Japan

I went home to Japan. It was a very quick decision that I made to go home. It was a short trip, but this is the best way to spend my free time; to be with my family.
On the second day in Japan, I was told to baby-sit my 5-year-old niece and 2-year-old nephew. It is almost the standard pattern. I baby-sit. But actually, it is not that bad. After my sister leaves the house, the three of us can do anything we want! No worries for someone to yell at us!

My nephew, Yusuke, was talking to himself with a calculator in one hand and a pencil in the other. He looks like an accountant.
My niece, Kaho, baked a cake with me. This one was a very easy one. What we needed was only a microwave! Not bad!


During my stay in Japan, I had a business trip to Kobe for two days, and I was lucky to be treated for Kobe-beef! It was soooo good!!
(left) No no, it's not a portion for one person. Even I cannot eat that much!
(right) This is the portion for one. It was delicious with crunchy garlic!

Mr.Donuts. It is very popular in Japan. This is Josh's favorite! Mr.Donuts is supposed to be American, or so all Japanese believe. As a matter of fact, it is actually from Boston even though the American version disappeared a long time ago. Josh and his friends have chased the address from the Yellow Page in Boston, but there was no such donut shop any more.

When I went home the last time, I brought my DS with me. I meant to introduce it to my sister, but actually Kaho was better at it. Since then, she is crazy about it. Of course, she does not have one for herself, but every time she sees mine or the one in a store, she runs to it. Even though she is only 5 years old, without any instructions, she can play with no problem. It makes me think if she is really my sister's child... But she probably knows that she should not play that much, so every time a game finishes, she asks me whether she can play another round. That makes her even cuter to her aunt! (No, she's not allowed to call me an aunt though.)

This time, I feel like I spent most of the time with Kaho. She stayed over with me the last three nights also. Imagine... my bed is a Japanese one. It's not a queen or king, but a single. It's a bit too small to sleep with one more person even if she is a kid. Oh my goodness! This kid moves a lot during her sleep; rolls over, kicks, punches me in my stomach and even rotates for 360 degrees!

But it seems 5-year-old kids have almost the same feelings as adults; Kaho is pretty sensitive. My sister told me this afterwords.
After sending me off at the airport, when Kaho steps into my parents' house, she saw the slippers that I was wearing. The next thing you know, she started crying out loud for a while... How cute! But I feel really bad leaving her every time at the airport.

Las Vegas, US

Las Vegas! Finally, the time has come…Gambling! Actually, I won $40 in 15 mins on the way back from Grand Canyon. Not bad. But I usually win only the first day of a whole trip. That’s my usual pattern. Of course, I was still hoping to win all the way for 4 days though… yes, that was my mistake! The very next day, my $40 profit was gone very quickly. Also, between Josh and I have a jinx about gambling… every time we play black jack or poker together at the same table, almost all the time, he loses. We have come to Las Vegas for three times, but all three times that has happened. That being said, when we want to play, we first need to discuss who would play at that table. We cannot play together…
As a result, he successfully avoided sitting with me at the same table, he won for $200! Lucky him, but this really proved once again that I bring bad luck… great.


On this trip, we stayed at（Bellagio）for two nights. This hotel was the one used in the movie, Ocean's Eleven. This has been my favorite hotel in Las Vegas!

This is the view from our hotel window. You can see Paris Hotel and Eiffel Tower across the street. Their breakfast buffet is excellent!






















This is the area right next to lobby at Bellagio. This time, their theme looked like “Spring”. As soon as you enter the lobby, you can smell all flowers! I kind of worried about allergy people though. That is how much of flowers’ scent you could experience there.


Because it was the weekend before Easter, everything was rabbit! I found this cute rabbit cake.












For the last night in Vegas, because my colleague was also in town by coincident from Sweden for training, I took him to Hooters Hotel!! I hope he learned something American there!










During my colleague visiting restrooms, I took my one dollar and wasted in a slot machine… so I thought. But guess what? I won big time! One dollar became 11 dollars in one minute! Not bad!





To tell you the truth, this time, most of the trip expenses were paid by someone else… and because of that reason, Josh and I have decided to go pretty wild. Ok. First, we stayed at Bellagio. We took a couple massage. We went to see my favorite play by Cirque du Soleil called "O”, and we had very nice dinner at a restaurant called Picasso where they have Picasso’s arts! It was great having dinner surrounded by Picasso’s arts, especially; there was one right behind me!

Grand Canyon, US

Grand Canyon! Right after the trip from Copenhagen, I took an extra flight to Las Vegas. I left at 8am for my first flight, and when I arrived at the hotel in Las Vegas, it was already 10pm WST. That makes it total of 23hr-trip… Yes, I was literary exhausted! I managed to get up early (enough) in the morning to go to Grand Canyon the next morning though. Grand Canyon is something I wanted to visit for a long long time. I’d been dreaming about it.
Once I stood up on cliff, I could not believe what I was looking at. Grand Canyon is huge! I mean… HUGE!! It is so big that it seemed like I was standing in front of a big screen TV! I am afraid of heights, so I could not go to the edge of the cliff to stand. But I still enjoyed it very much.

We started hiking. There was a 1 meter-wide path along the side of cliff, but in order to go all the way down, it takes 4 – 6 hours, only one way! Then, we found this sign. It says, “Don’t even think about hiking in one day because some people die from the exhaustion.”



For the hiking course, you can ride of mules; a mixture of a donkey and a horse. It seems you need to make a reservation one year advance. Mules walk on the same path as regular hiking humans, so mules’ poops were everywhere; dry ones and very fresh ones… and here is Josh taking picture of “it”.


Cleon who acts like he just “did” a big job by pulling his pants right by the fresh poop!












