Hope in Nottinghill Gate

Kuki had a birthday and her friend from Puglia was there too. We had the usual Hope evening in Nottinghill Gate, dinner from the Aga, wines galore, kids running in and out, multilingual conversation. Kuki's birthday present is the dog on her chest purchased from a breeder in Sussex.

Vietnam finally.....

I made my second trip to Vietnam last week, spending a couple nights in Saigon nka Ho Chi Minh City for an Asian real estate conference. John Suzuki, an high school friend, was visiting in Izu and helped me find a flag pole for my Vietnam flag I bought in Hanoi in January.

As you can see, the flag now flies proudly over the entrance to our Izu house.

I reminded John of one of the cants from the anti-Vietnam war days. It goes like this,

"Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

Viet Cong are gonna win."

Growing kids

Anton is sprouting still, and Thor has now started putting on height at a faster pace. Where'll it stop?

My beard has reached the "gravitas" length. Someone at an Islamic conference this week in Malaysia asked if I had grown it for the conference. Ha!

We were all together at the Yawatano Shinto Shrine to show my high school friend John Suzuki and his family our Izu local culture. After the stop at the shrine we checked out the wasabi fields behind Ike and had some soba.

My shadow

He found me again, this time on the way to the 606 Club in Chelsea to see Gilad Atzman play saxophone and clarinet really well last night...

Here we are again, old friends.

Sally and I get together for lunch or dinner whenever I'm in London. Today we went to Manicomio in the Duke of York Square for veal chops. Then we went shopping for kitchen stuff for her cottage in Devon.

Meat Muffins

Yep! Here they are. Beef and pork meat muffins baked in one of those new silicon muffin pans. I used a herb meatloaf recipe from Epicurious, but added plenty of bread crumbs and milk to give them some lightness and smoothness.

That's my son Thor next to me. I put the ketchup on the table just in case he behaved like a teenager and need ketchup on his meat muffin. Actually he used the gravy!

The other dish is some green beans sliced lengthwise and cooked with garlic and olive oil. My favorite way to cook them.

Next time I'll use Hilma Charlotte Swanson's Kjottbollar (Swedish Meatballs) recipe.

3 lbs ground beef

1 lb ground pork

1 lb ground veal

3 T minced onion

2 C bread crumbs

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 t allspice

1 T salt

1/2 t pepper

1/2 t nutmeg

Water as needed

Mix and stuff in the muffin pans. Cook for 20-30 minutes at 350F. Use the drippings in the bottom of the muffin holes to make gravy.

Wow!

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Instructions Left by Ieyasu

Life is like a long journey made with a heavy load. Slow and steady be your steps lest you should stumble. No complaints or despair there will be if you take it the way of mortals to bear personal discomforts.

When excessive desires are harbored in your heart look back upon the days of extremity you have passed through. Bear in mind that patience leads to a long life of security, while wrath is your own enemy.

To think much of your conquering and little of your stooping -- that will fare ill for you. Blame yourself and not others. It is better to be deficient than to exceed.

15 January 1603

'Tis all to a man to know himself,

To weigh and consider his ability:

Dew pearls sparkling on the grass,

Will ne'er stay long, alas!

When they are too weighty.

The Major Cause of Slicing - Jack Kuykendall

The major culprit of slicing is the rotation of your lower body at the start of the downswing. If the right shoulder moves with the right hip, it causes the clubhead to go outside the downswing plane. Start the downswing with your arms moving backward and downward. Keep your back to the target until the arms rotate and keep your clubhead behind your back as long as you can. When your hands reach waist-high during the downswing, make a tossing motion. Your slice will be gone.

Clankazoid keeps reminding me to pay homage to Duchamp

Old Marcel used to find things and then make them into art. "Art"? There are even places to go to see these things. Actually those places are now full of things that some people - called 'artists' - have actually made to be looked in those places or sometimes out of doors or even in-doors.

I have attempted to follow in the foot steps of Marcel, or more correctly R. Mutt, and here is what I have come up with. Notice the subtle differences in coloring. I like 'em in pairs!

