Spring teased us a bit a few weeks ago with warm days and the first bits of sakura, or cherry blossoms. It was followed shortly thereafter with a drop in temperature and even a bit of snow and hail. This weeks the weather has righted itself once again and the sakura are in full bloom. We’ve been taking full advantage of the season by enjoying the outdoors in proper Japanese fashion.

On Sunday I went on a short little ride with a few friends out to the sand dunes and back, stopping to enjoy a cone of nashi (Asian pear) flavored soft cream along the way.

Bronwyn was working that day, translating for a delegation from Hong Kong who had come to observe the Uradome coastal area. We met up after she was done in a park in Tottori where we partook of unhealthy but delicious Japanese fair food including age mochi (deep-fried mochi balls), taiyaki (fried dough shaped like a fish and stuffed with red bean paste), and takoyaki (fried dough balls stuffed with octopus).

Because Bronwyn had worked on Sunday, she was able to take the day off of Tuesday and we used that time to ride our bikes out to Kurayoshi for more sakura viewing. Rather than take the usual coastal route, we opted for the country route which took us up and over a couple of small mountains, passing through the towns of Shikano and Misasa, past Mitoku-san which we had climbed last fall.

Drivers in Japan are generally quite courteous towards cyclists. Though drivers are occasionally perplexed as to what a bicycle is doing on the street rather than the sidewalk, despite the integral prevalence of utility cycling, they are generally quite courteous towards cyclists. They wait for a safe time to pass, then give a safe amount of distance.

We had one rare bit of asshattery on this ride, however. While going down one of the twisty, two-lane mountain roads some idiot driver came up from behind and leaned heavy on his horn for nearly the entire descent. The thing is, the road had a 40kmh speed limit. I was going 60 and doing just fine keeping pace with the next car, a large van, about 200m ahead of me. The driver behind finally found a straightaway where he was able to pass me maybe two thirds of the way down the stretch of road, but of course then had to ride his brakes the rest of the way as he now had the van in front of him. At the bottom of the mountain is a stop light. Of course it was red and of course I ended up pulling right next to the car, waiting for the green for a solid minute and a half. In L.A. I may have verbally berated the driver for his stupidity. That’s a little too forward for Japan, so instead I simply stared him down. The Japanese do not do well with direct eye contact, especially from strangers. It makes them extremely uncomfortable. Not meeting my gaze, the driver simply fidgeted in his seat until the green light finally came and he turned quickly to me and mouthed what looked like “asshole” before speeding off. That felt good.

At any rate, the annoyance of that whole experience was very much overshadowed by the otherwise entirely pleasant ride. The weather was perfect and the scenery gorgeous.

There were a couple of mechanical difficulties. One was a broken seatpost bolt on Bronwyn’s bike early on. It was close enough to town that I quickly zipped over to Cycle Shop Fukuhama for a replacement. The other was a broken chain, also on Bronwyn’s bike that was a fairly quick fix. That was probably due to my improper installation when installing my old 11-34 cassette, LX derailleur, and chain on to her bike and is the primary reason why I much prefer using SRAM chains with their powerlinks – you can break and reassemble the chains without fear of creating a weak link.

Once in Kurayoshi, we grabbed a few beers and enjoyed more unhealthy Japanese fair food under the sakura, the act of which is called hanami, before riding the train back to Tottori where we ended the day relaxing in an onsen, or Japanese hot spring. ?????!

