Anton and Thor - Both Ways

On the Croziers' roof near Portabello

Bob and Gillian got back from Sardinia this week. We wandered over to their place on Saturday after going out to Greenwich to walk the line. We had drinks on the roof of their Blenheim Crescent flat overlooking the spice shop and the travel book store in Nottinghill Gate.

London

The Hoffs have come to London for a week of vacationing. We're staying at the Singh house in Golders Green and Paul had a week of work in Canary Wharf. Some of the spots visited during the week have been Parliament, Oxford Street, Tate Modern, British Museum, Tower of London and the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. We had a nice dinner with Sally Matthews and daughters Sophie and Lucy, afterwhich we attended the Fuerzabruta show at Roundhouse. During the week Naomi and the boys saw The Producers.

Izuvians in Singapore

Down in Sg for a conference. Roger the Izuvian was there! Got a shot with Olivier who is happily back in Singapore from Tokyo after quitting MSCI Barra. Now he's setting up Axioma in Asia. Also ran into John D'Abo who had stopped in on his way to Dubai. Don't we lead interesting lives?

Hanako's wedding

Back in April Hanako Tomimatsu got married. Her dad was pretty proud! I took a self portrait with her. Her husband managed to get in the picture.

Bolo Ties

I recently got motivated to make some bolo ties using old silver coins. My mother has given me a silver dollar her father got in Idaho during WWII when he was working as a carpenter building aircraft hangers. It is a Peace Dollar. I also have two Morgan silver dollars. I used the Peace dollar to make a bolo tie with materials I picked up at Tokyu Hands.

When looking around Ginza on the way to lunch with Bill one day I stopped in a coin shop and found that Japanese silver yen pieces from Meiji era are both very pretty and inexpensive. When I bought some high end bolo tie supplies from Utah I used them to make a 1912 Japanese silver yen bolo tie. Really nice! In a couple days I'll post a picture of the two.

Let me know if you want one too! I'll charge you double. Ha!

Paul

Anton Graduates

Anton finished 10 years at Nishimachi International School on 15 June 2006. He'll move on to three years of high school at Yokoyama International School. This summer we'll all head off for London and Paris to give Anton and his brother Thor a view of Europe. Should be a fun trip.

Wine tasting in the Yarra Valley

After Melbourne meetings, a swim and steam bath, dinner with Rod Eddington and a good night's sleep, I got up on Saturday, 13 May to take a tour of the Yarra Valley with Victoria Wine Tours. It was a splendid day and there were six of us in the van. Two guys out to drink, three women out to celebrate one of their birthdays and me to look for Yarra Edge, a single vineyard Cabernet Merlot I had had at Vlados on Thursday evening.

I found the wine at Yering Station where the group shot was taken around 4 pm. I bought two bottles to take back to Tokyo.

Dinner at Vlados

Well, it was a classic night at Vlados, the best steak house on the planet I reckon. Donald and I met up with his step son in law who was also in Melbourne on business. Here they are on the way down the stairs pointing out the poor cow. I was over at the Long Room on Collins Street wrestling with Bullwinkle.

Sydney

I have been in Australia for the past couple days. From my room in the Marriot I could see the Opera House. The morning light was nice, but the window was dirty. Maybe that helped this shot.

Drinks recipies from 1982

In 1982 Esquire magazine published a guide to bars in America. I took it out of the magazine because I had been a frequent visitor to the US recruiting teachers for Time-Life Educational Systems’ Japan instructional services. I would spend two weeks traveling across the US from the West Coast to New York interviewing teachers who had sent in their applications, transcripts, letters of recommendation and indicated they really did want to pay their own way to Japan and work for a pittance!

I would set myself up in a nice hotel in the middle of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, and schedule the appointments on the hour from 9 am to the early evening. Then I would go to dinner with friends living in those ciites, or just wander out to areas where there were plenty of bars and restaurants to choose from. So I thought this bar guide might come in handy. In fact I have not traveled in the US like that since joining Grieveson Grant and continuing working with the Brits at James Capel, HSBC and now FTSE.

This week I took the drinks folder out of the cupboard in Izu and opened up a few pages of various documents in it. Besides the wine temperature guide I will send to fellow Izuvian Roger Marshall, I thought it would be good to liberate some of the drink recipies in the Esquire guide. Here are some. If you want more, let me know. They are classified by city, so you can ask me for bars and cocktails for the following cities.

Atlanta
Baltimore
Boston
Chicago
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Dallas/Fort Worth
Denver
Houston
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
Miami
Minneapolis/St. Paul
New Orleans
New York
Philadelphia
St. Louis
San Diego
San Francisco
Seattle
Washington, D.C.

