a hint of mustard.

sanford the french asian bunnypig.

2012-02-08T23:15:00.000-08:00

so, my mom just got back from a trip to taiwan and she brought me this (no, not the dog, but the outfit).

it is red and gold for the lunar new year. on the back is the typical lunar new year greeting gong shi fah tsai.. but the front completes it with they rhyme hong bao nah lai - which essentially means give me the money!!!

sanford is unsure how he feels about this situation..

L&E : an eastside oyster bar.

2012-02-05T22:27:00.000-08:00

the owners of bar covell opened up an oyster bar in silverlake! how exciting is that. i couldn't wait to try it.

kegs with pillows as waiting seats! love that. the menu had oysters raw, grilled, and fried. under steamed are a couple seafood cocktails, the soup was a clam chowder, and there were a few simple salads as well. the daily offering of oysters had four west coast and three east coast. they were out of the malispina, but we ordered two of each of the rest.

we also had an order of the oysters rockefeller and the dungeness crab cocktail; and split an oyster po'boy. everything was really great, a little bit pricey for the size of portions, but that's silverlake and i'm more than willing to pay for the convenience of having an oyster bar around the corner. james really liked the miagi and i the sunset, so we ordered another half dozen.

we then walked across the street to lamill for dessert. we had the emmy's peanut butter cup (madagascar peanut butter vanilla cream, bananas, honey, valrhona dark chocolate) and a hong kong milk tea for me and a macchiato for james. what a perfect meal.

---
L&E oyster bar
1637 silver lake boulevard
los angeles, ca
323.660.2255

lamill coffee boutique
1636 silver lake boulevard
los angeles, ca
323.663.4441

shaved brussel sprouts! who knew? @ canele.

2012-02-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

stopped by canele in atwater village for dinner all by myself on friday. they had a venetian spritz on the menu (aperol, prosecco, pellegrino) - so i had to have one. or two. anyway, for the meal, i settled with the autumn salad (shaved brussel sprouts, apples, pomegranate, walnuts, and fourme d'ambert). it was so good; my only issue was with how small it was. and shaved brussel sprouts is a revelation - i need a mandoline slicer just for that!

the seared market fish (with mediterranean couscous and caponata) was a local sea bass that was cooked perfectly. the dish reminded me how much i like caponata and need to learn how to make it myself.

hmm, where should i go next in atwater village?

---
canele
3219 glendale boulevard
los angeles, ca
323.666.7133

fred62 : los feliz village diner goodness.

2012-02-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

james and i brunched at fred 62 the other day. oh, i do love good diners.

james had the patty melt. i love the pickle (though it'd be nicer if they gave you more, and the little paper basket for the fries.

i had the sunshine salmon, which is an egg sandwich and lox bagel plate mixed together! and it was massive!

the layers in it, from top to bottom: bread, hashed browns, scrambled eggs, tomato, cream cheese, smoked salmon, bread. SO. GOOD.

last but not least, i ordered a coke float - their ice cream is vanilla bean! definitely a nice place to have around the corner from james's new place. can't wait to go back and try other items on their menu - it was really hard to decide what to get. we have so many places to explore and try in los feliz now.

---
fred 62
1850 north vermont
los angeles, ca
323.667.0062

who doesn't love a good tito's taco?

2012-02-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

played catch-up with my good childhood friend katrina the other day. we both grew up in the LA burbs, and have actually lived in LA the past few years, but neither of us had been to the famous tito's tacos in culver city before - so we decided to give it a shot.

the line wasn't too bad, maybe just 20-30 minutes. they only sell one taco, tito's taco. it's a hard shell beef taco with lettuce and salsa on the side, but you can get it with cheese too.

i got two tacos, no cheese, and a chicken tamale. opening up my box, looked like this:

below is after removing all the chips and unwrapping the tamale. the dark salsa you see is for the tamale. the salsa that came with the tacos (not pictured) was really good, and i also got a small guacamole. i don't tend to like hard shell tacos, but these were great. i think the shells are "hardened" or pressed after the meat goes in because it was so tight. the meat melts in your mouth - i don't believe it was ground so much as maybe stewed then shredded?

i tend to prefer seafood (shrimp, fish) or lengua (tongue) soft tacos, but tito's might have just changed my mind.

---
tito's tacos
11222 washington place
culver city, ca
310.391.5780

golden deli.. express! (and open wednesdays!!)

2012-02-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

my favorite place to get pho in LA is golden deli, they're open every day but wednesday. they recently opened up an "express" restaurant, that is open every day but monday! now i can get golden deli seven days a week. AWESOME.

anyway, the premise of this place is like a lot of small LA places.. where you order at the counter, then find a seat and they bring the food to you. you even go get your own drinks, silverware, napkins, sauces, etc. express, it is.

it's also kind of cool because they're kitchen is semi-open, and not completely behind closed doors like at the original spot. the food was pretty much spot on. i had the #4, my usual, with rare cooked beef and tripe. my dad got a bbq pork and seafood one. it comes with one ittle crab claw in the middle. we also go the eggrolls, which we ate before i thought to get a picture of. they're still better at the original place i think, but that would be the only thing that i felt fell short.

---
golden deli express
9664 las tunas dr.
temple city, ca
626.285.2899

fried chicken goodness @ house of pies.

2012-02-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

ah, house of pies. an LA establishment. it's just around the corner from james's new place in los feliz, so we stopped in for dinner the other night after he had finished a round of packing.

fried chicken liver and onions! made me so happy. not as good as the fried chicken liver you can get at KFC's in the south, but the onions make up for it.

the broaster chicken i got was really good. three pieces (leg, thigh, breast), perfectly fried! i couldn't eat all of it (i just had a bunch of fried chicken livers, too), so i didn't eat the breast, so i'm unsure how dry/moist it was. sanford ate it right up at home though. you get to pick from several sides, i got the corn on the cob and corn bread (with honey butter!!)

james had the cheeseburger. looked really good, but i was a bit too pre-occupied with my fried chicken to try any.

and of course, you can't go to house of pies without getting some pie! i had the strawberry, james had the apple (traditional pie crust, they also have two other options). deeee-licious. i love the huge strawberries they use.

---

house of pies

1865 north vermont

los angeles, ca

323.666.9961

TOMS b-flats are here!

2012-02-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

i was so excited for the TOMS release of ballet flats and mine came already! i love them. the sole has a much better construction than your standards.. several layers of foam, and an extra heel cushion. super cute. super comfy. i'm in love!

these are (los angeles neighborhoods print) things.

2012-02-04T18:01:00.000-08:00

i've mentioned before that i love typographic maps, and i finally bought one of the los angeles neighborhoods from these are things. i got it on sale over at the daily design deals site fab.com (use my invite code if you're interested in joining!)

it's 18x24, and i need to find a good frame for it now!

february is for (TOMS) lovers and ballet flats.

2012-02-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

happy february!

want to know what february brings that i'm super duper stoked about this year? TOMS ballet flats. yup, you read that correctly, TOMS has finally released a line of ballet flats.

it was a difficult decision, but i've already ordered mine! aren't they pretty?

a couple things to note:

from various comments and in the SIZING tab, it is mentioned that these run true to "industry standard" and are noticeably longer than your traditional TOMS. so instead of my normal 7.5, i ordered the 7. hopefully they fit!

under DETAILS, they mention that there is a hidden wedge, padded heel cushion, and two layer insert of EVA foam and latex - so i'm hoping these soles will be a bit more durable than the standard TOMS, which i tend to run into the ground.

heirloomLA does southern with soul.

2012-01-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

silverlake wine's weekly monday tasting usually features the heirloom LA truck outside the store. and this week, the menu went southern.

i had the jidori fried chicken, buttermilk belgian waffles and a market salad. which went really well with the first wine of the night, a paso robles pinot gris (which were followed by a bordeaux and a chilean carmenere / cab sauv). the chicken had great flavor and was nice and tender. the waffles were BOMB (yes, i just said that) with the creme fraiche and blueberry maple syrup. not a bad way to end a monday.

me and my shadow in THR.

2012-01-31T15:30:00.000-08:00

the hollywood reporter released an article today announcing the voices (bill hader, kate hudson, josh gad) for the dreamworks animation film i'm working on now, me and my shadow, as well as a brief of the story:

Conceived in-house as an original film, Shadow centers on Stan, a shadow (Hader) who yearns for a more exciting life than being attached to a timid human named Stanley Grubb (Gad). When a crime in the shadow community puts both of their lives in danger, Stan is forced to take control of Stanley, thrusting both of them into an adventure featuring a shadowy villain, who intends to lead a rebellion to take over the human world. Hudson will voice Grubb’s potential love interest in the real world.

The movie will mix up CG and traditional animation (the shadow world will be handrawn while the human world will be CG), which the studio hopes will be pioneering and create an experience not seen before.

and yea, my work since puss in boots has been entirely on the hand-drawn/CG integration for this film. fun stuff.

soup & sammies @ fabyans station.

2012-01-31T12:07:00.000-08:00

when we first arrived at bretton woods, no one else had arrived and the townhouse was devoid of food except for some cheese and crackers. everyone else was driving in from boston or providence and bringing food for the weekend. but they all also would have already eaten dinner that night, so we were kind of left to fend for ourselves that evening.

we hadn't thought we could go to mount washington hotel for dinner (it said jackets required) so we tried going to the only other restaurant within a couple of miles, fabyans station. based on the menu, it's your typical american fare - soup, salads, sandwiches, burgers and a few pasta or protein entrees. however, everyone else in town had the same idea, and the wait for two would have been an hour. instead, we went to the gas station / trading post next door and got ourselves some new hampshire beer, crappy pizza and fried chicken, and soup. the chili and beef stew were actually pretty good, and the beer was welcome.. but the rest was crap. but that was our arriving dinner:

anyway, before we left for manchester to catch our returning flight, we decided to stop by fabyans station for lunch this time, and we arrived just before they opened so it was quiet.

we started with the tomato bisque and new england clam chowder. not the best chowder i'd ever had, but i liked the size and freshness of the clams themselves. james loved the bisque.

and the corned beef sandwich and a pastrami sandwich. the pastrami sandwich had blue cheese, grilled onions and beer mustard - and pretty much hit the spot. and the fries were fresh, crunchy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside.

sharp looking men; the sartorialist.

2012-01-30T14:27:00.000-08:00

i'm a big fan of the sartorialist and his work, and he recently did a lunch for 25. the photos and video below show off some really sharp looking gentlemen.

the sartorialist: lunch for 25 from the sartorialist on vimeo.

weekend getaway @ bretton woods.

