rip lehman brothers

today marks the 7th anniversary of the lehman brother holdings chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. i can't believe it's already been seven years! it was a pretty tumultuous time for me and many people i knew, and a day that would change my life forever (and empty out my 401k as well).

thinking back ...

• 7 years ago (2008), i was living and working for lehman brothers in tokyo. my friend, carrie, was staying with me for the week and i felt extremely lucky to have a close friend with me during those tumultuous times. it was also right around the time i met billy and emily, two of my closest friends in japan!
• 6 years ago (2009), i was back in new york city working for nomura securities and getting ready to launch the us index product. our offices were down in the world financial center, which is nowhere as nice as brookfield place is now, but i had a corner seat on the 22nd floor and views of the water. it was a bit distracting to say the least :)
• 5 years ago (2010), rose and i were planning our trip to colombia (october 2010)! as recent friends who did yoga together 2-3 times a week (i miss it ...), we decided to take a weeklong trip together to bogota and cartagena.
• 4 years ago (2011), jordan, forest, and i biked the new york century bike tour. that's +100 miles on the bike through almost all the boroughs (less staten island). it was brutal .. for jordan and forest especially because i was out-of-shape and riding a hybrid. somehow we are still pretty good friends :)
• 3 years ago (2012), kevin and i completed the new jersey gran fondo! well, we biked the first half together, and separated when i opted to do the piccolo fondo (42.6 miles) and kev opted for the medio fondo (62.7 miles). the following weekend, liz and tom, close friends from tokyo, came to visit and stayed with me for a weekend. the following weekend, kevin's younger brother, eric, came to visit and i met him for the first time. i remember it was like +100F all weekend (aka nasty). it was a busy month!
• 2 years ago (2013), we were in chicago celebrating the marriage of our friends, doshi and bijal. it was both of our first times attending an indian wedding (farm animal included, of course) and my first time wearing a sari! it was just a few weeks before our own wedding at the central park boathouse.
• 1 year ago (2014), we were preparing to move out of our union square apartment around this time. i was busy checking up on the renovation at the loft and attending weekly meetings with the architect and contractor. on top of back to back meetings that day, we had dinner at bobby flay's then recently-opened gato with friends. over the weekend, kevin did his second 70.3 half ironman down in princeton, nj. it was a pretty hot and humid day, and the bike and run course was really nothing to brag about, and he did really well :)

japan journey: famous woodblock prints

japanese woodblock prints have been a topic of curiosity for me for some time now. i love the matte tones of the prints, the japanese subjects and landscapes, and most of all, the stories behind the prints. 

one of the most unexpected places where we saw japanese woodblock prints was at frank lloyd wright's fallingwater last april 2014. fallingwater is a home built partly over a waterfall that wright designed for the kaufman family in 1935 forty-five miles outside of pittsburgh. little did i know, but it turns out that wright was a dealer in the japanese art, and during his insolvent periods, including the time he was designing the imperial hotel in tokyo, his japanese art side business helped save his architecture practice during its less solvent periods, and practically financed taliesins 1 & 2.

so i decided to do a little digging online and recently finished andreas marks' japan journeys: famous woodblock prints of culture sights in japan.

the earliest surviving examples of woodblock prints from china date back to 200, when it was used as a method of printing on cloth. however, in japan, the earliest known woodblock printing dates from 764 when an empress commissioned one million small pagodas containing short printed scrolls to be distributed to temples. 

ukiyo-e (浮世絵), which literally translates to "pictures of the floating world", is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that flourished in japan from the 17th through 19th centuries. among the most popular depictions were beautiful women, kabuki actors and sumor wrestlers, travel scenes and landscapes, and flora and fauna.

through the introductions and prints in marks' book, i was able to learn a little bit more about the culture and history of japan. as many of the subjects of the woodblock print makers are often major cities and sites in japan, it felt very much like i was quickly reliving some of my adventures in japan, in woodblock print.

here is a photo of perhaps one of the most iconic woodblock prints by katsushika hokusai, the great wave off kanagawa.

and through a little research online, i also happily learned that the brooklyn art museum has an extensive collection of utagawa hiroshige's one hundred famous views of edo.

