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Japan Part Three – Kanazawa

The last post ended with us needing to plan our next stop. We were scheduled to leave Kyoto the next day and hadn’t finalized our plan. Before I get to the plan, I have to step back to the Not Suspicious Bar in Asakusa, Tokyo.

When we were there, we took seats at the bar. There was an empty seat to the right of me, then a group of four Australians occupying the rest of that end of the bar. A young man took the seat between me and the Australians. It turned out he was an American from Florida and taking an impromptu 3-week holiday in Japan. I assumed he was military as he said he had some time off and jumped on a flight to Tokyo.

We made some small talk and he also engaged in conversation with the Australians. One of the Australian women was very talkative and gave the guy next to me advice about where to go and what to see. Donna overheard much of the conversation as I talked to the bartender and didn’t pay as much attention.

After the Australians left, the bartender told us the talkative women had been coming to Japan for a few months per year for about 16 years! She was an avid skier and had a home near Kanazawa. Donna made note of this.

While we were planning our next move, I had an ulterior motive. I wanted to head northwest to the west coast of Japan. I wanted to make a visit to the Takefu Knife Village outside of Echizen and then go to Sanjo near Niigata – another knife making area.

Donna checked on hotels in Echizen and didn’t find much that we would want to stay in. Echizen is fairly small and mostly agricultural although there are electronics and apparel factories. Donna brought up Kanazawa and recalled the Australian woman being very enthusiastic about telling the guy at the bar all of the things to see there and how it wasn’t as crowded and also slower paced than Tokyo or Kyoto.

The Shinkansen train to Kanazawa stopped at Tsurugu Station where we could transfer to an Express train to Echizen. The thought was we could make Takefu Knife Village a midday stop, then continue on to Kanazawa. I checked train schedules and we found a way to make it happen, by continuing on Shinkansen from Echizen to Kanazawa. We decided to take some time to get to know Kanazawa and bag the excursion to Niigata. It was too much to try and Kanazawa seemed like the right thing to do. We would stay there until we went back to Tokyo.

The story behind Takefu Knife VIllage could fill several posts, but in a nutshell it comes down to this. In the 1980s, the Japanese knife industry was facing a crisis. Sales were down and artisans crafting the knives were aging. Fewer young people were interested in apprenticing in the small villages and shops to learn to become master bladesmiths.

A group of Echizen knife makers got together, informally at first, and discussed solutions for the future of their craft. Eventually, 10 makers formed a cooperative and created the Echizen Knife Village. This is a shared workplace offering clean, fully equipped facilities with master bladesmiths willing to take on young apprentices and teach them the craft. This worked – it attracted a number of young people interested in creating traditional Japanese knives. Many of them came up in the 1990s and 2000s and have established their own businesses and worldwide clientele. I have a knife from a Takefu graduate, Yoshimi Kato. I bought it several years ago and today his knives are commanding premium prices.

Donna booked a hotel in Kanazawa, I bought train tickets and we were all set. This is how I like to vacation – a set beginning and end point with spontaneous destinations in between. I like the flexibility rather than a rigid schedule and I like hearing first hand from people with local knowledge about places I might not have otherwise considered.

On Thursday, October 3rd, we made the trek to Kanazawa Station. We had a better idea of the layout, but it was just as large and confusing as the last time we were here. I found the Shinkansen JR ticket office. Although I had bought my tickets and reserved seats online, I still had to check in and get paper tickets to get us through to the correct platform.

We gave ourselves plenty of time and shopped for Bento box lunches to take on the train.

The platform was nearly empty when we arrived. I had a little confusion over where we should wait to board the train. A monk I assumed was a Buddist showed me where we should wait to get on our car.

The monk walking away from me directed us to wait here for the train

The platform filled with people just before the train arrived and the monk had steered us right – our car stopped right in front of us.

When we reached Echizen Station, we found a modern and very clean facility – of course. I don’t know what I really expected, but I figured Echizen was more of an outpost. I guess it was – we were the only people to depart the train there. We deposited our luggage in lockers. Like just about everything else in Japan, it’s automated. You choose a locker, put your stuff inside, then pay through a machine. The machine spits out a ticket with a bar code that will open the locker when you use the code reader on your return.

It was raining lightly as we left the station to find a taxi to Takefu. It wasn’t hard to find, but the thing is, you don’t pay the driver cash. You need to go to the information booth and buy a taxi ticket. I bought a round trip at a cost of about $5 each way and off we went. The knife village is outside of town and we drove through farm land for about ten minutes and were dropped off at the entrance.

We went into the retail shop and reception area where we were greeted by a couple of clerks. We were told where to start the tour and it was free. It was interesting for me, but I already knew the knife making process and what we were seeing. Probably less interesting for Donna, but she had a great time shopping for kitchen accessories in their retail space.

We worked our way through the viewing areas, then found another small shop with another viewing space behind the retail store. A guy walked past me, turned and looked me straight in the eye and entered the shop. As he walked to the back of the shop, I realized he was Yu Kurosaki, a young and already well-known knife maker. There were only a couple of workers in the shop as it was lunchtime, but then I noticed their shirts had Kurosaki Knifeworks logos. Yu and his brother Makoto came up through the Takefu apprentice program and now own their own businesses.

After the short tour and Donna’s shopping adventure, we took a taxi back to the station. It turned out that Donna’s plan to make Takefu a stopover on the way to Kanazawa was a good call. I didn’t need more than a couple of hours to take it all in.

I know I’ve already talked a bit about the toilets in Japan – even public toilets are mostly elaborate. Donna snapped an instructional toilet placard in the train station restroom.

Kanazawa Station is fairly large, but not on the scale of Kyoto or Tokyo Station. We found the main entrance/exit easily enough. We had reservations at the Hotel Torifito Kanazawa a few blocks away from the station.

This hotel lobby was similar to what we would expect in America. A few clerks at a check-in counter with a roped off area for patrons to line up. It had a small restaurant attached to the lobby and two elevators. There was also a small business center with additional seating for any time you wanted to hang out in the hotel lobby.

Our room was on the fourth floor and a little larger than I expected. It was late afternoon by then. To be honest, I don’t recall what we did for dinner, I was tired from the day’s travel.

The following morning we found Family Mart a couple of blocks down the street from the hotel. This Family Mart had a seating area, the usual coffee machines and cold breakfast selections. The freshly made sandwiches and noodle dishes are intended for breakfast or for lunch. They also had packaged fruits – I may have already described the packaged fruit, but I have to say I’ve never found anything like them here in the US. It’s not packed in syrup – high fructose or whatever. Instead it has a light but tasty, natural juice and I really liked it.

We walked and explored the area near our hotel. Right across the street from the hotel was a small playground and Shinto Shrine. On a few occasions we saw parents bring young kids to the playground and use the swingset. We often saw people walking on the street stop and bow and presumably say a quick prayer at the shrine.

There was another Shinto Shrine a few blocks away at the intersection of Kanazawa Echidori Avenue – a major thoroughfare that we would become well-acquainted with. We learned that there was an alternative way to get across the busy avenue. Instead of waiting for the traffic light at a crosswalk, we could go down to an underground passageway. Some of these passages just got you across the street, others were more elaborate and you could enter department stores from below.

We stopped somewhere during our wandering and had lunch at a noodle place.

Donna’s ramen dish with marinated egg and pork

We found a bar later called Harry’s Place. It turned out to be a whiskey bar, one with the largest selection of whiskeys from around the world I’ve ever seen. I had to sample a couple of Japanese whiskys. The bartender was very knowledgeable and asked me about the taste profile I preferred, then made suggestions. After I ordered the first sample, he brought me a book that had descriptions and general information of many of the Japanese distilleries and their offerings. We left after I tried two. Donna isn’t a whisky drinker and that’s all they have there.

I wrote this post later than I expected to. The reason was due to processing of the photos. I take photos from my phone or Donna’s and resize them, compress the jpg image to reduce the file size (it loads faster for you) and sharpen them and/or correct color balance when needed. I usually do this with a quick work process through Photoshop Elements. I don’t have or need the full Photoshop suite – it’s too expensive and I just do a quick clean-up anyway.

Well, my computer started crashing while I was processing photos. At first I thought my laptop was going down. Then it occurred to me that the only time I had issues was when I used Photoshop Elements. So I processed the photos for this post with Gimp. This program is a little more cumbersome and time-consuming, but I learned some shortcuts while doing these images. And had no computer crashes. So I think my theory was correct – Photoshop Elements has a corrupted file and I need to stop using it.

With that in mind, I’ll end this post here, but there’s more to say about Kanazawa soon.

Japan Part Two – Kyoto

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I closed my last post with a short mention of the train to Kyoto. I should elaborate on that. From the Hotel Wing International, we made the short walk to the Asakusa Station entrance 2 elevator, which we had discovered after we checked in at the hotel. This was a great find as we avoided having to navigate a lot of staircases with luggage.

We found the Ginza line and an Express train bound for Tokyo Station. I should mention something we learned about Japanese culture and public transportation – actually it pertains to public spaces in general. The Japanese people are very respectful of shared spaces. This is most obvious on trains and buses. No one talks loudly as that would be disrespectful to others – they may be reading or napping. No one talks on their cell phones on trains or buses although 90% of the people are staring into their phones as they read or text or maybe play a silent video game. This stems from the principle of “not causing inconvenience to others” (迷惑をかけない), an important value in Japanese society.

The Ginza Line took us to a section of Tokyo Station – I think it was the west side. Tokyo Station is a huge transit center, the largest and busiest in Japan. More than 4,000 trains arrive and depart daily and more than 500,000 people on average pass through every day.

