - or is it the Rabbit? Life's mysteries revealed within...

Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! May you and your family be blessed with happiness, health, luck, success, and the chance to read my blog many times this year :)

I thought I'd spend a little time researching the glorious Inter-Web to learn more about this great tradition. Even as an Asian growing up with this stuff, there are things you just observe but don't really understand the meanings or origins of. To observe the holiday properly, I should really be taking the next two weeks off work. But nooo, I'm not taking any time off. So just an hour or two of research isn't so bad :)

Don't you mean Happy Chinese New Year?

Don't let Chinese oppressors fool you - there is more to Asia than China. Just because there are 1.3 billion of them and 100 of the rest of us doesn't mean that you should only listen to them! If you are a cultured Gringo, you may have asked yourself "hmm, to which of my Asian friends should I wish a happy new year?" Obviously Chinese ones, since it's often called Chinese New Year. The Vietnamese too, since I am blogging about it. The Vietnamese new year is called Têt. Even Koreans as well. Here's how to say Happy New Year in several languages:

• Vietnamese: Chúc mừng năm mới
• Chinese Mandarin: Gōng xǐ fā cái (恭禧發財)
• Chinese Cantonese: Gong hey fat choy (恭禧發財, written the same as Mandarin)
• Korean: Sae-hae-bok ma-ni pa-dŭ-se-yo!  (새해복 많이 받으세요)

What about the other Asian countries, like Japan? I wondered this myself.

• Apparently Japan used to follow the Chinese Zodiac and observe Lunar New Year. But the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800's put the Japanese on the Gregorian (western) calendar, and the new year on January 1.
  
• Southeast Asian countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand used to observe Chinese New Year, but heavy South Asian/Hindu influence and climate differences apparently moved the new year to the fifth lunar month - April.
  
• The Philippines is pretty much "Latin Asia" - Jan 1 new year and Catholic.
  
• In Malaysia, they celebrate Jan 1, Chinese New Year, and even Islamic New Year.
  

What the heck is a Lunar New Year anyways?

While the answer on the surface (duh, it's the new year of the lunar calendar) may be simple, it's really a little more complex... Let's step back a little. The sun and the moon have been used for telling time since the early days of civilization. The concept of the year is pretty obvious. It's very useful for figuring out seasons, weather, and planning agriculture. Each time the earth is at a certain spot in its orbit around the sun makes perfect sense for a new year.

The hard part about the year is that it's a really long time. Every day looks like the previous day, until you realize a big difference several months later, like when summer has turned into autumn and the leaves start to fall. Hence a more useful and shorter-term measure of time is the moon's position around the earth - the month.  The moon takes about 30 days to travel around the earth.  It's pretty easy to tell where in the month you are too - new moon, waxing crescent moon, full moon, waning gibbous moon, etc.  That's why every civilization has the concept of the month.

The Moon makes roughly twelve revolutions around the Earth in a year.  I bet this behavior of nature is why you see a base 12 system (aka duodecimal) used in many units of time: 12 months in a year, 12 hours of day and night.  Many Asian countries used the twelve lunar cycles as the main basis for determining the length of a year.

Problem is that it's not exactly twelve cycles - it's really 12 cycles + a few days.  So every once in a while, you have to add an extra "leap" month in there to make up for it.  Since this system adjusts months to fit the earth's position around the sun, it's technically called a lunisolar calendar.  Thought I'd insert that random trivia fact :)  The lunar new year usually occurs at the beginning of the second lunar cycle (new moon) after the winter solstice. 

Strange, eh?  Are these crazy Asians making life too complex?  Well there's another well-known holiday that is determined in a similar way.  Easter, as recognized by Western (non-Orthodox) Christian churches, occurs on the first Sunday following the full moon that occurs after the spring equinox.

The Chinese Zodiac

Lunar New Year is strongly associated with the Chinese zodiac.  The Chinese zodiac is like the western zodiac in some ways: there's a cycle, and there are twelve phases to the cycle.  The western zodiac, which came from the Greeks, is based on the Sun's position across the sky.  The twelve signs of the western zodiac are supposed to be the twelve constellations through which the sun passes (though the signs have been abstracted for astrological purposes, so don't believe any nonsense about the earth wobbling and a 13th sign). The constellations refer to characters or events in Greek mythology.

