Just for our memory...

I've been really swamped these days and have not uploaded my sister's San Diego vacation which was almost one month ago. They had fantastic time and made their trip unique experience. I, at least, have to put up some pictures to reminisce it in the future.

Major League Padres vs. Dodgers @ Petco Park - Sep 2nd









Del Mar Horse racing & Wild Animal Park - Sep 3rd









Balloon ride @ Del Mar - Sep 4th









Bicycle ride to Del Mar Beach through SR56 - Sep 5th

Horseback riding @ Canyon Side - Sep 6th

Hollywood, Santa Moninca in LA - Sep 7th

Emmy Awards After Party @ Les Deux

Something exciting happened to me. My partner and I were invited to TV guide Emmy Awards after party in Hollywood. We never attended this sort of luxury party and did not know what it would be like. The dress code was black tie 'optional' for men and evening dress for ladies. The word 'optional' was tricky because it puzzled my partner over a suit he would wear. Tuxedo or normal suit? He had a new tux that seemed not to have any other chances to appear if he skips this time, but it might be too much for him and only the Emmy awarded people might wear tux. Feeling perplexed, he decided to dress in tux. As for me, I wore a light green knee length one-piece dress, which I thought was okay for this occasion.

After having dinner with a host couple, we headed for the party venue, Les Deux at around 10 pm when celebrities were supposed to arrive after Emmy Award. Along the Hollywood blvd, the fans and the passengers flocked and some of them mistakenly gazed at us as though they found celebrities. It was not bad to pass the entrance of the restaurant where Paris Hilton or Britney Spears used to hit it up.

As soon as we got in, I found John Pyper-Ferguson from my favorite show "Brothers and Sisters", and I was so thrilled that I could not help but looked him up and down. But no one with me was familiar with him or the show. Since we were still on the red carpet, I hesitated to show my enthusiasm to ask him for a picture with me, but later on, a huge regret gripped me. I should have taken a pic with him or of him. He was, in a word, "too cool." Oops, it is 'two' words.

While strolling in the terrace, someone unexpectedly grabbed my partner's hand and shouted, "congratulations!" He mistook my partner probably with Masi Oka.

A while later, the Grammy Award winner, John Legend performed live with soulful voice followed by the "Band from TV" in which James Denton (Mike in Desperate Housewives) played guitar. 'Mike' is a good-looking guy, but frankly, his singing was not for the musician's, to say the least.

Although I caught some of the familiar faces including Simon Cowell from American Idol, I seem to have missed a lot of actors/actresses in the party. Maybe I should have waited for them at the entrance in order to catch all of them.

Anyhow, what a colorful party it was! The gorgeous people drank, relaxed, danced, and enjoyed in their own way. For the first time in my life, I saw so many beautiful and sculptural people at once. It was an improbable and a superb experience that I would not be able to have again.

Parking circumstance

Unlike parking in Japan, in most cases in San Diego, we do not have to worry about finding a parking space. We can park at any streets unless the curb is colored in red, green or white, or it indicates special signs. Furthermore, because of the recent expansion of malls, we have plenty of parking spaces surrounded by stores which keep us even from concerning about our parking skills. But when it comes to parking in down town where there is incessant traffic, the things are different. We habitually have to compete with others for a space, being cautious not to wander the wrong way to the narrow one-way streets.

The other day two days in a row, I had an inevitable chores which obliged me to drive to San Diego down town and park in the center of down town. The first day, when I was trying to plunge my car into a tiny space, a young guy came to me saying that his parked space would be open and 40 more minutes were remained in the meter so that I could use it. What a gentleman he was!! Instead of just leaving his space, he came to me all the way just to say it. With the reluctant chore that I had to handle later, I was in a somber mood, but this guy made my day.

The next day, I was a bit concerned if I could find a parking space. When I arrived at the area I parked the day before, an African American guy who neatly stood 100 yd away waved me pointing out an open parking space. I mumbled myself that another nice guy appeared! When all the San Diego guys became so courteous?

I did not notice, however, until I parked and rushed out of the car that the guy was expecting me come out. When I thanked him and was about to leave, he grinned and murmured, "what about a homeless tip? This is my job to find a parking space for people." Oh, there you are! Not every guy was I-will-find-you-a-space-for-free guy. We cannot forget that this is a tip society. I, thanking him for his freelance work, gave him a dollar. "If it's expired, I will add more coins!" he stated. I returned to my car, unfortunately, to find the meter was expired :(

My sister is visiting SD

My sister and her husband came from Japan to spend their 1 week vacation with us here in San Diego. We were going to pick them up at LA on Sep 2nd as she let me know their schedule via email.