With all of the train activity, it’s amazing how well it all functions. Trains generally arrive and depart on time. I saw sign boards in the various stations with a message “Arriving late'” when a train was a minute behind schedule! When we got off the train, we followed the flow of people until we entered a concourse area. As I said, the station is huge and daunting. The underground station is covered by a couple of districts overhead. The connecting tunnels include entrances to shopping malls and hotels as well as other train facilities.

We went up to the street level so I could get oriented with the GPS in my phone. We had to go to the Shinkansen station for the train to Kyoto, which was on the east side, about a half-mile from where we were. We stayed above ground and walked through the Ginza business district and followed sparse signage to the Shinkansen station.

Shinkansen translates as “Bullet train.” The Japan Rail website stated the Shinkansen would reach speeds of 177 mph. Sounds pretty impressive. The Green car was very comfortable, surprisingly quiet and smooth. Through the city, the speed was subdued. Once we left the city, the acceleration was barely perceptible. As we sped through the countryside, the speed was deceptive. Looking out of the window, most objects were far enough away to diminish the sensation of speed.

When we went through tunnels, the speed became obvious. The tunnels had lights at a certain interval. I can’t say how far apart they were because they became a blur making it look like a continuous beam of light, like a long flourescent tube. Occasionally we would pass an oncoming Shinkansen and the closing speed of well over 300 mph made the train go by in a flash and it was one of the few times we sensed speed and also exterior noise.

The train took us through Hamamatsu and Nagoya along with a number of smaller towns. The nearly 300-mile distance took a little over two hours.

Kyoto Station is another huge transit center. The underground passageways include numerous restaurants, a shopping mall and department store and a movie theater. Above it is a 15-story building with more shopping and government offices. We had to figure out where we were in relation to our destination hotel – the Irori Tokyo Station Higashi-Honganji.

We walked and looked for signs. I found signs directing us to a bus station – I figured that would be above ground and I could use my phone again to see where we were. Once I did that, I found we were on the south side of the station and we wanted to exit the north side. We went back through the station and discovered more stores and restaurants before we finally found the north exit. This is the Porta underground mall at Kyoto Station.

From there we walked to the hotel – about half a mile away. This took us through an area of Kyoto with high-end hotels, shopping and restaurants. We found the Irori and checked in. It was mostly an automated process – they had e-mailed me entry codes for the lobby and a key code for our room. This room was a little larger than the Wing International room in Tokyo. In fact, it had a kitchenette, small table and chairs and even a washing machine.

Once again, we were tired from travel but didn’t rest much. We cleaned up and headed out. We went back to the Porta area on foot again.

We went on to find dinner. We found a nice looking restaurant, I wish I could remember the name of it. It was sort of a teppenyaki type place. We were led to a private box-like room with tatami seating with a foot well under the table. The table had a hot plate built into the center. By the way, we had to remove our shoes and leave them in a locker at the entry area. We were seated and given menus, then the door was slid shut and we were alone in paper-walled private box.

The menu seemed a little confusing to me. We ordered a la carte. The food was delivered through a small window-like section that slid open and the server handed our plates through it.

A built-in hot plate for sharing and keeping meals warm

The menu started to make more sense to us as we figured out that we were to share food as we wished and the food would stay hot. I had a Highball with the meal – Highballs are standard fare in Japanese restaurants and izakaya. An izakaya is a bar/restaurant – the Japanese kanji for the name literally means stay-drink-place.

I thought this meal would be on the expensive side, but I was surprised to find it was under 6,000 yen – under $40 total. As we walked around the Porta, Donna found a something she had heard we might find – a beer vending machine.

Back at the hotel I thumbed through a sightseeing magazine. I saw an entry for the Toji Temple Flea Market on Tuesday. The Toji Temple Flea Market was something I wanted to do. I immediately looked up how to get there and found a bus route that would get us close.

After breakfast the following morning, we walked to the bus stop a few blocks away from the Irori. Our Suica cards worked for bus fare in Kyoto and we found the right bus stop after about a twenty minute ride. We walked a few blocks and found the entry gate to the Toji Temple.

Inside we found a large courtyard and several buildings. There was a gift shop with people in it, but otherwise the place seemed fairly empty. We went to the gift shop and I found a guy that worked there and asked about the flea market. He shook his head “no,” and showed me a calendar. The flea market was last Tuesday, September 24th. This was October 1st. Bummer.

We walked around and looked at a few of the buildings. There was an entry to a garden and the Toji Temple pagoda. There was an entry fee, but I was so dejected about missing the flea market that I wasn’t interested enough to pay to enter. I regret that.

The pagoda is the tallest in Japan at 187 feet. It’s an Iconic image. We walked through the grounds and found a different exit. It was near lunch time by then, so we walked through the neighborhood and found a small restaurant with about eight tables. I ordered sushi and Donna opted for ramen. The food was delicious and the place was full of local Japanese people by the time we left and people were waiting for a table. We were the only gaijin (foreigners) there.

We rested for a little while back at the Irori then went shopping back at the area we had walked through from the train station. Did I mention how much my feet were hurting? We went into a shopping mall and we found a modern shoe store. My feet were killing me. For an American, finding shoes in Japan can be troublesome. They typically don’t carry sizes larger than about 10. I got lucky and found some Nike shoes in size 12. My feet used to be 10.5, then they became 11-11.5 and now 12! My theory is that as we age, some of us end up with weaker arches and flattened feet that require larger shoes for comfort. These shoes were among the most expensive in the store, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t keep walking in the shoes I brought.

When we returned home, I found a hole in my theory. The tag in the Nike shoes I bought in Japan says “US 12, UK 9.5, Eur 44.5.” The tags in my US sourced Wilson tennis shoes and Babolat tennis shoes, which both fit me comfortably say “US 11, UK 10.5, Eur 45.5.” So, apparently in Japan Nike uses a strange shoe size chart.

We walked back to the hotel – me in my new comfy Nikes. We saw a small brewery near the hotel and went for a cold one. We were a little early, they were set to open about ten minutes after we got there. The young lady inside let us in though and served us beer. Such hospitality! Donna had a porter float and I had a golden ale. The beer was good.

The bus stops we used were outside of a large walled property. This was the Higashi-Hogan-Ji Temple, a large Buddist temple. We went there to have a look around. This is an old site, but the temple had to be rebuilt several times over the centuries after fires destroyed it. The last rebuild started in 1879 and was finished in 1895.

It’s a very large wooden structure built with traditional Japanese carpentry which doesn’t include nails or adhesives. The wood structure is built with tight jointed pieces precisely cut and fitted together. To get a sense of scale, look at the people standing in front of the steps.

Before you can enter the temple, you must remove your shoes. They had plastic bags to carry your shoes if you wanted to take them with you. They also had recycling bins for the bags. We entered and found most of the flooring was traditional tatami matting.

The posts in the picture above are turned from a single log! I wish I had Donna in the picture to give a sense of scale – these posts were about two and half feet in diameter and about 20 feet tall. They are found throughout the building.

The logs were cut from forests in the mountains near Kanazawa – about 130 miles away. To transport the logs, sleds were made to pull the logs over the snowy mountain passes and down to Kyoto. Whole families made this trek, pulling the sleds with ropes. A disaster occurred when an avalanche killed several people including women and children on a mountain pass.

We had the privilege of observing a ceremony in the temple. That’s one of the things that struck about the shrines and temples in Japan – they aren’t just tourist attractions; they are used in the daily lives of Japanese people.

From the temple we walked to the bus stop a few blocks away and caught a bus to Gion – the Kyoto geisha district. Geisha are misunderstood by many tourists. Although geishas are sometimes hired as escorts, they are not in the sex trade. They are generally well-educated and are entertainers. They are mostly hired as hostesses for parties, banquets and corporate events. Some will sing and dance, others play musical instruments and some are escorts that are well-versed in literature or poetry and have conversational skills. To become a geisha takes years of study and training. There’s a sort of apprenticeship where a maiko learns the skills required of a geisha.

We saw geisha and psuedo-geishas in the Gion District. I think some of the businesses in the area pay to have geishas attract people to their stores and restaurants here. You also see people that rent geisha costumes – something that Donna and I found hard to understand. When you see a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl made up as a geisha, you have to wonder who she thinks she is fooling. On the other hand, some people rent geisha costume packages that include a photographer so they can bring home souvenir pictures of themselves in traditional clothing.

Geisha costume rentals usually include hairstyling and all clothing except underwear and cost from $35 to hundreds of dollars depending on what the renter chooses.

We had dinner at a restaurant that featured wagyu beef. The name wagyu is derived from the Japanese word Wa, which means Japanese and gyu, which means cow. This meat comes from pampered cows and has a high intramuscular fat content. It’s considered a delicacy by many. We were seated at a table that had a hot plate on a bowl in the center heated by a flame. I’m not sure of what the source of flame was, I saw the server light something under the iron plate and it heated up quickly.

The meat was cooked rare and sliced into half-inch thick pieces. We seared our meat on the hot plate and dipped it sauces. It was very rich and honestly not really my cup of tea.

The Gion District is over-run with tourists. There were more gaijin than locals. It was like walking in Disneyland. This has created some problems. Local people are tired of rude visitors that don’t respect Japanese customs. Some geishas felt threatened by foreigners stalking them for photos or touching them as they walk from their housing area to work. Parts of the Gion District are now off-limits to foreigners. We saw police at some intersections to narrow streets or alleys leading into neighborhoods. They stopped and questioned people, presumably to determine if they had good reason to enter a neighborhood.

I quickly grew tired of the crowds in Gion and parts of Kyoto in general. We rode a bus back to the area of the Irori Hotel, did some more walking and called it a day. We needed to plan our next stop on this adventure and figure out what we were going to do. That’s fodder for another post as this is too long already.

