On my first morning in Tokyo, I awoke to find the sky overcast. I put on my coat, left my sunglasses behind, and ventured downstairs where I asked the concierge if there was a chance it could get sunny at some point. "Oh, no,"she replied, straight-faced. "It won't get sunny until January." So I headed…
November 29, 2009: Tokyo Travel Day #5 – Faro, Kadowaki, and the Sights of Ginza!
I honestly don't know how I did it on previous trips here. Between all the eating and the drinking and the strolling and the not-much-sleeping, when the hell did I ever have time to blog? Anyway, another full day yesterday. I spent the morning uploading a whack of pics and videos, then headed out. Lunch…
November 28, 2009: Tokyo Travel Day #4 – Dai San Harumi, Tokyo Big Sight, Les Creations de Narisawa! Now With 60% More Robots!
Okay, I've got a lot of ground to cover so let's get right into it. First off, the mystery of Ginza line-ups solved. Every year I come down to Ginza, I see these enormous line-ups. We settled in at which point Chef Kazuo Nagayama made his grand entrance. I'll tip the review by telling you…
November 27, 2009: Toko Travel Day #3 – No Pepsi Cucumber, Coke! Aroma Fresca! A Sneak Peek at Tomorrow’s Gear-eat Entry!
No, I haven't tracked down Pepsi Cucumber yet but I assure you I've tried and will continue to keep looking. In the meantime, here are a couple of other interesting items I aim to sample while I'm here... I swung by the Mori Art Museum yesterday, but the next exhibition doesn't begin for a few…
November 26, 2009: Tokyo Travel Day #2 – Aronia de Takazawa, Chikuyo-tei Honten, and more strolls and sweets.
So, what better way to include a day of eating than eating some more? After a memorable lunch at Chez Matsuo, a late afternoon snack at Pierre Herme, and a pre-dinner appetizer at the Pierre Marcolini Cafe, we headed off to Akasaka and dinner at Aronia de Takazawa. According to the direction I got from…
November 25, 2009: Tokyo Travel Day #1 – Fit Over Fat, Lunch at Chez Matsuo, Strolling up an Appetite!
Needless to say my sleep schedule is all screwed up. By the time I got to bed last night, it was a little after 11:00 p.m., and even though I was thoroughly exhausted, I lay awake, wound up as tight as a fancy new watch. Finally, about 1:00 a.m., I gave him and took some…
November 24, 2009: Tokyo Travel Day
As per Air Canada’s suggestion, I got to the airport well in advance of my scheduled flight time and, as a result, ended up arriving at the departure gate with plenty of time to spare. And by plenty of time, I mean about two and a half hours. It would’ve been a full three but…
November 23, 2009: Okay, NOW I’m gone!
The mystery of the missing outline deepens. FACT: I had it with me when I left the restaurant Friday night. FACT: I remember tossing it onto the passenger side seat along with the half-dozen comic books I picked up on the way to the restaurant and the leftover grilled cornish game hen I was to…
November 22, 2009: Wait! I’m not gone yet!
I leave for Tokyo tomorrow. Today, I finished packing. I think. I mean, I've double, triple, and quadruple-checked and it appears as though I've remembered everything. But, of course, I won't really know whether or not I've remembered everything until I actually need everything. And I won't get around to needing everything until I'm in…
November 21, 2009: Prepping my Tokyo trip. Stargate this and that.
In less than 48 hours, I'll be Tokyo-bound. But between now and then, I've got A LOT to do. Still, there's always time for a blog update... Yesterday, we gave and received notes on three outlines: Episode 1 (Paul's story, which will shoot second), Episode 3 (my story, which will shoot fourth), and Episode 4…
November 20, 2009: A bittersweet victory, more bitter than sweet, and, really, upon closer scrutiny not sweet at all and, come to think of it, not an actual victory either.
According to Telus, my internet issue has been resolved. Yep, they've informed me they've fixed the problem and that, theoretically, I should be back online and surfing away. Of course, as any student of science will tell you, theory and practice are two very different things. Take early man for instance. He theorized that he…
November 19, 2009: Temporarily Back Online!
I'm online! But no thanks to Telus. My home internet is still inaccessible for the foreseeable future (Telus says the issue will be resolved by tomorrow morning but, hey, they say a lot of things - like, for instance, that the issue would be resolved by the the day before yesterday, or that the issue…
November 18: Telus Incompetence Knows No Bounds!!!
So Monday they told me I'd be back online Tuesday. On Tuesday, they assured me that my Internet would be up and running by Wednesday. Today, Wednesday, I was told: a) they had no record of my being promised either, and b) I'd be surfing by this Friday. Friday?! FRIDAY?!!!!!!!!!! Okay, I'm going to go…
November 17, 2009: A dedicated Telus employee is working on it…
Hey, guess where I am! That's right! NOT ONLINE!!! Apparently, a simple change to my billing information has proven a real challenge for my Internet provider, Telus. So much so that they felt it necessary to shut down my Internet access while they work on the problem. And what exactly IS the problem? Beats the…
November 16, 2009: Look, I don’t have time for titles…I’m being charged by the keystroke here.
Aw c'mon!!!! Now a screw-up on the part of my internet provider has booted me off-line. The telus rep is hopeful I can be back online tomorrow. Tomorrow?! But today is TODAY!!! As a result, I am painstakingly tapping out this entry on my iPHone. If I still had my Blackberry, I'd be hooped right…