2012-01-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

we woke up bright and early friday morning to catch a 6.30am flight out of LAX. we were really, very tired, but the sunrise view of los angeles out the window during take-off was quite gorgeous.

john rented this townhome over in bretton woods, new hampshire for this year's annual ski trip. the view out the back porch was absolutely gorgeous. and we didn't even realize until later in the day when the clouds cleared that we had a magnificent view of mount washington.

this years trip was much smaller than last year's to sunday river, maine. it was just john+cindy and kids, greg+yoko and kids, me+james, chris (minus claire) and dustin. we all arrived sometime friday night, and saturday was the designated ski day over at the bretton woods ski resort.

i loved this mountain! it definitely helped that the temperature was in the thirties (as opposed to the high of SEVEN last year in maine), but in general the runs themselves are much nicer - especially for someone of my skill level. the green runs are really long, and it can actually be quite exhausting to complete an entire run without taking a break. and there are plenty of blue runs that are closer to a green than a black. i've been to too many places where the difficulty level between green and blue is so great, that i'm bored if i stay on the greens, and scared shitless if i go on the blues, so i'm just not having a good time. here i actually felt like i was being challenged but not scared, and actually had a ton of fun. i really hope we come back here next year.

here are a couple pictures from the top of a run. our red noses was due to wearing goggles all day. >.<

at the base of mount washington is the gorgeous castle-like mount washington hotel. while we didn't stay there, we did stop by just to take a look. the best view of it though, which i wasn't able to get a picture of, was from the very top of the ski resort. you see the entire valley, with the mountain in the back and the hotel nestled at its base. pretty awesome.

we even saw dog-sledders! how freaking cool!

oh, and i forgot to mention, we flew into and out of manchester, which has a dunkin' donuts! LOVE.

and since i started with an LA sunrise, i thought i'd end the post with a NH sunset. can't wait til next year's trip!!

mahler number five @ walt disney concert hall.

2012-01-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

awhile back i saw that the LA philharmonic was doing the mahler project. a good friend is a huge mahler fan and he recommended symphony number five, so i got tickets for me and james.

it was both of our first times attending something at the walt disney concert hall. i've been to the building many times but never in the actual hall, so i was very excited. we ended up just eating at the concert hall cafe, which had a decent selection of pre-packaged, as well as you foods. james had a braised lamb shank with polenta and cauliflower. i went a bit more casual with a prosciutto sandwich. and we also split a half bottle of pinot grigio. super convenient.

the hall itself is gorgeous and really quite intimate - much smaller than i was expecting, which also meant our seats were better than i expected. here is a panorama i took before they told me that pictures were not allowed (which i figured would be the case during the performance, but not for when it's empty.. my bad!)

it was a great performance conducted by the curly-haired and high-energied gustavo dudamel. it was only three acts and a little over an hour, with no intermission. we thoroughly enjoyed it and are now planning to attend a ballet over at the dorothy chandler pavillion, which we saw several posters for when we walked through the music center courtyard.

good times @ golden road brewing.

2012-01-25T15:55:00.000-08:00

golden road brewing opened just down the street from work a couple weeks ago or so, and we have quite a few connections within the company to them so there's been a lot of chatter and excitement over it. an ex-coworker dropped by today for lunch so a bunch of us decided to head over there and check it out.

the chalkboard beer + food menus:

they have a surprising selection of vegan and vegetarian options (not that i'm either, but i found it interesting). but then again, they are trying to do things as sustainable as possible (such as being the only canned brewery in LA; here's why).

i had the dino kale rolls (dino kale leaves filled with white bean ragout over sauteed quinoa + kale) and a small miso crabby salad (blue crab meat with shaved cucumber, bell peppers and cherry tomatoes and a miso vinaigrette). they were both served cold, but still very good, simple fare. those plus a 16 oz. get up offa that brown ran me $20 after tax and tip. i was quite happy, and will definitely be back. i must also say that i really like their ordering system. you order both food and drink at the bar. you get your drink and a buzzer, that buzzes you when your food is ready. it's great for large groups and the casual atmosphere.

they even have growlers! we both liked the get up offa that brown so much that james got a growler of it.

oh, and those dreamworks-goldenroad connections i mentioned? one of the people we were at lunch with does his own homebrewing and knows the golden road people quite well. the owners spotted him and sent over two complimentary pitchers of their hefeweizen and ipa. awesome all around.

---
golden road brewing
5410 west san fernando road, los angeles
213.373.HOPS {4677}

dreamworks oscar nods.

2012-01-24T17:51:00.000-08:00

the 2012 oscar nominations were announced today and both kung fu panda 2 and puss in boots were nominated for best animated feature! the above panorama was taken at our company toast - everyone's in high spirits!

aaaaannnddddd, that means both movies i've ever worked on (how to train your dragon and puss in boots) are oscar-nominated. >.<

the bullitts are supercool.

2012-01-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

this "music video" and song by the bullitts make me ridiculously happy. the first two minutes is setup - the lead singer pretends to be a homeless man who spots rosario dawson. the music itself starts around 2.10 and i absolutely heart it.

proof bakery in atwater village.

2012-01-21T17:14:00.000-08:00

the neighborhood atwater village is just on the other side of the five freeway from me, and i've heard many good things about it since i moved to silverlake, but for some reason i never really ventured over there. well, this post over at the amateur gourmet (where he has much better photos than i was able to take) totally inspired me, so before heading to venice this morning to help james move, i stopped at proof bakery for coffee and a croissant. the croissant is definitely one of the better ones i've had in this city. i just can't get over how close it is, and how i thought there were no decent croissants near me this whole time. it might become a regular morning stop before work now.

---
proof bakery
3156 glendale boulevard
los angeles california
323.664.8633

sanford loves car rides.

2012-01-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

how do i get in this darned thing?

wait, what do you mean we're not going for a car ride?

roundup : kitchen yellow.

2012-01-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

so, if you got the january crate & barrel catalog, this is the very first spread:

how delicous does that look? now i am seriously considering buying all of it! toaster, coffee maker, espresso maker and the dinnerware. there's even a matching kettle! the delonghi kmix appliances come in a huge variety of colors too (which is why i amazon-linked them) - but i'd obviously go with the yellow.

they would go fabulously with the yellow melamine mixing bowls i got last christmas (and was thinking of getting matching paint for to re-do my kitchen cabinets - but that's a whole other story).

i can't afford all that though. maybe just the coffee maker? it might be nice to keep my own coffee maker at work since i can't stomach starbucks. my cubicle neighbors would have to bear with grinding beans in the morning though... too rude?

you can even get a yellow kitchenaid mixer (though, the amazon colors don't really show a true yellow..)!

black diamond gloves.

2012-01-19T23:03:00.000-08:00

we are heading to new hampshire next weekend to see my brother john and his family. he's rented out a house, and hopefully we'll get some mountain time in. last year in maine, it was so cold, my gloves just wouldn't cut it. my hands were frozen / numb / useless within a couple hours and made for skiing the rest of the day very difficult.
this year though, i have purchased some new gloves from black diamond equipment. they are supposed to be good to sub-zero temperatures, so hopefully they hold up!

With premium construction, fresh moto style, and a sleek, under-the-cuff design, the Women's Legend is Black Diamond's premier women's ski glove, offering versatile, top-notch performance for any part of the mountain. Outfitted with a waterproof and breathable Gore-Tex insert with XCR Product Technology and PrimaLoft One insulation, the Legend gives you warm, waterproof comfort and incredible dexterity without unnecessary bulk.

hopefully they get here on time. aren't they pretty?

brunch @ gjelina

2012-01-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

gjelina is one of those restaurants i've been dying to go to. my one experience there was meeting up with a few people who already ate most of their dinner, and i simply joined in, nibbled on some leftovers, and left. however, i never ever actually think to go there.

this past sunday though, james had the brilliant idea that we should try to stop in for brunch. so we did. and it was awesome. it was a wait of about 10 minutes for two people at the communal table.

i had a glass of 2002 reisling kabinett and james had a 2009 grenache blanc. we were very tempted by the pizzas, but opted for the brunch items instead hoping we'll actually be back for dinner one of these days.

i ordered the buckwheat ricotta blueberry pancakes (and the largest freaking blueberries i have ever seen!) and james had the fried egg sandwich, which had mozzarella, prosciutto, arugula, bell peppers and harissa aioli. both were great, but the sandwich was out-of-this-world delicious.

roundup : gotye's somebody that i used to know

2012-01-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

one of my favorite songs of 2011 is gotye's somebody that i used to know featuring kimbra; it kind of blew up on the music scene and now there are a bunch of versions of it out there.

this is the original song + music video:

this was a live session they did on KCRW:

this is a cover done by walk off the earth - five musicions who recorded this particular song on a single guitar all at once - it's rather mind-boggling and amazing:

and since we've been a bit obsessed with dubstep lately, here is a dubstep remix by DUBS.me:

sanford's exciting weekend.

2012-01-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

despite my food adventures this past weekend, sanford too had a big weekend. he played with his neighbor max on saturday then took a nice long walk in venice and santa monica beach on sunday.

and he wants to know, "what are you looking at?"

salt's cure : simple fare in west hollywood.

2012-01-09T21:50:00.000-08:00

dinnered with my beloved tannis at salt's cure in west hollywood. small menu; nice simple food - really enjoyed it.

we shared the pickle plate - it was very tart and fresh. the soft pretzel it came with was quite good. i had the stone crab claws, and tannis had the beef shank; we split a side of russian kale, which i didn't get a photo of.

---
salt's cure
7494 santa monica blvd.
west hollywood, ca 90046
323.850.7258

fresh uni @ the hungry cat.

2012-01-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

had an awesome dinner at the hungry cat for the roomie's birthday tonight.won't go into too much detail, except that they had a special tonight of fresh plucked uni, from santa barbara this morning. can you tell how excited i am?

it was DERICIOUS!

photos courtesy of james t.

---
the hungry cat
1535 n. vine street
hollywood, ca
323.462.2155

brunch @ AOC.