Japan Part One – Tokyo

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In the early morning of Thursday, September 26th, our friend and neighbor Tom, volunteered to pick us up at 4:30am and drive us to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. We were starting our journey to Japan.

Our flight was on Hawaiian Airlines with a connection in Honolulu. Due to the long flight time, we opted to step-up to First Class/Business Class for the flights. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to depart until 8:15am, but the airline advised checking in three hours prior to departure for international travel. I don’t know why they advise that, we breezed through check-in and security.

The flight out of Phoenix was on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. First Class accommodations lived up to that name. We had roomy, comfortable seating areas with privacy and fold flat seating. We were treated to a celebratory cocktail – a Mai Tai – before take-off.

With the time zone change, the six-hour flight had us landing in Honolulu at 11:35am – although it felt later to us. Our departure from Honolulu was scheduled for 12:40pm. This time we flew on an older Airbus 330. It wasn’t as fancy as the 787, but we had ample room and seats that reclined to a flat position if desired.

By the time we reached Japan, we had crossed 16 time zones. After crossing the International Date Line, we arrived at 4pm on Friday, September 27th, Tokyo time. We were tired and in for a culture shock. Narita airport is large, we were directed to the luggage retrieval, then the immigration and customs area and went through the process fairly quickly. They were very efficient. The immigration procedure included an electronic fingerprint and facial recognition screening.

The next order of business was finding the Japan Wireless kiosk. We had pre-arranged pick up of a mobile personal wireless hotspot, which I carried in a small backpack throughout our visit – this allowed our phones to access the Internet. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Some of the signs included English verbiage, but not all. When the signs are written with kanji characters, it becomes almost impossible to decipher their meaning. Luckily, there were numerous information desks with English-speaking attendants.

Next, we had to find the correct train station and platform to take us to the Asakusa. District in Tokyo. That’s where we had hotel reservations at the Wing International Hotel. Between the two of us, we figured it out and I quickly learned how to identify which trains were “Local” “Rapid” “Express” or “Limited.” If you make the wrong choice, it might not stop at the station you desire, even though it goes through it. To be safe and make sure we would stop in Asakusa, we boarded a crowded “Local” train. Local trains make every stop on the route and take longer to get to some stations, but I wanted to be sure we would stop where we wanted to get off.

By the time we got off the train at Asakusa Station, we were pretty exhausted and had to drag our luggage through the station. We bought new four-wheeled suitcases for the trip and they were great, except for when we had to climb stairs!

I should try to describe the train stations, Most were underground and some of them were huge. Asakusa station had several exits. Without knowing exactly where the exits were in relation to our hotel, it was just guesswork for us. I couldn’t access Google maps while we were underground. The underground station is covered by several blocks of the city above. We were a couple of floors below the surface and climbed four flights stairs to get out of it. Once we were on the street, I used Google maps to get directions. We chose the wrong exit and had a little hike ahead.

We would quickly become used to walking and consulting Google maps. It was raining lightly and I was soaked by the time we checked in. Our room was on the 8th floor with a view of the Sumida River right behind the hotel.

We could see several bridges, the Asahi Brewing Headquarters across the river (the yellow building that was built to resemble a glass of draft beer!) and the Tokyo Sky Tree Tower. The room itself was small. We set up our stuff as best as we could and were ready to sack out. It was about 8pm.

We were up early the next morning and opted to go for a convenience store breakfast – Donna had read about it and they were supposed to be good. Not much else was open anyway. We found a 7-11 a couple of blocks away from the hotel. 7-11, Family Mart and few other small convenience stores (konbini) were easy to find – they’re everywhere. What we didn’t find is a traditional American breakfast, but what we found was very good. They had freshly made sandwiches with ham and egg salad filling and the crusts cut off. The coffee machines were excellent – you buy the cup at the counter, then go to the machine. After opening the little door on the machine and placing your cup, you make your selection. The machine locks the door, grinds beans, then brews the coffee. After it’s done, it beeps and unlocks the door. Fresh, hot coffee! The machine then locks again and goes through a cleaning cycle to be ready for the next use.

Donna also found cups of frozen fruits or vegetables that were marked “Smoothie.” They had a machine for these as well.

We quickly adapted to this type of breakfast and used convenience stores for 90% of our breakfasts. Donna was embracing the culture and soon started buying onigiri (rice balls) for mid-morning snacks. We became more adventuresome with our breakfast selections over the next couple of weeks.

We took a walk down the River Walk behind our hotel and started to get the lay of the land.

We saw many others walking or jogging down the path which goes for miles on both sides of the river.

Boat on the river with the Asahi building and Sky Tree Tower

One of the things I wanted to do while we were in Tokyo was to visit Teruyasu Fujiwara’s knife shop. TF, as he is known is a famous sword and kitchen knife maker. I have six of his kitchen knives. His shop is located in the Meguro neighborhood, southwest of our location on the other side of the city center. Some map study and train routes were committed to memory and we set off.

The first thing we found was an elevator into the Asakusa Station a few doors down from our hotel! I should mention something else we got at the airport – a Suica card. Actually two of them. They are a type of prepaid credit card that can be used to board trains and some buses. I put 5,000 yen (about $35) on each card so we could enter the train platforms independently of each other. You tap the card reader when you enter, then tap it again when you exit at your destination. The fare is calculated for the length of travel and deducted from the Suica card balance. Pretty convenient.

We took a train to Meguro and once again followed the Google map to TF’s shop. It was a bit of a walk, but that’s just how it is in Japan. Public transportation and walking are the norm. Along the way we traversed a few neighborhoods and got a good sense of how people live here.

Interesting pruning of this tree – new growth was starting

Shoes and umbrellas at an apartment building entrance

We found the shop and I browsed a bit and had a pleasant conversation with the guy there. I’m sorry I didn’t catch his name. He was TF’s knife sharpener. I saw his Japanese natural whetstones and asked if they had any for sale. He told me he gets his stones from Morihei. Before I tell the next part, I have to explain this. As native English speaking Americans, we tend to sound out Japanese words and names phonetically. So, Asakusa becomes Ah-sah-koo-sah. This is not how a Japanese speaker would pronounce it. They tend to slur multi-syllable words and kind of squish the second or third syllable. So, Asakusa becomes Ah-sock-sah.

Back to the TF story. He told me about Morihei, then looked at us and said slowly “do you know where Ah-sah-koo-sah is?” Donna replied, “Yes! Our hotel is in Ah-sock-sah.” I was proud of her for using the correct pronounciation. He then said we were very close to Morihei, their shop is in Asakusabashi – two train stops from our hotel – he didn’t speak slowly or use American pronounciation this time.

Before we left, he gifted us with two Japanese head scarves and told me he was TF’s son!

Finding Morihei’s shop was next on my agenda. We walked back to Meguro Station and retraced our route back to the hotel. My feet were swelling and hurting by this point – we had 10,000 steps before lunch time. I mapped out the route to Morihei, but they were closed on the weekend.

So we mapped out a route to Tsukiji Market. This is a large, mostly open air seafood market near the mouth of the Sumida River. It covered several blocks and was very crowded. We walked the market, taking in the sights. Donna had to snap a shot at one of the stalls selling crabs – it showed the crab brains were sold out. Who knew crab brains were a popular item?

We had a wonderful lunch of sushi at a restaurant and later bought a couple of Asahi beers for $3 each. We just missed seeing a demo of a guy butchering a large tuna. Donna snapped a photo of the results of his work. Not much is wasted.

After we returned from Tsukiji we went back to the shopping/dining area of Asakusa.

We stopped for dinner at a small ramen place – it seated about 12 people at the counter. A woman sitting next to me helped me out with ordering. The food was delicious. We noticed two things there – Japanese men can practically inhale noodles. In the time we took to eat our meals, the seat next to Donna had two different men come in, sit there and finish their meal before we were ready to go! By the way, slurping your noodles is perfectly acceptable in Japan. It’s not bad manners, it tells the cook you enjoy the noodles.

The other thing was those guys got up a left quickly and didn’t seem to pay. I wondered if they had a tab or something. Then we found out what the deal was. There’s a machine at the doorway. You make selections off the menu at the machine like it was a jukebox. You put money in the machine to pay and take your seat. The order is transmitted to the kitchen, you get your food and you leave. By the way, there’s no tipping in Japan. You pay the listed price and that’s it. It’s considered rude and insulting to leave a tip.

Line of people waiting to enter a ramen shop

The next morning we did some touristy things. First we walked to the Senso-Ji Torii Gate and then on to the Buddist Temple. The grounds and the woodwork were amazing.

Donna inside the gate at Senso-Ji Temple

From the temple we set out to walk to Kappabashi. This is a section of Asakusa that has several stores with kitchen supplies. On the way out of the temple grounds, Donna found an interesting drink. Vending machines are ubiquitous in Japanse cities. They usually have bottled water, fruit drinks, cold coffee drinks and whatnot. This one had someting called Tomanade. It was a blend of tomato juice and lemonade. Drinks cost less than a dollar at most vending machines – 120 to 150 yen.

Donna had to try it and it was good!

It was Sunday so some of the markets in Kappabashi were closed and others opened at 10 or 11am. We were a little early so we stopped and sat on a bench outside of a kitchen knife shop. The sharpeners were hard at work inside although the shop was closed.

The kanji at the bottom center of the window says “Sharpening Team”

Donna had loaded Google translate app on her phone. I had a different translate app. The Google app worked better than mine, so I ended up installing the Google app. With it you can use your smartphone camera to look at kanji and translate it to English. Very convenient. Also, Donna used it speak English words into her phone and it would display the appropriate kanji symbols. She used this in stores to ask clerks questions. Without these aids, it would’ve been much more difficult to communicate.