The Chinese zodiac, however, is not based on any constellations.  Asian philosophy/religion/astrology is very closely tied to nature.  The Chinese zodiac's twelve signs are based on everyday animals and the characteristics associated with them.  There's a good Wikipedia page that describes the characteristics in detail. Another difference is that the Chinese zodiac cycle is in years rather than months, so the entire year of 2010 is Tiger, and 2011 is Rabbit/Cat.  Here's some awesome artwork by DarkuAngel that shows the cycle:

There is more complexity to the Chinese zodiac as well. There's a macro cycle involving the 5 elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water).  Not all people of the same sign are the same.  A 1975 Cat/Rabbit is a Wood Cat/Rabbit, while a 1963 Cat/Rabbit is of Water.  This makes the astrological cycle 12 x 5 = 60 years. There are other considerations for which month and even which hour you were born. The end result is several thousand possible astrological personality traits. No wonder Asians actually pay astrologers for significant readings!

2011: Year of the Cat? Or Rabbit?

I have wrestled with this mystery since my birth.  Those of you born in 1975 like me, or 1951, 1963, 1987, 1999 may have experienced similar inner turmoil as children.  Now that it's 2011, you can all join me in the controversy.  In Vietnam, 2011 marks the fourth and luckiest year of the lunar cycle: the year of the Cat.  Everywhere else, it's the year of the Rabbit.  It may be true that cats and rabbits both have whiskers and pointy ears, are good jumpers, and breed a lot. But cats and rabbits are pretty different animals, really...  Regardless, let's talk about the lastrological traits of whatever-this-small-furry-mammal-is:

• Luckiest of the signs (followed by the rat). Talented and affectionate, yet shy. You are peace seeker.
  
• Gracious, good friend, kind, sensitive, soft-spoken, amiable, elegant, reserved, cautious, artistic, thorough, tender, self-assured, astute, compassionate, flexible. Can be moody, detached, superficial, self-indulgent, opportunistic, stubborn.
  
• The best life partners would include the Sheep or Pig but not Rooster.
  

Let's also add a description of a cat/rabbit's astrological trine, which is kind of a harmonious grouping of a few signs.  There are four groupings of three signs.

The fourth trine consists of the Rabbit, Sheep, and Pig. The quest for these three signs is the aesthetic and beautiful in life. Their calm nature gives them great leadership abilities. They are artistic, refined, intuitive, and well-mannered. These souls love the preliminaries in love, and are fine artists in their lovemaking. The Rabbit, Sheep and Pig have been bestowed with calmer natures than the other 9 signs. These three are compassionately aware, yet detached and resigned to their condition. They seek beauty and a sensitive lover. They are caring, unique, self-sacrificing, obliging, sensible, creative, empathic, tactful, and prudent. They can also be naive, pedantic, insecure, cunning, indecisive, and pessimistic.

I'm honestly a bit of a skeptic, but I gotta admit that many of these traits are true of myself (well, the good traits hehe).  Ladies, remember: I'm seeking beauty and a sensitive lover, and I could go for some artistic lovemaking!  Haha :)  Come to think of it, I even had a great relationship with a Pig before, and a not-so-great one with a Rooster.... But I digress....

Ok, now why do we have Cats in Vietnam and Rabbits everywhere else?  The Chinese zodiac dates back a very long time - beyond 2500 BCE.  This is almost 2000 years before the Greeks (who came up with the western zodiac).  There are many legends and stories.  Culture has evolved over time too.  Unfortunately, there really is no accurate record of what happened.

The zodiac origin story that I enjoy the most is of the Great Race.  Click this link for the story.  It's a wonderful read - it's a great myth tale, and it clearly depicts the personalities of the animals.  It's even great for telling your children - check out the book on Amazon :)

While some have argued that somehow "rabbit" got turned into "cat" due to some translation error into Vietnamese, I'm not so sure.  The legends all feature the cat prominently in the story, as one of the 13 (or 12) animals.  Either the cat got screwed out of the race, or somehow it finished the race.  How do you mess up the translation of part of the story (rabbit to cat) but maintain the cat's role in the story?  Highly unlikely, I say!  Furthermore, Vietnam was occupied by China for over 1000 years.  There had to have been a tremendous amount of culture swapping - too much for a simple translation problem to get in the way.

Bottom line: no one really knows what's up with the Cat in the Vietnamese zodiac.  I think the folks selling Trix cereal would rather see the lucky rabbit as the winner.  However, Al Stewart would probably make a lot more money with royalties if 2011 were truly the year of the Cat.  As for me, all I have to say is "meow."

