Month: November 2008

Posted on

Hoshinoya

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. Tomo and I are in Karuizawa, Nagano-ken, enjoying a nice getaway at Hoshinoya ryokan. It is really, really, really, really nice. We had a 7 course French dinner and then took a bath at the onsen. Our room is right on the water (after some discussion that our first room was not what we were expecting…), there are floating lanterns decorating the water as well. It has a special meditation spa as well as the onsen that we have yet to visit.

When we arrived, we were ushered into a greeting room where they have a musician playing traditional instruments. It is hard to explain what he was playing, but one of the instruments was a metal bowl that was rubbed around the rim to make it resonate. He had wind-chimes, steel plates, gongs, etc. I’ll post a picture. Unfortunately I left my card reader at home. You can check it out at http://www.hoshinoya.com/en/index.html. It feels a little “culty” but I can handle it!

Now I am too relaxed to continue. More tomorrow? Do NOT ask about the price.

Posted on

Back home from going home to visit home

What is home? I’m now back in Nagoya, which for the moment is home. I have an apartment, it is where I work, and I have a lot of my “things.” I came from Los Angeles, which is where I own my home and which I consider to be my home. It was great to be in my place where I have all of my things that are not in Nagoya. I have a dryer that can dry clothes in under 3 hours without completely wrinkling them. I have three floors of living space. I have a walk-in closet, a dresser AND a window seat in my bedroom. I visited Indiana during my trip as well. Indiana is where I grew up, sometimes it is where I am from, and I still refer to it as home, like “I will not be home for Christmas.” I have no material possessions left in Indiana, but I do have family there. But now I’m back in Nagoya, home, in a fierce battle with jetlag.

While in the States, I think I was single-handedly trying to stimulate the economy. As I write this on my desktop, I now have a MacBook and a PowerBook G4 hooked to each other so the G4 can migrate to the MacBook. Yes, I bought the new MacBook.

One angle of my new Mac

Another angle of my new Mac

Of course, I feel that I needed it. I chose to downsize a little to make it more transportable. Moving from 15 to 13 inches doesn’t seem like that much, but it is lighter and more compact. Also changing from a Motorola chip to Intel should improve application performance. I even have a buyer lined up for my old computer, which is nice.

While I was home, I also bought some clothes. As winter approaches I felt like I needed to update my wardrobe to fill in some gaps with clothes that fit. I now have a new coat, dress shirts, dress pants, and socks. My book and DVD library has also expanded.

I apparently left my voice in the US. I caught the cold that everyone seemed to have. My voice almost completely disappeared. I don’t sound like “me” currently, but at least I can be heard. Yesterday, complicated by all the flying, I could barely be heard.

The weather has turned significantly more winter-y than before I left. My apartment could even be considered to have a chill in the air. Mind you, whenever I have jetlag, temperature control is one of the first things to go. As I said before, I definitely have jetlag at the moment.

Even though I went to the dentist is LA, I didn’t find time to get my haircut. I went out today and accomplished that task. This time, however, I pulled pictures from a magazine to be able to show the guy who cuts my hair. He couldn’t make me look the model, but the haircut isn’t bad.