My mother panicked me, however, when I casually called her one day before their leaving. She exclaimed that my sister and her husband would leave on that very day, which means they would arrive on Sep 1st. After I came to know that it was my sister's misconception, I rushed to get through what I was going to complete on Sep 1st, such as homework from my college classes, room cleaning, washing, and grocery shopping and such. Phew!! This is my sister. She is not meticulous and attentive, but always easygoing. People might say it's her attraction, though.

When my partner and I arrived at LA airport on 'Sep 1st', we freaked out that he left his cell phone home and I did not have my sister's cell phone number. Furthermore, I completely forgot to tell her my number, she did not even ask my number. We needed, at any rate, to find them at the arrival gate and fortunately, we were able to discover them among Korean passengers coming out of Korean Airline.

Being relieved, I laughed at myself noticing what a similar character my sister and I have - easygoing, negligent and sweeping. I hope their stay will not be heading for trouble.

Second experience as a babysitter

I babysat 4 kids today for two of my good friends who needed to visit their kid's school to see their teacher at parents' night. The age of children are, 7, 6, 5 and 3, only 6 is a girl and others are boys.
Babysitting is not my job and I am not used to do it for any children. Furthermore, I tend to talk to kids just like I do to adults. But since I see them either at my house, our community pool, or their houses at times, I was not afraid of being left alone with them. Just in case, however, I came over with some ideas to use when the kids fretfully cry.

My unprofessional tactics are ...
1. to draw Thomas and Friends with my poor skill
2. to lay floor with Plarail
3. to make simple quizzes about, for instance, animals and insects
4. to ask them about dinosaurs
(when it comes to dinosaurs, they are connoisseurs)
5. to let them make a show and practice to play in front of their parents after they return

and if it still does not work, especially for a 3-year kid, my last resort was ...
to call their mom for help.

The result was quite different from what I had expected.
They merrily enjoyed their parents' absence and even asked me to leave the kid's room. Feeling a bit lonely, I myself started writing my free-writing in English, then kids came to notice what I was doing with a notebook and a pen, and surrounded me requesting a draw of their stuffed animals, Thomas and Friends and the like.
What made me feel content was the fact that the smallest child had been able to tell the name of the Thomas' friends from what I sketched :0 For me, though, they were all same and hard to distinguish their faces.
We enjoyed our time otherwise. They fought to kill a fly found in a living room with a flyswatter and succeeded to do away with.

Nothing precarious happened until the end, and instead of having made me fatigued with their bottomless power, the kids filled in my solitary night :)

I will be pleased to accept next time :)

New semester

Today, my first English class at college started. As I expected, all the students except probably three of us sounded native speakers. I thought I had been prepared to jump into that situation, but it is not an easy-going Spanish class I took this summer (and am taking fall too), and it is an all English class composed of English speaking people. I was extremely nervous when I first rushed into the room.

For one reason, one of my Japanese friends gave me a bit of information about the same class of another professor, and she said she would be dropping it because of the difficulty of all the assignments she needed to do inside & outside the class.

Fortunately, my professor who I met for the first time today and came across as a considerate and cheerful lady mitigated my concerns a little bit. Moreover, my ESL teacher whom I learned from for two semesters told me, in replying to my email message, that she knew my new teacher very, very well. It is so auspicious that I cannot help continuing the class ;)
Just wish me luck!

What American accent do you have?

I found an interesting page here.
It tells you which American accent you do have by answering only 13 questions.

The below is my result.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I've never been to the Northeast, but I know the reason.
My much-loved sitcom 'Sex and the City' is still on air and my addiction that kept me from going out and let me sit in front of the TV all day long turned to be a 30 min healthy daily routine, and I am absorbing their way of speaking (hopefully) without any consciousness, or at least I believe they speak in a correct and cool manner :)))

I'm aware I do not have any accent of notrheast and I have, for sure, Japanese accent. Yet it is not too bad that someone tells me I have 'their accent' ;)

Schulte-ufer

I fell in love with this stainless steel pot at first sight.This is the first pot I bought for myself since I got married about 8 years ago. Any pan, pot, skillet or Chinese frying pan I've used were either taken over from my partner's single life or given by my friends as a wedding gift.

Now that it poured a fresh air into my kitchen, I have to stir myself to get out of a rut and improve my culinary skills.

Afternoon tea in America

I'm a coffee person, yet it does not mean that I cannot enjoy a good cup of tea. But I never expected to have afternoon tea in San Diego; yes, there is a few restaurants where serve good tea.