2012-01-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

suzanne goin's AOC is one of my favorite restos in LA - i had my birthday dinner there last year and am seriously considering it again for this year. awhile back, OpenTable had a spotlight deal (kind of like groupon) for $15 for $30 brunch at AOC, as well as $25 for $50 dinner at AOC. obviously i jumped right on them, but time is running out. they both expire before the end of this month, so we cashed in the brunch one this past saturday.

i was going to have wine, but our waitress highly recommended trying something from the selection of mimosas and bellinis. james had the tangerine + basil mimosa (above, left) and i tried the cucumber + mint bellini (above, right). both were really great - light and refreshing, and not too sweet.

we ordered three entrees (hey, we were technically getting $30 off of our meal, so why not?) the first was an oven-baked pancake with blueberries, pistachios with fresh whipped cream and candied meyer lemon on the side. so good! texturally it was more like a cake - i'm tempted to even say i'd want it to be my birthday cake. next was a toasted brioche with gruyere, frisee, prosciutto and an egg. so heavenly. my one complaint is that the knives we had were not sharp so it was very difficult to cute through the amazing prosciutto they had. our last dish was the duck confit and wild mushroom hash which came with two poached eggs and aged balsamic drizzled on top.

freaking delicious, we'll definitely have to be back. and we only have a couple weeks before our dinner one expires. i'm never buy food coupons again - way too stressful.

---

AOC
8022 west third street
los angeles, ca
323.653.6359

photos : prettiest succulents.

2012-01-04T22:46:00.000-08:00

i think these are just the prettiest succulents.

taken at the huntington library.

NYE2011 : the images.

2012-01-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

as previously mentioned, we attended LACMA's the golden stag for new year's eve, which was held at the gorgeous park plaza hotel over by macarthur park.

the event itself was sort of a mess on top of it being new year's even and impossible to get a cab. it took us forever to get a cab there, and forever to get a cab home. they were very disorganized, and the entertainment for the evening was all over the place. however, in the end, it was quite fun and i can't really complain. i think we were really more annoyed at the taxi situation than anything.

best of all though, at the VIP tables, we got a bottle of absinthe and a bottle of veuve clicquot (my favorite!) for the midnight toast, all for free! well, we paid $150/person, so i guess it's not really free, but you know what i mean.

the full flickr photo set can be found here.

NYE2011 : the details.

2011-12-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

i've made new year's eve plans for the first time in years! i believe the past couple years, i've just sat on a couch and had champagne; last year's was my own couch and a bottle of veuve clicquot, so not bad, really. for about the same reasons i hate hollywood, i tend to hate new year's eve and the accompanying parties.

this year though, we stumbled upon something pretty cool - LACMA's the golden stag, a new year's eve in "roaring-20s style. for one night only in L.A.’s legendary park plaza hotel, return to the glamour, big bands, cocktails, dance, and utter charm of a bygone era." tickets were $50, and $150 for VIP; so we thought, why not, let's do this right, and got ourselves on the big daddies and leading ladies VIP list! i'm really looking forward to it - hopefully the head cold james has right now buggers off before tonight.

here is the information we were just sent about the evening with much more details than are available on the website. haven't decided yet if i should / if it's worth it to bring my camera, but if i do, i'll be sure to post.

The Golden Stag, presented by LACMA Muse and Sypher Art Studio

Where

Park Plaza, 607 South Park View, Los Angeles, CA 90057

When
9 pm - 2 am; last call at 1:30

Drink
Waiter service delivers complimentary drinks from the VIP menu (below), plus a midnight champagne toast. Drinks are not included at the Park Plaza bars.

_Beer & Wine
_Champagne
_Pisco Side Car
2oz Pisco, 1oz Triple Sec, squeeze lemon juice;
shaken and strained, garnish with lemon
_Speakeasy Martini
2.5oz Vodka/Gin, splash Dry Vermouth;
shaken and strained, garnish with olive
_Bootleg Manhattan
2.5oz Bourbon, splash Sweet Vermouth;
on rocks, garnish with cherry
_Old Fashioned
2.5oz Bourbon, splash simple syrup;
shaken with orange slice, and cherry, strained over rocks, garnish with orange and cherry
_Champagne Cocktail
5oz Champagne, 1oz Pisco, splash simple syrup;
shake and strain Pisco and simple syrup, add cherry garnish, top with Champagne
_Bee's Knees

2.5oz Gin, pineapple juice, splash simple syrup;
on rocks, garnish with lime
_Prohibition Coffee
2.5oz Vodka, chilled coffee, cream, splash simple syrup;
on rocks, no garnish
_New Orleans
1.5oz Gin, .5oz Absinthe, splash Dry Vermouth, orange juice;
shaken and strained, garnish with cherry

Eat
Fruit and cheese plates to share start the culinary adventure by chef Justin Bastian. Stuffed mushrooms are ready at 10 pm followed by waldorf salad to cleanse the palette and beignets for dessert. Thank you to Melissa's and The Co-Op for their generous donations.

Move
The Speakeasy is in the Bronze Room on the ground floor to the left of the staircase, just past the Gold Room.The Grand Ballroom is upstairs to the left. The Gold and Bronze Rooms both connect to the patio.

For Your Entertainment

Grand Ballroom
9-9:45: Music of the 20s
9:45-10:45: Elliot Deutsch Big Band with special guest Brent Canter
10:45-11:45: Interlude
11:15-11:30: The Lindy Hop Kings; performance followed by an interactive lesson
11:30-12:30: Elliot Deutsch Big Band with Brent Canter, featuring a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" at midnight
12:30-1:15: Modern club music
1:25: Grand Ballroom closes

Speakeasy (Bronze Room)
9-10: Big Daddies and Leading Ladies only
9-9:30: Alice Underground (Instrumental)
9:30-10: Duets with Alice plus solos by Sasha & Tasha
10-10:50: Series of short musical and dance performances, including Syphilrance, Astra Dance Company, Hollywood Hotshots, and The Josephina
10:50-11:20: Pianist Dennis Hamm
11:20-11:30: Diana Knight solo dance performance
11:30-11:50: Interlude
11:50-12: Countdown to Midnight
12-12:05: Hey Pachucho, performed by Sylphirance
12:05-12:35: Duets with Alice
12:35-Close: Music of the 20s

Patio/Grand Staircase
9 pm-Close: Rotating musical and dance performances

a huntington library visit.

2011-12-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

i've been to the gardens at the huntington library several times now. i feel like i almost always get the same photos, so this time i tried doing things a bit differently. i just had my 50mm with me, and i tried to get photos from ground-level, or parallel to the ground, where i usually take plant photos from above. so.. i ended up on my butt or knees a lot. >.<

ramen yamadaya : tonkotsu ramen in culver city.

2011-12-30T21:42:00.000-08:00

i love ramen, and i try to go to all the best spots on LA. my favorites are daikokuya, santouka and shinsengumi - and all for different reasons. i'd recently heard of yamadaya and lots of good things, so i had to go try it.

obviously, that their broth is made from boiling pork bones, was a very, very good sign. it's the only way to do it, and what makes tonkotsu just so darn good.

we ordered a side of the kara-age chicken, and both had the tonkotsu kotteri - rich and fatty ramen with black garlic oil. i always get the kotteri at daikokuya, and i usually try to get the equivalent at the various ramen places i visit. the fattier the better, but yamadaya might be a bit too much for me.

it was quite good. the broth was definitely super thick and fatty - the texture, creamy. while being super fatty, it wasn't particularly flavorful, and i was really hoping for more of that black garlic oil. the noodles are thin and "hard" - my favorite kind. all in all, it was a really good ramen. i still like daikokuya and santouka's soup better. their noodles are as good as shinsengumi though (where you have the option of how "hard" you want your noodles). and really, the kara-age chicken really just kicked ass. one major problem was that the soup was so fatty that if you let it sit for more than a minute, it would coagulate and look like this:

anyway, it's definitely going on my list of top LA ramen, and i'll definitely be going back, but next time i may try a non-kotteri version.

update: panorama taken by james:

---

ramen yamadaya
11172 washington boulevard
culver city, ca
310.815.8776

sunny blue : omusubi in santa monica.

2011-12-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

found this place while walking down main street in santa monica the other day. i totally fell in love with them from my trips to japan, and have always wished one could get these outside of the japanese markets. i just got some very basic ones: tuna mayo, kara tuna, and shrimp mayo (the special of the day) to go. they are made to order, and if you eat it immediately, they just put a fresh nori around it, but if you're getting it to-go like i was, they even have the plastic wrapped nori for you, so that it doesn't get mushy in the mean time. they were a perfect snack for later that day. yay, omusubi!

---

sunny blue
2728 main street
santa monica
310.399.9030

merry christmas to all..

2011-12-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

and to all a good night!

now, gimme those cookies, fat man! he seemed to say...

silverlake's first annual beard and mustache competition.

2011-12-22T20:34:00.000-08:00

tuesday night was silverlake's first annual beard and mustache competition, and james decided to enter it. it was held at the silverlake branch of los angeles public library, and while we had no idea what to expect, we were pleasantly surprised at the turnout of some amazing facial hair. the celebrity judge was joel stein from the LA times. and jack passion, two time world beard champion was also on hand (and won his category, of course) to talk about his book, the facial hair handbook, and answer questions.

james entered in the santa category, which consisted of him and one other guy, with a last minute kid entering himself, and he won! i mean, who wouldn't love this mustache?

close-up of james's mustache.

anyway, the echo park patch does a pretty good write-up on it, for more information. this post is more about some of the pictures i was able to take. i took many more, but have not yet had the opportunity to get them online yet.

freestyle competitor.

james, freestyle and mustache competitor.

jack passion, two time world beard champion.

freestyle competitors.

fake beards - children.

fake beards - women.

winner of freestyle beards.

jack passion talking about his book and answering questions.

silverlake librarian and MC for the evening.

winners of most scholarly.

fake beards - women winners.

fake beards - kid winners.

the winning santas.

jack and james.

a los angeles snow globe.

2011-12-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

gorgeous los angeles bokeh "snow globe" time lapse from all cut up films:

Snow Globe Los Angeles from All Cut Up Films on Vimeo.

roundup : electronic music and old-timey dancin'

2011-12-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

uhm, i love this! clogging or polka (i think) plus lmfao? amazing.

this one is kind of fun, some old school charleston plus daft punk.

interesting how little dance has really changed.

BRAVE(S): disney vs. mlb?

2011-12-20T16:40:00.000-08:00

oh, how exciting!
the animation industry and major league baseball seem to be in a bit of a clash.

from stitchkingdom:

It all started back in March of last year when we reported on trademark applications which appeared to have been confirming a title change for what was then known as The Bear and the Bow, but is now known to be Brave.