Japan 2010 - Trip Overview

I just spent 11 marvelous days in Japan for vacation.  It's a beautiful country, with lots of history, culture, and innovation.  Japan and China are probably the two most influential nations in Asia.  I'm glad to have the fortune of visiting both places.

This trip was very memorable and rewarding.  Lots of things to write about (and I'm not done yet).  Here are some topics:

• Tokyo, modern metropolis
• Fashion in Japan
• Kyoto, the cultural capital of Japan
• Food in Japan, yum!
• Entertainment and Nightlife in Japan
• Japan side trips: Nikko, Nara, and Osaka

Note: the articles appear in reverse order when you view my blog site in full.

Three of us went on this trip.  Mo, my faithful traveling sidekick (ha), was finally able to go this time.  Last year, he and I tried to go to Japan, but some red tape with U.S. immigration prevented him from leaving.  Instead, he was stuck in Mexico for a few weeks.  We refer to this period as Mo's Exile.  Ingrid was also able to join us as well.  It was her first time traveling with us (poor girl, stuck with two dudes).  Nonetheless, good times were enjoyed by all! :)

Japan is an island nation.  Although several thousand islands make up Japan, almost all its landmass comes from four islands.  Most of the good stuff is on the biggest island in the middle, Honshu.  Our travels were solely within Honshu.

Japan is located just east of Korea and Russia.  Since it's east of all its neighbors, it is known as the Land of the Rising Sun.  I knew it was close to Korea, but I didn't realize how far north it goes.  The big northern island, Hokkaido, seems like just a small hop from Siberia.  Japan is pretty far away from China too.  Now I know why Japan is so much more similar to Korea in language and culture than it is to China.

We spent the entire trip in two main areas of Japan - Tokyo and Kyoto.  We flew into Tokyo Narita Airport (1hr train to Tokyo).  Tokyo is Japan's capital and is the largest city on the planet.  We spent six days there, including a day trip to nearby Nikko.  The remaining four days were spent in the Kyoto area, which is a 3hr bullet train ride from Tokyo.  Kyoto is Japan's center of traditional and religious culture, very different from Japan.  We also did a day trip to nearby Nara and Osaka while based in Kyoto.

You can get everywhere in Japan via train.  However, train tickets are expensive.  Our solution was to buy a Japan Rail Pass, which gives you unlimited train rides over a certain number of days.  Just one round trip between Tokyo and Kyoto almost makes up for the price of the rail pass.  In addition to that, we got "free" rides to Nikko, Nara, and Osaka, not to mention some local rides in Tokyo and Osaka.

In Tokyo, we stayed the the most excellent Conrad Tokyo Hotel.  Gotta love traveling with consultants with lots of hotel points and elite status.

In Kyoto, however, there weren't many western Hotel chains to choose from.  We ended up staying at a hostel! Talk about a change of scenery...

Related links:

• All articles on my Japan trip
• Slideshow of Japan trip highlights on Flickr
• My full blog

Food in Japan, yum!

Japan is a land rich in culture. One cultural aspect that the Japanese are particularly proud of is their food. You are probably familiar with many Japanese foods already: ramen, sushi, tempura, teppenyaki, Kobe beef… It was a delight to taste the foods of Japan firsthand. And of course, I had to devote an entire blog article on food :)

Japan is a dense country. People are everywhere. Likewise, food is everywhere - to serve the people. The major districts of Tokyo (Shinjuku, Shibuya, etc.) and Osaka are packed with restaurants. Train stations, hubs of foot traffic, feature a variety of restaurants and shops for people on-the-go.

For us tourists, there was no problem finding food. We tried hard to find the best places, as recommended by our handy dandy Lonely Planet books. They were all excellent picks. But after walking around all day, we often got tired and hungry, so we often stopped at whatever was nearby. Either way, the food was good.

Noodles

You can’t come to Asia without having a bowl of noodles. Japan is full of noodle shops. Ramen noodles are one of the most common styles of noodles, especially in Tokyo. Ramen is a wheat-based noodle, yellowish and wavy-looking. You can usually choose from several soup bases (miso, soy, etc.), as well as various toppings (pork, pork belly, etc.). Do you remember eating cheap instant pre-packaged ramen in college? I did – and lots of it! I probably consumed a lifetime’s worth of MSG from instant ramen. Ramen in Japan is much, much better. It’s fresh, it’s healthy (enough), and it’s tasty. I could probably have eaten Ramen every day in Japan without getting sick of it….

