Michèle's random pics and vids

I am by no means a photographer, but I do take pics here and there whenever I go anywhere. Most of those pics end up on Facebook, but I'll post them here, too. So, here goes!

Our plane from LAX to Tokyo was one of the new fancy "Dreamliner" planes. The windows didn't have shades, but instead had new controllable window tinting technology. Kat told me she read that eliminating the shades saved a lot of weight in the plane, which makes it more fuel efficient. Yay! While it was neat to be able to control how much the window was tinted with a push of a button, the lack of a shade meant that the window itself was HOT from the sun, something that a shade shields you from. Anyway, here's what it looked like out of my window:

I already mentioned that the B3 bell fell off the table after our first concert - Arthur Syin saved our bacon by hand-delivering a new clapper assembly to us - but there was another casualty after that concert: our gong stand got broken during the petting zoo. The stand is home-made from PVC pipes and joints & it was one of the joint pieces that cracked, meaning that the stand could no longer stand up. Tess super-glued it, then I wrapped strips of gaffer tape around it to help hold it together. Unfortunately, the super glue was not quite dry yet & I managed to super glue my finger to the gaffer tape. Oops! Michele Meenk tried to help me get the super glue off my finger using fingernail polish remover, which actually didn't work. The glue eventually wore off my skin, but here's a vid of us trying the nail polish remover:

One of my favorite things about Japan is the food, which would surprise anybody I grew up with because I was The World's Pickiest Eater until I was in my 20s. But I love me some noodles! So far, I've had udon, soba, and ramen. Yum! Here's my udon:

udon with a side of tempura

And here's my soba:

Soba is served cold, with a cup of warm broth. This broth had slices of duck in it. Yum!

I didn't get a picture of my ramen at the rest stop today, but I did get a pic of this adorable Coke Zero bottle. You peel off one end of the label to reveal a pull tab which turns the label into a Christmas bow! How cute! And quintessentially Japanese! 

SO CUTE!

Another of my favorite things about Japan is their use of English. They use it for "atmosphere" or to evoke a specific mood or ambience to a thing or place. And then, there's also what is known in the InterTubez as "Engrish", which according to Wikipedia is "a slang term for the misuse or corruption of the English language by native speakers of some Asian languages". I collect samples of Engrish whenever I come to Japan. Here's my latest acquisition, from an Italian restaurant in Karuizawa:

After yesterday's concert in Karuizawa, all of us went out to dinner & ended up at a French restaurant, where once again the Japanese have proven that they know how to do toilets right:

More later!