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Eclipse, Subversion, and Moneydance CSV Importers on OSX

I use Moneydance to track my personal finances. Recently Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ bank decided to drop support for downloading transactions in Microsoft Money format and switched to a CSV format. That is kind of annoying because I like to download my transactions from the bank and jam them into Moneydance. It means I don't have to type them in. But now they are in CSV format, which isn't natively supported

There is a beta CSV import extension for Moneydance though, so I tried that out. It has support for formats from some banks, and then has a "custom reader" format that you can use to set up the fields that your bank sends. That worked out well. The problem is that the imported transactions from the bank were garbled. The text didn't show up as proper Japanese, it was more like goobledegook.

That is a clear indication that the encoding on the file was set wrong. I know the files my bank sends are in Shift-JIS, but I changed the format to UTF-8 in Emacs since UTF-8 is the format that all text files should be saved in. Unfortunately, the extension does not import as UTF-8 and since it does not give an option for selecting the encoding I assume that they just take the platform default or something.

A quick check of the code shows that indeed, they use a Java FileReader (who thought it was a good idea to have the filereader open text files in the platform default encoding? It is never a good idea to assume a default and not allow programmers a way to change it.) So to fix it, you simply need to use a FileInputStream and an InputStreamReader with the encoding set. No problem.

It looks like Google has a SVN repository for the project. I figure I'll open up Eclipse and use that to make the local change and import my text file. Oh, my version of Eclipse is really old. So let's download a new version. That was pretty painless.

Now, how do I hook Eclipse up with Subversion? It looks like there are two solutions, the more popular of which is Subclicpse. I was able to install that without any trouble. I was a bit worried about the version of Subversion that my mac came with (1.6.17 according to svn –version) and a mismatch there, but let's give it a go.

Wait, they don't have any information telling me how to use Subversion. Well, some British guy wrote something up that makes it pretty clear. Following along with him, I got up to where Subclipse would try to pull down the information and … Some sort of error about a JavaHL library! What? Well, that seems to be pretty well explained on the Subclipse website, so I downloaded JavaHL (the Java subversion bindings apparently) and tried again. Now I get a version mismatch! It says "Incompatible JavaHL library loaded. 1.7.x or later required." But there were no versions listed on the download page! And by the way, that download from open.collab.net does not list any different versions, only different operating systems! I downloaded the correct version for my version of OSX (I still haven't downloaded to the latest version) but that did not work! What do I do now? The documentation says that it installs svn itself (it did, in /opt/subversion/bin) but that version is the same as the one that came with OSX by default anyway. So why would there be a version mis-match? Also, they made me register to download their package, which was kind of annoying, but forgivable. As long as they understand that some guy named Fugu Tabetai working as a consultant for Fish Eating Incorporated that makes less that $25 million a year probably isn't a good business opportunity for them.

A little searching shows that other people have had this problem as well and the solution is to install a newer version of Subversion than the one that open.collab.net installs from wandisco, whatever that is. Apparently wandisco is a subversion provider of some kind. In my case, since I am on 10.6 I needed their 10.6.x package from their subversion download page. After downloading that though, it still seems like I have the same old version of subversion and not some sneaky new 1.7.5 version.

Guess what? Rebooting did not solve the problem either. But doing a sudo rm -Rf /opt/subversion and re-installing the wandisco problem did get me the proper version (after appending /opt/subversion/bin to my PATH) in terminal. So maybe now it will work in Eclipse? Let's give that a go!

Hey what do you know? It worked! I was able to suck down the code for the CSV importer. Of course, then I realized another problem: since the importer is an extension for Moneydance, I now need to find the Moneydance library files (JARs) that is links against so I can actually compile the thing. Then I have to figure how to compile and package it in the extension format that it needs after I make my changes. Luckily, all of that is available at the Moneydance developer page.

Adding the two JARs in the developer kit did get the project to almost completely compile, except for six errors that popped up. It looks to me like I'm linking against old JARs, because the documentation says that the errors Eclipse is complaining about are not true (e.g., this class doesn't implement some method, but it shows in the API docs that it does.) So perhaps I downloaded an old version of the developer's kit somehow. I don't see how that is possible though; I downloaded the only one that is up there. Well, I've posted in the group for the csv importer and will see if that is actually something that they can help me with. If not, I'll email the Moneydance folks. This should be a simple problem that I can actually fix, and it would improve my life, so I really want to get this done.

After a day's delay, I heard back from the maintainer of the CSV import plugin and he passed me different versions of the Moneydance development libraries. They were created in 2011 sometime vs 2006 which are the ones that came from the Moneydance website. The project compile successfully with them, so now I have no excuse not to actually add this feature.

The GUI was created in Netbeans' Matisse which is supposed to be a nice automated GUI creation system. It generates regular old Java code though, so I might as well edit that directly in Eclipse myself and then worry about what to do on the commit later.

I need to modify ImportDialog.java's creation of a CSVReader and also the one in TransactionReader.java. I did all that, and now I am caught up on the failing unit tests (nothing that I did - these were pre-existing failures) from what looks like a test that can't compile anyway. After making those modifications and building on my machine (generating my own keys to sign the plugin and all) things looked great, and the import went fine. I've sent the changes on to the maintainer, so maybe we'll see this show up at some point!

Joe Abercrombie's The First Law Trilogy

Another post about books. I heard about The Blade Itself a while back, probably from one of the author blogs that I follow. I don't know which one; it could very well be any one of John Scalzi's blog, Joseph Mallozzi's blog, or Patrick Rothfuss. Or possibly even tor.com. I don't know; I just heard that this guy Joe Abercrombie wrote a good yarn.

I think I found "The Blade Itself" on sale on the kindle store at some point for like $5 or something. The normal price seems to be around $7, which is reasonable to me. I like the idea of not having to lug around a physical book, and I certainly can't store books in my tiny Tokyo apartment, so a virtual good is actually worth money to me, although I do balk at paying more than what a physical book would cost.

At any rate, I read through the first book at a quick clip. It has very memorable characters, a well-constructed world, a believable and interesting magic system (perhaps even three or four, depending on how you count) and an interesting story.

I'll probably verge a bit into spoiler territory, so if you are interested in hearing my thoughts, click the readmore link below.

read more (331 words)

Ginza and Kamakura with Alan

We've had a busy week this week! To start things off, at some point last weekend Lisa snuck a shot of Alan and I taking a nap. It was a good nap.

Also last week, we took a walk to a local park (a different one from one of the parks that I've mentioned on this blog before) and on the way home stopped at a nice cafe not too far from our house. They are a cute little cafe called Les Cinq Épices in Aomono Yokocho that makes their own cakes and bread. We stopped over there and had some cakes, which were great. I love how there are all sorts of little cafes all over Tokyo with small cakes, and they usually have a tea and cake (or coffee, if that's your thing) set that you can get. We enjoyed a nice walk through the park in the sun, and had some tasty cakes on the sidewalk cafe, then had a nice walk home. On the way back we rented "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (the newer one) and "Kung-Fu Panda". It took us a week to watch them, but we actually were able to watch them before they were due. Both good movies, although nothing to rave about or anything I would write a blog entry about. I will note though that they were our first movies post-Alan!