Udon noodles are another popular type of noodle dish. Udon is a super thick wheat noodle. The soup base is usually a much lighter, clearer soup. It often comes with something tempura-fried as an accessory, such as shrimp.  We noticed Udon to be much more common in Kyoto. There are several other types of noodles in Japan: soba (buckwheat), somen....  Here's an udon dish:

The way you eat noodles is a bit different in Japan.  First of all, you use chopsticks with your main hand, and the large soup spoon to catch noodles and soup in your other hand.  Most Asians do this with noodle soup.  In Japan, people usually place their heads close to the bowl and slurp the noodles.  Making a slurping sound ("ssssssp") is encouraged.  I'm not sure this woman (photo to right) enjoyed having Mo place his camera right next to her as she ate, but she was a good example.

We observed some differences in people's dining habits in Japan too.  Japanese big cities are very fast-paced, and Japanese business culture can be pretty crazy.  There are a lot of fast food counters, for people on-the-go.  With respect to restaurant food, the Japanese don't appear to do take-out.  Instead, there is a lot of fast dining in.  Many shops just have bar counters for solo diners to eat quickly.

Japan is so into fast and efficient dining that some places even have vending machines to take your orders.  You place your order and pay through the machine outside.  Then go in, sit at the counter, and give your order ticket to the shop owner.  This approach cuts down on the labor costs for extra waiters, as well as space requirements.  For us, it was a bit difficult to understand the vending machines.  They were mostly in Japanese!  But at least they had pictures next to the buttons.

Speaking of vending machines - you can buy beer or shochu from vending machines in Japan!  How sweet is that!!

Sushi

You can't talk about Japanese food without talking about sushi.  All I can say is that the sushi was great anywhere we went.  Most of the time, the sushi didn't cost an arm and a leg; it was reasonably priced.  While sushi is sushi anywhere, we did learn one thing from asking the locals: they don't do fancy rolls in Japan.  It's straight up sushi, nigiri, or sashimi.  All these fancy dynamite rolls, caterpillar rolls, godzilla rolls, etc. appear to have been concoctions made by Gaijin (non-Japanese).  At any rate, I think at least Ingrid was in heaven, since sushi is her favorite food, at least of the non-tortilla-based foods :)

We didn't want to eat just any sushi when we were in Japan.  We had to try the best.  So we decided to visit Tsukiji, the Tokyo Fish Market. It is the largest fish market in the world, and probably the world epicenter of sushi production. The first part of this adventure was checking out the tuna auctions super early in the morning.  A limited number of tourists are allowed to watch the auction each day.  In fact, the market was never intended to be a tourist attraction, and the workers don't really like all these clumsy, snap-happy tourists wandering about.  We got our butts up early, arriving at the fish market at around 4:30am. We got lost a few times, but finally got to the auction tour office.  We were the last ones allowed inside!

The auction was fascinating. While I've been to fish markets to buy fish, I've never seen the production side of it before.  The fish market is a huge complex (maybe a full square kilometer?) - full of warehouses and stalls.  Various utility vehicles like forklifts and scooters fly around at a frantic pace; it's actually rather dangerous if you aren't careful.  These fish come off boats or planes, then they're forklifted to warehouses like the one above.  Buyers poke and prod the fish, to determine which ones they like and how much they are worth.  Wholesale auctions take place for each fish.  Sushi-grade tuna goes for quite the premium.  The most expensive tuna species, bluefin tuna (which is actually the unfortunate victim of overfishing and is at the center of an international controversy), can sell for over $100,000 USD!

Once the auction tour was done, we were ready to try out some fish market sushi.  There are two super popular sushi joints at the market.  We went to one of them, Daiwa Sushi, which was recommended in our Lonely Planet book.  It was a bit strange to do this at 7am - even for Japanese - but hey, it's supposed to be the best!

Daiwa is a very intimate place.  There's a sushi counter and maybe 8 seats.  With so few seats, you have to wait a while to get in.  We waited maybe 30 minutes - even at 7am.  Many wait for an hour or two.  Once you are seated, you just place your order verbally to the sushi chef.  You can order individual nigiri items a-la-carte as I did, or you can get the chef's choice of X items.  He gives you your sushi as he makes it.

