Lyford House

Marin Sunset. Look closely and see the Farallones

Check out our wedding website at ruthandjosh.net, and watch this space for more information as we get closer to the big day.

GPIS keynote: Eric Schmidt

CEL was invited to a conference on political innovation, hosted by Google the Knight Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. The talks were off the record, so sadly I can’t share some of the juicier quotes, particularly from republican data analysts about the outcome of the campaign.

I was surprised at the level of techno-utopian “solutionism” present from some of the speakers. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but the notion that merely opening information is insufficient to create political change shouldn’t be novel to anyone. That was pretty much the takeaway from my graduate degree (that and creating online communities is hard). Someone who should know better even said that in four years the digital divide will be erased because “everyone interesting” will have a smartphone. There was a good conversation about whether “big data” is really good for democracy, or just winning elections. For me, the jury is still out on this one.

However half of the crowd really got it, and we had some real conversation once the free beer started flowing at around 4pm. And I got sit next to Anne Marie Slaughter, who tweeted up a storm. I was very impressed with the visual note-taking done by a google staff member. It does a great job at laying out the CEL model as presented by Ian during his session, and the snack table.

GPIS Visual Note-taking

In the morning we got Krispy Kreme, and walked across an artificial island to the Cupnoodles Museum. A testament to the innovative spirit and imagination, the curation is actually really well done. The building is hyper-modern, and was designed by the art director for Uniqlo. We got to design our own cupnoodles, choosing flavors, drawing on the styrofoam cup, and watching it get heatwrapped and bubble packed. Very cool.

The shack of invention

Cupnoodles Museum

Wall of Noodles

My cupnoodles

Sapporo Beer Museum

Jinguskhan

After sleeping off the lamb, we packed our bags and headed towards the airport. On the way, we stopped at the Chitose Salmon Museum, for an inside look at our favorite fish. They have a very informative film which showed the whole salmon life cycle, from spawning to the open ocean, and back to spawn again and die. The cartoon salmon named Sammy treated the existentially fraught topic with grace. That, or we didn’t understand the Japanese.

Welcome back Salmon

Chitose Salmon Aquarium

Ruth and Otaru cannal

We walked along the canal and through the old downtown to a small six seat restaurant. The owner told us it was “lamb only” as if that would be a problem. It was not. After greasing the grill with a bit of lamb fat, she let us cook our own thinly sliced delicious lamb, leeks, and crunchy bean sprouts. Washed down with fresh Sapporo beer, it was a filling meal.

Back towards the hotel, we stopped to take a picture at the canal in the falling snow. Since it was quite cold, and we feel like walking much further, I ducked into another restaurant for a second meal. We proceeded to have the second best fresh fish of the trip, with gigantic crab hairy crab legs, succulent sea urchin, and plenty of hot sake. I may have embarrassed myself slightly by incorrectly cracking the crab, but the staff was very helpful and friendly.

Second dinner of sushi

First dinner at lamb restaurant

Niseko

The last day of our rail pass, we aimed to make the most of it. We booked a couchette on the overnight luxury train to Sapporo and settled in for a long ride. Saw Mt Fuji at sunset, and the slept through the ride past Fukushima and through the world’s longest undersea tunnel (23km!). Woke in southern Hokkaido, stopped in snowy tracks. We waited for a few hours for a new locomotive, arrived in Sapporo a little late, and eventually made it to Niseko after 25 hours of consecutive travel.

Frozen beard

As we got close to the resort, accents and tourists changed, and we felt like we were entering Australia, as apparently a lot of their folks come up here for the winter holidays. Can’t blame them, as the snow is fantastic. Only spending one day at the mountain, but what a day it was. Thigh high light powder, -15C temperatures, and winds gusting hard enough that my beard froze with ice and I had to buy a new pair of goggles. I loved it, but Ruth was less thrilled. Got in 5 or 6 of the best powder runs of my life by following friendly locals into the trees (apparently most Japanese skiers stick to the piste, so the woods were relatively untouched). Will have to come back with my new Megawatts, or at least put them to good use back at home.

Ito Onsen

Ito is another hot-spring town, but the air isn’t as cold and the water isn’t as warm in Yudanaka. We stayed in K’s House Ito Onsen, which is one of a small chain in Japan. Their Kyoto branch was comfortable and clean, if a bit backpacker-ish. The Ito branch is lovely, in a 100 year-old restored bathhouse, with views of the river through the classic paper windows. We asked for a recommended place to eat, and ended up eating basashi, or horse sashimi (much better than in Slovenia).

Kadowakizaki Point

Before going back to Tokyo for our long train ride, we went a little further down the coast for a quick hike. The rock here is volcanic, which made some nice features as the erosion meets the sea. Not quite as impressive as Big Sur, but I might be a little spoiled on California.

We walked through the snowy forest to the park, and were quite impressed with our first sighting, not knowing that there would be dozens more. The park itself is pretty developed, but where else can you feel like a National Geographic photographer and get shots like this?

Snow monkey family

Snow monkey soak

Arashiyama bamboo grove

The rain stopped last night, and the weather was much improved for wandering through temples. We took the train to Arashiyama and the foot of the mountains west of Kyoto. Ate a delicious lunch overlooking the Togetsukyō bridge, and then walked up through the beautiful bamboo grove. I guess the paved trail through the grove is technically a road, because we saw taxis driving through it. Didn’t diminish the Crouching Tiger feeling of the place, with bamboo swaying gently in the breeze.

Okochi-sanso villa

At the top of the grove, we entered the Okochi Sanso villa, the former home of a silent samurai film star, and now a beautifully manicured garden that shows off views of the mountains and city below. It was snowing lightly, which delighted Ruth and made it all the more scenic.

With the light fading, we took the train and a bus to the Kinkaku-ji (Temple of the Golden Pavillion). This is one of the more famous sights of Japan, and it had the crowds to go along with it. But it was lit perfectly in the afternoon light, and was a must-see according to both the book and John who had come here before. I had fun finding less crowded views of the temple and grounds to photograph, including the absolutely huge koi.

Huge koi

For New Year’s evening we walked to the Kiyomizu-dera temple to hear them ring the big bell 108 times. It’s a beautiful complex of temples, and was full of folks celebrating the occasion. We found a quiet corner under the stars, and I pulled out the ring I’d been carrying all day to ask Ruth to marry me. We’ve been trying to learn one or two Japanese phrases each day, so I used the occasion to learn “kekon shi masen ka”. She was gracious enough to say yes, and we returned to our hostel to call parents and toast Hakushu whisky, happy as gai.

New Years Eve