It was a very rainy Sunday, and my original plan to go mountain climbing was canceled. Instead I spent the day cooking. I made some date and cranberry cookies as well as English bread pudding. The pudding idea was brought up by a new British person that just moved into my building. It took a lot longer to cook than we had thought but in the end was well worth it.

Today was the actual Unagi day. I took a coworker out to the local Unagi place for lunch. My coworker also really liked the Unagi.

I finally had time to update my site…

Scroll down for some pictures of Korea, and my latest mountain adventure.

The Korea photo gallery is also up!

Last summer I went back to the USA and thus missed Unagi day. I do not plan on missing it this year!
A few days early, but I met with my old Japanese teacher to go eat Unagi. Except for last year, we had met every year to eat some delicious Unagi.

Even though it is summer, recently the air has been cool, clean and windy. These are the types of days where it is impossible for me to sit around at home. I got up really early and took the TsukubaExpress train out to Mt. Tsukba in Ibaraki prefecture. The hike up was extremely hot and humid. I sweat more than I can ever remember sweating and drank more than a liter of water before reaching the top. However, it was all worth it. The cool breeze and the fantastic view at the top of the 877m mountain was just amazing.
On my way back to the station I noticed a small festival and decided to spend the early part of the evening joining in on the fun.

Tsukuba-san

Tsukuba temple

The temple cat

Cooling off with cold mountain spring water

The peak of the slightly shorter Mt. Nantai

Lunch at the top.

Enjoying the view from Mt. Tsukuba

Click here for the pictures of the festival:
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I finally got to meet up with my friend Tatsuya. Both of us have been busy so we havent been able to meet for footsal or mountain climbing very much.
We had Ramen at a famous place in Yokohama, caught up and made some plans to go climb Yarigatake in September. Im looking forward to it.

My friend invited me to attend a Macrobiotic cooking class. It was an interesting learning experience, plus I got to eat some interesting new and healthy foods.

I bought a new camera a while ago and took it to Korea, and when I got back I had a lot of large pictures to look at and organize. I then realized that the 10 year old laptop I bought way back in college just wasnt cutting it anymore.

So, I finally decided to buy a new computer !

Here it is:

Toshiba L775-S7240

Over the Forth of July vacation I took a short trip to Korea with my friend. We had 4 whole days, which is a good amount to take in a lot of the sights and foods of Seoul. We went to the famous places like the Seoul Tower, the old palaces, different markets, museums, and the DMZ. However, one of the main reasons to go to Korea is for the food. Every meal, no matter what you order, comes with Kimchi and although the food was fairly spicy it was always really good.
However, 4 days is still not enough to satisfy me and I am sure that I will be going back to Korea fairly soon.

Dressing up in traditional clothes.

At the old palace.

Korean night stall foods are also quite good.

We went to a restaurant that served the traditional royal court cuisine complete with a dance show.

It was raining the day we went to the DMZ so we didnt get to see North Korea. The tunnel was pretty interesting.

Of course we are Korean BBQ.

My name in Korean

Some cool Korean guy making straw shoes.

The tea cafe we went to had birds flying all around it. This one tried to steal my sweet.

We decided to see the Nanta show, which was a lot better than expected.