Sometime during the week while I was working, one of Lisa's friends, Julie, stopped by for a visit. Apparently a few other people stopped by also, but I was never around so I'm just going on rumor. I did find some photographic evidence of one visit though, and it looks like Alan was having a good time. He seems to be pretty popular with the ladies. I can't blame them, I think he's a cutie myself.

On the weekend we decided to go to Ginza. After our stop at the local cafe I was in the mood for more cafes so that put Ginza on the plate. With the additional "todo" item of getting our broken Time Capsule looked at, it was pretty clear that a stop at the Apple store in Ginza might be useful. Finally, Lisa planned to meet her friend Mibe, the jeweler, who just finished up a bracelet for little Alan. So we set that meeting for our favorite place in Ginza, and decided to make a day of it.

Wandering around the area, we came across a lot of people taking pictures. I fought through the crowd and found that they were taking pictures of a Geisha! That is pretty rare in Tokyo (this isn't Kyoto!) but it looks like she was selling a CD and some postcards. So that made some sense. Interesting!

Our first stop was the Tokyu Hands store, but we didn't find what we were looking for (glasses to view the upcoming Solar Eclipse) - they were sold out! So we ordered some from Amazon Japan on Lisa's phone. They actually did arrive the next day (Sunday) in time for the solar eclipse on Monday.

Our next stop was a cafe. I didn't really know where to go, but we wandered around and decided to go to Mitsukoshi, which has a rooftop garden and some restaurants up there. We got some gelato and tea and then hung out with Alan for a while. There were lots and lots of families out there. You really get the feeling that there are not many places in Tokyo for families to hang out on grass at all, so they all congregate at any place that looks like it might be nice. We did have maybe a 15 minute wait just to order our gelato and tea, but at least we were able to find a place to sit without any problem. We spent a bit of time on the grass, but since Alan can't walk around yet we didn't really have too much to do there with him. He likes it when I lift him up high, so I gave him a few tosses. He seemed to enjoy it.

I should mention that right now we are at that one very brief period in Tokyo where the weather is nice. It is warm, but not humid. Pretty soon it will get humid and then oppressively hot and you will not want to spend any more time outside than possible. Because all of the nuclear power plants are currently shut down, we also will have to reduce energy consumption by about 10% over the summer, which means there will not be enough air conditioning and I am going to have a terrible summer.

I should also mention that I think this picture of Lisa and Alan is really great. It isn't like I'm a good photographer or anything and know what Bokeh is or how to cause it, but if you take enough pictures eventually one of them must turn out well. It looks like this one is it!

On the walk to the Apple store I came across these two cool cats, hanging out on a Ginza street sign. Those cats were just taking a break, oblivious to everything. I have no idea if that is normal or not (I doubt it) but it was super cool.

After a nice dinner at Hayase, we headed home for a good night's sleep, because the next day was shaping up to be a busy one! We also got a nice bracelet for Alan that our friend Mibe made. We hope that it will last him until his coming-of-age celebration (at 20 years old) but we'll have to see.

On Sunday, Lisa had to a attend a friend's wedding, but neither Alan nor I were invited! Since the wedding is in Kamakura, we thought it would be fun to head down there and hang out while Lisa has fun at her wedding. So it was decided! A boy's afternoon out on the (small, temple-laden) town! We drove down to Kamakura, got stuck in traffic for a bit (about half an hour) but still made it in time for Lisa's wedding. We parted ways, and Alan and I struck off on our own.

The first place we stopped was a nice cafe that had organic homemade food. I ordered the set lunch (it was some sort of beef bowl, very delicious!) but before I could eat Alan started to get fidgety. I prepared some milk for him, and we sat by the window for half an hour or so while he drank his bottle. I noticed quite a few people walking by and looking at Alan. I guess we make for a bit of an unusual pair, but no matter. The owner of the cafe liked Alan and chatted with us a bit. She got a few smiles out of him; he's a really friendly guy so far. After Alan's lunch I changed his diapers and he was calm enough to sit in his stroller for a bit while I ate. We left after a relaxed lunch, and headed to Hachiman-gu temple.

The street was pretty crowded. Kamakura is a small town, and pretty heavily driven by tourism of some kind. It is on the sea, so there are beaches that people go to, and there are also a whole bunch of temples. Kamakura was, for a very short time (about 200 years - and that is a short time!) the seat of the government. So the government, as they were wont to do in those days, helped out with local temples. There are lots of them. In our case, I had hoped to visit the large Buddha shrine, but that would have required a trip on the train, so we went to the closest one instead. That worked out well, because we had a nice walk and it was just about the right distance for a there-and-back-again in time to meet Lisa.

Lisa did mention when we were in the car that there are some steps at the temple, but I thought "ah, that shouldn't be a problem. I'll just pick up the baby carriage."

The main street in front of the temple entrance was a 5-way crossing with a nice big gate. It made for a busy intersection, but an interesting picture. After that I got a few pictures of Alan: in front of some (presumably?) famous bridge, in front of the long walk up the temple, and in front of a whole bunch of sake lined up. These monks are prepared for a party, if one ever spontaneously breaks out. Actually, I'm not sure why but temples always have lots of sake around. I think it is because Sake is somehow sacred, but I don't really know. I'll have to remember to ask someone sometime.

At the temple there was a couple that was getting married, and I snapped a few quick photos of that. I don't have any super good ones, but they looked like a very nice traditional couple.

Do you see that staircase? Man, that is more stairs than I was expecting. Alan and I gave it our best though, and we made it to the top. Alan was pretty tired, so he's got his eyes closed up there. You have a really nice view of the street. I doubt you can see it, but that street goes right up to the ocean, and we walked the entire length. On the way back we stopped for a bit in front of a nice pond with lilies.

On the walk back I spotted a woman getting on her motorcycle. This has nothing to do with temples or Japan, I just thought she looked cool riding and old (maybe?) Yamaha. You see a lot of women on small scooters, or these strange scooter-like things that can fit two people and look like space-aged minibikes, but this might be the first time I've seen a woman on a serious looking bike. She had leather boots and leather gloves too, really looked like she knew what she was doing.

We stopped at the end at a Mister Donut, where I had a donut and Alan got some more milk. From the temple to the shop, he was completely zonked out, sound asleep. He slept for quite a while at the shop too, but when he woke up I think he was confused. He didn't know where he was, he hadn't seen mommy for hours, and the place was full of strange people. So he really started to let loose with some loud crying. I got busy making a bottle for him, but the woman next to me actually offered to hold Alan if that would help. I was pretty close to finished with the bottle by then, so I thanked her but declined, and Alan was happy as a peach once he got some of that milk.