Fast forward to this past summer when — after filing a number of extensions — the Atlanta National League Baseball Club, owners of the Atlanta Braves, formally filed an objection to many of the trademark applications. Although trademarks are specific to their singular and plural forms and the Braves do not possess any trademarks for the word BRAVE (only BRAVES), the organization believes that damages will occur as a result of Disney’s trademarks being approved as they have used the singular form before on merchandise and insist it is common for fans, media, et al to use the singular form when referring to a single player, whereas the pluralized form refers to the entire team.

i wonder who has better lawyers? >.<

the eleventh doctor : lacking sources.

2011-12-20T16:33:00.000-08:00

while david tennant / 10th doctor is my personal favorite, i love these images from the matt smith / 11th doctor incarnation.

i love tumblr, as it helps me find these sorts of fun thing, but it sucks because there is NO SOURCE INFORMATION. all i have is the tumblr and/or amazon cloud url for them. i would love to source these properly and give credit where its due, so please please please, if you know who or what made these, do let me know!

children of dreamworks.

2011-12-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

people bring their kids to campus dressed up for halloween every year. they are too darn cute for words.

more photos can be found in my dreamworks halloween 2011 flickr photoset.

i'm on a horse.

2011-12-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

andrew jackson and fountain; jackson square, new orleans, la.

trailer : the dark night rises.

2011-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

source: apple.com/trailers, via comingsoon.net

saw this trailer in theatres this weekend playing before sherklock holmes: a game of shadows (which is a good, fun movie - better than the first i think). i am so excited. especially to also see marion cotillard, anne hathaway and joseph gordon-levitt.

firsts: blew a tire.

2011-12-19T12:51:00.000-08:00

gah, it finally happened. i blew a tire. while driving 60+ mph on the 5 north. at night. hit a pot hole. left front blew out. there wasn't a real shoulder, but some dirt i could pull off on. i was freaking out, because james wanted to change the tire. did i mention this is a night, and there was no shoulder? and what i was pulled off onto wasn't even, so the car was up on an angle? and that we were around a bend, so cars couldn't even see us until they were about 20 yards from us?

anyway, it was not pleasant. james calmed me down though and convinced me he could do it. i stood by and watched traffic though so that i could, theoretically, pull him out of the way in case anything happened, as well as just being more visible standing than he would be crouched down by the tire. it ended up being fine. we got to our destination. and life is okay.

unfortunately, i didn't just blow a tire, my two left side wheels are bent, and thus need to be fixed or replaced. i found the wheels online for $200each. volkswagen wants to charge me $600+ each for new ones. eff that. repairing the existing ones will run me around $150each, so i'm going with that.

thank goodness for james in all this - keeping me calm and knowing about cars. i might still be stuck freaking out on the 5 if it weren't for him.

me and my shadow : crew shirt.

2011-12-17T01:22:00.000-08:00

how exciting. i just got my puss in boots crew hoodie yesterday, and today our very small crew on me & my shadow got t-shirts as our holiday present. fun fun.

frugaldad : illusion of choice.

2011-12-16T18:43:00.000-08:00

i thought this was particularly interesting since dreamworks animation is independent (paramount is our distributor, but we are a publicly owned stand-alone company, unassociated even from dreamworks studios, as far as i'm aware).

from frugaldad.

rise of the guardians : first look.

2011-12-16T12:27:00.000-08:00

from dreamworks animation, via hitfix.

on his Motion/Captured blog over on HITFIX, drew mcweeny does a very nice write-up of our fall 2012 release, rise of the guardians, which he got to preview earlier this week. it includes our very first poster for the film as well (above), which is pretty sweet in my opinion. reading through it, i had no idea how much of a media franchise this was for william joyce, with an accompanying thirteen illustrated childrens chapter-books called the guardians of childhood (two of which are released, the man in the moon and nicholas st. north and the battle of the nightmare king).

from mcweeny:

I like that the film feels very different from the sort of bright comic adventures that most animated films aspire to these days. Each of the Guardians lives in very different worlds, with very different palettes, and as we were shown a few sequences and some design work and a rough trailer, we got to see the way the characters have evolved visually over time. The Tooth Fairy, for example, originally had a much stronger Hindu influence, classically Indian in design, but her finished design makes her look more like a hummingbird or a tiny parakeet. Jackman's getting a chance to turn up the Australian as the Easter Bunny. He's heavily armed and he's got a swagger to him, designed as a long, lean, muscular character.

My favorite design has to be The Sandman, though. I love that he doesn't speak, and he rides around on a cloud of golden sand, perpetually chasing the sunset, showering the cities below him with the very stuff of dreams. He's played for comic relief in some ways, but he's also very wise. It's going to be interesting to see how these very different characters play off of one another, and how they face down the challenge of Pitch, the force of evil in the film.

Pitch is being designed as a very real threat, and this is where you can see a bit of the Guillermo Del Toro in there. Joyce and his director Ramsey talked to us about how important it is to them to make the scary parts genuinely scary, and the movies they mentioned as touchstones, like "Sleeping Beauty" or "Fantasia" were movies that made huge impressions on young viewers because of the way the images seemed to be very primal and dark and terrifying on a basic level. Everyone we spoke with talked about how important it was to them to make the film feel like a big adventure, with peril and stakes and real scale.

it's not one that i'm working on, but i know quite a few people who are.

PIB hoodies and the golden globes.

2011-12-15T15:59:00.001-08:00

we got our puss in boots crew gift today - a hoodie! the above is printed onto our left sleeve. the hoodie is a grey heather, from alternative apparel.

also, the movie was also nominated for best animated feature golden globes today! how very exciting. the other nominees are the adventures of tintin, cars2, rango and arthur christmas. that kung fu panda 2 wasn't nominated (which one, i didn't work on, and two, if only one dreamworks movie is to be nominated, it really should have been kfp2 instead of puss - so i'm doing my best to be objective here), among other reasons i won't voice publicly here, it just shows how much "the industry" doesn't really care or know about animation.

nicole mlakar photography and rufus!

2011-12-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

had to share this from nicole mlakar photography today; meet rufus!

photo taken by nicole mlakar photography, via her blog.

i subscribe to nicole's blog (and totally wish she were LA-based!). she takes amazing pet portraits, and this guy today was just too cute to not share! i mean, just look at that face!!!

arm-resting.

2011-12-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

sanford's favorite spot on the couch - resting his little arms on the arm rest. isn't he insanely flat-faced, even for a frenchie?

DIY : holiday cards!

2011-12-12T16:57:00.000-08:00

made my own holiday cards this year!busted out the home letterpress kit from lifestylecrafts james got me for my birthday, finally. i did a silver damask letterpress print on its side for the top, and used the same pattern for a blind letterpress print on the bottom.

i then took photos of sanford i had printed, and fixed them to the card using some black photo corners.

finally, i sealed it all up with some gold-striped washi tape.

i think it all came out pretty nice, don't you think?

wagville

2011-12-09T16:54:00.001-08:00

i've been wanting to find a doggy-daycare for sanford for quite some time now. he had so much fun at K9 playtime up in san francisco when we went for a long weekend back in july. i would have done it much sooner, but things got so busy during puss in boots crunch time that i kind of forgot about it.

anyway, what got me thinking about it again is the upcoming christmas vacation. we'll be in alabama for christmas, and didn't want to deal with trying to reserve flights for sanford to come on the plane with us when they're already hard to get and expensive. basically, i needed a place to board him and started doing lots of research.

the place i ended up finding was wagville, both because of the facility, reviews and proximity to silverlake. i contacted them and they put me on the waiting list for their christmas boarding, and scheduled sanford for an evaluation, which was today. and he passed! i got to tour the facility, which is really nice and big. with separate indoor and outdoor areas for big and small dogs. someone sat down with me and sanford, asked questions and assessed sanford. then they took him into the small dog area to see how he would get along with the other dogs, and he did really well. i'm such a proud puppy mom right now! everyone there was super nice, and of course, sanford stole the show with how darn cute he is.

all images from www.wagville.com/tour

my impression of the place so far is great, i'm super excited to take him in for doggy daycare - i think it will be really great for him to get to socialize with other dogs. and the best part is, they'll be able to board him over christmas! what a huge weight off my shoulders.

---

wagville
2400 north san fernando road
los angeles, ca 90065
323.222.4442

HtTYD : gift of the night fury.

2011-12-09T09:50:00.001-08:00

the how to train your dragon holiday special, gift of the night fury. it's loaded with cute about halfway through, and even gets to be a bit of a tearjerker at the end. in a happy way of course. ALSO, hiccup's pillow: see that lovely burlap texture/material? that was me. back on the movie that is. kind of happy it's getting so much screen time in the short.

no idea how long this video will be up, or if dreamworks will make whoever take it down. but, enjoy!

update: clearly not very long, as the video has been removed. bummer.

taiwan543

2011-12-08T16:26:00.001-08:00

found a fun new little blog today: TAIWAN543, a self-described "online magazine with a mission to close the gap between Taiwan and the world." i find it a bit amusing that just about all of the staff either grew up in or currently lives in southern california, and a few of them even grew up in the same LA suburb as i did, arcadia. in fact, i recognize one of them from my elementary or middle school days.

anyway, i totally dig it and have subscribed. the taiwanese american community is shockingly small sometimes, and it's always nice to at least feel more connected to it and the "homeland" itself, one way or another. and with posts about taiwanese-americans in the industry, major leage baseball visiting taiwan, and even opportunities to visit taiwan, what's not to love?

trailer : madagascar three.

2011-12-08T10:56:00.001-08:00

the studio's new trailer for madagascar 3, set to come out this summer.

roundup : typographic maps.

2011-12-08T10:07:00.001-08:00

a few months ago, i came across these beautiful city subway maps in type from TRNSPRTNATION. they have them for boston, chicago, london, new york city, san francisco, washingtonDC, and most recently, los angeles! the LA one is a little sad (but that just reflects our public transportation system, really) but it got me to thinking that someone should do one of the freeway system in LA! maybe if i have some free time...

then today, i found axis maps! they offer online interactive map services, but i discovered them through their store of typographic maps. how cool is that! i particularly love that some of the backgrounds/non-street-areas are given the names of the neighborhoods. totally bummed they don't have one for los angeles yet!

bells&whistles.