When I came to Japan as a kid, we didn’t have these technologies. It wasn’t a problem for us because my mom was born and raised in Japan. As a Japanese native she could translate for us and of course speak her native language and read everything.

We shopped in several Kappabashi stores. Donna wanted to find Japanese cocktail napkins to use as gifts for friends when we returned. We soon learned that paper napkins really aren’t a thing in Japan. In fact, most restaurants have tissue paper for napkins unless it’s a higher end place with cloth napkins.

Also, in Japan it really isn’t acceptable to walk down the street or sidewalk while eating or drinking. That’s probably one of the reasons the streets are so clean. Everything in Japan seems to be exceptionally clean.

She gave up on the cocktail napkins but eventually found a soap dish she wanted for our new bathroom sink. I checked a few of the knife stores for stones, but struck out.

I should probably mention the Japanese bathroom facilities. The toilet in our hotel had electronic controls. I didn’t pay much attention at first. I noticed a retractable wand inside the bowl and assumed it was a bidet for women. It also had a heated seat. When I finally checked out the control panel I saw it had English words in small print under the kanji and line drawings. One said “Front” and another said “Back”. Hmm. I gave the back button a try. I heard the wand extend then woosh – it started shooting a perfectly placed stream of water on my butt crack. No mess, no wet butt cheeks, perfect aim. I could hardly believe it.

When we were out we found these toilets everywhere – in restaurant restrooms, in public parks, in the train stations and so on. All of the restroom facilities were very clean, even in public parks.

We started a routine of going out for breakfast early in the morning, then sightseeing or shopping. After lunch we would come back to the room and rest for a bit, then head out again. Our smart phones recorded our daily steps and we usually found between 14,000 and 16,000 steps even on days that we took trains! A 10,000-step day felt like we were slacking.

Later Sunday afternoon we took a river boat tour on the Sumida river from a dock near our hotel down to Odaiba Beach in the Tokyo Bay. I had mapped out a return route on the train, but we were a bit too tired to walk to the train station. We found a return boat that would take us back near the dock we left from and bought tickets – it was the last departure of the day.

After we returned, we walked to the Asakusa shopping district to find dinner.

We found a katsu restaurant and had a great meal. Most of our meals were very inexpensive. Breakfast for two with two cups of coffee each was under $15. Lunch for two usually ran from $20 to $30 including a beer for each of us. Most dinners were in the $25 to $40 range for two, including drinks. The katsu was very good – I had the traditional Tonkatsu which is fried pork. Donna tried a variation of it that also included large green onions.

Donna’s dinner plate with cabbage, miso soup and of course rice

Rice and finely shredded cabbage are a staple that’s included with most meals.

I wanted an after dinner drink. Up to this point, the only bar we found was in the Banrai hotel and I didn’t want to go there. We wandered around until Donna said, “I think we should look down this alley.”

Halfway down the alley we found a bar called “Not Suspicious.” We found out it’s a foreigner friendly place and has a lot of social media attention – lots of people seek it out. We went in and I sampled a few different Japanese whiskys. I found that I really like Japanese Whisky (like Scotch, Japan doesn’t have an “E” in whisky).

Donna taught the bartender how to make a Holland Razor – one of her favorite cocktails.

All of the notes left taped above the bar are from foreign visitors.

I had created an account online with Japan Rail and I purchased Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets to get us to Kyoto. We were set to leave around 11:30am Monday. First, I had to make a trip to Asakusabashi to see Morihei’s shop. We took a train and arrived right as they opened at 9am. Luckily an English speaker worked there. I ended up buying two Japanese natural whetstones from the Oozuku mine. The price was hard for me to believe – it was about a quarter of what they go for in the rest of the world.

We chose to walk back to the hotel. We were already packed and planned to check out right before 11am and head to Asakusa Station. We took an Express train to Tokyo Station, which is huge. We had to find our way to the correct Shinkansen line to get us to Kyoto. We figured it out and boarded our reserved seats in the green car. The green car is sort of a first-class car on the train with roomy seating and food and drink available. We had Bento box lunches we bought at Tokyo Station. It doesn’t cost much more for the green car than standard coach reserved seats, so why not? I’ll stop this now and resume the story about Kyoto later.

View from our hotel – Tokyo Sky Tree at night

Fourth and Final Housesit

We had our fourth and final housesit of the season at the end of August. I mentioned in my last post the construction work on our home, adding a half-bathroom and laundry nook. The work started a bit late on Monday, August 26th. There was some confusion on the expectation and what the construction crew thought they were doing. Donna had met with the contractor and had a fairly long discussion going over what she had in mind and how it should lay out. Ron, the owner of Paragon Home Services, said it looked straightforward and easy.

He sent me the job quote while Donna was away in Vermont. I looked it over, but I wasn’t there when they discussed the project. I wish he would have included a drawing of the layout instead of just a written description which was a little vague in my mind.

We had a meeting with Ron and his foreman, David. Once we were on the same page, they went to work. We thought we would be heading to our housesit in Alpine, California the next morning, but that was also a case of mis-communication. We actually had to arrive on Wednesday, August 28th. This was good as it allowed us to see how the home project was shaping up. Tuesday afternoon, as they were finishing up for the day, I asked David when he thought they would be finished. He said he thought it would take “a few more days” and he would send photos to my phone.

We left Mesa around 9am on Wednesday and made the familiar drive west on I-8. We’ve done this countless times over the years in cars, motorcycles and the motorhome. We made the usual stops – Dateland for a date shake, Yuma for gasoline before we hit California gas prices and El Centro for lunch at Las Palmitas Taco Shop. It’s a pretty authentic Mexican restaurant – my phone even said “Welcome to Mexico!”

We made good time and left I-8 at Japatul Valley Road east of Alpine. It was a little too early to show up at the ranch, so we did a drive-by to find the private road to the ranch, then went into Alpine. Donna bought a new charger for her phone – she forgot her charger at home and wanted a back-up anyway.

It was a 15-20 minute drive back to the ranch from town. After we arrived and had a tour of the house, a custom built ranch home with exquisite woodwork, we went out to the barn to see how things would be done. There were 13 sheep, five Border collies and a cat to take care of. The ranch is on 10 acres of land. The set up was impressive and included an on-demand back-up LP powered generator. If the power went out or dropped below a specified voltage, the generator would automatically start and the electrical power for the entire ranch would continue nearly seamlessly.

The number of animals seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but Donna adapted quickly and the Border collies were so well behaved they took very little care. On the first night, Marcy the home owner, had dinner for us and two other guests – one is a boarder that rents a small studio apartment attached to the barn. The other fellow was a friend from Great Britain, the Isle of Man specifically. It turned out that Sean and Jim were motorcycle enthusiasts and we had a lot of interesting conversations.

I didn’t take many photos – many missed opportunities. Here are a few landscape views of various points from the ranch house.

View south west – terrain is steeper than it looks

I found a suitable spot to set up my telescope and equipment. The preferred portion of the night sky would be in the northeast. This had the fewest obstructions and pointed away from the San Diego light dome, over the sparsely populated Cuyamaca National Forest, Laguna Mountains and desert to the east. We were about 2400 feet above sea level.

The days were warmer than normal with the high temperature exceeding 90 degrees. This was still about 20 degrees cooler than home. The nights were pleasant in the upper 60s.

Friday morning we drove to San Diego, about 40 miles away. I dropped Donna off at her sister, Sheila’s house in Point Loma. I went to Shelter Island to take some photos but made a stop for a quick lunch. Once I was out of the car at Shelter Island, I didn’t find any good photo opportunities for birds and wildlife. I took too long for lunch and was pressed for time. I saw one interesting thing – an amphibious vehicle, a duck tour bus.

We saw similar tour buses in Branson, Missouri but I had never seen one in San Diego before. I saw two of them at the boat ramp on Shelter Island.

Donna helped Sheila plan on the furniture layout for Donna’s mom. She is relocating to San Diego and will live in Sheila’s vacant Point Loma home with some help from a caregiver.

With my astrophotography effort limited to a northeast target, I was at a loss to find an interesting subject given the time of year. I decided on IC 1396, a star forming gas and space dust region in the northeast sky. This is a huge target and if I had known that was going to be the target, I would have brought my William Optics GT71 for its wide field of view. But, without knowing which direction I would be pointing, I brought the AT115EDT as I thought this was my best compromise, since it’s the mid-range of my telescopes. Not ideal.

I had issues the first two nights – it’s been months since I last tried to capture a deep sky object. I figured out the problems – there were a few settings on my laptop software that needed to be corrected. This happens sometimes when the good people at Microsoft automatically apply updates and they choose default settings for me. Grrr.

I ended up shooting two-minute exposures over four nights. I used a new-to-me filter setup. First I used an Askar Colormagic Ha+OIII filter. This brings out the red hydrogen component and bluish oxygen gas. The filters don’t add anything. On the contrary, they block unwanted bands of the light spectrum. This eliminates some effects of light pollution, in essence enhancing the desired color spectrum. Then I used an Askar Colormagic SII+OIII filter, This should allow more of the greenish and bluish light through. I did two nights of imaging with each filter.

IC 1396 is such a dim target that I couldn’t see what I was capturing with a single two-minute exposure, so I was shooting blind. When we came home, I went through the images and stacked 206 of the two-minute exposures for a total integrated time of six hours and 52 minutes. I was a little disappointed in the result, but here it is.