After he finished his bottle we had a bit longer to wait around in the shop, but Lisa called not too long after that was we were ready to go. We hopped back in the stroller and headed out. By the time we got back to the wedding venue, Alan was super happy to see mommy!

Unfortunately, we had an hour and a half ride back to Tokyo, but he's a good kid and really loves riding in the car. He fell back asleep after a bit of fussing and crying.

All in all a really fun day! I think Alan enjoyed his boys-afternoon-out, and I know I did!

Computer failures all over the place

About a month back, Lisa's MacBook Air (2008 vintage) gave up the ghost. It just wouldn't boot anymore. I bought the machine back in 2008 so four years running, that isn't too bad. It is the second generation MacBook Air, and still has a 1.8" hard drive, no fancy SSDs here. It died though. I took it down to the Apple store recently and let them have a look at it.

I was hoping that it would be dead, and we would have to buy another nice MacBook Air for her. Then, through some magic of my own I would be able to bring the thing back to life somehow and I could use the old one. But Lisa is a practical woman, and so we just paid about $100 and had them throw in a new hard drive since that is what went wrong. At the same time, there was some sort of bulletin out on that machine, and we were eligible for a free replacement of the screen mount (with new screen!) since the hinges were known to be bad on that model. That is pretty sweet, getting a new screen for free. So we did that too.

I wasn't too worried about the hard drive since we have time machine backups on the Time Capsule (500gb, also bought in 2008.) It took a few days, but the machine was repaired, and I brought it home. It booted up fine, and things looked good, so I decided to try to start up the Time Capsule and restore the old data back onto the machine.

This is where things started to get tricky. First off, I dug around until I found the original install disks for the MacBook Air. I finally found those and got the machine up and running via the external DVD drive. I found the Time Machine restore option, it found my Time Capsule fine, and the restore started. I've done this once or twice before, so I expected about 16 hours or so to do the full restore over wireless network (there is no built in ethernet port on the MacBook Air, and the USB port was taken up with the install DVD - I don't have the ethernet dongle anyway.) After an hour or so, an error popped up saying that the Time Machine backup couldn't be read.

Uh oh.

I checked the Time Capsule and it was flashing amber, indicating a problem. After firing up AirPort Utility, I saw a little message: "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Drive failing". Oh, that isn't good. I was prompted to plug in an external USB disk and copy data off the time capsule ASAP. Since I happen to have a 1 TB disk laying around, and the Time Capsule is only 500 GB, that shouldn't be much of a problem. I formatted the external drive as a Mac Filesystem and plugged it in … nothing happened.

I checked a bunch of things, made sure the disk would show up on my MacBook Pro (it does - that is where I formatted it) and tried again. No go. So I guess I can't plug it in to the Time Capsule and copy the data off. I should be able to still mount the Time Capsule as a disk and copy the sparsebundles for each machine I have backed up though. So I tried that. Unfortunately, the Time Capsule made a strange clicking sound, and I didn't think the disk was even spinning. So … What to do?

Well, I've been around the block a few times, so I threw the Time Capsule in the freezer, right under the frozen strawberries over night.

When I came home the next day, I was able to connect to the Time Capsule and copy both of the backup files off of the disk to the external USB drive now plugged in to my MacBook Pro. Once the MacBook Air backup file was on the external USB drive, I was able to use Disk Utility to repair it (it needed one round of repairs before things looked good) and then ready to try to install again.

After digging around in my bag of tricks for a while, I found a powered USB hub and plugged in the external DVD drive and the hard drive, then booted up.

But the MacBook Air didn't see the DVD drive. Oh yeah, that's right, Apple decided for some reason to only let the DVD drive work if it was plugged directly into the single USB port on the MacBook Air. Why? Why? I don't know. But that is what they did.

So now I have set up Remote Install on my MacBook Pro and have it sharing the install DVD over the network (and of course the MacBook Air can't see the Time Capsule network when I have WEP encryption on, so I have to remove encryption) and now it is trying to boot off of that. It looks like it is working but I bet it will take a long time before I can get up to the screen where I can choose to restore from the external USB drive with the Time Machine image. Man I hope that works.

(Many days later)

Installing over a networked-shared remove DVD worked. That is really amazing. How much technology do we need to have for that to actually be a reasonable sort of thing to do? It is amazing how far computers have come since I started out on my Dad's Apple //e back in the early 80s.

At any rate, I was able to get to the "Restore" option from the remote install DVD, and it was able to see the Time Machine file on the attached USB disk. I was able to recover Lisa's data, so now we are back to a working MacBook Air for her, and my MacBook Pro for me. And an ex-linux now Windows machine (ugh - I want to go to linux but the flash performance is so terrible that I was forced to install Windows) for videos.

The Time Capsule (maybe it is first or second generation?) gets very hot. It ran fine for about four years straight, so I have nothing bad to say about it at all. I'll go to the Apple store and get a new one at some point, but we're a bit tight on cash right now (and more taxes are due shortly - the car tax, local property type tax, and some other sort of tax are on the way) so I'll just use the external disk as a weekly manual backup for now.

I should also note that we rented "Charlie and Chocolate Factory" (well, the new one with Johnny Depp since Lisa hasn't seen either of them) and "Kung Fu Panda" the other day. For some reason the DVD player we have is broken too! So we needed to watch the DVDs on my MacBook, which worked, but requires some cable swapping. Lisa's TV (maybe 6 years old now?) only has one HDMI port, but it has a bunch of strange ports that I've never seen before (D4 they are called. I think.) So we are just full of electronic mysteries today.

Golden Week 2012

Last week was "Golden Week" in Japan. That is a run of 3-4 holidays that usually land on the same week, and on unlucky years, span some of the weekend. It usually is the time in Japan when everyone in the country takes time off of work and bundles the kids in the car then goes somewhere. The kids school is out, summer is just starting, and people want to get out and do something different.

In the Tanaka-Evans household we had some small travels. We'll be going to America in July for my younger sister's wedding in Montana, and likely hitting Glacier National Park, so until then we don't plan on any expensive travel.

Three to four times a year (not every day) our family will get together and go to a nice sushi place. There is one place in particular in Sagami Ohno that the Tanakas like, since they used to live in the area and know the sushi chefs well. We went there on Monday, the opening holiday in the week long salvo. This year, Tuesday and Wednesday were work days, but Monday, Thursday, and Friday were national holidays. We took the train down to Sagami Ohno, visited the Paul Smith shop that Lisa really likes and chatted with the employees there, who all thought Alan was cute. Then we went on up to the Sushi place.

Alan was excited to be in a new environment, or maybe he was just happy that I was feeding him some milk. He didn't seem to mind being surrounded by cold fish and beer. He did like his milk though.

This place is always interesting because of the variety of dishes that you can get there. We always start out with some Sashimi, but this trip out we also had some very good mushrooms stuffed with something (grilled, so served warm.) The Satsuma-age (fried fishcake) was also very nice. The grilled bamboo was also great. I didn't take pictures of the sushi, but it was also excellent.