2011-12-07T17:43:00.001-08:00

i got some new gadgets for the pup! the first, is the Tell Bell. its just a little bell, with a wider button than normal. sanford still occasionally pees in the house when given free reign and i forget to take him out after about an hour and a half, so i'm going to use it to help with the whole house training thing, just so that he has a way of letting me know he has to go.

the second one i am really excited for. its a QR code dog collar! it has a QR-code and a website (that the QR code also points to) etched on it and is a collaboration between dogIDS and PetHub, where i can put his information in case he goes missing and someone finds him! obviously you can't assume everyone will be that tech-y, so the name and number are also etched on there for that. my one qualm so far is that PetHub is pretty slow, and not the most intuitive website/system to use, but it serves its purpose and is mostly a set up and leave alone type thing.

update: so i received an email from pethub last night - crazy! they saw this post i guess and wanted to let me know that they are working on the website-slowness. good to know!

Thanks for the great write-up. Sanford is adorable. We agree -- the site is uber slow. We just moved over to AWS (Amazon Web Services) and we're getting it configured to work with a load balancer and caching front-end servers. Currently when you click around on the http://pethub.com/get-tagged pages and even our articles, they're very peppy and we're working to get the rest of the site performant as well. But, you're right, we cannot argue that recently it's been super slow but I wanted to assure you it's one of our top priorities right now. Thanks again! Glad you're liking the collar and concept.

ohai! you're warm.

2011-12-07T10:19:00.001-08:00

when the weather gets cold, you try to stay warm! the landlord very kindly installed a new heater for us this year (we had one before, but it was extremely inefficient - our gas bill for one month jumped from an average of $15, to $100 last winter!). it's super easy to turn on and off, unlike the old one, is more compact, and honestly, puts out more heat. hopefully the gas bill doesn't jump too much.

anyway, sanford discovered the heater last night and then decided to spend most of the evening planted in front of it, which is behind the couch. so he wouldn't even come hang out on the couch. it's his new best friend. ALSO, we match this morning! i busted out my green hoodie without even thinking about it.

sanford: i don't know what this thing is but it's my new best friend!!

the black keys : el camino

2011-12-06T11:35:00.001-08:00

downloaded the new album el camino from the black keys last night, then promptly uploaded it to my google music account so that i could rock out to it all day today. and that's what i've been doing: ROCKING. OUT.

colorofSEAFOAM.

2011-12-05T17:43:00.001-08:00

my latest color obsession, from the color of.

larry's

2011-12-05T15:41:00.001-08:00

i've been to larry's in venice twice now. the first time was for their happy hour a couple weekends ago, on a cold and rainy afternoon. the second was a warm, sunny sunday for lunch. consists of a covered outdoor patio and a bar - i really like the industrial comfort feel, and its quite a nice little haven on windward avenue, just off the boardwalk.

their happy hour menu consists of pizzas and a few small plates; lunch is pizzas, sandwiches and salads. the food is decently sized and not overly expensive, though not cheap either.

potted chicken liver and foie gras parfait.

porkalicious pizza.

short rib grilled cheese.

the small butter lettuce and vegetable salad (not pictured) you get for $9 is a bit of a rip-off no matter how tasty it is, but the $13 pork cheek BLT that i ordered at the same meal more than made up for it. especially since i could barely pick the thing up, and the braised pork cheeks were melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness, and it came with a chunk out of the biggest pickle i have ever seen.

attempting to eat the pork cheek BLT.

the delightful beer menu.

---

larry's
24 windward avenue
venice, california

lukshon

2011-12-03T23:11:00.001-08:00

finally got around to trying sang yoon's newest resto, lukshon. it's been open for quite awhile, but in culver city, which i rarely make my way out to.

it was quite good, but something didn't quite sit well with me. it's "asian fusion", but what its fusing is a lot of asian cuisines, not a western-asian fusion so much. and i found it really quite tasty, and very reminiscent of what i consider to be comfort food. however, the decor and prices are pretty high-end and modern in comparison to the food, so for me the setting and atmosphere i was in didn't match the food.

[ lukshon photoset ]

UNIQUELA2011

2011-12-03T21:36:00.001-08:00

we went to uniqueLA today! it was both of our first times, and we weren't really sure what to expect, but it was pretty awesome. we were able to walk all of it in about three hours, though we perused pretty quickly and would only take a closer look if something really caught our eye. i was definitely way more into it than james as he really only wanted to look at art and prints, while i dug a lot of the home-made crafty and diy type stuff.

i snagged two prints, two korean radish porcelain cups, taiwan map locket, koi fish earrings, and a laser etched wood block.

prints from humantreerobot and andrea zuill.

korean radish ceramic cups from alyson iwamoto.

taiwan map locket from the weekend store and carp earrings from frolick jewelry.

LOVE/heart laser-etched wood block from search+resQ.

roundup : dragons ampersand pancakes

2011-12-02T11:45:00.001-08:00

here's a quick little roundup of stuff i've found cool/interesting on the interwebs this week:

image from hollywoodreporter.com

our ceo was in australia this week as part of the puss in boots international release press tour. while there, he stopped in to check on the progress of the how to train your dragon arena show and the hollywood reporter did a write-up on it. and it looks so. bad. ass. i need to figure out how to get over to australia for when it opens in march.

image from sixrevisions.com

i'm a bit of a type nerd, and someone did this very cool visual guide to the ampersand (my favorite part is where the name came from: and, per se and).

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;and &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

and last but not least, this little rap-remake that makes me really really happy. i don't know the original song, but i love what this guy did with it! but really, a metal spatula on a non-stick pan? cringe.

shaanxi gourmet : best noodles ever?

2011-12-02T10:15:00.001-08:00

back in early november, it was chinese food week over at eaterLA. they did several articles during the week interviewing chinese restaurateurs in the san gabriel valley including a couple of my favorites JTYH and huge tree pastry. however, it was this article that caught the interest of both me and my brother mike.

and so, one sunday morning, we went to shaanxi gourmet. now, i can't really comment on the authenticity of xian cuisine, but in general the food is good. good flavors. not as spicy as szechuan. they have a wonderful intestine dish. but what i discovered here, are the noodles.

sidebar. anyone who knows me knows that i'm a bit of a noodlephile. i love noodles. all kinds of noodles. to the point that i've made it a goal of mine to learn to make all different sorts of noodles. but, my favorite of favorite noodles, is shaved noodles. basically, its where the chef has a giant block of noodle dough, and with a knife, quickly shaves noodles off the block straight into boiling water or broth. it's amazing. there is nothing that compares texturally. until recently, my absolute favorite shaved noodle was a hole-in-the-wall in philadelphia's chinatown (perfect!), but in LA, it's between JTYH in san gabriel (very finely shaved, not much chew) and mas' islamic chinese restaurant in anaheim (more dense, but great chew).

that is, until i went to shaanxi gourmet. now, they have several different noodles types, and the various noodle dishes each have their own default. but i've only had one type of noodle here because we always ask them to replace it with this noodle. so, in chinese, they call it tsuh mien which translates to a sort of pulled noodle, but to me, it's shaved. it's the default noodle for their lamb noodle soup, which is how we first found it, and it is about an inch wide and very flat. and LONG. insanely long. one noodle will fill your typical rice bowl. and the gluten and texture of it is perfect. we're not sure how they make it.. maybe they really pull the noodle that long then cut it? or they have a ball of dough that the shave around the way you would peel an entire apple? whatever it is, it is delicious. it is so delicious that in the three times i've gone, i've never taken a picture of it because i'm so focused on eating it (but i'll try to remember next time) and i guess it's not technically a shaved noodle, but man is it good.

now, we've had some questionable experiences with the service when we went there, which i won't go into because i don't want to discourage anyone from going, but if you ignore that and are patient and just sort of go with the flow, get the lamb noodle soup, or if you get another noodle dish, ask that it comes with the very wide noodle or tsuh mien, then your mouth will be happy. especially if you're a noodlephile like me.

shaanxi gourmet
8518 valley boulevard
rosemead, california 91770

a pan family thanksgiving.

2011-12-01T22:09:00.001-08:00

the thanksgiving 2011 spread.

my oldest brother john, and his wife and kids joined us in LA for thanksgiving this year. and mike was in town too, so we were so close to having the whole family together.

anyway, i was in charge of thanksgiving dinner, except for the turkey, which my mom made. it came out great! mike made bread from leftover beer-making grains and provided the wine. and james made a pecan pie.

in addition to that, here is what i made:

bacon-wrapped dates.
creamed corn.
japanese sweet potato mash.
peel-and-eat shrimp.
bacon parmesan brussel sprouts.
whole roasted branzino.
rosemary-garlic crusted racks of lamb.
apple pookies (pie-cookies).

it was a fun day, and so good to spend with family. went home everyday of the long weekend basically. and we always ate huge meals. it was essentially food and family overload. it was great, but i'm definitely glad it's over.

[ thanksgiving 2011 photoset ]

sanford meets his cousins.

2011-12-01T21:53:00.001-08:00

oh, kids. since i was spending the entire day of thanksgiving at my parents house, i had to take sanford with me. my sister-in-law is deathly afraid of dogs, an actual sort of phobia i think, so i didn't know how her kids would take to him. they were excited to meet him, until they saw him, at which point they were really scared. they basically just stared at him from the other side of the baby-gate.

sanford, with my nephew and niece, when they were scared of him.

my nephew is quite the brave little boy though, and he quickly started to stick his hand through the gate to pet sanford and give him treats. his bravery gave his older sister some courage, and after a coupe hours, they were both in the kitchen leading him around by his harness, petting him, and feeding him treats.

my niece and nephew after having warmed up to sanford.

the littlest one though, who was only two, remained scared of him until the end. however, she did end up with a sort of weird fascination with him and would keep saying gogo (chinese for "dog") somewhat obsessively throughout the day. but if you brought her near him, or he went near her, she would freak and scream and run away. but start saying gogo again about thirty seconds later.

such a stink.

2011-12-01T11:31:00.001-08:00

what?

oh, sanford. he makes the funniest little faces and sounds. he turned one-year-old earlier this month; and he had quite the eventful thanksgiving meeting his "cousins" (my nieces and nephew) - i'll post more about that later.

speaking of which, he has his own tumblr that i tend to update more than this blog. check it out!

high winds.

