Great News, Riding Tantalus, and More Rain

Great News:

Great news today as Ms. Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who was kidnapped in Iraq was released. Click here to read more on My Politics of Peace Blog.

Riding:

Although it looked like it would pour last night, I chanced it and did almost 2 loops of Tantalus. The ride was windy, wet and messy, and the top clouded-in, but, I only got drizzled on for 15 minutes or so. (Too bad I didn't put my fenders on cause my back got all dirty - Duh!) It was also VERY cold as if you were training with air conditioning on. Good thing I had my thinsulate arm warmers and bib shorts on cause it was very comfortable! The conditions really reminded me of my bike ride in Nara.

My training must also be working a little cause although my power was still on the low side, I felt better than I have in a couple weeks of riding Tantalus.

More Rain:

I couldn't agree more as the papers say we are on our 40+ day of constant rain...more than since 1950's or so! And just at this moment, it looks like night time out my window and it is just DUMPING. I wish I had my camera...

Last Weekend of March

Sumo: Like the New Year's tournament, this past basho was SUPER exciting. This year, Asashoryu is NOT getting a free ride like he did last year. Lots of competition especially from follow Mongolian Hakuho and my favorite, Tochiazuma. Since Hakuho is being promoted to Ozeki, there will now be 5 Ozeki gunning for Asashoryu and for promotion to Yokozuna. Next tournament should be really exciting.

Training: I must have picked up a slight bug this past week cause this weekend was really bad. I had no power, even though I was going pretty hard on Saturday and today. Not much looking forward to this weekend's Tantalus Time Trial.

Rain and the Jet Stream: As everyone knows, it has been raining for weeks like I've never seen it here in Hawaii.

For the last 4 or 5 weeks, the jet stream has shifted south causing all these storms to hit the State. The top left pic is from Feb 1st, more or less, the "normal" jet stream. The top right pic is from Feb 26. See how the stream is taking a U-turn to the south. The pic on the right is from today. So guess what the weather predition is for this week...RAIN AGAIN of course!!! Accroding to the weatherman, this southerly shift in the jet stream is supposedly causing all of these southerly storms.

マツダ　ロードスター: Spent rainy Sunday afternoon installing a jdm オーリンズ performance suspension on my brother's car. It was actually a little easier than I thought it would be. Took it for a short spin and it definetly is lower and a little stiffer than stock with MUCH less brake-dive than before. Shoud be great fun trying out the 20 different dampening rates at this weekend's upcoming autocross.

New Blog: The Politics of Peace

Since I tagged "politics" as one of my interests, I will now have live up to that tag by delving into the political "arena" with my 1st political post.

However, since it has really been nice and peaceful here, I was truly contemplating NOT even going there, to the "arena" that is...BUT...I just couldn't take it anymore!

If you can't take it anymore either, click on the link below to read the first post in my new blog called The Politics of Peace.

In there, I plan to opine my thoughts on political issues that affect you, me, everyone else, this Island, this State, this Nation, this World, and this Universe.

Take your chances though...New Blog:The Politics of Peace.

Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Another Day!

As you can see, I went riding Tantalus under very overcast skies LATE this afternoon. The first picture is taken at 7:08pm on the way down after my first trip up.
The second was taken at 7:49pm on the way down after going back up from about 3/4 of the way down. (Kind of confusing, eh???)

The weather here has been unusually rainy for almost a month now! In fact, I and almost everyone I know cannot remember ever having this much rain for this many weeks! Luckily for me, I checked the doppler radar and decided to take a chance and only got drizzled on slightly at the very top.

This was the first time I ever rode Tantalus at night and tell you what...it was WAY better than you would think! The city lights were beautiful, the air smelled good and clean, it wasn't cold (I didn't even put on my vest), very few cars, and I only ate one flying bug. I even talked to my "bicycle insider" who said he USED to run there at nite??? and the "insider" agreed that Tantalus at night is tottemo kakkoii!

But, riding there, or anywhere at night, depends on ONE BIG THING. And, I hate to always bring this up but...my LIGHT worked fantastic - again! In fact, the darker it got, the better it worked. But, since I got the horespower (4200mah @ 13.2v) I will maybe put on a 35 watt Solux bulb cause I want to be the KING OF LIGHTS!

