I spent the morning hanging out and chatting with Andee, my complete cyber twin, to a spooky degree! I hope your test went well, or at least OK, and that Bentley and Bailey have called a cease fire in your house!! :)

is having to go a little ways out of the way to find a light to cross at for the big intersection half way to Feeling optimistic about my bike riding skills after yesterday, I decided to take Hitomi's bike down to Shibuya instead of walking - it was another absolutely gorgeous day, the weather here has been fantastic so far! I managed to make it down there with nary a close call, and decided to park just on this side of Shibuya so I wouldn't have to find bike parking right in the main part. I was careful to park with other bikes so as to avoid a parking ticket (not something I would have EVER expected to have to contend with for a bike!) The only issue with getting down to Shibuya is having to go a little ways out of the way to get to a light to cross the huge intersection half way to Shibuya, I'm not suicidal enough to ride with the traffic across that street, especially with all the construction! However, with the bike, its no trouble to go around, only about .5km extra, if that...I love how we can ride on the sidewalks here - people even tend to get out of your way! It's also great how everyone just kind of tools around on their bikes - it's funny though, some of those little old ladies can MOVE! I got overtaken several times, but I was out to enjoy the day, so I didn't take it too personally, or engage in any road racing :)

I was on another 'Crash' editing trip, so I had my laptop and everything with me, and was planning to go that Starbucks with the power that I'd found last time, but the line was out the door when I got there, so I bailed and went across the street to the New Yorkers Cafe, which was great, and had power, so there you go! I had to write an extra scene today which was hard - it's been a long time since I actually had to write much, so I had to try and think about how to get back into Rian's head, but I think it went OK and answered a couple of questions about how Rian and Bailey actually end up being friends. It was stressful to work on today though, because so much of it is about Oma, and I started remembering us before, which I've managed to successfully avoid for so long, and that was hard! But I think it was good to start remembering that stuff, though maybe not in a coffee shop!

Anyway, I'm thrilled because I'm finally making fairly steady progress on this thing, and also finding all of the cafes with power in the surrounding vicinity, so that's all good :)

A quick stop in at Tokyu Hands, and also at a very cool stationery store, picnic on picnic (I love how random shop names can be here!) to pick up a pretty metallic blue meishi holder...

Then, I picked my bike back up and went to Yoyogi Koen for a bit, just to enjoy the lovely day... I stopped for awhile and read on a bench, and just generally enjoyed being happy, and thinking about what a positive contrast this experience, that I'm having right now, is to the one I just finished last year. (and how sappy can one paragraph get? Good god!)

(reading spot and my trusty chariot)
(those two blobs on the left near the edge of the roof are people!)
(that same building - the National Stadium built for the 1964 Olympics, and modeled after a Samurai's helmet, bathed in some nice late afternoon light)
(leaves just starting to turn)

After a little while, I decided to keep biking around before it got dark (which is early here, like 5 o'clock!), so I set off to the other side of the park, and found the bike route, which was a very pleasant, one way loop through the park. On the far side of the park, I came across a concession stand of sorts, that was minutes away from closing. They were probably desperately wishing that they'd managed to close before I came along! The entire menu was in Japanese with nary a picture or eiga word in sight, so I took a completely random guess that cup noodles might be offered, and managed to successfully order them, along with and iced tea, and oreos (that whole point and order method can be quite successful!). The grandmother type that was working there was very sweet and we managed to get along with gestures pretty well (I ended up with a meal, didn't I?)

However, the cup soup thing wasn't quite as easy as it should have been, as I had to pick a flavour as well - I had three options, two of which were written in English: curry, and seafood. Given neither of those appealed to me, I went for the Japanese only one, hoping it would be beef, chicken, pork, or vegetable flavoured... In the end, I got 'grab bag' flavoured, which had shrimp, scrambled egg nuggets, and mystery meat nuggets. The mini-shrimp went the distance, but the rest of it was pretty good, and newly fortified, I set off towards home...

It's a biiiiiiiig hill from Yoyogi to Pete's house! 'nuff said.

Venus and I have just been hanging out, reading, and not doing much of anything...

Since I've been enjoying the travel with Rick Steeves pod casts so much when I'm walking/biking/subwaying around town, I went on a bit of a podcast downloading binge tonight, grabbing samples of, among others: This American Life, New York Times: The Ethicist, The Best of National Geographic Magazine, The Philosophy Podcast, and Walks of a Lifetime (all available on itunes). I haven't actually listened to anything yet, but tomorrow I'll pick a far away destination so I have lots of time to start deciding which ones to subscribe too... And then Thursday is Metpod day :).

The Internet is a wild and wonderful thing for sure! It's soooo cool how much stuff is availible on here for the taking, and how good the quality of a lot of this stuff is starting to get... Fantastic! So glad I wasn't born in 1897 - none of this back to earth stuff for me! :)

Anyway, that takes us up to the present... Pete's not back from the office yet, but nothing too exciting tends to happen in our evenings, if it does, I'll be sure to blog about it, but if not, count on some Friends watching, and probably some falling asleep on his big comfy couch.
D

PS - the blog passed 800 visits since around the 20th of October today! Thanks everyone! I should hit 1000 in about a week if my averages stay where they are :)