Blogs from Long Beach, Los Angeles, California, United States, North America

From 2010. Unfortunately, all my Aunts who know how to prepare Shogatsu are getting too old to do all of the preparation and cooking. But the memory will always stay with us. The three-day New Year holiday is a very special time in Japan, a time of solemn prayers and joyous greetings. While New Year's Day is a holiday in many parts of the world, the occasion has a unique significance to the Japanese, who take the opportunity to begin anew many aspects of their lives. New Years is regarded in Japan as an auspicious occasion. As such, it is filled with traditional activities which, it is hoped, will result in a more successful year. The people particularly observe the age-old Japanese custom of not carrying-over any debts or tasks from the old year to the ... read more

Well according to the Stepz App on my phone we have walked 62 km over the last 4 days around NYC so that is a new record. We were collected from our driver who was right on time and we headed to JFK airport for our flight to Los Angeles. The drive took about 45 minutes which is what we expected. We are flying with American Airlines today and arrived approximately at 8.45am and had a bit more than 2 hours until our scheduled departure time. Checking in our luggage was simple and we were through the security checkpoint quite quickly and we were at our gate by 9.30am and we have not experienced any of the delays here you keep hearing about on the news at airports. Just after we boarded there was a lady ... read more

I am up a bit after 6am local time. Check my email, play some games, quick edit or two on yesterdays journal. Today we head back to LA and tomorrow will be spent mostly getting to the airport and flying to Cincinnati and then driving home. Everyone is moving by 8am and be breakfast for the last time in Verde, the hotels' restaurant. In the room we fill our bags and try to have things organized so that tonight/tomorrow nothing will have to go into or come out of the big green suitcase. All out traveling possessions fit neatly in the trunk of the Elantra and we walk over to Old Town to grab some souvenirs for Caroline's co-workers and to see the blacksmith work. We also toured the saddlery and saw the burros. At noon ... read more

It's my goal to get to every MLB stadium, and I'm well on my way. At the time of this post (Feb 2017), I only have 5 stadiums left. That will quickly become 6 when ATL opens up their new park. Those stadiums are: MIN, TOR, WAS, ATL, TB, MIA. I've ranked them all and eventually would like to systematically score each of the parks, but as of now I just ranked them based on gut feel. Keep in mind my criteria probably varies considerably from what other people would value. For me, the actual ballpark architecture plays the biggest role, but also the food/drinks it supplies, any cool traditions/quirks, and things like that are very important. Additionally, LOCATION for me is huge. If your park is amazing but in the middle of nowhere, that will ... read more

Week 3 In week 3 I started off with a karaoke night with a group of people, it was a lot of fun and I even stood on stage and did a song. No matter how bad you were, you got a standing ovation and everybody sang along. The mother in the family is a French teacher in a school in Los Angeles and she’s asked me to help her out by grading papers and logging them into the data system of the school. This is very useful because I get a taste of what will be my job later on. We went out for dinner in a restaurant a little down the road and it was really nice to have a family dinner. It’s so different from the ranch and I really enjoy it here. ... read more