Ha! Readymade indeed! As the book says, just something to force you to contemplate aesthetic questions. What is the question? Perhaps Riggs has an idea.

New Year in Akazawa

New Year again in Akazawa. Every January First it is the ritual of pounding boiled rice to make the "mochi". This year the management office had procured a stone cauldron to do the pounding in. Mr Hoshi, laughing behind me, arranged for me to be the last one to do the pounding. I am holding up the mallet so Anton could get a good photo of me in my "happi" coat.
Later in the afternoon Anton and I went to the local shrine to pray for a good golf score and all kinds of other important things for 2007, bought some groceries and headed back up the hill to watch some rented DVDs.

After lunch at Ikabata

Naomi likes this photo taken at a restaurant on the road from Hiekawa to Amagikogen. We visited this restaurant with Eiichi Onodera and his wife several years ago to have inoshishi nabe. This time it was for the udon, but we had some cold inoshishi rib tidbits to knaw on and a plate of warm inoshishi "aburi" to chew too.

We were on our way back from the Marshall house at Iritahama - beach shot of me and Naomi - and had stopped at the inoshishi center on Rte. 414 earlier.

We got back to our place for an early evening - I slept through the new year and we didn't open the champagne until the next evening!

The Wit and Wisdom of Forrest Gump

My favorite quote from this little book of Gumpisms is the last one, "Always be able to look back and say, 'At least I didn't lead no humdrum life.'"

I am working on that statement.

Ha!

Happy Birthday, Thor!

It was a late birthday dinner for father and son. Thor turned 14 on 10 December, but I was on my way to Kuala Lumpur so I could attend a meeting on Monday. We agreed to delay his birthday meal, so today we did it at La Jolla in Hiroo. He was pretty happy with his virgin margarita and tacos.

Thor is a T shirt guy. He has been wearing this Bali T shirt as much as he can for the past year. But he was complaining this evening that the new coat I bought him from Lands' End was not very warm. So I explained that if he wore a long sleeve T shirt, tucked it into his pants and zipped up the jacket all the way, he'd be warmer.

Hmmm........

Happy 22nd Anniversary, Naomi

We went over to our local sushi place for dinner on our 22nd wedding anniversary. Naomi promised not to cry, as she had for several years when we went back to Trader Vics regularly. I never found out why....

For Eldon

Eldon sent an email asking for my blog address. I thought it would be fun to put up a crazy shot of him and Bob in Baja during our trip there.

This is a great photo!

A few colored shots

These are made from digital shots I have taken.

Staff party in Hong Kong

I was on my last leg of my last business trip of 2006 and stopped in Hong Kong to have the staff dinner. We had the SW corner room of Aqua in Kowloon, so we could look out on the Hong Kong Island light show. At 8 pm they set in motion several buildings' lights, making quite a spectacle.

The young ladies enjoyed dinner, drinks, Christmas crackers, Silent Santa gifts and all the usual party chit chat.

I got up at 6 am the next day to head back to Tokyo.

Jothi enjoys the limelight

This week Yusli the president of Bursa Malaysia was given a Malaysian title, Dato. The flowers came in from all kinds of places. Jothi and I were waiting in his office to talk to him about CSR and I took this shot of her sitting with her favorite bouquet.

Bird Day

We just keep on eating turkey. I brined and Webered an eleven pound bird this year.

We got out my mother's California Ivy plates for the occasion. Anton and Thor had seconds and thirds.

All in all it was a nice evening with the Owens and Chureis joining us at our Izu house.

It was a long time since I saw Ken Lucas

Ken hired me to help him get James Capel going back in 1985. He retired a few years later and took his secretary to Perth to start and raise a family. I finally had a chance to see him and Yuko when I went to Perth to speak at the ASFA conference in November 2006. He had me over for dinner and we celebrated from his wine cellar with a sparkling Shiraz, an 18% Cab, a fairly dry Aussie Reisling and one of the local ports. Yuko had prepared several dishes of the local seafood specialities. Thanks for dinner, Yuko and Ken!