shinjuku & hakone

today is our last full day in japan! tomorrow we will head back to taipei via haneda around noon, so it was time to get our run in and go for some ramen!

we woke up relatively early to a beautiful cool morning and did a few loops around shiba-koen and tokyo tower. during our run, we saw more trees and flowers blossoming, as the weather was warming up through the weekend.

after the run, we headed to tokyo station and it took a little while to find the station's yaesu south entrance and *drumroll* ramen alley! we were gunning for rokurinsha again, but given that there was another 45 minutes before opening and a line beginning to form, we decided to have it next time. we opted for the veggie ramen shop which was really tasty! i don't feel like i eat enough fresh or green vegetables whenever im in japan, so the bean sprouts were a welcomed addition. here is a picture of kevin finishing off my bowl :p

in the afternoon, we headed to shinjuku-gyoen to enjoy the thousands of cherry blossom trees - there are so many different types! shades of powder, pink, rose, to hues of purple. there were mobs of tourists around the larger blossoms, so we eventually made our way to an open grassy field with a view of the empire state building in shinjuku. lol.

in the evening, masa and chisa picked us up from the hotel and we took a long drive to tenzan onsen in hakone. hakone is a mountainous area in kanagawa prefecture, just south west of tokyo. it surrounds fuji mountain and lake ashi, two iconic places to visit in japan. we had a nice shabu shabu dinner and then everyone enjoyed the onsen for an hour while i napped in the quiet room. it was a lovely way to spend the evening and the onsen grounds were very lovely.

omotesando & shibuya

on our second day in tokyo, we slept in and woke up to a beautiful view of tokyo tower and zojo-ji, a large buddhist temple. we spotted some cherry blossoms from the temple outskirts and peeked in for a look. i love how japanese architecture is so grand, yet simple.

but we didn't have time to dawdle. first things first - brunch is the most important meal of the day and we were off to bill's, the bill granger restaurant in omotesando. granger achieved stardom for his first restaurant in sydney, which i've not yet visited, though we have visited his shichirigahama and notting hill locations. the restaurant decor is simple, yet decorative; modern, yet country; clean and spacious. the lemon ricotta pancakes are fluffy and light, and while the menu differs from location to location, the food is as we remember it - consistent and tasty.

a big breakfast put us in the mood for a walk so we spent the rest of the morning walking through the meiji shrine park, catching a glimpse of a traditional japanese wedding ceremony, and then a walk through the neighboring yoyogi park. yoyogi park is designed with a large circular walking path surrounded by trees, not too long, but just long enough to stroll and do some people watching. of course, i chose all the shaded routes.

after exiting the parks, we awed at the multiple long lines which wrapped all along omotesandao-dori for garret's popcorn, bill's, and eggs n things. i took kevin down one of my favorite streets in all of tokyo, cat street! when living there, i think my friends and i spent at least 2-3 days each month browsing this quiet little street of small shops. these days, it feels a bit more commercialized and crowded. in the middle of cat street is a coffee shop with the most delicious "new york style donuts" (basically cronuts), the roastery. since we discovered this little haven last april, i've been excited to come back! i picked up the limited-edition sakura flavored donut this time.

we split up in shibuya after coffee: i was off to matsumoto-kiyoshi and kevin was off to bic camera. matsumoto-kiyoshi is one of the most popoular and largest pharmacies in japan, and where i like to go for my grooming, medicinal, and skin products. the breadth of products available at matsuomoto-kiyoshi is breathtaking! from inexpensive drug store brands to luxury department store brands! i treated myself to a few goodies and picked up a few things for my parents, while kevin treated himself to a new g7x. it's been a successful shopping trip so far :)

finally, lunch-dinner at suju-masayuki on the sixth floor of the shibuya hikarie building. it's a delicious spot that our friends brought us too last spring and one of my most memorable meals in tokyo! the lunch setto comes with 8 small dishes, including a fish, a rice bowl, miso soup, a few side dishes, and tsukemono. they also have an english menu for us gaijin - how convenient :D

konnichiwa!