Three of my good friends and I visited TEA-UPON-CHATSWORTH the other day. Since I've never been to the UK, I cannot tell the difference from the traditional British tea, and only I can give is the comparison between this restaurant and my meager afternoon tea experience in Japan.
The service here was great and their indoor ornament was just like what we usually imagine about. Their tea was selective from the ample choice. We were able to relax and chatted to our heart's content. Sounds like everything was perfect!
But unfortunately, the scone and sweets were a bit too sweet and it brought us back to reality. We are in America!

2007 Acura Classic

La Costa Resort and Spa is, as the name shows, a fabulous resort hotel with a spa in Carlsbad near San Diego. I badly wanted to visit there to get my dry skin healed, but this time my purpose was not a spa or a gorgeous restaurant, but tennis.
US open series Acura Classic was taken place there. I had some tennis class before, and hastily acquired a little knowledge of tennis, and about a month ago, my partner and I bought the ticket for our free weekend without even knowing who were going to play. Actually, we had not checked the result until late at night the day before, and were still believing the game we would watch should have been a semi final. (Our local Japanese magazine said the game on Aug 5th would be a semi final.)
When we checked the result the day before, however, the number of the remaining players for the singles tournament looked only two, Maria Sharapova and Patty Schnyder, and for doubles tournament, 2 teams. Our subtle expectation we might be able to see Sharapova turned out a fairly high possibility. Yet we still did not know if we could see the game of singles or doubles.

The result was below ;)
It was a final of Maria Sharapova vs. Patty Schnyder. In addition to that, we were able to see the doubles final if we still had an energy. Unfortunately, 4 hours of sun exposure discouraged us from sitting for next game.


Maria Sharapova won by beating Patty Schnyder 6-2, 3-6 and 6-0 :)

2007 San Diego Pride Prade

In my last post, I completely forgot to mention the most inciting event I've ever seen in San Diego. It's a Pride parade, i.e. gay parade! The majority in the parade was gay including the police officers and fire fighters. Even most spectators were gay. Being coward, my partner kept muttering, "Don't leave me alone! If I look I'm alone, everybody would gaze at me!!"
Don't worry. They know who their targets are and they like beautiful one ;)
Some guys were too good-looking to stay gay. Mottainai!

No comment in particular for each photos. Seeing is believing ;)

Hello again

I did not mean to stop posting my blog... but it's been almost 2 months and I was taking a long summer break from my blog.
What I did during these days are below. Nothing special, but everything was fun♪ except funeral....

1. Spanish class - summer semester - started and ended yesterday

3 hours a day 4 days a week for 6 weeks
I was completely overwhelmed by tremendous amount of homework. (This is one of the reasons I procrastinated my blog) The class mates were American teenagers or at oldest in their early 20's except one nice Romanian lady and myself, and it was like I was in a high school class. But it was fun and reminded me of Latin gaiety, so I cannot wait for the fall semester Spanish.

2. Went to Pacific Beach midnight to see the life of Grunion.

I am NOT an ecologist though ...

What is Gruinion? (source http://www.dfg.ca.gov/Mrd/gruschd.html)
California grunion are small silvery fish found only along the coast of southern California and northern Baja California. Most sportsmen would be unaware of their existence were it not for the unique spawning behavior of these fish. Unlike other fish, grunion come out of the water completely to lay their eggs in the wet sand of the beach. As if this behavior were not strange enough, grunion make these excursions only on particular nights, and with such regularity that the time of their arrival on the beach can be predicted a year in advance. This phenomenon can be seen on many beaches in southern California. Shortly after high tide, on certain nights, sections of these beaches sometimes are covered with thousands of grunion depositing their eggs in the sand.

3. Went back to Japan to attend a funeral of my granma-in-law.

She was 91 years old and it was a peaceful death.
I stayed in Japan only for 3 nights and ate Sashimi as much as I could, and got my hair cut.
After one year and 2 months away from Japan, my first impression was that girls were wearing beautiful makeup and they were very thin and white, not suntanned like me...

4. Went fishing again

Terrible seasick and no catch.
One of my friends who caught 3 big barracudas gave me one of his almost 3feet but not-fit-in-th-fridge barracudas. I cooked it on my own :)

5. Went to LA to see Akio Morita exhibition and ate Santoka Ramen

6. Bought new PC & theater system

My PC was more than 5 years old, and so I newly bought a nice one! Whatever the PC was in the store, it would be much much better, faster and more functional than my previous one.

All above are my latest news. I will update at my own pace. ;)

from Las Vegas to San Diego - June 9th

The next day, we enjoyed lunch at Paris and took a walk along Strip.
The ambiance of Las Vegas was utterly different from the national parks we visited. By visiting both side of the places, our trip was enriched and became unforgettable one.