China Club Punch
1 oz. Light rum
1/4 oz. Dark rum
1/2 oz. Tequila
1/2 oz. Apricot brandy
5 drops Galiano
5 oz. Pineapple juice
1/4 oz. Grenadine
Squeezes of lime
- Mix, pour over ice and add an orange slice

The Fan Club’s Ice Tea
Fill a tall glass with ice cubes and add one ounce each of light rum, gin, vodka, and tequila. Add a dash of Triple Sec, a splash of sour mix, and shake. Fill the glass to the top with cola and garnish with a lemon.

Busy Bee
Add two ounces of brandy to one ounce of Galliano. Stir, don’t shake. Serve over ice.

Root Beer Float
Pour into a blender one shot of Kahlua, one sixteenth of an ounce of Galliano, and three ounces of cola. Add three ounces of vanilla ice cream and blend.

Cold Duck
One part Burgundy and two parts Champagne.

Cayman Island Rum Punch
Mix a pint of dark rum, a pint of 151-proof rum and three cups of light rum. Add enough of the following mixture to make three and a half gallons+ one part each of pomegranate, mango, and orange juice and a half part each of pineapple, pineapple-coconut and grapefruit juice. Serve from a jet-spray machine like the ones lemonade is often made in.

Butchie’s Special from the Dan Lynch on 2nd Avenue
Mix about a half shot each of vodka, Kahlua, dark crème de cacao, white crème de menthe, and Amaretto. Add milk or cream and shake well. Serve over cracked ice or straight up. Garnish with a cherry.

The Borgia Café’s Prussian Princess
In a shaker, mix an ounce of apricot brandy with an ounce of Harvey’s Bristol Crème (or dry sherry if you want it dry) and two ounces of gin. Shake and serve over ice.

There were many more, mostly standard cocktails with the bar or bartender’s name on them. Ha! Can’t fool me.

Let me know how these turn out.

PS. The picture at the top has nothing to do with drinks, the US or me. I'll replace it when I have a decent cocktail photo.

Lunch with Aka

Stan likes to call himself Aka because he likes red wine. We met for lunch and a good tongue wag. We couldn't use the Tokyo Kaikan's first floor bar, so we populated their Prunier bar. Club house sandwiches and a couple reds! See you soon, Stan. Don't forget about our golf plans.

More flowers from the ROG

Greenwich in the rain.... after the London Marathon

I made it out to Greenwich last weekend. I didn't realize that the London Marathon was going to start there, so was surprised to find a long stream of runners heading into London as I made my way to the Royal Observatory Greenwich. Luckily they had all left Greenwich. At the ROG the daffodils were covering a slope. Nice in the cloudy Albion atmosphere. Not much of a view when it's raining. Better luck in the summer.

At the Hopes I envisaged a blue room...

And Angelica had her school friends over.

A night in London.... playing with my shadow

On the way to Nottinghill Gate tube station there are lots of opportunities to use the street lights to shoot your shadow.

The blossoms of an Izuvian cherry tree

Alas, they are falling already. This shot from Saturday was taken to show the bark of the cherry tree. Too much attention is given to the blossoms. Cherry trees' bark is also very interesting and available for viewing 365/24/7.

Getting ready to die with the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has some things to say about preparing for death. These are good to contemplate.

Tibet’s Buddhism has a lot of emphasis placed on the process of death, so that the individual at the time of death not only retains his or her presence of mind, but also is in a position to utilize that subtle state of consciousness effectively towards the realization of the path.

One of the reasons why the awareness of death and impermanence is so crucial in the Buddhist religious practice is that it is considered that your state of mind at the time of death has a very great effect on determining what form of rebirth you might take. Whether it is a positive state of mind or a negative state of mind will have a great effect.

As death become familiar to you, as you have some knowledge of its processes and can recognize its internal and external indications, you are prepared for it.

Didn't see Koizumi at Yasukuni this week

Naomi, the boys and I went to

Yasukuni on Wednesday night to see the cherry blossoms and eat at the best yatai hanami has ever known. We had oden, yakitori, ninniku, hotate, urume iwashi, sora mame, asparagas and a little takenoko bbqd over Japanese charcoal. After the obligitory beer we had a couple glasses of Sugitama, a dry sake. Very nice!

My old friend Dick showed up with his new bride Shizuko. And Nakagawa from HSBC Research came running up with a cup of sake in his hand proud to tell me he had been drinking with Bill Achilles at lunch. Whew! A real Hanami Day.

Yankees in Norway - Summer 1948

My father spent the summer of 1948 in Norway on a study program for Americans. He traveled throughout Norway and visited relatives and relatives of Minnesota friends. He had pneumonia and was hospitalized for a while, and traveled back through New York City. This is a shot of the men in his group on one of their excursions. And one with his nurses.