After that, I spent two days at work. On Thursday, two of Lisa's friends (bridesmaids at our wedding!) stopped by for a visit. We had a nice time visiting, and Alan enjoyed being held by more people that didn't have beards and made cute noises at him.

On May 5th, "Children's Day", some sort of day that boys are supposed to be celebrated (but maybe girls too?) it was a beautiful day (it had rained on Thursday and Friday) so we decided to take a little walk to a nearby park. This is the same park where we went for the Cherry Blossom viewing a while back. I didn't notice then, but there is a building (a pumping station it sounds like) that has an elevator to the roof (4 stories up) and a roof garden. So we hung out there for a while. In a city with lots of roofs and few gardens, this roof garden concept is really cool. It was a cute little garden, and there were a few other families with their kids up there playing catch or just sitting in the shade.

That park is a pretty nice park. We wandered around it for a while. They have a nice bridge going across the canal, and in the park itself have a big open space for kids to run around in and skateboard on or something. They also have a kind of fountain that overflows and turns into a very shallow wading creek for the kids. I think we'll be coming back to this park a lot as Alan grows up. It is only about a ten minute walk away.

Finally, we didn't do much else (I was working from home a bit, but helping out with Alan a bit too) but Alan did manage to get his favorite panda toy stuck on his foot. I think he's just trying to make sure he has a lot of foot dexterity for his upcoming career as a professional basketball player. You need to have good foundational basics you know!

Alan's first play date, trip to Tokyo Disneyland, and visit with the family in Chiba

Over the past few days Alan and Lisa have been busy! One of Lisa's friends, Kaori Nishi, had her first son Taishi about a month after Alan was born. During the week while I was out working, Kaori and Taishi came for a visit. I wasn't here so I only have photographic evidence, but it looks like they got along famously. I wonder if they will grow up to be great friends? Well, they are holding hands already, so that is a start.

On Friday, the day before the long "Golden Week" holiday in Japan (we have Monday, Thursday, and Friday off the coming week) Lisa, Alan, Lisa's mother, her sister Rie, and Rie's daughter (4 years old) Yuzuna went to Tokyo Disneyland. Since Lisa works there (currently on maternity leave) even though Alan is really young (4 months!) it is fun for the whole family. They actually went there for a "Character Breakfast", where I guess they all get breakfast and then meet some of the Characters from the theme park. It looks like they were able to meet a lot of characters, primarily from the Winnie the Pooh franchise. So that was great! They also went to Mickey's house and got a picture with him. Nice.

Everyone was really tired when they got back. The next day, on Saturday, we drove over to Chiba to introduce Alan to his Great Uncle. We all had a nice lunch there with family, and stopped by Costco on the way home. Alan was getting pretty tired after all the excitement this week, and we had some trouble getting him to sleep, but hopefully things will be better today (Sunday.) He's already shown lots of interest in the NBA playoffs, so I think we will just stay around at home and take it easy.

I really like that picture with Tigger. Tigger is great.

Books by Shamus Young

I've linked to Shamus Young's Twenty Sided blog before. He puts a lot of time into his blog and what he writes there, often explaining technical concepts in plain, easy-to-understand language. He has run a great series on procedurally generating a nighttime city and a 3d terrain engine.

I was happy to hear that he was working on writing a fiction novel, The Witch Watch. He's actually written two novel type things before, one of them the freely available "Free Radical", which is loosely based on the old First Person Shoot "System Shock". I never played System Shock, I actually never really got into first person shooters. I did play Bungie's Marathon (look it up kids, also now freely available as Aleph One) but never got too far. I kept getting lost and confused, and people were shooting at me. It was too much pressure.

I did actually, come to think of it, complete one "first person Shooter", Portal. But that was more because it was a great game and allowed me to take my time to think about things without getting shot up all the time. Or lost as much.

Anyway, I didn't know anything about System Shock, but I have read a lot of cyberpunk and I do know a lot about computers. So I was really happy to read Shamus' take on the genre, and also thought he did a great job of writing about Cyberpunk and computers without making all the dumb mistakes about computers that people who don't know about programming make. You can get a kindle version for free at the link to the left, and I highly recommend it. You won't beat it for the price (free!) so you can't lose much by taking a chance on it.

More recently, Shamus wrote an autoblogography, and then turned that into a book (linked to the left.) Shamus didn't enjoy school much and homeschools his own children. While I never really fit in at high school, I don't think I had a bad experience. I made some great friends, worked hard, learned a lot, and had some fun. I'm not sure that I would have described it as such at the time, but that is probably more just about being that age with others kids in a social situation. At any rate, you can read Shamus' take on his education process in the book "How I learned." It is also full of funny stories and is a run read itself. You can read through it on his blog as well, so give it a try.

Once you are done with all of that content I linked, you can then decide if you want to buy his book "The Witch Watch." I really enjoyed this book. It is completely worth the price - I think he has dropped the price all the way down to $5, which is my impulse purchase price for books now. I've been reading a lot more with the Kindle, and taking chances on books with lower prices and finding some really good stuff. For $5 though, The Witch Watch is a steal. It is well written, has a very well-thought-out magic system, and has interesting characters, as well as a strong female lead. The only knock I have on her is that she is a bit too appealing as a smart, confident, skilled, and attractive character that seems like a dream come true for geeks, but that isn't really too hard of a flaw to overlook. Better than the default of assuming that a woman couldn't be all those things at any rate!

I highly recommend the Witch Watch! If you liked Brandon Sanderson's Elantris then you will like the Witch Watch. And if you haven't read Elantris, I recommend that one too!

Cherry blossoms and Saitama Shrines over the weekend

Last week I was in the US after a business trip and had a day to visit with family. Due to the international dateline, coming back to Japan you lose and entire day, so I had two days at work (and groggy ones at that) and then the weekend hit. What a weekend it was!

During the weekend the Cherry Blossoms around Tokyo are just starting to come into full bloom. They aren't there yet, but it is really close. Usually, due to the timing of my twice-yearly business trips to America, I miss the Cherry Blossom season in Japan. This year though, due to the weather and trip timing, I'm here for the Cherry Blossoms! Hooray! The Japanese love the Cherry Blossoms. Something about the transience of time and impermanence of beauty, the passing of seasons. So people love to go out and sit in under the Cherry trees and watch the blossoms fall. Whatever your reasons, it is very pretty. So we decided to take Alan out to a nearby park, Eastern Shinagawa Seaside Park, a good ten minute walk from our house. The weather was very nice, a little bit chilly but comfortable in a t-shirt and hoodie.

The park was playing host to a Cherry Blossom festival, so there were lots of people around and nice little stands selling food, candy, and of course beer. You can't have a proper Cherry Blossom viewing party without alcohol, and you can't have a proper festival without beer. That means a Cherry Blossom festival definitely has beer on the menu.