Also riding tonight were David, Barry and Mike. And, fwiw, I climbed it in 26:23 @ 263 watts, all while doing 3 min on / 1 min off intervals all the way to the top.

イチロ ガ イチバン デシタ ヨ！！！

WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME (日本 10 - CUBA 6)

ICHIRO!!! ICHIRO!!! ICHIRO!!!

As I said in my post BEFORE the game, Ichiro is the MAN! (Matsui-san who???)

By his comments throughout the tournament, you could tell that he really wanted to represent Japan and you could especially see it tonight by the composed intensity and concentration he showed on the field and in the batter's box. Even the Cuban team knew they were playing with a legend as several of them were taking pictures with Ichiro after the game.

Lacking stacked MLB rosters, both Cuba and Japan played hard and with a lot of heart. Both also showed great class by congratulating each other after the game - as it should be done. I noticed that Cuba especially rides the wave of emotional momentum, almost too much, as you could tell when they rallied in the middle innings, they were super up, but, when they got behind, they got way too down. All in all though, the whole atmosphere was like a World Little League Championship for BIG KIDS - which made it VERY exciting!

As for the US team, that kind of "Little League" passion was certainly lacking in its money-talking (and sometimes steroid totting) baseball world. I guess the World will now consider this "proof" that we are no longer the center of the baseball universe anymore...which may actually be a good thing for the "game."

Now back to: イチロ!!! イチロ!!! イチロ!!!

Read more about Ichiro, Oh-san, missing Matsui, Japan and Cuba, and Umpiring here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11934229/.

イチロ ガ イチバン

World Baseball Classic -

Thoughts on Last Sat. Game (Japan 6 - Korea 0) -

What a game it was this past Saturday. The odds of going undefeated and beating a team 3 times in a row finally caught up with Korea as they lost to Japan. In that game, the Home Run King (Sadaharu Oh) made several brilliant coaching calls with pinch hitters and pitching.

Also, I think Ichiro is the Man! Some of that old-boy US of A trash-talking seems to have rubbed off on him as he's provided some expletives and commentary that, shall we say, was very un-Japanese like!

Ichiro's comments were the cause of much consternation to the largly Korean crowd as they boo'ed him loudly every time he stepped to the plate. What was Ichiro's thought on that? "I was disappointed because the boos weren't loud enough!"

Another GREAT thing was that other than for some really low pitches being called for strikes, NO BAD CALLS!!! We should expect the same no matter who's playing though - right?


Thoughts on Today's Game:

Todays game will a real WORLD game with Cuba taking on Japan.

The great MLB cather Mike Piazza, playing for Italy said, "...this was something very special for us to play for the country of our fathers and mothers and forefathers and foremothers...," so...you know who I'll be leaning for if the game is close! But if it's not THAT close, I'll be cheering for the losing team to catch up!

Should be a GREAT game no matter who wins. And WORLD baseball will be the true winner when all is said and done.

I LOVE VIDEO & the World Baseball Classic

Guess what (by reading one of Lee Cataluna's articles) I found a GREAT way to put videos up on any blog. It is through this site called www.youtube.com. The uploads seem to be decently fast and from what I can tell, youtube is sort of a Flickr for homemade videos.

I like photography, but, sometimes...if a picture is worth a 1,000 words, a video can be worth 100,000 words, for example:

SURFING:
Check out this insane video clip taken of the gigantic Jaws surf break:


BASEBALL:
By now you must have saw a replay of the bad call the USA "Chump-ire" gave to Japan. If you didn't see it, here it is via youtube:

Btw, this video has been viewed over 70,000 times already!

Obviously THAT was a BAD call. But guess what - tonight, in the Mexico vs US game, the SAME ump made another "chump" call. This bush-leaguer must have bet a ton of money on the USA getting to the semi-finals cause he was trying his best (worst) to "help" the home team - what an embarassement!

He changed a LEGIT Mexico home run into a ground rule double. Luckily for Mexico, it didn't matter as they ended up eventually winning. Sort of poetic justice anyway, cause by beating the US, via the tie breaker system, Japan got to advance to the semi-finals even though Japan, Mexico and the US were all in a 3-way tie. Read about it here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/17/WBC.TMP

We'll see what happens this Sat since I think even Japan's famous manager, Sadaharu Oh, has said that if they get beat again on Sat, then Korea is the better team since Japan would have lost 3 straight to Korea. Should be a super good game - hopefully sans any "chump-ire" calls!

Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan - 大阪・海遊館

Osaka, Japan - 2004



While in Osaka during my 2004 trip, me and Randal took a day trip out to see the world class Osaka Aquarium "Kaiyukan."

Getting off the train, the first thing to catch my eye was this giant ferris wheel - bigger than any I had ever seen and I knew I HAD to ride it before I left. The second thing to catch my eye was the exterior architecture of the aquarium, like a gigantic "transformer."

Being a weekday it wasn't very crowded, only a few tourist and some school kids. So, we got to see everything at a very relaxed pace - generally NOT the norm for Japan! While inside, and purly by chance, Randal and I got to meet this attractive girl who worked there :-).



Being a world class aquarium, it is one of only a few to have a live whale shark in captivity. Truly impressive and depressing at the same time. I felt sad for this magnificent animal since, by nature, they are pelagic and live to travel the oceans. I can only hope that it is set free once it gets too large or, before it loses it's mind pacing around in endless circles and circles and O O O O O's.

After checking out the aquarium and eating at the Tempozan Harbor Village, we decided to split up and meet back later at the Ryokan. I spent my time buying some omiyage and browsing through the stores in the shopping area. However...prior to leaving...I promised myself a ride on that giant ferris wheel.

Nobody was in line and I would be one of only two or three cabs on that whole thing that were occupied. The motion was a slow and steady climb and the cab would only rock, if I made it.

By myself and floating to the top, I took some pictures and many thoughts ran through my mind while looking upon the city of Osaka and out to the setting ocean-sun in the West. I was in Japan for the first time, and the feelings in that moment...were questioning...and irrepressible...and hopefully melancholy...and unforegettable...just like a ride on that giant ferris wheel.



Click on this link to see all my photos from this day: Osaka Aquarium Pictures .

Also, if you ever go there, here are a couple of informational links:

(http://www.kaiyukan.com/eng/index.htm)
(http://www.tourism.city.osaka.jp/en/enjoy_osaka/...)

Some Rambling About Sports

Sumo

After 2 days of the Haru Basho, my favorite sumotori, Tochiazuma has a 1 and 1 record and new Ozeki Kotooshu looks injured and is at 1 and 1 too. And of course, to no one's suprise, Asashoryu is looking great at 2 and 0. Well see how events go over the next couple of days.



Cycling

After winning the Tour of California a couple of weeks ago, an awesome Floyd Landis followed it up by taking 1st in the Paris-Nice stage race by 9 seconds.

After reading much about the Floyd-Armstong spat, it seems like Floyd is really an all-a-round nice guy and I'll be pulling for him to do well in this year's Tour de France. (Not that Lance isn't a "nice" guy, but, Floyd seems much more laid back and easy going.) Hopefully he's not peaking too early and can still build from here.



Baseball

A VERY controversial call in the 8th inning helped the USA beat Japan in the newly created World Baseball Classic. From what I saw in the replays, it was pretty obvious that the umpires decision was wrong - infact, they OVERTURNED the orignal correct call.

I mean, sometimes, in a close play you would expect a "hometown call," but this wasn't even close - pretty embarassing in fact! Oh well, I guess if it it can happen in the Super Bowl, it can happen here too. For more on the "call" see here: Flat-out screwed: Japan homered in loss to U.S..

2006 Honolulu Festival Parade

2006 Honolulu Festival Parade
Originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

During today's Sunday ride I took a few minutes to check out the Honolulu Festival parade. There were tons of people along the parade route which goes through Waikiki via Kalakaua Avenue.

Unfortunatley...I didn't stay around long enough to see much of it ;-( since it was cold, rainy, windy and kind of late already.

A Dog on the Ginza...

A Dog on the Ginza...
Originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

その日、いちばんいぬでした。。。

Tokyo - Japan 2004

On our last day on this 2004 trip, we took a stroll along the Ginza which was just a short walk from our hotel.

There were lots of families and even pets enjoying the streets that were closed off to traffic on Sundays. Quite a (political?) feat, I would think, for downtown Tokyo. For this to happen in Waikiki???...I don't think so!

Photo: A Dog on the Ginza 2
Photo: A Dog on the Ginza 3

On that day, this was the #1 dog!

btw...that is NOT my hand!

