Foote Family Christmas Party Japan 2008

Once again the Foote Family opened its doors wide to entertain 30+ people for a post-Christmas, Christmas party.  This was also a white elephant gift exchange party, which proved to be a huge success.  There were about four highly coveted presents that exchanged hands many, many times.  The most popular of these was a Cocoa Latte machine.  It was swapped at least a dozen times.  I ended up with a nice, wooden hand massager turtle.  Aya got a glove hand massager, another win for me!

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Shinjuku Mitsui Building Walkabout After Hours

I usually meet up with the boys in some capacity on Sunday evenings, and this one was no exception.  After a meal at the local fave Indian place, The Can, Scott and I went on a semi-reluctant rainy walkabout of the Shinjuku skyscraper district, in particular the Shinjuku Mitsui Building.

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Cycling to Haneda Airport with a Thunderstorm

FULL RIDE STATS:

• Distance: 34.38 miles
• Time in motion: 2 hours 57 minutes 08 seconds
• Average speed: 11.6 mph
• Max speed: 28.5 mph

I had wanted to cycle out to Haneda Airport for quite some time.  This Sunday I finally attempted it.  I was joined by UK Mike and The Can, who also ride Trek 7.3 FXs.  I wrote down some rough directions based on a route planned by Tokyo Half-Fast Cycling.  However, it was a bit more complicated than that, and after much asking and street sign map reading, we were able to get to a point close enough to see JAL’s planes come in really close for landings. [Read more]

Gunma Japan Haikyo Urban Exploring!

I went on my first ever haikyo, or urban exploring as it’s called outside of Japan, with the Mikes in January 2008.  We rented a Nissan X-trail, which was a pleasure to drive by the way, and headed up deep into Gunma Prefecture, Japan.  Snow was everywhere and we were all very excited to be out of Tokyo and on our first adventure in a long time.  We went out seeking an abandoned theme park, volcano museum and schoolhouse.  We found them all, with varying degrees of difficulty. [Read more]

KumiCan's Wedding in 60 seconds! [video]

This is Kumi and the Can’s wedding reception in 60 seconds. Listen carefully as the quips come and go quickly!

Filmed on location at a restaurant in Harajuku, Tokyo, Japan.

(Forgive the Xacti its poor low light performance. In its defense, it was really dimly lit in there after sunset.)