Train Museum

Dante and I visited the Railway Museum outside Tokyo. Here are 21 photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/grout7/TokyoTrainMuseum?authkey=Gv1sRgCIjt6ouGjYS8mAE&feat=directlink

Tokyo with Dante

Pictures of my trip to Tokyo with Dante. We went to see the Fire Fighters' Museum. We got a green car ticket for the Shonan-Shinjuku line, which whisked us to Shinjuku w/ only 5 intermediate stops. We had to sit in the bottom of the double-decker.
http://picasaweb.google.com/grout7/FireFightersMuseumTokyo?feat=directlink

Yokohama!

Photos of our trip to Yokohama
http://picasaweb.google.com/grout7/Yokohama?feat=directlink

Japanese Winter

It snowed one night last week. There was a bit of snow on the ground in places - I saw school kids picking up little bits to play with it.
I took this picture on the way from the train station to the office. You can see a little snow on the ground and some snow on the little mountains in the background. Fuji is there somewhere but got washed out in this poor exposure. Of course Fuji-san is snowy all the time, but this is the first time I've seen snow on the little mountains.
The locals tell me we'll likely have a little more snow like this before the end of February, but they don't seem very sure about it.

Special Bike

Vicky and I found this humorous, since culotte in French means underwear. I guess this bike is meant for riding with a short skirt.

Japanese Bikes

Speaking of bikes, here's a typical Japanese model - well used and equipped for a kid and groceries. You often see moms bicycling with kids, sometimes one in front and one behind. People ride on both sides of the street when that's convenient but even more often on the sidewalks. This morning I saw a bicyclist stop at a green light because the Don't Walk sign was illuminated. He was on the left side of the street like vehicle, but I guess he figured he was more like a pedestrian than a car.

Supper

In Japan, there are lots of prepared foods you can buy to eat at home. I often don't know whether you can get take-out at restaurants, but all groceries have take-out choices, and there are hordes of bento box and other take-out food stalls near the station.
I bought this stuff at a store that specializes in rolls (maki, I guess). All I could determine about these two big rolls was that they didn't have anything gross-looking sticking out the ends and one said, "mayonaise". One of them turned out to have fish eggs, so I skipped that one. On the left are rice cakes (nigiri) - these ones weren't particularly good - some of the packaged ones at the combini (convenience store) are better. The box in the middle had three inarizushi-like tofu-scum pockets filled with rice and stuff. One had ground meat, one had eggy bits, and one had tuna.
On the left you can see my sake. Vicky's tipple in the black cup is Australian Syrah.