Speaking of coming home, we were in for a surprise. David never sent me photos of the finished construction. We found out why – it wasn’t finished when we came home 10 days later.

To be fair, there was a long weekend over Labor Day included. But here’s the thing. Ron never told us he was retiring on Friday, August 30, four days after the job started. David was taking over the company. David still didn’t have the full picture of job – note the lack of ceiling in the photos above. To compound the issue, when we were back, I noted that different workers showed up to do a part of the job each day and it seemed each worker only knew his or her small part of the job. No one seemed to know what the finished product was supposed to be. This goes back to Ron only doing a written description with no floorplan. He had the whole thing in his head and he was gone.

One of the workers, Brenda, also told me that excessive heat had them knocking off by 2pm on a few days. Well, it was finally finished on Tuesday, September 10th. Everything was straightened out and we were happy with the finished product. These are quick cell phone snap shots.

I also had them install a stainless steel restaurant style sink in the shed where the old washer/dryer was. This will be my knife sharpening and razor honing station. I need to do some finish work and clean out the shed too.

All of the boxes under the sink contain various whetstones for sharpening/ honing. That reminds me of another quick story. Before we left for Alpine, we met up with our friend, Marcia, for happy hour at Fat Willy’s. While we were there, Donna had to excuse herself to take an important phone call. While she was away, Marcia asked me what I was up to lately. She knows I dabble in a number of hobbies. I reluctantly brought up straight razor shaving and razor honing. I say reluctantly because eyes usually glaze over if I start talking about this topic.

Marcia asked me if I used whetstones. This surprised me. I was more surprised when she said she threw one out that very day! What? She said she had an old one in a box, but the box was broken and she didn’t have any use for it. Then she said it was just in her kitchen trash and she could retrieve it if I was interested in it. I told her I would like to look at it. I envisioned a coarse hardware store offering in a plastic box.

The next day she brought me this.

I could see under the gunk what appeared to be a translucent Arkansas stone in a wooden box! The top of the box was broken, but she had all four pieces. I asked her what she wanted for the stone and she said I could have it – she’d thrown it out.

A little Titebond glue and a couple of clamps was all it took to repair the wooden box top. I soaked the stone in Simple Green and gave it a good scrubbing. The stone is a butterscotch translucent Arkansas stone suitable for razor honing. It appears to be at least 70 years old – the stone itself is obviously millions of years old, I ‘m talking about when it was mined, cut and marketed. Without any stamps or labels, it’s impossible to accurately date the manufacturing era of this stone, but the box style and joinery seems to indicate a Pike-Norton from 1930s or 1940s. I’m not clear on whether this stone came from Marcia’s father or her grandfather.

Now I have two translucent Arkansas stones and both are old stones that were gifted to me. Makes me a happy guy.

A week from Thursday, we’ll board Hawaiian airlines for our trip to Japan. We’re excited about it and I have no idea what to expect. It’s been nearly 60 years since I’ve set foot there – I was just a little kid. Donna has a few ideas, but we mainly want to see the countryside and visit some smaller towns and villages to get a glimpse of the culture and lifestyle of the average person. We’ll see some of the tourist spots, but for me that’s not the main attraction.

We’ll be mostly offline for our two weeks in Japan, so I’ll try to catch up on our adventure after we return.

Summer Sits

The summer is getting away from me. I haven’t been up to posting lately. No motivation. We had three housesits so far, I don’t think I mentioned the last two. One was in Prescott, only about five minutes from downtown. It was a large house in a gated community situated on a steep, rocky hillside with pine trees, overlooking a driving range near the golf course clubhouse.

I brought my AT115EDT telescope and Losmandy mount along with all of the associated equipment, only to find the terrain was too steep and sightlines were blocked by trees and the house anyway. So, that was out.

The house had two levels – the main floor and a finished walk-out basement floor. On the main floor the master bedroom and bath were on one end and a guest room and bath on the opposite end. What I found to be a little unusual was the basement floor – it was an exact replica of the guest wing – same layout and same bed and furniture, just one level below.

The owners had two dogs and one cat. It was an easy housesit. We watched Wimbledon on the tennis channel every day. And our visit coincided with the Prescott Frontier Days – an annual rodeo that’s been taking place since 1888, making it the oldest annual rodeo in the world. It was hot – the temperature was in the 90s, but we enjoyed the final day of the event.

It was a fairly uneventful housesit. I brought my terrestial camera equipment with the hopes of capturing some wildlife images, but that was a failure too. The birds seemed to stay away from the back deck – most were in trees too far away to photograph. One day a coyote trotted along the woodline on the far side of the driving range – again too far away. I managed to get a couple of shots of a hummingbird that came to the deck.

The hummingbird flew into a bush. I approached slowly and could see it well hidden inside the bush. I focused on the bird, shooting between branches. It resulted in a natural vignette, with the branches in the foreground well out of focus.

With no wildlife to point my camera toward, I focused on a flower instead. Look closely and you’ll see an ant inside the flower.

Our next housesit was a four-day sit about 10 days later. We came back to the house near Prescott Valley in an area called Williamson. We had a housesit on this rural property around the same time last year. Again, it was a large, beautiful home on acreage. Last year, I captured images of the Dumbbell Nebula and the Fireworks Galaxy from this property.

This year I was out of luck again. The weather pattern had thunderstorms forming every afternoon with gusty wind and passing showers. The skies were cloudy by late afternoon and into the night every day.

I had better luck finding things to photograph in the mornings here – namely birds and lizards.

One afternoon we took a drive over to Chino Valley, about 15 miles away. We were looking for a Thai restaurant for lunch, but when we found it, it was closed for a few weeks. There was a Mexican Restaurant nearby, but when we entered to check it out, it was more of a fast food type outfit and Donna didn’t like the vibe there.

She found another Mexican restaurant that was off the beaten path. We followed the directions from her smart phone and I was getting a little pessimistic about finding anything good as we were on the outskirts of the small town, well away from highway 89. We eventually found El Charro Norte and had a wonderful lunch there. Great food, good service. We would go back next time we’re in the area.

The weather has been hot – what else would you expect in central Arizona in the summer? We’ve been getting out of bed early to play tennis three days per week. We play from 6:30am to 8am. We usually have a group ranging from four to eight players and we enjoy it. After nine years of pickleball, I felt like my playing had reached a plateau and no longer improved. With tennis, I have a potential upside and I’m enjoying the challenge of learning the finer points of the game.

Earlier this month, Donna made a scheduled visit with her parents in Vermont. Her father was in the Vermont Veterans Home – a skilled nursing facility in Bennington. Her mom is currently in Brookdale Assisted Living, also in Bennington. Her father’s health took a turn for the worse – he was in the end stages of Parkinson’s disease and kidney failure. Unfortunately, her father, Duke Connor passed in the early morning hours of Monday, August 19th – just two days after Donna returned from Vermont. Rest in peace, Duke.

We have a lot on our plate right now. We’re having a small addition built on our house – it’ll be a laundry room and 1/2 bath. The contractor has the crew scheduled to start on Monday, August 26th. While Ron, the owner of Paragon Home Services, Inc was here to make an estimate, he found we had gray polybutylene pipes in our plumbing. This was bad news. This product has been banned since 1998. It corrodes from the inside out – the outward appearance may look fine while the pipes are about to burst.

We had Paragon immediately replace all of the gray polybutylene water supply lines in our place with Pex lines. Meanwhile I’ve purchased a new LG washer/dryer, sink, bathroom cabinet and toilet for the room addition.

Timing is everything, right? We have a housesit scheduled for the 27th through September 5th. The room addition will take about a week to complete and we’ll only be here for the first day. Donna sees this as a blessing in disguise. We trust Ron and will leave him a house key. We won’t have to be living in the house while the construction crew sets to work and tears out part of the Arizona room wall. Also, Ozark the cat will be staying with our neighbor during this time, so there’s no worry about her getting out while they’re working.

The housesit is near Alpine, California – east of San Diego, on the western side of the Laguna Mountains. It’s a 90-acre ranch with 13 sheep, five border collies and a cat. The border collies are trained to herd the sheep out of their pen and into a pasture for the day. In the evening they will herd the sheep back to the pen. It’ll be something different for us, that’s for sure.

Speaking of something different – here is dinner plate Donna made. Crawfish Scampi with cheesy grits and green beans.

When we return from California, we’ll have three weeks at home before we leave again. We have a two-week vacation in Japan coming up.

With Japan on our minds, Donna made an entree of Japanese chicken curry.

Triple digits are forcasted for the remainder of the month – nothing unusual about that. What has been unusual is this year’s monsoon season. We usually have several thunderstorms and downpours of rain at this time of year. Thunderstorms and damaging wind have occurred in the area, just not here in Mesa so much. We can see thunderheads and rainfall around us in the Superstition Mountains to the east, up near Fountain Hills to the north and the San Tan valley to the south, but we’ve only had passing showers. Alpine, California should have daily highs of 80-90 degrees and nighttime temps in the 60s. We can live with that.

Graduate

It’s summertime here – just like it is in the rest of the northern hemisphere. But, here being central Arizona, summertime has extra significance. It can get hot, very hot! We’re playing tennis three days a week from 7am to 8:30 am. Starting tomorrow we’ll move the start time a half hour earlier.

We escaped the heat for a few days when we flew up to western Washington on June 12th for our granddaughter’s high school graduation. Donna had us booked through Trusted Housesitters to housesit in Arlington only a few miles away from Kevin and Alana’s place. My other daughters, Jamie and Shauna, showed up with some of their family members as well. It was nice to have everyone together all at once.