Last weekend, I successfully conquered all ten hills of the “Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer” race. I think I even managed to snag 6th or 7th place overall, with a second place finish on the first hill. Not bad, if I do say so myself. An official write-up hasn’t been posted anywhere, and I’m still scouring the interwebs for photos, but here’s one someone snapped of me. Note the angle of the horizon in the background. That was the first hill, Eldred St., the one this article talks about. While going up the hills was agony (sweet, sweet agony), going down them scared the crap out of me. I had to walk down Eldred St. and a few others, and I think I wore out my brake pads slowly riding my way down the rest. Indeed my fears weren’t unfounded as one rider crashed going down Baxter at 40mph. He hit an unexpected bump at the bottom of the hill, flew off, and slid some 20 feet up the next hill, winding up with a fractured collarbone and a couple of broken ribs, as well as several patches of road rash. But to show you what kind of a manimal this guy was, he still placed fourth overall even though he only did five out of ten of the hills AND he showed up for the after-party at Pure Luck once he was done at the hospital. Insanity.

On Sunday, Bronwyn and I had our engagement shoot with our wedding photographer, Allana of Ars Magna Studio. We spent a few hours wondering around downtown in the Grand Central Market, the Bradbury Building, the Biltmore Hotel, Pershing Square, and a bit of Echo Park. She posted the results yesterday and they’re absolutely fantastic!Check out her blog or the online gallery to see more.

Finally, in completely unrelated news to anything, other than the fact that I’m Filipino, watch this video:

I’m all for experimenting with bacon. I made some great bacon-wrapped scallops last weekend, but this is tragic. That bacon should be in my mouth, not smacking against a guy’s thighs.

Anyways, vacation was great. It consisted primarily of sitting around in pajamas watching the Discovery Channel in high definition. If you haven’t experienced that yet, get thyself to a Best Buy and tell the salesman you want to see some grizzly bears.

I also spent a lot of time acquainting myself with one of my Christmas presents, a shiny new PSP. When we weren’t watching the mating rituals of Galapagos iguanas, one of the things we would do whilst exploring Memphis was drop into the local Gamestops from which I quickly put together a core collection of PSP games. Most notable of those acquisitions are two peculiar games. One is Loco Roco, a game in which you roll a singing blob around a maze, all the while munching on bugs and berries to plumpify your Loco Roco. The hypnotic experience is akin to playing with one of those ink hourglass things that were so popular back in the ’90s, except that this sings and won’t break and stain your carpet. The second game is called Puzzle Quest, which is an unlikely pairing of a puzzle game and RPG. At first the concept seemed a bit too quirky, but the game appeared on the top of 2007 lists of quite a few sites, like Gamasutra’s Top 10 Games of the Year and Gamespot’s Best Game No One Played, so I thought I’d give it a try. Basically, you move around a map completing quests, collecting treasure, conquering undead hordes, and laying seige to cities, except that all manner of “combat” is determined in a puzzle game match up. As odd and dorky as it sounds, Puzzle Quest is ridiculously addictive. I had to give it a few hours of gameplay before the mechanics actually started to click and I figured out why I couldn’t beat the stupid giant bat (it’s his shriek spell, duh! Like Officer Michaels’ coitus interuptus of McLovin, I’ve got to block his mana collection).

At any rate, as great as my shiny white PSP is, it pails in comparison to Bronwyn’s other gift to me: the gift of bacon. It’s a collection of five of the top bacons of 2007 according to The Grateful Palate, which offers a bacon of the month subscription service, so they should know their bacon. We cooked up the first of the bacon this last Saturday morning for breakfast, opting for the Jim Oliver’s Hickory Smoked Country Bacon.

Alls I can say is, “Oh, Glory!”

Until then, I’m celebrating my bisected work week with a little malted beverage action. At first I was thinking some Oregon honey beer would be appropriate, seeing as apples and honey are a big thing for this holiday. But instead I decided to crack open a bottle of He’Brew Pomegranate Ale that I’ve had sitting in my fridge since the Beer Cruise in August. It’s not bad. A decent bodied ale with the pomegranates making a very distinctive appearance, maybe a little too heavy-handedly. Or rather, if you’re looking for the pomegranate taste it’s definitely there, but it exists more as an afterthought such that the taste doesn’t really lend itself to the rest of the flavor. It was still pretty refreshing. Not altogether memorable, but ’tis the season.