We wandered around a bit, found ourselves a spot under a tree, and had some nice food. Overpriced for what it is - in our case some fried chicken, yakisoba, and grilled clams, but super good. The clams were so good we bought a bag of them to use in the next night's dinner (kim-chi hot pot, which was delicious.)

It was Alan's first trip to a park, and first time to see Cherry Blossoms. I'm not sure that he noticed, but we had a good time. I know that Alan likes taking trips in the baby carriage, so I think he enjoyed that at least. We had a really nice time at the park, and I'm really glad I had a chance to see the Cherry Blossoms with the family. I know Alan won't remember this, but we got a few pictures and at some point we'll be able to line up pictures of Cherry Blossom parties every year. Maybe.

On Sunday we had a plan to visit some friends in Saitama. We decided to drive. It has been ages since I've been to Saitama (perhaps only once?) so it was a bit of an adventure. It was also Lisa and Alan's first time! The trip took about an hour (I drove on the way there - on the way back it was about 40 minutes, but I wasn't driving...) We stopped by our friend's place, and visited for a while. Alan was sleeping almost the entire time. The purpose of the visit was interesting; my friend's younger brother is in grad school for biology, and has to give a talk (in English!) at a conference coming up in two months. I've given talks before, so his sister thought I could help out with the translation. The talk itself wasn't ready, but I did get a chance to listen to his research work, give some pointers on research presentations, and learn a bit about high fat diets and mouse pregnancy. Pretty cool actually!

After a delicious homemade lunch, we went out of a walk to the nearby Hikawa Shrine. It was a nice walk away, maybe twenty minutes or so. Alan was a good kid on the way there, and we walked around the temple for a bit before heading back. On the way back Alan started to cry because it was about time for his milk, but we weren't prepared to walk and feed him at the same time, so it had to wait until he got back to the car. Alan's actually had a cold or something so his voice sounds funny, and just sounds so painful for him. I hope he gets better soon. He isn't crying or anything because of it, but when he does he sounds like a confused chicken.

So, in two days we had two firsts for Alan: first Cherry Blossom viewing, and first Shrine visit (along with a trip to Saitama to visit some friends!) It was a great, but busy weekend. I was really happy with how it turned out, even though I think both Lisa and I are tired from all the prep work it takes to travel with little Alan. Still, lots of fun!

Happy Cherry Blossom viewing to all of you!

A visit to the limited-time Koyama Sweets shop

My friend Akihiro Oyama's family has run the Koyama Western Sweets shop in Kessennuma for 120 years. His older brother is the 5th Oyama to run the Koyama sweets shop. Last year in the March 11th Earthquake and Tsunami, their town and shop was completely wiped out. Since then Akihiro has been involved in various charity and other efforts to bring attention to the Kessennuma area.

On Saturday and Sunday his older brother opened up, for two days only, the Koyama shop in the Takanawa Prince Hotel in Shinagawa. Since we were out and about for the day, and Shinagawa isn't all that far, we took a trip out there. We all bought a bunch of stuff - prominent among things the "Kizuna" (bonds / community) Sponge Cake. The box for the cake has messages from all their supporters, a delicious honey flavor, and appreciative feelings for all who have supported them (and other recovery efforts in Japan.)

Alana's friends Wendy and Lizette also bought a few goods from the store and between the three of them we will be spreading the word about the Koyama Western Sweets shop throughout Austin and San Diego. Probably not much further than that, but I'll tell you what: the stuff is delicious, they deliver from their website (linked above) throughout Japan, and you can't go wrong trying to support recovery efforts in Eastern Japan by eating cake.

Aside from France, when has eating cake every gone wrong?

Professional Family photos

As my loyal readers know (all one of them - myself, potentially twenty or thirty years down the road when I start to forget things) that my sister, my father, and two friends have been in town for the Tokyo Marathon. Well, back before Lisa and I had our son Alan Yoshiyuki Tanaka-Evans, we went to Happy Birth Photo studio to take some professional Maternity photos. We thought that went really well and we liked the studio so we decided to go back when my sister and father were in town. This time we had a lot of people - Myself, Lisa, Alana, Gary, and our son Alan Yoshiyuki as well as Alana's son Scout.

I think the pictures turned out great. Initially our son was tired and most of his pictures show him crying, but by the end of the session he started to cheer up a bit, and we got some nice photos throughout the shoot. We have a bunch of photos with my sister, father, and I with out medals we received for finishing the Tokyo Marathon - those are great! We also have a few pictures with me and my twin sister as well as our sons. They all turned out great.

Growing up we never really took too many professional photos, but these have really turned out great so far, and I think that we will treasure them for a long time to come. Assuming our digital data storage strategy keeps them from being deleted at some point or other. I'll have to get started on setting up some sort of secure backup for the important data, but for now at least I have them on two machines with one backed up nightly.

A trip to Hakone with the family

After running the Tokyo Marathon, I was a wreck. My legs were shot, and I was just barely able to hobble home with the rest of the group. When we decided to actually run this marathon, I thought it would be a lot of fun for us to go to Hakone, a traditional Japanese hot springs resort.

It is about an hour and twenty minutes from Shinjuku via the Odakyu (private railway) Romance Car train (which has nothing to do with romance.) The ride up to Hakone from Shinjuku is quite nice; you get a nice view of Mt. Fuji, and also Odawara castle near the end of the trip. You end up in Hakone Yumoto, and from there can take a very small train further up the mountains.

Before continuing on the trip, we went to get lunch at a soba shop that we often go to. Hakone Yumoto is a small little town with a nice shopping street aimed heavily at tourists. On the walk up, we stopped at a little shop that outside lets you grill some of the fish that they sell. For free. I don't know how they make money because every time I have gone to Hakone I have stopped there and had some fish (it is delicious) but I have never bought anything from that store.

The soba shop is just up the road and across the river. We ended up going to the "new" building of the same shop, around the corner and a bit further down the river, but as always the soba was great. We then took a walk back down the shopping street and headed to the train station, where we were able to get on the small mountain train that takes us up to the small station closest to the onsen we were going to, The sound of Water (水の音.) I've been there a few times with Lisa's family before and it is a nice onsen. They've got I think five different hot springs (ten really, since they are segregated by sex, and switch who goes where each day) both inside and outside. We got there in the afternoon, and had time for a trip to the onsen before dinner. I stayed in the room and looked after little Alan, and dressed him up in the cute Yukata that everyone wears there.

Dinner was a great 12 course meal that is half cooked at your table. Our bunch took over two tables in the place, and with Scout walking around, and sometimes Lisa or I would take Alan for a walk (it was a long dinner) the people at the tables near us struck up some conversations about how our kids were cute. I agree! But they were probably only getting that because our kids are double American and Asian mixes. I won't turn down a compliment though.

After dinner, we entered the hot springs again. Of course, it is a little strange getting naked with your dad and father-in-law and hanging out in a bath for a while, but once you do that, it does help break the tension and make things more informal. It is a pretty good way to build up personal relationships and break down barriers actually.