Alana is my oldest daughter and she has two daughters, Lainey and Gabriella (Gabi). Gabi is the younger of the two and she was graduating from Arlington High School. The graduation ceremony was held in a hockey arena in Everett. It was a nice venue and Kevin and Alana secured box seats for family and friends. This was a deluxe accommodation with a private room, snacks and beverages – including adult beverages. I found it a little funny to have drinks served at a high school graduation – they were available to private box suite attendees only. I can’t even get a beer at a college football game!

We were definitely out of the heat in Washington. In fact, Donna and I were downright cold! Our first couple of days were very pleasant with afternoon temperatures in the low 70s. But it was down in the 50s Thursday evening and never got past 60 degrees again for the duration of our stay. It also drizzled rain on and off. Typical for this time of year in western Washington.

The property we were housesitting was on four or five acres and was very nice. I wish I could’ve packed my camera along as one morning about a dozen band-tailed pigeons came into the bird feeder in the back yard. I’ve never seen band-tailed pigeons at low elevation – I’ve only found them above 3,000 feet above sea level and higher. They’re only found in parts of the west coast and some higher elevation areas of the soutwest and Mexico. They are the largest north American pigeons.

We also had deer traipsing through the yard.

Kevin and Alana had a house full of guests most of the time and always had plenty of food and drink on hand. They also set up games in the yard. Our youngest granddaughter, Petra, daughter of my youngest daughter Shauna had fun with all of the attention.

Somewhere along the way, Donna picked up a bug and stayed behind to rest on Sunday. She felt better on Monday and we hung out with the crew then caught a ride to the Paine Field airport in Everett to fly home. We never warmed up until we got back to Phoenix.

Last week the bug caught up with me and I’ve been off of my game for a week. I rarely catch a cold or any other bugs, but it got me.

Tomorrow we’ll be packing up the Jeep for a trip to Prescott early Tuesday morning. We’ll be housesitting there until the following Monday. The high temperatures here will be triple digits – 102 to 108 degrees. Prescott will be 10 to 15 degrees cooler. I plan to pack my AT115 EDT telescope although I haven’t settled on an astrophotography target. I plan to also take my camera bag.

I’ll close with a dinner plate from earlier this month. Donna came up with something new – crawfish scampi. She served it with cheesy grits and green beans.

Travel Plans

I haven’t posted in a while – nothing in May. Unbeknownst to me, the site was in trouble. I couldn’t log in and Donna could only open it as an Administrator. It took Bluehost an entire day to get it up and running again! Luckily, it appears all is well now.

Donna has been hard at work with our travel plans – inbetween running her Viewpoint Good Neighbors program and making a trip to Vermont to assist her mom, who is recovering from a hip replacement.

Our first trip of the summer will begin next week. Our granddaughter, Gabi, is graduating from high school in Arlington, Washington. Gabi is the daughter of my eldest daughter, Alana. Donna secured a house-sitting job within a few miles of Kevin and Alana’s place. We’ll fly up there on June 12th, graduation is June 13th and we’ll stay through the weekend and fly back home on the 17th. The house sit should be easy, we just have to care for a cat.

The house sit was fortunate as the hotel prices seem high to me and Kevin and Alana will have a house full of guests. That’s house sit number one. The next house sit will be over the Fourth of July. We’ll be up in Prescott, Arizona from the 2nd of July through the 8th. It looks like a real nice place and I should be able to set up for astrophotography.

Our third house sit will be at the end of August. We’ll travel to San Diego’s east county outside of Alpine, California from August 27th through September 6th. This house sit will involve dogs and sheep and more astrophotography. Sounds interesting.

The big travel event will occur on September 26th when we board a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Tokyo, Japan. We will spend two weeks exploring Japan. I haven’t been there since I was a kid and I’m really looking forward to spending some time kicking around there. We plan to spend the first two or three nights in Tokyo, then keep things loose and travel without a preset plan until we return to Tokyo for our flight back home.

We’ve been playing tennis three or four times per week. We were starting our 90-minute sessions at 7:30am to beat the heat. This week we moved the start time up to 7am as the days are getting warmer. Eventually we’ll have to start at 6:30am as the morning temperatures quickly climb.

Yesterday the Viewpoint management had the palm trees trimmed. This is a little earlier than the last couple of years. They started using a different tree service two years ago and they prune the trees severely – the result is what they call a Hurricane Trim in places like Florida. I’ve read that it can be stressful on the trees here in the desert, but they have bounced back every time and seem to be thriving.

I think this time they were even more severe than in the past. Also, trimming this early doesn’t do the birds any favor. We had at least two bird nests in each of the palms at the rear of our property. One had a young bird in it that was unable to fly and it perished.

Our palm tree after trim – the tree in the right background is home to Lovebirds

I mentioned the Belgian Coticule whetstone in my last post. Now that I’m sharpening straight razors I needed another finer stone to to finish after the coticule. I ordered a type of slate called Imperia La Roccia (ILR). While I was waiting for this stone, my next door neighbor gifted me with an old translucent Arkansas stone. He didn’t remember how long he’s had it. It had very little use and he thought he inherited it from an uncle.

It has the original box and markings on the stone. I’ve been told by whetstone experts that this stone was on the market between 1955 and 1965. Back then, hardware stores stocked fine whetstones. This stone has the Bear trademark which indicates Behr, a division of the Norton Company and it came from Troy, New York. Coincidentally, Donna’s dad worked there in the early to mid-1950s.

I wouldn’t have ordered the ILR if I knew I would soon have a fine translucent Arkansas stone. But, you can’t have too many whetstones! I wrote above that I’m sharpening straight razors (plural). My first straight razor is a modern razor made in Germany by Ralf Aust in 2023. Since then, I’ve found old straight razors on Ebay.

I bid on a German Puma razor from the 1930s. It wasn’t in very good condition when I received it and the scales (handle) were incorrectly fitted. The blade was chipped and needed work. It was a learning experience. I replaced the scales with buffalo horn and repaired the blade. I also figured out that I paid too much for it.

Puma 88 with new scales and refinished blade – I wish I took a before resto picture

I found another listing for a Puma razor in Japan. This one appeared to be in much better shape. I made a low-ball bid and won the razor! It only needed a little clean-up and honing to become shave ready. This one is a 222 and it’s also from the 1930s. I still need to polish the blade, but I’ve shaved with it.

Then I bid on a Wester Bros. German straight razor and was surprised to win again. This one was shave ready right out of the box and it’s a real fine razor. It dates back to the 1920s – that’s right, I’ve shaved with a razor that’s about 100 years old.

If I would have known these old razors were available at a fraction of the price of a modern one, I would have started with these. On the other hand, these old razors involved a bit of learning along the way. Just learning to shave with a straight razor is challenging enough without having to think about its condition.

Summer temperatures have arrived with highs forecasted to be around 110 degrees over the weekend before it cools down to the low 100s. We don’t mind it much, we start our day early then stick with mostly indoor activities once it heats up.

I have a couple of dinner plates before I wrap – actually one is a good ol’ American breakfast. I don’t know why I took this photo, but here it is.

Donna tried something new – a stuffed flank steak. She rolled and tied the meat around a stuffing of fresh oregano and cheeses. The oregano came from her garden.

And the dinner plate.

Stuffed flank steak with pasta marinara and asparagus

Learning to Shave

My last post covered some natural whetstones I bought. I also mentioned the Japanese sujihiki kitchen knife I sharpened with the natural whetstones. I don’t usually pay much attention to the handles on my kitchen knives – I have both Japanese traditional style (called wa in Japanese) and western style handles (called yo in Japanese).

But the handle on my sujihiki kind of bothered me – it felt coarse in my hand and the transition from the ferrule to the wood handle wasn’t smooth. I never liked the plastic ferrule either. I saw a sale notification from Tokushu Knife for replacement wa handles. Tokushu Knife is located in Tennessee and the handles they had on sale are locally made and looked to nice. I ordered an ebony handle with a padauk ferrule.

Tokushu shipped promptly, but the USPS fumbled. Tracking showed the handle leaving the USPS facility in Chattanooga with no further information for a week. Then it showed it at the USPS facility in Memphis. What did they do, walk it to Memphis? A week to progress from Chattanooga to Memphis is ridiculous. It finally arrived here after 10 days or so.

Getting the old handle off wasn’t an easy task. I tried several methods and in the end I had to use a chisel to split it. I found hot melt glue holding the blade tang to the chestnut wood handle. I had tried heating the knife by submerging the handle in boiling water, but apparently the wood insulated the glue and it wouldn’t melt. I didn’t want to overheat the metal.

It took about 30 minutes of filing with needle files to get the fitment of the new handle right. Then I shaved a hot melt glue stick and put the shavings inside the handle opening. I heated the tip of the tang with a kitchen torch – the type you would use to glaze sugar on creme brulee. I held the blade by the spine near the heel – the heat never went past the tang. The blade slid into the hot glue and I let it set for a few minutes. It was a great fit. Everything is aligned and the depth into the handle is just right. Altogether it took a little over an hour – I was thinking it would be a 20-minute job.

I have another kitchen knife story. The dollar is very strong against the Japanese yen right now. My most recent purchase was a nakiri from Japanese Chef Knives. It was made by Teruyasu Fujiwara from pre-laminated Yasuki Shirogami #1 steel and is part of his Nashiji line of knives. I love cutting with it. But, I couldn’t help stepping up to the next level – a Teruyasu Fujiwara Maboroshi Nakiri. I had to order one and wait for it to be made. Teruyasu-san has three levels of knives he hand makes. The entry level is the Nashiji line made from pre-laminated steel.

