The best bread of my life

These two items, bought at the Ueno subway station, were the best two pieces of bread I have ever eaten in my life, despite the fact that the one on the right was green-colored, with a few sweet grean beans inside. Unfortunately, together they cost me 1900 yen, about 19 US dollars.

Photos from around Tokyo

Even the bathrooms (okay, especially the bathrooms) are gorgeous by comparison.

Kawaii! (cute in Japanese)

This one's for Josephine!

Springtime

The press contingent

Also parked outside the hotel, waiting for some action

Outside our hotel in Tokyo

Outside our hotel in Tokyo, there are riot police stationed... for fear that right-wing Japanese groups will harass the North Koreans.

Background on the North Korea-Japan abductee issue

To Tokyo

I leave this morning for 10 days in Tokyo, to rapporteur for a conference on Northeast Asian security that's been called the "track 1.5 version of the 6-party talks". Pictures to follow when I return!

Fulbrighter

On Friday I got an email with good news: I've won a Fulbright award for next year! All those hours writing and rewriting have paid off.

Old haunts

I thought I swore never to go back to IKEA Beijing. But we did, and despite our exhaustion bought several armfuls of household furnishings, including a bookcase and coffee table. Rather than paying IKEA to deliver the next day, we saved ourselves 10 yuan by haggling with one of the minivan drivers crowding the exit to snag a customer.

Ping pong?

On the campus of Beijing (Peking) University, one of China's finest centers of higher education.

More photos around town

Dancing in the park (our last days near Tiantan, aka the Temple of Heaven). Yes, we did waltz!

Long time gone

Apologies for my long hiatus - these past few weeks have been busy, to say the least. We now live in a new apartment close to campus and new bicycles to school (at least until they get stolen, like two of my past three attempts to maintain a vehicular form of transportation in Beijing). The easy commute and spacious interior more than makes up for the higher rent.

We've had ample opportunity to sample the nicer restaurants in Beijing with successive visits of my family and one of Jeremy's advisors. One in particular features a 50s era red limo that Mao apparently reserved for his exclusive use. This limo is parked outside the restaurant, blocking about a third of the hutong that the restaurant fronts. In fact, to hail a cab after dinner, one of the restaurant employees - probably hired for this purpose - had to run a quarter of a mile just to flag a cab from the main street and convince the cabbie to enter this narrow and winding alley (cliche aside, this is a literal description - we had to wait five minutes on our way in because a little minivan was unloading produce at the local grocer).

Oh, China

It's nearing three weeks now that I've been in China again, time enough to settle in and start missing the comforts and sanity of home. First, I found out upon close inspection that I had been living a dream - those stickers I posted about were actually fakes - "Washinton," not "Washington" apples. That's China for you.

Next, I ate a bad apple and was laid out sick for a day and a half. Just as I was regaining my ability to remain vertical without nausea, Jeremy came down with a bad sore throat. Strep throat? You got it, or at least that's what the doctor proclaimed with 90% certainty. Will we ever know? Not really, since he didn't take a culture but suggested a blood test instead - to "determine the strength of your immune system," he said, so he would know what strength antibiotic to prescribe. Not that I'm any expert, but we were just as happy to avoid the use of needles.

But the day ended happily. I had a productive meeting over in the Jianguomen embassy area, in Starbucks, no less. Sitting in a cushy sofa chair, gazing up at the surprisingly blue sky, and listening to a classic Starbucks mix, I could almost imagine that I was in California again. Cliche, perhaps. To top it off, we had pizza delivered for dinner!


So, to sum up our day, in chronological order:

Snow!

And hopefully the last of the bitter cold.

It's the little things that matter

Like having ready access to potable water. China's tap water isn't drinkable. Even for brushing teeth, bottled water is recommended. Here I am, immensely proud of having negotiated by phone a water delivery service.

Washington, my home sweet home

I doubt that all of these fruits were really imported from Washington State (I'm not even sure what kind of fruit the pink and green one on the right is), but seeing these stickers on a fancy fruit basket was still a nice surprise.

Chinese chess on a Monday afternoon

Around town

This is why I got my rabies vaccinations (apparently rabies is China's 2nd deadliest infectious disease, if you believe the official AIDS figures released by the government)

Politics

Last night we had dinner with an old friend of mine from high school, Greg Distelhorst. He's working for the Washington Post's Beijing correspondent, Philip Pan. In fact, you can see his name in lights on the Washington Post's most emailed article for today, The Click That Broke a Government's Grip. Interesting article, too.

Photos

Buying a cellphone. Just as much of a headache as in the United States, but with a whole new set of vocabulary. I never learned the words for "prepay", "mobile to mobile", or "text message" in my Chinese classes.


Dairy Queen is tasty under any circumstances, but particularly after a spicy-hot Szechuan meal. We stumbled upon this store at a local shopping mall while looking for flannel sheets, which don't seem to have made it onto the domestic Chinese market (though I don't doubt they're exported by the ton to the United States.)