Finally!!! a "real" final design!

After weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks...click here to see a long post of my new frame design: www.mycyclingpage.blogspot.com.

2005 Japan Trip - Day 2 (Part 3)

Part 3 - Saturday (Doyoubi 土曜日) Oct. 29th 2005 - After putting my Bike Friday together and changing into my rain suit (which consisted of only an old windbreaker that wasn’t all that waterproof), Shizuka-san led me off on our Nara 奈良 adventure. There were so many places to see, and because it was 1:00pm already, Shizuka-san had to decide on the best places to go.

The first place we rode to was Horyu-ji temple. Horyu-ji is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is known for having the oldest wooden buildings in the world – some dating back to the 700’s or so. I mean, can you imagine that these buildings have been standing here for over 1,300 years年! Quite impressive to say the least.

It really gave me pause to think, that here in America, our US history runs for only 230年 or so (though the history of the indigenous peoples of America and Hawaii runs MUCH longer). But here, in this land of the rising sun, people have been coming to worship on the exact ground I was standing on for over 1,300年! My mind is overwhelmed trying to comprehend the history of this place, this country, and it's people!

While unlocking our bikes in front of Horyu-ji, a Japanese gentleman strolling by asked where we were from - since I was speaking to Shizuka-san in English. He couldn’t help but ask since he could also understand and speak a little English too. After a short chat, he wished us well.


...in the soft stagnant drizzle, we pedaled off to our next destination, Todai-ji temple...

つづく...

Btw...if you want to see all the pictures (w/ comments) of my trip, click here: My Flickr Pictures of This Japan Trip . I will be adding more and more as I post more.

An Update To My Roppongi Post Below

I was just doing some checking on the Web to see if I could find out what street in Roppongi I was on.

And guess what...I found this site: Tokyo Travel: Roppongi Hills. If you open the link and look at the picture in the lower right, there is a picture of practically the EXACT same place my picture was taken from! The picture was taken along Keyakizaka Street.

What instanly stood out in the web pic is the 333 meter tall Tokyo Tower 東京タワー standing there in the backgound!!!
Now I know what that orange thing is in my pic.

Cool Temps and Lights - Roppongi 2004

Cool Temps and Lights - Roppongi 2004
Originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

Japan - 2004

On one of the nights during my 2004 trip, we went to Roppongi to check out the scene. This shot is taken looking down one of the busy streets in the Roppongi Hills area.

I really liked the way the blurriness of this photo brings back memories of that nights hectic movements of the traffic, and the noise, and the many people rushing by on the sidewalk.

The coolness of the white and blue lights also made it really feel like winter time. I wonder if it is lit up like this all year long???

Hikari - 光

Hikari - 光
Originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

Tokyo Japan - 2004

In Nov/Dec of 2004, me and a friend went to Japan for the first time. Since I took a lot of pictures back then, I've decided to start putting some of them up.

This picture was taken at the SIO-SITE near Shiodome Eki and the Park Hotel Tokyo.

At night, while walking to and from the Park Hotel, we saw this shining spire of light eminating from the top of one of the buildings. This picture really captures how it looks in real life.

While looking at the beam, you can just feel the crisp cool air and the ultra-modern vibe of this new area of Tokyo.

Nostalgic Cool - Townie Sugarcane (Satakibi)

Super Cool - Townie Sugar Cane (Satakibi)
Originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

On this same Pacific Heights climb, say about 1/4 of the way up, there is a small patch of sugarcane growing in front of someones house.

I couldn't resist changing this picture to a b&w since it is so nostalgic to see sugarcane growing...like "small kid" times in Waipahu near my Baban's house.

In the 1910's my grandfather came to Hawaii from the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) to work in the satakibi fields. (Satakibi is sugarcane in the local Okinawan dialect of the 1910's)

A Beautiful Tree, With a Bike, Under Another Tree

A Beautiful Tree, With a Bike, Under Another Tree
Originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

A couple of weeks ago I took another ride up to Pacific Heights. I took a lot of pictures and will be posting a complete story soon. But till then, here's one of the better pics I took.

This picture is near the top of the climb, probably about 3km from the bottom. It looks like a park, but, I actually think it is someone's yard.

This tree with the yellow leaves really caught my eye. From this angle, it really looks like a life-sized bonsai.