The next step up is the Maboroshi line. These have the same shirogami core steel, but the stainless cladding over the core steel is hand forge welded by Teruyasu. This means it is repeatedly heated and hammered and this changes the molecular structure of the steel for the better. The pre-laminated steels use the same materials to make a three-layer blank, but they are made by running the sheets of steel through a high pressure roller. This works well, but it can’t match the quality of hand forging.

Very few bladesmiths have the ability to forge weld the hard shirogami core steel to a soft stainless cladding. I can only think of a few. Most Japanese bladesmiths laminate soft iron over the hard core steel, which is easier to do but it negates the advantage of using a stainless steel to cover the corrosion prone core steel.

By ordering direct, I was given the choice of a custom kanji on the left side of the blade. The right side has the Teruyasu usual signature. I asked Ayano at the customer service if he could create a kanji for Koop. Apparently this was a hard concept to create phonetically, so he offered a couple of suggestions. This is what he suggested:

【光峰】: “光” means luminosity or brilliance, and “峰” means a high mountain or peak. This kanji symbolizes that the person is a person who brings brilliance to those around him or her and pursues the heights to which he or she should aspire.

It might be a little over-the-top, but I went with it. After about nine weeks, I received an e-mail telling me the knife was ready to ship. They sent me pictures.

The knife arrived two days later and it was worth it.

I’ve been doing dinner prep for Donna. She comes up with a dish to make and then sets out the ingredients to be cut. I cut the ingredients and usually will place them on a quarter-sheet pan and she can use them as she prepares our meal. She calls me her sous-chef, but I hardly qualify for that title. I think I’m more like an amateur prep cook. Last night I was getting ready to cut potatoes for Donna – she was making potato salad to go with the Memphis-style babyback ribs I had in the Traeger smoker-grill. I asked her how she wanted the potatoes cut. She said “Let me show you.” I handed her the Maboroshi nakiri – she never uses my Japanese kitchen knives – she was amazed at how it split the potato with no effort at all.

While I’m on the subject of sharp, shiny objects, I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I wrote a post a few years ago about the shaving razor business model where some companies will give you the razor handle to get you on the hook to buy disposable plastic razor cartridges from them. This model took hold back in the 1970s and the marketing machine has convinced us that we need two, three, five or more blades in the razor cartridge to get a decent shave.

I remember the razors my dad and grandpa used – they were called double edge safety razors. No plastic. I’ve read that the EPA estimates over a billion plastic razor cartridges end up in landfills every year in the USA. That’s a lot of plastic bits.

I’ve found there’s a cult-like following for shaving the old-fashioned way with a safety razor or a straight razor – it’s called wet shaving. No more plastic disposable junk – with ever escalating replacement costs. With a safety razor or straight razor, you pay up front a one-time cost for the razor. With a straight razor you need to develop sharpening skills (or send it to a sharpener), but there are vintage straight razors on the market that are 100 years old! With a safety razor you still need blades, but they are ten to twenty cents a piece and they are recyclable metal – no plastic. Again, these razors can last for generations.

There are forums such as Badger and Blade where you can learn how to wet shave and what equipment to buy or avoid. There are also countless YouTube videos. I jumped aboard this train. I went head first and bought a straight razor.

I bought a Ralf Aust 5/8 straight razor. Ralf is a craftsman in Germany running a one-man shop assisted by his wife with the bookkeeping and shipping. The photo didn’t pick up the laser engraving on the blade – it says “Solinger Handarbeit.” This translates as “Handcrafted in Solingen.” The scales (handle) on this model are made from redwood.

I have plenty of sharpening stones and some sharpening skills. A straight razor is different from a kitchen or pocket knife though. The techniques are similar, yet different.

For one thing, razors need to be finished to a higher level of refinement than a knife. Most people prefer a certain level of “toothiness” in a kitchen or pocket knife – unless they’re cutting sushi. A truly razor-sharp edge might not “bite” into a tomato or pepper skin. This toothiness would make a shaving razor very uncomfortable.

So, I needed a finishing stone for my razor. I wanted go natural, so I bought a rectangular Belgian coticule finishing stone with a small bout – called a nagura in sharpening circles.

The Belgian coticule is a whole story by itself – it will have to wait for another post.

You also should have a couple of strops on hand for a straight razor. These used to be common items in barber shops. I now have two hanging strops – one made in Germany from linen and one made in Morocco from cow hide.

Hanging strops – leather on top and linen below

Well, shaving with a straight razor is not straight forward. It’s scary! Putting a razor sharp blade against your face is daunting. It takes skill to successfully shave with it. Acquiring that skill can be a painful experience. After a few bloody experiences, I decided I needed to take baby steps. It was suggested on the forum to start by only shaving the easy parts – your cheeks – until you get a better feel for it.

If you know me, you know I also shave my head. This would be impossible for me to do with a straight razor – what was I thinking? I’d probably cut my ears off!

Well, I really wanted to ditch the disposable cartridge razor. So I ordered a safety razor. That’s a whole ‘nother topic with much to learn – but it’s not nearly the learning curve of a straight razor. I call it my training wheels – I can shave my cheeks with the straight razor, then shift to the safety razor to finish my neck and touch up areas. I can also shave my head with it. High quality safety razor blades can be obtained on the internet for about $10 for 100 blades.

Goodfellas’ Smile Bayonetta safety razor

My safety razor is made in Italy by Goodfellas’ Smile. The model is Bayonetta and it is CNC machined from brass. It’s a little aggressive, I have to be careful shaving my head. But I’m enjoying the process and I understand the reason why guys and gals do this. That’s probably enough about sharp, shiny objects for now – I’ll be revisiting this sub-culture topic.

I only have one dinner plate photo for this post. Not that Donna hasn’t made many photo-worthy dinner plates, I’ve just neglected to photograph them. This is one-pan tortellini with sausage and fennel soup.

Chopping the fennel was interesting – the recipe used all of the parts. I thinly sliced the stalks and bulb, then minced the fronds. It was an excellent dinner!

My last tennis lesson for the season was a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been playing some informal pick-up games. Summer play will begin tomorrow. I played pickleball for a couple of hours yesterday and I think all of the tennis has actually improved some aspects of my pickleball game – I was on fire despite not playing recently while I concentrate on tennis.

The weather has been great. A little on the warm side, but mostly comfortable. We’ve had highs in the upper 70s to 80s. A 90 degree day here and there and more 90s to come. I’m not complaining.

Stoned

The snowbird season is coming to a close. Many of the winter visitors at Viewpoint have departed for points north. Golf league and tennis league play has ended and I had my last tennis lesson of the season.

Donna and I intend to continue to play tennis through the summer in the mornings with other full-time residents. My goal is to become proficient enough to join a team in league play in the fall. I held my last pickleball class of the season at the end of March.

Donna found information for free admittance at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on the second Tuesday of the month. So this past Tuesday, I grabbed my camera and few bottles of water and we headed there. We arrived around 9:30am and I was surprised at the full parking lots. We parked in the overflow lot and got our second surprise at the entrance. At the check-in area, we were asked if we had a reservation!

I thought this was really odd – like needing a reservation to visit the zoo or something. We told the guy we didn’t have reservation and it didn’t seem to matter. He just handed us a map and waved us in. We entered and it felt like we were at Disneyland. The walking paths were all crowded and little kids were everywhere. I brought my camera thinking I would be able to photograph birds in the gardens, but with all the people the birds seemed to have fled to the open desert.

We walked around for a bit, but it was like going down a crowded Walmart aisle. Oblivious people would stop in the middle of the path, blocking others from moving through. I shot a few pictures of flowers, but we soon tired of the place and left. I would not have been happy if we had paid for admission.

I wrote about a new natural whetstone I bought in my last post. Like most things I do, I had to take it up a notch. I enjoy sharpening knives – I find it almost meditative and doing so on natural stones adds another element to my enjoyment. The use of stones for sharpening tools by humans predates any historical reference. Homer wrote about Cretan whetstones in The Iliad and Odyssey more than 12 centuries ago.

The truth is, natural whetstones are harder to use than man made synthetic whetstones. The biggest difference is the consistency of the stones. Modern synthetic whetstones have abrasives that are usually some form of aluminum oxide or silicon carbide. These abrasive particles are uniform in size and shape and are held by a binder that wears down and constantly releases fresh abrasive particles. The stones are engineered with different binder compounds that can be relatively soft or hard.

Natural stones on the other hand are cut from various types of rocks. They are quarried or mined from seams of mostly homogenous stone types that are naturally abrasive. The abrasive particles are randomly distributed and are bound together with other natural compounds that have fused together from heat and pressure over millions of years. These stones are found and mined all over the world, but the most desirable stones originate from Japan, Belgium and Arkansas in the USA. There are many other lesser known stones from other countries.

The Japanese and Belgian stones can be very expensive – some are considered collectible. I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole, so I sought out lesser known stones like the Indonesian stone I wrote about before. I bought two more Indonesians – a medium and a medium/fine to go with the fine stone. These stones are called Red Stone (Batu Beureum in Sundanese – the language of West Java), Black Stone (Batu Hideung) and White Stone (Batu Bodas) respectively.

Red, Black and White Indonesian whetstones

I don’t let my Japanese kitchen knives get very dull, so these three stones are a good progression for sharpening them. If the knives were very dull or chipped, I would start with a soft, coarse synthetic stone. I would do the same if I was sharpening a softer stainless steel knife like a German Henckels or Wusthof.

I took things a step further and added a couple of fine finishing stones. The first one is Japanese – an Ocean Blue Tsushima whetstone. Tsushima stones come from two mines – one on a mountain on Tsushima Island – these are usually brownish – the other mine was under the ocean off of the coast of Tsushima. These are black or dark blue. The mines closed in the 1980s, but there are still plenty of stone blocks available.