after a short morning flight, we landed in tokyo's haneda airport around 11am.  haneda airport is the international airport located just 30 minutes south of downtown tokyo by taxi/metro. after checking into the prince park tower hotel, we headed to our most recent favorite place in tokyo - kappabashi dori, a street of restaurant supply shops!

no longer newbies since we visited kappabashi street last april, we scoured the shops on both sides of the street for tableware and settled for a set of black porcelain dishes with a silver-gold swirl on them. then towards the end of our multi-hour search, we arrived at the mecca of coffee shops for coffee geeks. this shop has coffee making tools and machines going back to the 1800-early 1900s? and all the fancy japanese brands for almost half the price in the US. kevin stocked up on a few things and picked up a new kalita glass pot for his brother.

we hung out in the asakusa area, spending a bit of time along nakamise-dori before arriving at the stately sensoji temple. before dinner, we treated ourselves to back massages and i brought kevin to onyasai, my favorite all-you-can-eat shabu restaurant, next door.

our hotel, thought a little on the older side and not in a fancy part of the city, has wonderful service and gave us a room with direct views of tokyo tower. it's stunning!

family hotpot

today we had kevin's cousins and nieces over for our first hotpot of the season. shawn, yuka, hana, and kiki arrived around 3, and the girls were walking (no stroller for kiki anymore!), with a bag of boardgames, dessert, and their scooter in tow. it was their first time at the loft so of naturally the girls hopped merrily over the sofa cushions and glided all over the maple floors.

it was a pretty fun afternoon! the girls used some easter cookie cutouts to make sugar cookies in the shapes of rabbits, chicks, eggs, tulips, and daisies. then they taught me how to play their boardgames, which are the most adorable things! the first game was the disney enchanted cupcake party game, where the object of the game was to build two predetermined cupcakes in the theme of various disney princesses. such a cute girly game.

the second game was the sneaky, snacky squirrel game, where the object of the game was to complete a log with its five missing acorns of various colors. i grew up playing games like uno, monopoly, and scattegories. i can't remember having such cute-themed games! the final game we played was good old Chinese checkers.

mae and pierre arrived just in time for dinner, and pierre had his first taste of hotpot! dinner was relaxing and we got to hear about shawn's upcoming show in massachusetts, talk about our individual and group travel plans in taiwan, hong kong, and japan, and little sock monsters graced our dining floor pulling off and swapping socks.

note to self - prepare EXTRA white rice in the future since the little sock monsters are also little rice monsters!

after dinner, the girls iced and decorated the cookies with royal icing and various types of chocolate sprinkles, while the adults enjoyed yuka's simple, yet tasty desserts! they were a green tea ice cream + azuki bean + savory crackers concoction, and they were soooo good.

by the end of the night, the girls were tying themselves up with scarves and socks and running around the counter giggling and falling over each other, while the adults were chatting away. it's always so easy and fun hanging out with them! next time we see each other will be in yuanlin, taiwan in just three weeks time.

we are going to london+paris!

despite weeks of flip flopping between japan, argentina, and france, we finally booked tickets to heathrow, and are planning to spend 3 days in london and 5 in paris. i was clobbered with remodel stuff the last few months so was a little disappointed (understatement ha) when i realized that all flights to japan and buenos aires had gone through the roof, and i didn't have enough time or energy to plan a trip somewhere new.

looking forward to wandering the cold, wintry streets of london and paris with kev :) and exploring all the little shops, coffee spots, and architecture! it's been a year since we've visited somewhere foreign!

we will be staying at these lovely flats in notting hill and saint-german! i need to do some research! it's been +12 yrs since i've been to france ... lucky for me, three of my girlfriends just visited this fall so i am hitting them up for recommendations :)

best: watching friends find love. love that is strong and truthful enough to be the real thing. mutual respect. taking time to get to know each other and learn each others' strengths and weaknesses.

worst: watching friends go through difficult times. and nothing you say helps. i don't know, i'll just try my best to support and rebuild my friend's self-esteem. things will be okay, actually, things will be BETTER than okay in time.

smile: our sectional arrived! enough said. there will quickly be body imprints on the chaise :)