The next day we left and headed up the mountain more. We took the train to one of the stops, and then from there took a special cable car train. The cable car climbs up a steep mountain, so the car itself is canted and has stairs in the car. Neat.

At the end of the cable car ride, you can take a ropeway ride to another station where they make black onsen eggs. You eat one of those and your life is extended by 7 years. The eggs are black because they are cooked in a sulfur pool. A bunch of us hiked up to some place where they made the eggs - which was really tough because my legs were still jelly from the Marathon. The eggs are pretty good. We also had some awesome sweet potatoes. It was pretty cold though, so we hurried back and caught the ropeway down the mountain to Lake Ashinoko (or really just Lake Ashi, since no ko just means it is a lake.)

At Ashinoko we rode a boat. A pirate boat. They were announcing stuff that was on the lake, but we were just taking it easy after all the hiking and various modes of transportation. When we got off of the boat - and why there are fake pirate boats in a lake up in the mountains I will never know - we just took a bus back to Hakone Yumoto, did a little shopping, and hopped back on the train back to Tokyo.

It was a great trip with great food, and we saw a bit of natural Japan. We road all sorts of different types of transportation, and had some eggs that increased our lives by seven years. If you want a nice relaxing getaway from the city, Hakone is always our go-to place.

Tokyo Marathon

About a year ago my father made a joking suggestion that we run the Tokyo marathon together. My twin sister ran the new York marathon in 2010 so she wanted to run her second marathon. So we planned to run the marathon. By early October our application results were in and all three of us made the lottery. We were committed. I had never ran a marathon before - the closest I got was a half we ran as training in high school cross country once. I started training.

I initially started daily 5km runs and worked up to 10km per day. Up until the end my standard run was a 60 minute 10km run at 6am before work. On the weekend I would run longer distances, usually between 20km and 35km.

I started training in October, and it just started getting colder and colder in Tokyo. It was hard to get up at 6am and go for a run, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I really needed to complete this marathon. I was expecting a son in December, and I thought it made a lot of sense to try to show him that you can accomplish difficult tasks if you set your mind to it, make a plan, work hard, and stick to the plan. That is the main thing that kept getting me up and out into the cold to train for this marathon.

During training, I usually listen to a bunch of podcasts. Mainly some NPR Cartalk, APM Marketplace, This American Life, Marc Maron's WTF podcast, Freakonomics, NPR Planet Money, and a few Japanese podcasts (news and economics.) I was on target through most runs for a four hour time. My longest training run was about 35km, and through the first 30km I ran it in 3 hours, but then the last five kilometers went a lot slower. I estimated based on that run that my final time should be around 5:30, since basically I would end up walking the last few kilometers. Still, my goal was to finish, and beat the Tokyo Marathon mandated 7 hour (gun time, not chip time) limit.

The day of the race, we woke up early (I believe 5:30am) and headed down to Shinjuku, where the start is at. We went through all the procedures (drop off the bag, line up) and probably had about an hour until the 9:10am gun. Alana and Dad said the process went very smoothly, at least compared to the New York marathon, and the line up went well. We chatted with some of the people around us, and before you knew it, the gun went off. It was cold, but we had enough people around us that it wasn't too bad. Alana and Dad were amazed at how quickly we proceeded through to the start line after the gun. I think we were about fifteen minutes behind the start, despite being very far back. They made us line up in order of how long we thought we would take, and I entered the slowest time of 6 hours, so we were in the six hour block.

I don't have much to say about the Marathon, aside from how much fun it was to run with Dad and my sister. We went through some really interesting parts of Tokyo that I know well, and it is very strange to have the whole road to yourself without any car traffic. The first twenty or so Kilometers went pretty well. The time between twenty and thirty is about when Alana and I went a bit ahead of Dad. After about thirty five kilometers it was very tough. Perhaps the last three kilometers or so we ended walking at a fast pace, but that was ok.

Oh, I will note one amazing thing that happened during the race. Alana's husband (coincidentally named David) didn't come to Japan because he was very busy at work. But secretly he flew in at 5am on the day of the race and surprised Alana at the 11km point. It was amazing. There is video proof of how amazing it is.

Near the very end, with a kilometer left to go we started running again. The crowds the whole way along the route were great with supporting us. They thinned out a little bit near the end, but were still there and trying. At the very, very end Alana took off like someone had lit a flame under her. I took off after her. Later, she told me that her husband was always telling her during training: "You're at the very end! It is you, Twin A, and Twin B. Who is going to win? You can't let Twin B win!"

She beat me by 2 seconds. So I need to run another marathon so I can run it three seconds faster than this one.

For posterity sake, here are out times:

• Alana Evans: 5:34:22
• David Evans: 5:34:24
• Gary Evans: 5:41:09

Setsubun - throw beans around for good luck!

Today is Setsubun, a day that marks the traditional start of Spring. Well, I hope it does because it is super cold out here, and getting up and running every morning has been a challenge.

What Setsubun really means is that you buy a bunch of beans of some kind, and throw them outside your house, chanting "Demons go out, good luck come on in!" Or something to the effect. I took a look around our house, and oh no! We had a demon infestation!

We corrected that with the traditional bean throwing, and even little Alan Yoshiyuki helped out (although he does look suspiciously similar to one of the crying demons I caught on digital film just a little bit earlier.)

Anyway, happy Setsubun to you all, and I hope that all the demons in your house flee your violently flung beans and make room to let in all the good luck for 2012!

Announcing the birth of Alan Yoshiyuki Tanaka-Evans

On Friday, December 16th, at 12:08pm, our son Alan Yoshiyuki Tanaka Evans was born. In Japanese his name is 田中エバンス・アラン吉恭. I'll say more about the name later.

On Thursday the 15th, Lisa started to feel like the contractions were starting, and after some calls to the hospital, we caught a taxi and arrived there in the early afternoon. We went to the labor delivery room and spent some time with the nurses getting things timed and instrumented. We started to discuss what we wanted in our birth plan. The primary divergence from the standard Japanese birth plan - which is usually a natural birth with no epidurals - is that we wanted an epidural. Our hospital, Aiiku Hospital, is very accommodating and has an anesthesiologist (or multiple?) on staff. So we can get an epidural. Unfortunately, they don't really promote epidurals and prefer natural birth. So if you want an epidural, you can only do it from 9am-5pm Monday through Friday. Since kids aren't really known for being prompt and on time, we were very worried that we wouldn't be able to have the epidural.