The other finishing stone came from a mine on Velky Rozsutec – a mountain in the Mala Fatra range in Slovakia. These stones are favored by farmers in that part of the world for sharpening scythes and for knives. The stones were mined and cut by one man until his passing in 2013. A few years later, his son and daughter took over the business and began cutting and selling whetstones.

Rozsutec stones are unique. They are cut from a very hard strata of sandstone. I usually think of sandstone as a soft, crumbly type of stone. Not these. They are very hard and long wearing stones. The silica grains cut the metal when sharpening. Over time, these grains don’t release, they slowly flatten and the stone get smoother. At some point it needs to be conditioned by flattening the surface with a harder stone or diamond plate to expose fresh grit.

I use the Tsushima and Rozsutec in the final stage of sharpening. These require a very light touch and can provide an extremely keen, razor-sharp edge on hard steel. I used all these natural stones on my Sanjo sujihiki ( a Japanese slicer blade) and got a very fine edge. When I used it to cut a pork tenderloin, it practically fell through the meat. As an experiment, I held the blade between my thumb and first two fingers and slid the 240mm blade across the tenderloin with no pressure other than the weight of the blade. It cut cleanly through!

For the past several weeks I’ve been striking out on astrophotography. The nights have been either cloudy or the targets were too close to nearly full or bright full moons. When I shoot from the east tennis court lot here at Viewpoint, my preference is to locate targets that are in the north or east. This keeps me pointed away from the worst of the light pollution, but it’s still a light polluted sky.

Last week I caught a break. I set up on Tuesday night, March 2nd, but was stymied by technical problems (software). I went back out on Wednesday and was able to begin imaging a little after 8pm. I shot 80 exposures, 90 seconds each and packed up. I knew it wasn’t enough – I was targeting a very distant and dim galaxy – the Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565). This is an edge-on galaxy around 40 million light years away from earth.

A week later I had favorable conditions and went after it again. I repeated my earlier effort and picked up 80 more exposures. I used my Astro-Tech 115EDT telescope with a 0.8X reducer/flattener. This gave me a focal length of 644mm and an F5.6 aperture – you photographers out there will know what I mean. I try to keep exposures under 90 seconds in the heavy light pollution – preferably 75 or 60 seconds. This galaxy was so dim, I knew I needed to push the envelope and F5.6 allowed me gather enough light at 90 seconds.

My APM 140 with a focal length of 980mm would have been a better field of view for this target, but at F7 I think I would need a lot more time on target. It worked out better than I expected with the AT 115EDT.

If you click on the photo above to enlarge, you might be able to find three more galaxies in the image – they are much farther away and small.

As usual, Donna is feeding me well. Here are a couple of typical dinner plates from the past month. I bought a USDA Prime tri-tip at Costco and smoked it on the Traeger smoker/grill. Donna served it with sweet potato and green beans.

Another meal was simple grilled chicken seasoned with salt and pepper served with grilled peppers and onions with feta and grilled bok choy.

The weather for the past month has been a little strange. We’ve had very pleasant stretches with highs in the mid-70s, but also had rain at least one day per week accompanied by a couple of cool days with highs in the low 60s. It seems like that’s all in the past now. Today the forecast calls for low 90s. The next two weeks call for highs ranging from the mid-70s to 80s and sunny skies.

Sticker Shock

I received quite a shock in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It was my insurance renewal notice for our Jeep Compass. The rate for the same coverage on a car that’s a year older and depreciating was more than double – that’s right, my premium was more than double the cost of the previous year.

I talked to my insurance agent about this and she had some shocking stories to tell. The insurance market is in turmoil. She’s been in the business for over 30 years and she’s never experienced a market like the current conditions. She says a number of factors are involved – I think many of these factors were avoidable.

She cited California and New York as major influences in the cost of insurance. California has had huge claims from wildfires and they regulate the cost of insurance. Many companies have quit writing new policies or renewals in California and New York due to over-regulation. When the government doesn’t allow a free market, unintended consequences can rule. Companies leaving the huge California and New York markets has a ripple effect on the rest of us.

Companies that continue to operate in California and New York have to underwrite policies for less than their actuaries calculate. They spread that loss to others – in this case, my current insurance through Progressive raises the cost for everyone else to cover their losses in states like California and New York. In essence, I’m subsidizing California policies.

Another factor we face in Arizona is the double-edged sword of under-insured/uninsured policy requirements. Under-insured/uninsured coverage is a state requirement here. Many of the collision claims here involve uninsured motorists. The flood of illegal immigration puts many unlicensed, uninsured motorists on the road. So, the state requires me to have insurance coverage to account for that. Again, I’m forced to subsidize their lack of responsibility. If your policy is due for renewal soon, be prepared for a cost increase. End of rant.

Awhile back, Donna and I decided to buy whole chickens which I then broke down into eight or 10 pieces. We liked the quality of whole chickens better than the pre-packaged breasts we found in stores. I would break down the chicken and Donna would vacuum seal pieces and freeze them for later consumption. Somehow, over the last year or so we got out of that habit. It bit us when Donna made a dish with pre-packaged chicken breasts that turned out to be dry and stringy. It had nothing to do with her recipe or cooking skill – it was not a good quality product.

So I’m back into the chicken butchery business. I break down a chicken into two breasts and tenders, two thighs, two drumsticks and two wings which I sometimes cut into four pieces. We rediscovered why we were doing this in the past.

To break down the chicken, I use a Japanese knife called a honesuki which is designed precisely for this task. A honesuki was one of the first Japanese knives I bought. I’ve never liked the Misono brand Swedish steel honesuki I bought all that much. It was made in the traditional Japanese way with the blade sharpened to an offset bevel – in this case a 70/30 grind. I couldn’t keep a sharp edge on it and struggled to maintain the 70/30 edge.

I found a good deal on a honesuki made in Sanjo, Japan with a western 50/50 bevel grind. I like Sanjo knives in general. Sanjo is a historic blade- and tool-making district. Many of the bladesmiths there are small operators with one man doing the entire knifemaking process. There is a factory there called Tadafusa which employs a number of blacksmiths and sharpeners, but most of the knife makers there are run by only a few employees or a single person. The honesuki I bought is typical san-mai (literally translates as three-layer) construction where the hard shirogami #2 carbon steel core is sandwiched between layers of softer stainless steel. I broke down two chickens with this blade and it glided right through all of the joints to separate the chicken parts. Love it!

Most of the meal prep work I do for Donna involves cutting vegetables. I bought another Japanese knife from Teruyasu Fujiwara called a nakiri. Nakiris are typically made with a rectangular blade and have a slight belly curvature. They are specifically designed for cutting vegetables and the flat edge profile makes it cut cleanly through a vegetable without leaving what’s called an accordion – that’s when the vegetable isn’t fully separated and the bottom layer of the vegetable stays connected together. It’s annoying.

I keep our kitchen knives sharp by free-hand sharpening on Japanese water stones. These are whetstones that either need to be soaked in water before use or in some case can be used with just a splash of water to lubricate and clean the surface. I have a number of synthetic stones in various grits for this task.

Traditional Japanese stones were mined for centuries and are natural stones. This can lead to another rabbit hole where there are enthusiasts looking for stones with seemingly magical properties. This can lead to an expensive journey through stones which can be collectable as many of the old mines have been shut down for years. Enthusiasts sometimes spend hundreds of dollars for a single stone!

Recently I’ve been hearing about natural stones being mined in Indonesia. There are a couple of groups there trying to open up an export market for these sharpening stones. I watch a couple of YouTube videos describing them. I fell for it and bought an Indonesian natural whetstone. It was inexpensive – they haven’t developed much of a following or market yet, so they are dirt cheap. The stone I bought is hard and fairly fine grain. I used it to finish the edge on my honesuki and also on a Sanjo slicer (called a sujihiki). It left a razor-sharp edge.

You can see this thing is a brick – I think it’s a lifetime whetstone.

I put my knives to good use recently and made my famous Japanese fried rice.

Donna grilled shrimp and served it over a cup of fried rice.

Another recent meal was pork tenderloin served with chipotle maple sauce with garlic smashed potato and fresh broccoli from our garden on the side. That’s a winner!

Another fine dinner was a plate of skillet chicken parmesan served with gnocci and steamed spinach and fresh basil from our garden.

Last night, we had our friends, Chuck and Sue Lines and Dick and Roxy Zarowny over for Donna’s annual St. Patrick’s dinner. We had it a few days early as Donna has a Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday evening. She made all the traditional Irish foods – corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. Sue brought an appetizer and Roxy supplied Key lime pie for dessert. I neglected to take any photos as we chatted all evening.

There’s a big project underway here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. A company called Airebeam has been contracted to install fiber-optic cabling and internet service for the park. In a couple of months we should have access to blazing fast (up to 750Mbps) internet and video streaming – it will be great!

Donna competed in a tennis tournament a couple of weeks ago. I attended as an official scorekeeper – I’m a league scorekeeper for the East Valley Senior Tennis League. The league sanctions competition for seniors from various 55+ parks and neighborhoods in our area. Donna and her tennis partner, Linda Rice, won their first match but were eliminated in a close second-round match two days later.

The weather has been very pleasant over the past couple of weeks with daily highs in the mid-to-upper 70s. We had clouds roll in last night and will have some rain today before the sunshine returns again tomorrow. The rest of the month is forecast to have daily highs back in the mid-to-upper 70s.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Japan Part Three – Kanazawa

Japan Part Two – Kyoto

Japan Part One – Tokyo

Fourth and Final Housesit

Summer Sits

Graduate

Travel Plans

Learning to Shave

Stoned

Sticker Shock

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