I mentioned before that Husband had bike problems before we left on the trip. Amanda Sport was close to Tabata station but we still needed a GPS to find it since it was tucked away in a little neighborhood.

I took my own photos that day and here are just a few:

City Mascot - I have no idea what the cutsey turtlesque thing really is but it's adorable.



Here is a shot outside the station - that little french pastry shop was calling my name but we didn't end up stopping there.



Husband and I leaving.



A shot from inside the store. That's Mr. Chiba - the proprietor



Between some houses...



Amanda Sport bike stash - right outside the front door.



these were from a community garden right around the corner. It was so peaceful to stand there and listen to the cicadas...






and some video I took right next to teh garden so you could hear the cicadas...

Friday night, Husband and I went to see David Byrne talk about one of our favorite things - Bicycles.

The event was held at the Aratani Theater in Little Tokyo. It was AMAZING to see so many people who were cyclists or intersted in urban commuting all in one place. So many enthusiastic folks packed into a theater.

Clipped from the ALOUD site:

Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around, An Evening with: David Byrne, artist/musician, and special guests Jimmy Lizama, Michelle Mowery & Donald Shoup

The talks each guest gave were really interesting, David Byrne spoke about the differences in bike commuting around the world. Donald Shoup spoke about the urban landscape and parking. Michelle Mowery spoke on the Bike Plan for LA and working with the cities to get bikes as part of the transportation plan. Jimmy Lizama from the Bicycle Kitchen spoke about the epiphany that came with riding the first time and how it shaped his life in and love of Los Angeles.

LA Bike Coalition had a free Bike Valet service at the event. which was quite excellent.

heads up - there may be some wonkiness going on here in the next few weeks. also book mark animegirlie.com Just In Case...

Interesting tute from Lounge Kat on how to set up digital files for textile printing from Vector Tuts +.

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO DIGITAL TEXTILE PRINTING



*image snaked from the tute - all rights to the original folks :)*

As you may or may not know - I am trying (although slowly) to learn Japanese using Rosetta Stone. It's going well, but I was having a tough time remembering letters to read the words that are shown in the software.

Well, turns out there is an e-learning site run by a friend of a friend - where I can just learn to read hiragana and katakana.

Enter SMART.FM - awesome name for an e-learning site, huh? Their iknow software is pretty sweet and gives you specific items to study.

In 2 weeks, I've 100% learned 8 pieces of hiragana and am familiar with the 96 pieces.

my one gripe with the site - is that they should dump all the social networking features - they make for a REALLY wonky and confusing User Interface. Just because you are a good instructional designer does not make you a good interface designer.

and this would be the friend that recommended the site:


Photo courtesy of my husband - the amazing photographer

Rollip takes your images and transfers them to polaroid format for posting to your own site, Face Book, etc.

here's mine:

One of the places we went in our otaku visit to Japan was Nakano Broadway Mall. Nakano is a little suburbanesque area of Tokyo that happens to house one of the best old toy collectors mall we could find.



Nakano Broadway Mall houses the largest Mandarake Husband and I could find in Tokyo and they happen to have their main distribution center in the mall as well. They buy and sell just about any anime stuff you can find and have an AMAZING super old school shop that is essentially a museum. Think of them as the Half Price Books of Manga.



Here is the entrance to the super high dollar,super, super rare store that will make pot belly robot fans cry...



My favorite thing in this store was the Vaseline Glass they had on display. I had no idea what it was until after I came out of the store and Husband gave me the low down. But this stuff is the most beautiful glass I have EVER seen. It glows green because of URANIUM!

I mentioned it one of my previous posts but I didn't tell you whole story. My mobiky died about half way through our trip. What I didn't tell you was that husband's broke before got on the plane. I'll let him tell the story of the differences in our two bikes and how I will be buying a bike friday early next year.

Meanwhile - have a gander at the AWESOME photo he took of his bike.



READ HIS AFTER TRIP REPORT.

good canned coffee:


See the sandwich in the back ground of that one? AMAZING! It was a crustless egg salad and a crustless turkey with cucumber!! NOM NOM NOM!

good soda:


Best soda in Japan by far! light and refreshing it was like drinking liquid ginger but it strangely NEVER gave me heart burn.

Great candy:
Crunky = Nestle's Crunch



See off to the left under the red package? Can you make out the little durian fruit on the package?

It was AWFUL!!! I will never be convinced to eat durian now - I tried some of the hi chew candy in the durian flavor and omg - I almost spit it out because it tasted like moldy wet gym socks. definitely not my favorite.

I will post more pictures later.

really, I am

I'm wrangling the updates but here are a few for now

1) The dog is doing better
2) Mobiky sucks - it died on the trip
3) Paper Olive won best vendor bug on weddingchannel.com
4) Hurricane Jane has a new line out - check out her lower pricing!