Last night, Pete and Mom spent three hours on the phone while I was at the Tokyo Writer's Day. Were they catching up on old times? No...they were working it out so that Pete can run his Slingbox (Canadian TV), into his Toshiba laptop on the wireless network, and from there straight onto his big screen TV in the living room.

Its a pretty sweet setup, and to celebrate, he had to watch the Hockey Night in Canada (or Hockey Morning-Mid Afternoon in Tokyo) on his big TV. I made us some breakfast of buns (we needed to start making our bake 'n fresh buns from Costco!) eggs, and uber crispy bacon - ooops! And then left Pete to watch the Leafs cane Montreal, before moving on to the Flames vs. The Canucks.

While he was watching, I went out on the street and reacquainted myself with riding a bike! Now, there's this prevalent rumor going around that once you learn how to ride a bike, you can't forget it. Well, I submit that learning how to ride a kabuki kab can rather overrule your two wheeled sensibilities! It's a bit odd to have to say, balance again! I think I've got it basically sorted out, which is handy since Jordon offered to take me on a bike tour of his neighbourhood tomorrow and I don't want to end up under a delivery van or anything!

Once Pete's hockey finished, I suggested the we go on a fun expedition (k, he might say it was more than a suggestion!) Anyway, we ended up to to Ikspiari (pronounced like the first three syllables of 'experience'). It seems to basically be the equivalent of 'Downtown Disney'. We checked out the mall area, and Pete got some nice pants at J. Crew, and then we decided to go eat at Kua aina, 'Serving the World's Best Hamburgers since 1975'. They were pretty good! It's a Hawaiian based/themed chain, and definitely a good dinner choice! They also give you a couple of onion rings to go with your fries, which is the perfect combination!

(Pete just wants to point out his sweet parking spot)

(above and bel0w: one part of the Ikspiari mall)
(Pete at Kua aina - being.....cool?)

(there was a handy nine page booklet on 'how to enjoy kua aina' which seems like it would have been really entertaining if we could read it all! Different ways to enjoy your burger seemed to include: standard (which is the way we did it), the crush and eat, the spiral, and several other entertaining methods, including...)
(The Beaver! Pete figures its the dainty two front teeth chomp)

We continued with our tour of the mall part before heading to 'Thank You for Smoking', the satire about the tobacco industry. I'd already seen it in Toronto, but since I was boycotting all of the 9/11 themed movies, and Pirates of the Caribbean which I'd also seen was nearly 3 hours long, I happily went to TYFS again - Its a good movie! It was a pretty typical movie experience, right down to sitting in front of three Aussies, but there were some differences - the Japanese subtitles being one! Food was also, typically, scaled down to a much more manageable proportion, and we supplemented our popcorn and pop with a shared 'crepe stick', which I grabbed on a complete whim, having no idea what it might be. It turned out to be a crepe with cool whip and a little bit of strawberry filling rolled up (OK I could have guessed that), but it's a FROZEN item! Actually I really liked it, but I was shocked that it was frozen when he first passed it over to us! I randomly found a survey about going to the movies in Japan, and only 0.9% of people regularly add a crepe stick to their concession stand purchase! Count me in with that minority!

I also picked up a cute long sleeved t shirt with Hawaii related stuff embroidered on it -Hawaii is a huuuuuge thing here! The national favourite holiday destination it seems like. The other thing I've noticed is really popular here is the Cowichan Sweater motif, but modernised. For instance, ROXY/Quiksilver has a line of Cowichan Sweater inspired goods. Yetsa's Sweater could be popular over here!


Anyway, we came back home, enjoying the Metpod on our way (check out the podcast, hosted by the 'Met Pod Crew' you saw at the Glitterball, for a weekly one hour run down on what's going on in Tokyo, sponsored by....Ammmmmerrrriccaaaan Airlines).

Just blogging this and heading back downstairs to keep going with Friends - It's a fun series to plough through!

D