Josh drove on the way back to Las Vegas. It takes for 5 hours. Everyone else was sleeping… I tried to stay awake and I was giving him shoulder massage from his back, but because I had jetlag from the Europe trip, I couldn’t keep my eyes open for that long. I think I was sleeping with my eyes half way closed…

Lund, Sweden

It took me 4 years to come to Lund, Sweden. This is where our HQ is located, and this is where I've been wanting to visit for a long time!
From Copenhagen, it is about 50min train ride. I am not used to travel to different countries by train because Japan is an island, and even USA, people have to take a plane to go anywhere other than Canada or Mexico. I still cannot get the concept of the fact that European countries are all connected by land.
When I bought the train ticket in Copenhagen to Lund, I was told that I did not need to transfer. When the train arrived in Malmo, I realized that I was the only one in the train. No one had got off the train... I was so panicked, gathered all my lagguages and immediately got out of the train. A conductor told me that I had to move to the rear cars. They disconnect the rear cars and only that part goes to Lund... Someone could have warned me when they were getting off the train!
Anyways, I sat down and was waiting for the train to move. After 5mins, there was an anouncement in Swedish. Thanks, I have no clue! After the announcement, some people started acting a bit strange and I could hear someone's sigh... not a good sign. I could guess what was going on, but still no clue. After 10mins later, there was an announcement again, and everybody started getting off the train...again! Ok. Now I know that I have to get off the train, but where do I take the next train from? According to some stranger, the train broke, so we had to take the next arriving train... great.
20mins after getting on the next train, it finally started moving, and when I arrived in Lund, I was so exhausted. You can imagine. But I really appreciated the fact that Swedish people speak English! I wonder how tourists in Japan get away with those troubles since not many Japanese can speak English!


←I found this in my hotel's neighborhood. It seems Bishops drink beers in Sweden.


...I found Mah Jong in Sweden.↓











I love stone streets. I like the atomosphere around them. It's usually in a very traditional old town. It is not that easy to walk with heals on though. This is a picture of crosswalk. They painted the stones. I remember some stone streets in NY (in SoHo), but there are more histories behind in this town, and I really enjoyed taking a walk in this town.




Once I got into smaller streets, it was very quiet. There are cute houses with bright colors; yellow, orange etc. On this quiet street, I passed by some kids playing hockey! Very Swedish to me!

Right now, I am sitting in a hotel in Copenhagen. I came back here to fly out to the states tomorrow morning. It was a very productive week, but I am very tired. I have never visited three countries in one week. So now, I'm enjoying the complimentary red wine that was sitting in the room. Very relaxing and luxurious! I did nothing to deserve this! I really appreciate the opportunity to take this Europe trip!

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Finally I am here, in Amsterdam! Look at the bike heaven right outside of Central Station!

On the way to see my new apartment, I think my cab passed by Red Light District. I am not so sure but I definately saw girls with underwear on standing by the window. I thought they were mannequins in underwear shops, but I realized immediately that they were smoking...!


This is my new apartment (top left); the third brown building from the left. It is on the 3rd floor, but it actually is the 4th floor. (It seems they don't count the 1st floor, but rather zero!?) This apartment is GREAT!! It's in the center of Amsterdam, and the view out of the window is excellent! I just can't believe I am going to "live" there.


I have three big windows looking down two canels out of my window! It is the actual view. The apartment is furnished, so I do not need to worry about sleeping on the floor for the first week nor eating off paper plates. That's bonus!





This is my neighborhood; across from my building corner. I really liked the buildings in Amsterdam. They are old and beautiful. As a matter of fact, my building is built in 1800's. That's fascinating to me. I just love love love old buildings!
As a conclusion, I think my life in Amsterdam will be great. I'm very looking forward to it!



This is something I found on the street. It's huge!

Copenhagen v3

Blue sky!! As soon as I woke up, I was feeling so good because the sun was out! I cannot live without sun shine!
We were lucky to have a sunny day when we were planning to go to Helsingør to visit Kronborg Castle. We took a traing for about 40min north from Copenhagen. It is known all over the world from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Also, I learned that the author of The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen, is from Denmark!


These picures are taken in the chapel of the castle. I was amazed by how detailed they were.


After visiting the castle, Ginny and I went out to a shopping area called Strøget again. These are some items from souvenir shops - Cute!


This is the train ticket that took me to the castle and to the city. It is used just like a NYC metro card, but you need to stamp a time by yourself with a machine on the platform. It's a bit more complicated than how it looks. You are supposed to stamp multiple times for a ride depending on how far you go... Can't they make it easier for an air-head like me?

Copenhagen v2

My hotel room and the view from the window. This room is very European to me as there are two twin beds in very modern fashion; no the beds weren't put together which usually is the case in Europe from my experience.
and YES! Ginny has already blown the fuse in the bathroom by plugging her hair dryer into the outlet. It is 240voltage!

During the canal tour, I fell asleep... so after that, I had cafe latte to wake myself with a delicious "pancake" with strawberry jelly! What confuses me is the currency here (Danish krone). I spent 65KR for this. Doesn't it sound like a lot? It's 1 dollar = 6KR. You do the math.

Copenhagen

Yesterday was my last day at work in the states. I received a very nice card with everyone's comments in it. It was a very thoughtful gift!
I just got into Copenhagen. 8:00am... I had no idea they had already set their daylight time one hour earlier last weekend, so my head was spinning trying to figure out why we had 7hrs difference, not 6. Anyhow, I am about to go out with my co-worker to explorer Copenhagen today and tomorrow. We did not plan this far in advance, so we have no idea where to go. We'll figure something out. Pictures are about to come!