Lastly, I want to mention how we were able to endure the long drive we had as showed below.

- San Diego to Zion --- 7 hours
- Zion to Yellowstone --- 10 hours
- Grand Teton to Salt Lake City --- 5 hours
- Salt Lake City to Las Vegas --- 5 hours
- Las Vegas to San Diego --- 4.5 hours

It is all thanks to a Pod Cast. My partner acquired various shows such as Rakugo (Japanese comic storytelling) and radio talk show by comedians like (My loved Bakusho-Mondai etc..) from Pod Cast. It kept us from tiring when we drove for a long time and make us laugh quite a lot. I even felt like driving more to listen to the Pod Cast.

from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas - June 8th

Olympic Monument------------------------------------- Scenery from a car window-----------
In Salt Lake City, we did nothing other than visiting Temple Square for about 10 min., where reverent Mormons gather in. Since we are not Mormon, it was just like a beautiful park with buildings and gardens. We left there without being solicited, and headed for Las Vegas, our last place to stay.

After almost 5-hour drive, we arrived at MGM Grand Hotel and Casino where we stayed, and then enjoyed Buffet there. It was okay for me, but for my partner, the food was not satisfying for the price. He tried Sushi, and it came with cheese inside a roll, maybe that's the main reason he didn't like it.

To get a fresh air, we strolled from MGM to Bellagio and looked at the famous fountain show. My image of Las Vegas was just a big and an artificial city where everybody smoke and enjoy casino, so I was wandering why so many people were fascinated by Las Vegas. The question in my mind was solved after the fountain show came with music "My Heart Will Go On", the theme song of Titanic. It was extremely impressing in the twilight.

Though we were exhausted, our last big event on this trip was the well-known show by Cirque du Soleil called "KA". I cannot express it in a word, but truly want to recommend everyone who goes to Las Vegas see it.

At the end of our journey, of course, we didn't want to lose our shirt. However, my partner was eager to compensate some of our expenses by winning at casino. Therefore, at around 11 pm after the show, we started playing at casino. I lost about $50 until 2 pm, (it's not too bad as a first experience) but my partner gained $350, and as he predicted, a part of our expenses was covered by his fortune :)

from Grand Teton to Salt Lake City -June 7th

I jumped out of a bed in the morning, and realized that there was snow everywhere.
Everyone seemed to have been impressed by the snow lying all over the field. But it was not only snow that many people were seriously looking into a telescope but moose browsing.



With our binocular, the detailed action of moose could not be captured, but the kind couple who possessed a telescope let us look at the moose :) They were amazing with big horns.




We decided to stay in Grand Teton as much as time permit, and didn't leave for Salt Lake City until the last minute(3pm).

Thanks to this decision, we had time for a 3-hour trek and were able to meet a bear and bear cubs, moose, a mule deer, squirrels and marmots etc.

Being satisfied, we hit the road at 3 pm for Salt Lake City. It was, again, a long drive, but we were able to arrive 8 pm as scheduled.

from Yellowstone to Grand Teton - June 6th

I was badly anticipating visiting Grand Teton, because many friends commented they liked it very much and the irrefutable beauty of the park is incomparable. So, it was going to be the best place for me too. However, it turned into a terrible stay unfortunately, due to my acute headache and sore throat coming from my cold that I caught the day before.
Having said that, I have an inexorable character that I could not give up going out to see the Grand Teton. Therefore, after a while rest at Jackson Lake Lodge, I just had to hang in there, and went out with my partner.
By the way, the name of Grand Teton derives from the name of mountain "Grand Teton". From the lobby of our hotel, the Grand Teton was invisible, but a series of mountains captivated our heart.

The deer we ran across was there with a fawn, and maybe because of the maternal instinct, it intimidated us who were even in a car, but at a 5 meter distance from them.




The hotel we stayed was so fabulous that we had dinner at their restaurant. The crab cake I ordered was right my favorite :)

@ Yellowstone - June 5th

When we think of Yellowstone, the first thing which comes to our mind should be the geysers. They vigorously erupt once in a while, some periodically and others irregularly. The most famous geyser is called Old Faithful (left photo), that comes out every 65 - 92 minutes. Although the visitor center shows prediction on a board, we were able to tell when the next time the geyser will erupt by the number of the people gathering to see around the geyser. It's worth seeing it once in your life, but once is enough, in my opinion. The world is too big to visit everywhere we want in one life. Anyway, I preferred finding animals than observing geysers :)

- Today's animals -

a herd of bison
elk
Spectators of a coyote family


coyotes (Mother and 3 puppies)
Red bellied marmot