OMG.  It was sooooo fresh, soooo good!  The best was toro - fatty tuna belly.  It just melted in my mouth.  I could have had 10 of them, but at 800 yen a piece ($10), it would have been very expensive!  I was able to try many kinds (which were cheaper than the toro), such as: hamachi (yellowtail tuna), ebi (raw shrimp), aji (mackerel), tako (octopus), anago (freshwater eel).  I even overcame my ill will towards uni (sea urchin).  Many Americans don't like the "fishier" ones like aji or uni, but at the fish market, everything tasted like perfection.

Markets

You know you're in Asia when you are at a market.  You see great stuff everywhere: small alleys full of shoppers, shop stalls with eager vendors, and tasty food of all shapes and sizes.  We spent our remaining time at the Tokyo Fish Market going shopping at the various stalls.  We had more opportunities at the markets in Kyoto and Osaka.

Japan is an island nation, with little land for its 130 million person population (1/3 the U.S. population).  This lack of land is probably why seafood is such a big part of Japanese cuisine.  The Japanese have figured out ways to prepare and eat pretty much anything from the sea.  Whether it's fish, shellfish, sea vegetables, or just some crazy squirming thing in the sea, you can probably find it at a Japanese market.

Street Food

Maybe I watch too many Anthony Bourdain shows, but I love eating street food when I'm traveling.  There's nothing fancy or gourmet about it.  It's real stuff, served to real people.  No tablecloths or table manners.  Just pure food goodness.  Japan fares well in terms of street food.  Baked, deep fried, stir fried - it's all there.  Japan especially has a lot of fried seafood on a skewer. I really enjoyed these juicy baby octopi.  Ingrid and Mo got quite a kick out of the squid.  Another popular item is takoyaki, a dumpling of octopus and veggies mixed with batter (not pictured).

Tea

Japan loves its tea.  It appears to be served with every meal.  There are various types of tea, like oolong and green.  Teas are produced in different ways, giving you tea leaves or powders to put in your hot water.

There is a lot of history and tradition around tea in Japan.  Although tea first came from the Chinese, it became well incorporated into Japanese society over the centuries.  We attempted to learn more about it by attending a tea ceremony.  There's a ritual around the preparation and consumption of macha, a powdered green tea.  To net it out for you, there's a picture on your tea bowl.  Bring the bowl up with the picture facing you.  Breathe.  Contemplate.  Rotate the picture around to drink.  Key thing - don't drink from the picture side!  Rotate it back when you're done.

Bizarre Foods?

Any time Mo and I go somewhere, an excursion to eat something bizarre is not unheard of.  Many North Americans used to eating chicken or beef all the time would easily find it strange that the Japanese enjoy so much seafood.  The Japanese, however, will tell you that their cuisine isn't full of strange food like the Chinese (I actually had this exact conversation).  It's true - the Chinese are masters of strange stuff (have you seen our fried scorpion video?).  So our choice for a bizarre food was the spiny blowfish.  A fish, you might say?  What's the big deal?  It's not any fish.  It's poisonous! 

Needless to say, you shouldn't try spiny blowfish at any ole' place.  That's why we selected this restaurant in Osaka with a big blowfish sign on the front.  It must be good, no? :)  Well, Lonely Planet also recommended it.  You need a specially licensed blowfish chef that knows how to remove the poisonous parts BUT also keep enough bad stuff in there to give you a little zing in your mouth.

We went with a blowfish hot pot sort of dish.  There are some very expensive blowfish deals, which we skipped.  Heat up a stew, throw the fish in, and voila, you have some cooked blowfish in front of you.  Tasting it was actually underwhelming.  It just tasted like any other white fish.  And it was quite bony (hence the name).  But hey, we can now say we tried some official Japanese style blowfish and lived to tell the tale.


Conclusion

Japan is full of delectable delights for your palette.  I could probably have written pages and pages more about the food, but hopefully you get a good feel for the food.  For a culture that prides itself on dining, it's amazing that the Japanese are so skinny (even tall and skinny compared to other Asians).  Maybe it's the high seafood diet?  Smaller proportions?  Or maybe their lifestyle involving lots of walking and little couch time?  Or is it the genes?  Whatever it is, Japan has its cuisine figured out, and it was a pleasure to experience it firsthand.

Related articles:

• All articles on my Japan trip 
• Slideshow of Japan trip highlights on Flickr 
• All articles on food 
• My full blog