2011-12-01T11:21:00.001-08:00

photocredit : john woo, facebook.

my, oh my. last night when i was driving home, i noticed the winds were really strong. we even saw something blow out on the drive home that lit up the entire sky. and then, the winds just kept getting stronger. back home it was craziness, and the power went out a couple times. then it went out sometime overnight and was out all morning. luckily, we still had hot water!

luckily, right around me wasn't too bad other than the power outage. saw lots of branches down, and one downed tree. but then the news was talking about how insane it was, fallen trees and no power all over the place. arcadia, pasadena, san marino and a ton of other school systems are shut down today. i grew up in arcadia my whole life and we never had a day off due to weather. then there are the horror stories of trees and telephone poles crashing into people homes or totaling their cars. insane. these winds are insane, and supposedly, they're coming back in full force this afternoon/evening. eep!

photocredit : rusty grafman, facebook.

a new look.

2011-11-30T18:21:00.001-08:00

frida kahlo, dreamworks halloween 2011 costume contest.

updated the look of the blog a bit.

the new color inspiration comes from my recent obsession with seafoam green. even my nails are painted seafoam green right now.

and i finally figured out how to make the main post column wider, so that i can make my photos wider as well - i dig it because it put them front and center, instead of the piddly little thumbnails they were before.

let's geaux to new orleans!

2011-11-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

after i wrapped on puss in boots finally, and had started on me & my shadow for a few weeks, we took a week off of work to go to the south. the first few days we spent in new orleans. we kept all our time in the french quarter as we were only there for 2 full days and 2 half days. most of it was spent walking around exploring and eating.

view of the quarter from the mississippi river.

we got there on a day when it was in the 70s and not very humid.. when the day before it had been in the 90s! we definitely lucked out.

inside the quarter; decatur street.

the food was amazing. the restos we ate at were bayona, domenica, august and antoine's. august was exciting because they had mangalitsa pork, (3 ways!) which i've been dying to try for awhile now.. and it was amazing.

bourbon street at dusk.

and of course we went to the famous cafe du monde every morning for coffee and beignets. in that respect, thank goodness we were only there for 3 mornings! i'd get so fat if i lived in the south, if only off of these...

coffee & beignets at cafe du monde.

a highlight on our last full day in new orleans, is that we took a cemetary tour, which for most of it was just the two of us. our tour guide, george, was super nice and awesome, and at the end of the tour pointed us to frenchmen street and said that if we want to see the local music scene we should head there at night. we did and it was great! we even ran into him there at one of the little bars open mic sessions. pretty awesome.

open mic somewhere on frenchmen street.

after new orleans, we flew into alabama for a few days. first to see james's family in northern alabama and east tennessee.. then down to montgomery for his huntingdon college reunion. then birmingham to meet some more of his friends before flying back to LA. it was definitely a much needed, though a bit of a whirlwind, vacation.

[ new orleans photoset ]

i suck.

2011-11-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

ugh, it's been forever since i've posted.

and i can't do so quite yet, but i will!

events include a trip to the south and the puss in boots wrap party!

sanford on chevron.

2011-09-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

i ordered a fantastic new chevron rug from urban outfitters, and don't you think sanford just looks so handsome on it? this is his please-don't-go-to-work-and-leave-me-all-alone face.

hollywood performing arts.

2011-08-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

i hate hollywood. it's really the one part of LA, where after all this time, i really just can not stand, and simply being there makes me cringe. and in the past two weekends, we've been there THREE TIMES.

first was a dance performance called TRIBE by joseph allen decker dance company. joey is one of my bar method instructors, and owner of the studio, so when his dance company was having a performance, of course i went. it was a lot of fun, and great to see a live dance performance after so long. makes me miss it really.

the next night, we went to see cirque du soleil's IRIS at the kodak theatre. it was absolutely brilliant, and i adored some of their interpretations of film and its origins.

hollywood bowl.

then this past weekend, we went to the hollywood bowl (both of our first times) to see rodrigo y gabriela perform with the LA philharmonic. los amigos invisibles opened for them. what a great show and venue! it was particularly exciting since gabriela made a shout out to puss in boots (the movie i'm working on, whose soundtrack they contributed to).

so yea, while i really enjoyed the performances we sent to see, the getting their and getting home was really annoying, but i guess hollywood has redeemed itself in my eyes a little bit.

and now, randomly, here is sanford in his new favorite spot on the porch:

sanford and his alligator.

so lousy.

DIY : window film.

2011-08-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

so, i bought and installed the gila energy saving platinum window film this weekend! i think i did a pretty spiffy job. i did the installation mid-afternoon on my west-facing bedroom window first, and when i had just the first panel installed it made a HUGE difference.

on the untouched side, you could definitely feel the sun beating in, and that slight burn sensation on the skin. but on the film-applied side, it actually felt like being in the shade! my biggest concern before installation was that it would be too heavily tinted and darken the room too much, but as you can see, its actually quite a mild tint and doesn't bother me at all. installation itself really isn't too bad - the most complicated thing for me was actually having to dismantle my desk from the living room to bring into the bedroom so that i could do all the work in there.

i did the installation on sunday, and monday night when i got home from work my room was actually at a comfortable temperature rather than the way-too-warm-i-need-to-open-my-windows-right-away temperature it usually is. it will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. especially in the winter, since its supposed to help "retain winter heat" as well.

a little do.it.yerself.

2011-08-06T17:09:00.000-07:00

not sure what it is, but lately i've been wanting to do DIY-type stuff. nothing in particular, i just want to make/build/create things. maybe because part of me wants to buy a house, and i know i can't afford what i would actually want, so i'd have to buy a fixer-upper and do a lot of the work myself. and while that's a few years off, i'm a bit of a planner and somewhat obsessive compulsive.

anyway, while sitting at work today, i realized that i have totally done-it-myself once already pretty recently (though it was before i caught the DIY bug, so i didn't realize that it fit into the category) so i thought i'd share (my apologies for the awful image quality).

a few months ago, i was moved from a shared office at work into a cubicle that faces a hallway. that's quite a bit of foot traffic, and i don't like feeling like people are looking at what i'm doing behind my back, so i wanted a way to set up some privacy. lots of people at work just buy and put up soji screens, but i don't like how stiff they feel, and wanted something much more dynamic. so, since i had some extra japanese noren curtains, i decided to build a little structure and hang them up around my cube.

i bought pvc pipe, elbow joints, clamps and a pipe cutter at home depot, as well as some yellow fabric to make the side panel (it was too small to fit a full noren curtain) and voila! i think it turned out pretty nice, and i've gotten quite a few compliments on it.

the clamps were the smallest thing i could find to anchor the structure to the cubicle, since i couldn't actually cut a hole in the cube itself. i wasn't sure how it would work since they kind of stick out a bit, but it hasn't been an issue at all.

i used 3/4" PVC pipe for the vertical parts of the structure, and 1/2" for the horizontal so that the curtains would fit. the outer corner of the cube where i had nothing to clamp the structure to, i happened to find a cardboard "corner" from our marketing department that worked great to stabilize it. otherwise i would have found the equivalent of a small umbrella stand. the hardest part was figuring out which pvc joints i would need and buying the necessary converters for them.

from inside the cube.

there is a bit of a sag on the horizontal bar since the curtains are heavy and i used a thinner pvc pipe. but it's pretty high up (i made it 8 ft tall, standard door height) and not really noticeable.

anyway, the next thing i plan on doing is installing energy saving window film in my apartment. we don't have central air, and the windows are super thin. the apartment gets really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter, and this film is supposed to help a lot with that.

crunchy overtime.

2011-08-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

seen in monterey, california.

i really haven't been updating as much as i would like, but then again, there isn't much to update. the movie i'm working on is in major crunch, so i've been working six-day weeks and extra hours two nights a week. so my days are kind of like this: wake up, walk and feed sanford, maybe go work out if i got up super early, get ready and go to work, get home, walk and feed sanford, go to bed. it's been especially hard since i've had the late shift every friday too.. so anything fun like a movie is left for saturday nights, and sunday is reserved for cleaning the apartment and getting some quality time with the pup. i feel bad complaining though.. just a 4 or 5 weeks of this left!

hang-snoozing.

2011-07-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

sanford napping in the car during a roadtrip.

my dog is silly.

the color of mustard.

2011-07-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

a fun visual web-search algorithm will show you the "color" of anything! so i had to make one for the blog.

photo: snake.

2011-07-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

snake at the aquarium in chattanooga, tn.

i'm pepe.

2011-07-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

fun diner salt & pepper shakers.

this photo makes me happy; hell, i'm really happy. lately i have been emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted, but in a really great way. the sort of exhaustion that comes from working hard and pushing yourself, and the satisfaction that comes with it. i'm in a really good, stable place without being bored or complacent or insecure or anxious.

the fourth in the north.

2011-07-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

i haven't updated in forever - life's been relatively quiet yet busy. however, independence day weekend was quite a lot of fun despite being relatively last-minute in planning.

cannery row and monterey bay aquarium.

delicious austrian riesling @ passionfish.

fanny bay oysters with carrot-ginger granita @ passionfish.

in quick summary, we left LA saturday morning for monterey. went to the monterey bay aquarium and explored the cannery row area, then dinnered at passionfish in pacific grove - super fresh sustainable seafood. the fanny bay oysters were definitely the highlight.. the carrot-ginger granita on top instantly fills your palate with a split-second of almost overwhelming ginger flavor, and then it's gone and replaced with the sweetness of the fanny bay oyster. it was so good we ordered a second round!

loulou's griddle in the middle on monterey wharf two.

giant banana pancakes @ loulou's.

sunday morning we went sea kayaking (unfortunately no photos are available since i wasn't about to bring my camera on a kayak). it was amazing! we got to see quite a few wild sea otters including a little pup. afterwards, we brunched at loulou's griddle in the middle, a diner on the wharf. huge portions, delicious food. i had the squiddle and eggs (fried calamari steak and eggs), but i really wish i'd gotten one of their massive pancakes.

lardo and apricots @ incanto.

sunday afternoon we packed up and drove to san francisco. after exploring union square and chinatown for a bit, we met jon and jason at incanto in noe valley for dinner. SUCH. GOOD. FOOD. i had lardo for the first time there (served with apricots, the way the spanish serve jamon and melon). and the pork shoulder i had for my entree was killer. plus, it was so much fun to finally hang out with jon - we're like kindred taiwanese food-loving spirits.

mixed "salumi cone" @ boccalone.

alcatraz from fisherman's wharf.

a foggy golden gate bridge.

we dropped sanford off at k9 playtime, a doggy day care, on monday morning then proceeded to do our own walking tour/exploration of the city along the coastline from the ferry building to the golden gate bridge. at the ferry building, we found boccalone, where incanto gets their lardo from! they specialize in cured pig parts - we just had to lunch there (but no lardo this time, just some delicious sandwiches). when we reached the marina area, we grabbed a tuna melt at a place whose name i don't remember, before continuing our walk to golden gate. we didn't quite walk all the way there, but were pretty close when we decided to just hitch a cab ride back to the hotel.

salt & pepper crab @ r&g lounge.

for dinner we went to r&g lounge in chinatown for some delicious salt and pepper crab. the place was packed, so there was a bit of a wait, but totally worth it. no fireworks for us, though we definitely heard quite a few while walking back from dinner.

sanford had so much fun at k9 on monday that we dropped him off there tuesday morning while we packed up and checked out of the hotel. we also drove down to daly city to have dim sum at koi palace before picking him up for the drive back to LA. he slept pretty much the entire drive back.

all photos from the trip:

[ monterey photoset ]

[ san francisco photoset ]

resto specific photos (subsets of the above):

[ passionfish photoset ]

[ loulou's photoset ]

[ incanto photoset ]

[ r&g lounge photoset ]

walking breakthrough!