Speaking with the doctors, Lisa's contractions were pre-contractions, so they wanted us to see how things went Thursday night. If things went well, Lisa would go into labor early Friday, and we would hit the epidural window. Since they wanted Lisa to stay overnight, and visiting hours (even for family members!) is only from 1pm to 8pm, they made me go home. Around 9am Friday morning, I got a call from Lisa to come into the hospital. She had been in labor since 1am. By 10am, the doctors said that if we wanted to have an epidural, Lisa would need to have stronger contractions, so they administered a labor inducing agent via her drip-feed. That worked well, so around 11am or so the anesthesiologist came by and started on Lisa's epidural. She was really in pain from the contractions and started to feel a lot better in ten minutes when the drugs started to take effect.

Things were going well, Lisa and I were talking with the nurse that was in the room. The baby heart rate monitor suddenly dropped from about 150bpm to 70, and kept going down. In an instant some alarms started to sound, and then suddenly there were ten or twelve people in the room, including the main delivery doctor. Things happened quickly; Lisa got an oxygen mask and the doctor told me that they needed to perform an emergency c-section. They rushed her out, and had me sit in the waiting room. An eternity later, a nurse came by and told me that a healthy boy was born. I was ecstatic, for a few minutes until I wondered at the peculiar wording that left out any mention of how Lisa was doing. Then I got worried again until I was able to hunt up a nurse that told me that my wife was indeed fine. The doctor later explained to me that they did not have any idea what happened, but they were concerned that with the drop in the baby's heart rate, they needed to get him out of there quickly to avoid any potential for damage to his brain. Everything turned out ok, and also, I could go see my son!

I spent about half an hour with my son, and then he was taken away to get weighed and whatever else the nurses needed to do. I went back to do some more waiting, and then was able to go see Lisa. I had a few minutes to talk with her, and then the nurse came in to check on her bandages. Again, in an instant the place was full of doctors and nurses, and I was rushed out. I caught a few snatches of conversation about how she was having massive bleeding. I had another hour or so waiting outside the room, but the doctors got everything stabilized and I was allowed back in, along with our son. Lisa was exhausted but looked extremely happy.

Alan Yoshiyuki Tanaka Evans was born on Friday, 2011 December 16th at 12:08pm. He weighs in at 2884 grams, and 48.5 cm. Since Friday, mom and son have been recovering together in the hospital. She will stay there for about a week (a bit longer than normal due to the c-section, but not much.) Visiting hours are from 1pm to 8pm, so I go to the hospital and visit for a few hours. I can't wait for them to come home (just in time for Christmas as it turns out) and start my own sleepless nights.

What about the name Alan Yoshiyuki Tanaka Evans?

I have always thought it was somewhat sexist that the wife should change her last name to the husband's last name, and I think the name Tanaka is really cool, has a long tradition in Japan, so we just never changed our names when we got married. We are married though. So when our son is born, we had to think a bit about the name. I like the sound of Tanaka Evans, which is what we will use as his last name on his US Passport. We'll probably have to hyphenate it, so Tanaka-Evans. For his first name, I want a connection to my family, and the name Alan works really well there - my father is Gary Alan Evans, my sister is Alana, we have a few other Alans in the family, and one of his godfathers' middle name is Alan (although I might not have the spelling right there.) On Lisa's side of the family, men often have names starting with the Chinese character 吉 (Yoshi, "good fortune".) There are many people in their family with names starting with that character, so it is very hard to choose a name that is unique to the family. Lisa had a few candidates, which we narrowed down to two, Yoshitomo ("good fortune" and "intelligence") or Yoshiyuki ("good fortune" and "courteous".) Since one of the reasons we chose Alan is in the hopes that he turns out as smart as my father Lisa didn't want to have two "smart" meanings in the name, so Yoshiyuki it is. So far, he has cried enough that I'm not sure he understands the meaning of his name, but we'll work on it.

For reference, the Japanese writing of the name is 田中エバンス・アラン吉恭.

Rainbow Bridge Loop

Yesterday I went for a 20km run, and finally was able to do the run I've been trying to do for the past few weeks: starting at home, jog up to the Rainbow Bridge, jog across, then circle around Odaiba and back across the bridge home.

It was about 20km in total. When you get to the entrance from the Shibaura side, you have to take an elevator up to the bridge. On the bridge, there is a pedestrian lane, then two lanes of traffic, then two tracks for the monorail, and the same going the opposite direction. It is pretty loud in there, and when a big truck goes by, you can feel the bridge shaking. You can take the north or the south route, and get a different view. I like the north view, you have a nice view of downtown Tokyo.

Once in Odaiba, I ran along the beach which was surprisingly full of people even in this cold weather. Odaiba is supposedly a date spot (although honestly I don't know what people are doing there) and there were people out there on dates. I saw a few other people running around too, but not as many as I expected. Going around the island, you get into a more industrial section with loading cranes for shipping. You can actually see our apartment building from the island, and get a view of the front side of the cranes that we can see from our balcony. I don't get to see that view all that often, so that is pretty cool.

I got a bit lost on the way back to Rainbow Bridge, but did eventually make it. As with my other long runs, the last two kilometers or so were pretty tough, and I bought a drink and walked a bit to make it back home. Still, I completed the run, and got to see a bit of Odaiba on foot.

You can check out the run below.

Maternity Photos

Yesterday, R. and I went to a small photostudio, Happy Birth Photo in Shibuya. R. thought it would be a good idea to have some professional maternity photos done. Since this isn't something that happens every day, I definitely agree.

The photo studio staff is all female, which I suspect works well for them. They were very nice and walked us through the photo session with some options for things we could do. They weren't super interested in taking pictures of me, and I can't say that I disagree with them. I was in the first few shots, and then they focused on R. That was cool by me. I think the pictures turned out very well, here is a small sample.

I can't believe how large R. has gotten! We've got about three weeks to go I think.

Happy 37th Birthday Run

Inspired by my good friend Eric, who ran a half marathon today, I thought I would go for a long run (which is called for on my training schedule anyway) and decided to shoot for 21km (close enough to a half marathon for me) myself.

It also happens to be my 37th birthday. Since I'm training for the Tokyo marathon, which I'll run with my twin sister and father, I wanted to go for a long run over the weekend. So today, after we got back from a leisurely lunch with Lisa's friends, I headed out for a run. The plan was to run up to Rainbow bridge (which we can see from our apartment) and run across it over to Odaiba, circle around there for a bit, and head back home. That should have come out to about 20km, but when I made it to the bridge, it turns out that it is only open to pedestrian traffic from 10am to 6pm. So I was out of luck. I didn't want to give up though, so just kept heading in towards Tokyo, and eventually through Shinbashi and Ginza. On the way home I made a slight detour to visit Tokyo tower, and then slowly made my way home.

Prior to this run, the farthest I had gone was a 16km jog last weekend (not counting a half marathon distance run in high school.) So this was a pretty long run for me. I was absolutely stuffed from lunch (we met some of Lisa's friends from her days at Sizzler at Sizzler, and their buffet style salad bar is way too easy to overeat on.) So I had some cramps, but generally felt pretty good, until about kilometer 16 when my feet started to hurt. Just a general ache in the bones since I'm not used to this distance. I ended up buying a Pocari Sweat and mixing in some walking on the way home, but in the end I made it. And now I'm sore.

