This blog post is coming live from Tokyo...exactly 14 hours ahead of Starkville time. So, when you read this, it is much like looking into the future.
The airport I flew into (Narita) is about 40 miles east of downtown. It was actually quite rural. In fact, it reminded me of flying into Birmingham's airport with lots of very green trees, a few hills, and some small areas of agriculture. However, after a 2+ hour bus ride, I arrived in an area more like I was expecting.
This is the view from my hotel window...30th floor at the Tokyo Hilton.
Due to the constant risk of earthquakes, there are just a few places with lots of highrise buildings. This is actually what most of Tokyo looks like...lots of medium-sized buildings, very close together.
This is less than a 10-minute walk from my hotel. This is the busiest part of the city, and it is compared to Times Square in New York. This is adjacent to Shinjuku Station (the busiest train station in the world with over 2 million passengers per day). We have spent a good bit of our time just walking around this area looking for interesting bars and restaurants.
This is where we ate tonight. Looks like some pretty good meats on sticks, right? Well, it was actually pretty tasty, but the image below explains what we were eating.
Don't let his expression fool you...Balling was really excited about this place. We chose the following items: skin, cartilage (sic), intestines, heart, meat of head (our favorite menu item), and pig nose (or "rose" as they have it listed). Not sure what animals some of these come from, and we really were not sure which was which. We think we figured out which was skin and which was heart. The really fatty piece was likely the pig nose/rose, but the rest all seemed to blend together. None of them were terrible, but I was not asking for any recipes on the way out.
Konichiwa!
Early Thursday morning we went down to New Orleans so Grady could give a presentation at a conference. That evening we got to visit with Uncle Clyde, who took us to a festival that was going on just a few blocks from our hotel.
There was live music, fantastic food vendors, and cool artists selling funky New Orleans art.
"Mama and Daddy thought it would be cute if I got my picture made with the New Orleans Hornets mascot."
"3 seconds is enough with this huge creepy bug!"
When we first got into town, our hotel room was not ready, so they upgraded us to a condo at 521 Tchoupitoulas. Sweet!
We spent Friday night with Bryan and Christine in Jackson. They cooked us some tasty shish kabobs and let Delia play with their puppies, Pedro and Chief.
"Good puppy. Just don't come any closer."
"EEEE! That tickles!"
On Saturday we went to Grady's cousin's wedding in Madison. Here are the happy couple, Joe and Nancy at the reception at Lake Caroline.
"Aunt Laurissa (mother of the groom) has been loving me through the blog since before I was born, and we finally got to meet this weekend." Her grandbabies can be seen on Keith and Lauren's Hawaii blog!
Great-Grandma Dot digs into one of the 3 cheesecakes that Grandma Amanda made for the reception, which were fought over and devoured quickly!
Cousins Hannah and Rachel enjoy chocolate cake!
Grady and Cousin Keith enjoy beverages!
Delia and Grandma Amanda play with Cousin Rachel.