2011-05-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

i've had sanford for a little over two months now, and the absolutely most frustrating thing is walking. no he's not house-trained yet, and i've been dealing with his giardia (intestinal parasites) since i got him, but all the doesn't really bother me compared to trying to walk him every day. every two feet he just stops, and often down plops down on his belly as you can see above.

i didn't want to pull too hard and hurt him, plus he was so scared of everything when i first brought him home that i didn't want to push him to do anything he didn't want to. i had also read that if you pull forward, it triggers the stubborn/resistance in him. so walks have been filled with lots of stops, lots of waiting for him to decide to move forward, or enticing him with treats. well, yesterday i realized that he's totally been playing me. he's learned that if he stops, then i stop. and hey, he might even get a treat out of it. and this is every single day for two months now. and it is exhausting. and frustrating. and i was just about at my wits end.

so i changed my strategy. now, i do not stop. this doesn't mean that i charge forward and drag him. i slow down, but i continue to move forward and pull forward as gently and slowly as i can. i absolutely do not yank. i also pull up so that he can't plop down on his belly where i really could hurt him. and guess what? it's working. he is definitely fighting me a bit.. but he moves forward. our morning walks that have been taking up to forty minutes took only twenty this morning!

after two months of very slow, painful walks i finally feel like we're getting somewhere - and it's a huge, huge weight off my shoulders.

kung fu panda TWO.

2011-05-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

friday night was the ku fu panda 2 crew screening and wrap party. the screening was at the gibson amphitheatre, as usual, and the after party was on the universal studios lot in the globe theatre / streets of the world area. first of all, the movie is amazing. even better than the first, in my opinion. more action. funnier. and even more emotional. super intense, but very well timed. i got all teared-up three times. jack black even showed up before the movie started to "thank [us] in advance for all the accolades that will be showered upon [him]" for the movie. super proud of everyone who worked on it. the party was great using the indoor/outdoor street space, and lots of fun as usual. though the chinese acrobatic acts they brought in were a big.. kitschy.

impromptu frenchie party!

2011-05-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

frenchies at the dog park.

i feel really guilty that i don't spend enough time with the pup since i work all day and am pretty pooped out myself when i get home from work. so, we had a big sunday! first, his ama and agong (my parents) came over and played with him around lunch time.

in the afternoon, i drove over to the silverlake reservoir, parked on the far end from the dog park then we had a nice long walk to the park itself. then he went got to play for well over an hour with other dogs and three frenchies we met there - romy, luna and louie. after that, we did the long walk back, where we met a three-year-old red-fawn-black-masked frenchie name oliver. and then he slept (and farted!) for the rest of the evening. i was pretty exhausted and i didn't do nearly as much running and playing as he did.

cake pop at starbucks?

2011-05-13T09:49:00.001-07:00

i don't even like starbucks, but they now have cake pops! this one is birthday cake flavored. yum!

fried chicken and beer.

2011-05-10T22:31:00.000-07:00

forgive the awful photo! tonight we went to eva for their fried chicken and beer night. all-you-can-eat-and-drink for $29. their fried chicken was delicious as always - twenty four hour buttermilk marinade - and the beer was a firestone dba served in red dixie cups! very cute, very delicious, and we even spotted (and heard) seth rogan there.

the woes of intestinal parasites.

2011-05-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

the pup has giardia, an intestinal parasite. he's basically had it since i brought him home back in march, and after three rounds of medication, he still has it and the vet isn't quite sure what the best way is to proceed. poor little guy.

in happier news, he turned six months old today! happy half birthday, sanford!

deja tango.

2011-05-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

this past weekend was a big argentine tango festival in santa monica called the SMITH (santa monica international tango holiday). it's organized by several of the tangueros i know through my brother and the time a few years ago when i used to take classes and go to milongas.

anyway, they had a beginners bootcamp that was about 4 hours each on saturday and sunday consisting of 6 classes. so i went! and it was fun. and refreshing. and exciting. and made me really want to get back into it again. so maybe i will.

sanford dodger koufax.

2011-04-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

this is the new love of my life - sanford! born november 10, 2010; adopted by yours truly march 19, 2011. he is the cutest, funniest little guy ever and he's brought a ton of joy and laughter and cuteness to my life. he's not perfect, and he pisses me off often, but he's just so darn cute. isn't he just so handsome and distinguished-looking?

ps. for those who don't know, sanford "sandy" koufax is the greatest dodgers pitcher of all time, and one of the best in history. so that's who my pup is name after.

fresh slate.

2011-04-28T16:20:00.000-07:00

its been almost a year since i've posted anything.
the past year has been rather tumultuous, but life is settling down and i'm back in a good place, so i may start keeping up with this thing again.
first things first.. a new look for the blog - tada!

vacay days 22-23 : farewell, tokyo.

2010-06-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

trained it back to tokyo early wednesday morning and headed to the park hyatt hotel (as made famous by lost in translation) where we decided to splurge for our last night in the city / country. ridiculous. absolutely ridiculous. we lunched at a small yakitori place called echigoya in omoide yokocho, a tiny alley beneath the shinjuku train station, then went back to the hotel for afternoon tea in the peak lounge.

from there, we jumped out to mitaka where the ghibli museum is - and holy freaking cow. it is such an awesome place. there is one room / permanent exhibit where miyazaki "demonstrates" the principles of animation, but really, he's just showing off what a master he is. all visitors also get 3 film frames from one of his movies as their ticket. and entry to watch a short produced by the studio. the one we saw was about sumo wrestling rats - which was especially funny after having been to a real sumo tournament earlier in the trip. no photos or videos were allowed inside though, and it's too hard to explain, but anyone who gets the chance to go absolutely must. it's mind-blowing.

after grabbing dinner-to-go at the train station, we went back to the hotel and spent some time at the pool, then went up to the new york bar (again, from lost in translation) for drinks and live jazz. i had three sicilianas (a mimosa, but with blood orange juice!! - so tasty).

thursday morning, we breakfasted at the hotel before checking out and heading to the airport. our flight left tokyo at 3pm on thursday.. and arrived in los angeles nine hours later, at 8am on thursday morning. trippy.

the trip was exhausting in so many ways, yet so much fun. quite an experience, but it is definitely good to be home.

vacay day 21 : last day in kyoto.

2010-06-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

we took today pretty easy, no serious agenda. first we wandered through nishiki market, saw another temple, and explored kyoto station. it is a gorgeous, gorgeous train station. and massive as well. on the way back to our hotel area, we were walking on a riverside path when it suddenly started to pour (when half an hour earlier it had been hot and sunny), and we were luckily able to run under a bridge for shelter. after an hour or so without any sign of clearing up, we ran up to the street level and grabbed a taxi instead. after dinnering on some udon, we walked around some more, specifically over in gion, where we spotted 3 geisha! they were all in a hurry and avoiding tourist cameras however.

anyway, now we're all packed and ready to head back to tokyo in the morning.

vacay days 19-20 : day trips.

2010-05-31T07:23:00.000-07:00

sunday morning we took the shinkansen to hiroshima, but then immediately jumped on another train + ferry ride to the island of miyajima, where the famous floating itsukushima shrine. we were lucky enough to arrive at high tide when the ground beneath it is completely submerged like you see in all the pictures. when we left several hours later, it was low tide and you could actually walk right up to it. from there, we took the island's ropeway up to mt. misen, then hiked to the peak. the views were breathtaking. after we got back to the foot of the mountain, we grabbed some quick eats (grilled skewered meats, grilled oysters, grilled squid on a stick!) and headed back to hiroshima. there, we checked out the a-bomb dome and peace memorial park. it's a pretty stark and devastating reminder of the past. i can't imagine living there, either as a japanese or american. we munched on some hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (your basic okonomiyaki but with noodles cooked into it!), then back in kyoto, we had dinner at nippon omen. despite how tasty it was, i was unable to tell the difference between omen and udon.

monday we day-tripped it to nara, the old capital of japan. it felt like a pretty small town, where the main attractions are the todai-ji temple and its massive buddha inside, and the "tame" deer who wander the city and will bow to you for food (at least that's what we were told; however, when i pulled out the crackers we'd bought to feed them i was basically attacked/chased by a small herd of deer - i did eventually get one to bow). we did quite a bit of walking around nara before heading back to kyoto. despite all the tasty foods we've been having, we haven't had sushi since our first day in japan when we went to tsukigi fish market, so we decided to do the cheesy/touristy, yet delicious and affordable option of conveyor belt sushi! so delicious. so cheap. so happpyyyyy!

anyhow. tuesday is our last day in kyoto. wednesday we go head back to tokyo, and thursday we head back to los angeles. can't believe this crazy trip is near its end!

vacay days 14-18 : whirlwind kansai.