The good news is that I made 21km, I think I can (after a few more months of training) make 42km. The bad news is, man, I'm sore. Overall though, happy 37th birthday. Here's to another healthy 37 birthdays!

Fat, Sick, and nearly Dead

I watched "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" on Amazon Instant Video tonight. Another great documentary! I'm excited because a few days ago I ordered a Vitamix (1363 Spy [or possibly it was CIA] model) blender which can make great juices. Since I'm currently training for my first marathon, and my father has really enjoyed his vitamix blender, I started to want one at home. With little Alan on the way, I think we can also make fresh baby food when he gets around to eating that kind of thing.

I also checked out a few other things on Amazon Instant Video, and suspect that I'll be watching a bit of Doctor Who before sleeping. They have a whole bunch of the old series and the new series on there. Amazing.

Amazon Instant Video

I'm currently in America for work. I bought some stuff from Amazon, and they offered me a free Amazon Prime trial, which I can cancel within the first month for no charge. I've been curious about Amazon Prime Instant Video for a while, so decided to check it out.

They have some great videos up there! I checked out "Bigger, Faster, Stronger*" yesterday, and "Between the Folds" today. They are both great documentaries. Bigger, Faster, Stronger* is about steroid use (in sports and elsewhere) while Between the Folds is about origami. I particularly recommend the origami documentary for anyone interested in science, art, and the strange intersection between them.

I'm pretty impressed with the selection (there are a lot more interesting things that I would like to watch) and the process has just worked without a hitch for me. I won't keep the Prime membership in America because I live in Japan, and can't take advantage of the streaming there (as far as I know) but if I lived in the US I would definitely pony up for prime and make great use of this feature.

Since I work at Amazon, this might come off as blatant advertising, but really I don't think you can blame me too much. ;-)

A Wedding in New York, and a Baby Shower in DallasA Wedding in New York, and a Baby Shower in Dallas

Last week Lisa and I went to New York for the wedding of our friends Lena Park and Ben Grenier. This will be Lisa's second time in New York, and a welcome return for me. Because of the wedding, I also had a great chance to see a bunch of friends from grad school. We did this vacation pretty quickly, arriving Thursday evening, and flying from New York to Dallas on Monday, then back to Tokyo from Dallas on Thursday. That gave us basically three days in New York. We basically had a bunch of errands to run (shopping) but on Friday we were able to spend some time at the MOMA. You can see a picture with Lisa by Starry Night and Warhol's Marylin Monroe as proof. It is really amazing how many world class famous paintings are in that building (and how many more in storage?) We also swung by M1-5 in the evening for a get-together with Lena and Ben and lots of friends.

On Saturday we took a trip down to Princeton, primarily to visit our friends Ron and Michelle and their super cute boy Evan, but also to swing by some of the local favorites. For me, that primarily means Halo Pub, a great ice cream place. Strangely, Princeton has more ice cream parlors than bars. Michelle is convinced that the Bent Spoon is the best ice cream in Princeton, and of course you can't forget Thomas Sweet if you are talking about Princeton Ice Cream. So we decided to go for the rare Princeton Trifecta: ice cream at all three places. For dinner, we swung by perennial favorite Hoagie Haven.

We started at Thomas Sweet, where Lisa sampled their sugar free frozen yogurt. I had brownies blended into strawberry ice cream. Little Evan loves ice cream, which he calls "ice see". He also loves trucks, and even since spending a day with Evan, every time I see a truck now, I shout "truck!" We walked over to The Bent Spoon, and had some interesting ice cream there. Lisa tried the Avacado and Mango, I had a scoop of chocolate (excellent) and blood orange sherbet. They were all very good, I loved the chocolate, thought the avacado was a bit strange, and liked the blood orange sherbet but would have preferred a traditional strawberry or other type of berry. The last stop was Halo Pub, where I had more traditional strawberries on chocolate. Even though I was pretty full of ice cream, Evan didn't seem to be slowing down (Ice See!) and we did need some sort of dinner, so we went over to Hoagie Haven. Lots of our Princeton friends just love Hoagie Haven, and I like it as well, although I don't go out of my way for it. Lisa enjoyed the steak hoagie (we split a half) as well, but probably doesn't see the attraction that some of my friends have for the place.

After spending a great day with friends in Princeton (see the shot of the two of us in the flower gardens) we took the train back to New York, which was a great contrast with the trains in Tokyo. Slow, not necessarily on schedule, and perhaps not as clean as you would expect coming from Japan. She also noticed a few rats in the subway and commented on those. Another big issue with New York is that there are lots of stairs if you take the subway. Lots of stairs.

The day of the wedding, we had lunch at the Russian Tea Room. That was my first time there, and while people say it has really become a tourist trap, I thought the food was good, and I like the atmosphere. Who cares if it is a tourist location now? I ordered the trio of sliders, and was disappointed. Lisa had the Beef Stroganov and was not. We split the borscht. The tea was very nice too - I am going to drink more tea now. We have great teas out here in Japan, I can't deal with the caffeine in coffee and soda, but tea seems to be ok. After dinner, we headed uptown to Columbia, and then over to the wedding.

The wedding was at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, a beautiful church on 71st. The ceremony was shorter than I expected, and beautiful. It seemed like a fairly traditional Catholic wedding to me, but I'm not super well versed on traditional weddings, so I won't try to analyze the wedding aside from saying that it was a great ceremony and seemed to do the job.

The reception was at Del Posto downtown. The dinner was delicious, with great speeches by friends of the lovely couple, and the bride's twin sister.

After the wedding, we flew the next day to Dallas to visit with my family for a few days. My great sisters set up a baby shower for Lisa since they are not common in Japan. We had a great turnout of friends and family at the party. One of the highlights of the trip was getting to spend time with Alana's son Scout, who has grown very big!

Our Aunt Laura made some delicious cupcakes for the party, and the Butlers were gracious enough to bring sandwiches and other dinner foods. Don't misunderstand; we don't have Butlers, but Jerome and Sydney Butler did come to the party and brought the food. Alana and Jana also bought a bunch of white baby onesies and fabric markers, and the guests drew great designs for our little boy. We've got a whole bunch of fashionable clothes for our baby now.

Our mom, who has Parkinson's disease, really perks up when little Scout in the room. It was great spending time with mom and Scout, and we also were able to get a few pictures of the whole Evans family together. I don't think we've had the full family together for a few years, so that was also very nice.

We had a short trip, but it was packed with friends and family. As always time just seems to fly, and now here we are back in Tokyo. I'm hopeful that once we have our little boy we'll be able to see family back in the States again, but it might be a while before we feel up to the task of a 10+ hour flight with a little baby. Alana and Scout seem to have managed really well though, so maybe we will be able to do it also. At any rate, it was a very nice vacation! Many thanks to all the friends and family for taking the time to see us, and congratulations to Lena and Ben!