2010-05-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

it's been few days since i've posted, as we've been running around the kansai area. i'm too lazy to go into too much detail for five full days, so here's a quick summary.

tuesday!
shinkansen to kyoto. visited kinkaku-ji (the golden pavillion) and kyomizu temple. walked through southern higashiyama, and shopped for traditional japanese goods on sannen-zaka and ninen-zaka. bought a sake set and some tea cups. walked around the shopping district by our hotel at night.

wednesday!
trained it to kinosaki - a small town in northern kansai famous for their onsens (natural hot springs). it was raining so we just hung out at our amazing ryokan (traditional japanese hotel), nishimura honkan. we were served snacks when we arrived, then a huge five or six course kaiseki dinner in our room. the two hot springs in the hotel itself were really really nice. it was my first time actually doing it (in the past, i would have had to go with my mom, which is a bit uncomfortable for me, especially with the whole naked thing). i was lucky to have it to myself most of the time, but once i was in a tiny one and was joined by four old japanese women. awkward.

thursday!
one last dip in the hot spring, then train ride down to osaka. wandered around the minami area in the afternoon, i'm really not that big a fan of osaka. especially compared to kyoto and tokyo. something about it just rubs me the wrong way. then went out to koshien stadium to watch the tigers game. i like the stadium much better than tokyo dome, although the all-dirt infield is quite strange. in the seventh-inning stretch, everyone blows up these balloons and releases them. it's nuts.

friday!
went to osaka-jo (castle) and then over to the tempozan area, where we went on their ferris wheel (supposedly the biggest in the world - and my first time on one!) and the kaiyukan aquarium. quite possible the best aquarium i've ever been to. i spent so long watching the sea otters (my favorite). and their central multi-floor 'pacific ocean' tank is just ridiculous. also, had an amazing tonkatsu dinner at dojima hana in the kita area.

saturday!
shinkansen back to kyoto, where we spent the day in the arashiyama area. quite possibly the coolest thing ever was going to the iwatayama monkey park/sanctuary, where you can just wander amongst lots of japanese monkeys - though they warn you to not look them in the eye. we also did a bit more tourist-y shopping, and stopped by the tenryuji temple and gardens, as well as walked through the bamboo forest. we dinnered back near our hotel - shabu shabu at kashin, and grabbed dessert at crepe ojisan. yummm!

vacay days 11-13 : rounding out tokyo.

2010-05-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

saturday morning we explored the imperial palace east gardens (the rest of the palace is closed to the public for most of the year =/ ) then headed west to walk around omotesando / harajuku / takeshita dori. it was packed, and japanese girls are really wacky. from there, we checked out the neighboring meiji jingu shrine, where we saw a couple traditional japanese wedding processions. quite the juxtaposition from where we'd been 10 minutes earlier.

for lunch, we headed down to ebisu and got the kyushu style honten kasane aji ramen at ippudo, i bought a sweet chien ming wang action figure at a toy store that specialized in american toys, and then had stopped at frames in daikanyama for a rest and some sangria. a good chunk of our afternoon was spent in the starbucks overlooking shibuya crossing, just watching the insane number of people that cross the street from five different corners, and all the funny things the japanese wear.

that night we went to roppongi to try the kogashi (black) ramen at gogyo. mind-blowing. then we headed to shinjuku just to see the craziness and walk through the golden-gai a bit. it's a series of about 5 very small alleyways containing over a hundred tightly packed bars, each holding only about 7-10 patrons. it's nuts. we stopped in one that we had read about to be foreign-friendly (many places in shinjuku are not) called la jetee and had a beer.

sunday we slept in - the first time i've slept in in several weeks (yes, since before i went on vacation) - and grabbed a coffee and sandwich at doutor. it was raining, but we decided to head back to asakusa again to see it during the day. i found a store specializing in studio ghibli stuff and bought a sweet totoro fabric panel. while walking the nakamise shopping area between the kaminarimon gate and the sensoji temple, we found delicious azuki (sweet red bean) filled pancakes. we also later munched on some tako (octopus) pancake balls.

after stopping at the nissan and sony showrooms in ginza, we bounced over to jingu stadium, home of the tokyo yakult swallows. unfortunately, it had been raining all day, and the game was cancelled. normally, you can't get the money back on tickets until the next day, but we must have looked super lost, dejected and confused, because they gave us our money right away in the main office. plus they gave us each a gift (a little jar of jingu stadium dirt). and then they offered to let us see the stadium, so we got to go on the field and take some pictures. awesome.

since we got our money back, we decided to go do a nice dinner instead and settled on an izakaya place called en on the 42nd floor of the shiodome city center building. it had a pretty great view (and would have been better if it weren't raining) and the food was really great. we had an order of sake, and quite a few yummy eats:

kougen-cabbage and crab salad
deep-fried whale meat in tatsu style
grilled long eggplant
grilled skewered scallops with sea urchin and soy
seared fatty tuna with garlic soy
miyazaki hyuja chicken on hot pebble
broiled sea bream collar with rock salt
rice flour dumplings with azuki

and yes, i had whale meat, and it was delicious.

monday morning we went to shibuya to take care of a few errands, and went shopping in a couple variety stores (the loft and tokyu hands). after grabbing a beef bowl at sukiya, we spent the afternoon doing laundry and packing, before heading to tokyo dome for the yomiuri giants game against the orix buffaloes. japanese baseball is nuts. first, you can bring drinks, including beer, into the stadium. when you enter, you just have to let them pour it all into paper cups for you. there are tons and tons of food options. they have designated smoking areas, which are really glass cages. and instead of the walking vendors being men, they are cute dolled-up girls in shorts/skorts and bright shirts and hats. and most of them are "beer girls" with small kegs on their backs. as for the game itself, when a player hits a home run, he gets a stuffed animal. and the fans have many different chants that they do for the entire game, and whole sections are standing and chanting, being led by fans playing trumpets. the whole thing is crazy. and amazing.

vacay day 10 : tokyo 360.

2010-05-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

woke up early and went for a run around the imperial palace. we were under the impression that it would just be a couple miles, and were somewhat embarrassed at how tired we were and assumed we were super out of shape due to the vacation. however, we just mapped the run, and it was just under five miles, so we feel better now (=

last night, we looked into how to get tickets to the ghibli museum (ghibli as in studio ghibli, as in hayao miyazaki movies!) and found out the only way to get them in japan was to purchase them from a machine (known as loppi) at lawson convenience stores. and it's all in japanese. so it was quite the adventure in trying to get these tickets, even with the detailed instructions we were able to find online. luckily, people in japan are very helpful.

we went to iidabashi for lunch with a kimiko's friend icchan and her son hayato. she took us to soba neriya bunraku, a soba kaiseki place. we met with her because she's the one that got us tickets to three baseball games at three different stadiums in japan. we brought two little shrek toys for her son, who's a year and half old, and super duper cute. i so wanted to pinch his freaking cheeks.

made a quick stop at shibuya crossing to check out the hachiko statue, and shibuya crossing. however, not being the weekend, the crossing wasn't nearly as busy as we expected, so we left and will be returning on sunday for the full effect.

before going back to the hotel, we went to the tokyo metropolitan government building, which has two observation towers that give you nearly 360 views of tokyo, and even mt. fuji if the day is clear enough (it wasn't). it was pretty awe-inspiring. there was also a toy store up there and i bought a bunch of totoro goodies.

at night, we went to experience "high culture" as ~~pushed onto~~ recommended to us by mr henderson, who got us tickets to suntory hall for the tokyo philharmonic orchestra. tonight they performed mozart's concerto for flute and harp in c major and mahler's symphony no. 5 in c-sharp minor. it freaking blew my mind. plus the concert hall was absolutely gorgeous. since we arrived early, we grabbed a glass of wine in the lounge of the adjoining intercontinental hotel, and afterwards grabbed dinner at aux baccanales. the food was amazing, but it was strange as we were essentially kicked out at 11.30p for closing, which we've never had happen, ever, in a nice restaurant. but i guess that's the price you pay for dining out in a country where tips are not paid.

vacay day 9 : nikko.

2010-05-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

took the train out and spent the day up in nikko, where there are several shrines and temples, and lots of moss-covered things. it actually reminded me a lot of the cove in how to train you dragon. the temples and shrines were gorgeous, it was such a bummer that we couldn't take pictures at all inside. especially at the rinno-ji temple, where there are three 8 meter tall wooden buddha/deity statues covered in gold. mind-blowingly beautiful. the weather was cool, foggy and drizzly, which really worked out with the mossy ancient environment. there were tons of schoolchildren there on field trips, and one of them had assigned their kids to go up to foreign tourists and ask them questions in english. we, or rather dan, were approached twice. it was quite amusing.

before leaving nikko, we found a little stand by the train station selling some sort of fried snack filled with red bean. it was basically a tempura battered and fried ball of red bean paste, with salt sprinkled on it (same awesome effect as sprinkling salt on carmel) - so good!

we got back to tokyo around 6.30p, specifically asakusa. it was raining pretty hard, so we did a quick walk of the senso-ji temple, before grabbing a quick bite of okonomiyaki (a savory japanese pancake, filled with meat(s) and cabbage) at sometarou. it's a first for me, and very yummy.

vacay day 8 : fish, electronics and sumo.

2010-05-19T06:00:00.001-07:00

woke up bright and early (4am!) to go watch the tuna auctions at the tsukigi fish market, then wandered around the wholesale part of the market taking pictures. the place is insanely huge, and even though i'd been before as a kid, it was still quite and experience. around 7a, we stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall sushi joint called yamazaki right by the market and had some amazingly fresh (and new!) sushi. the new stuff we tried was the shako (a sort of clam/shrimp? with roe still in it), akagai (red clam) and ootoro (same as toro, but "prime" or a fattier better piece - holy cow it was so freaking good!!!!).

we wandered akihabara, aka electric town, for a bit. it was mind-boggling of course. found a pretty awesome collection of lomography cameras at one place too. they literally had everything (holgas - including stereo, pinhole and tlr; dianas; etc etc). for lunch we stopped at a department store food court, where i felt a bit ashamed because we went to a chinese place called xi'an. i ordered their dan dan toshomen, at which point i saw the chef making SHAVED NOODLES for it!! i guess japanese toshomen = chinese dow xiao mien. absolutely worth it, and SO GOOD.

we spent the afternoon at the sumo tournament going on in tokyo right now. very interesting stuff, and it got progressively more interesting the higher the rank of the wrestlers we saw.

final stop of the night was ikebukuro to try out a ramen place called tonchin, which is famous for their tonkotsu-style ramen. you order and pay at a little vending machine, then hand the ticket to a waiter while you wait for a seat, then when you sit down there is little-to-no wait for your food. and oh-em-gee, that ramen was so freaking good. i love japan for so many reasons, but food is really up there.

ALSO, update on the bug bites. my left leg is INSANE. yesterday, all the bites were really swollen, and became bruises. today, the swelling is down on the bites of my left leg, but my ankle is completely swollen up (ie, i have a cankle, ugghhh) and the best i can deduce is that the swelling / bad blood flow has just moved south due to gravity (especially with all the walking we've been doing), or i sprained it a little (or both!). it's gross. i hate this. stupid effing mexican mosquitoes.