this time around we timed it in order to be in town for the start of ‘soldes’. great sales but not as successful for me as i hoped. still backing the japanese brands and fit. mildly impressed with Kooples though. kind of a stylier version of club monaco. lots of locations around paris. l’eclairieur has some great retail spaces, their new store in the Marais is pretty amazing with a gajillion (yes that’s a real number) of embedded video screen everywhere in the store. the new Uniqlo near Printemps is pretty big. way better than their la defense location. bummed that i missed the launch of the J+ spring collection by a few days. but for some odd reason, one of my favourite stores which i luckily remembered on the last day was e.dehellerin, a 100+ year old cookware store where the local chefs shop. its a goldmine and got some mauviel saucepans for dirt cheap. of course the gorillas known as baggage handlers at KLM managed to dent one of them inside my luggage.

expanded our culinary adventures this time around. the highlights being lunch at Nomiya, the temporary restaurant on the roof of palais de tokyo and dinner at la regalade in the 14th. deliciousness in every way where i became addicted to rillette du porc, which i have since learned how to make.

managed to get last minute tickets to see werther at opera garnier. pretty cool experience. finally got around to going inside the pompidou centre and ended up going back to versailles since steph hadn’t been there before.

i’m sure there’s more but i can’t remember anymore.

Antwerp was funner. More to see/do. Our hotel was f’n amazing. If you get a chance go to m0851 guesthouse. delicious waffles from random street vendors. I didn’t get a chance to sample too many belgian brews but Stella’s here in Vancouver’s got me covered on that front. belgian fries aren’t as good as I remember. i guess i’m used to the thinner double fried stuff we get here now. and i love their sparkling water. can’t remember the brand but its soo fizzy pellegrino is flat by comparison. mmm… bubbles…

most likely it was the arctic weather, but berlin did not make a good impression. if it wasn’t for our friends showing us around i probably would have left after a day. however, with the local knowledge i did have a good time.

on the culinary front i had some great schnitzel from markthalle, discovered the highly addictive soda named bluna, developed a taste for kasespatzel and i’m still upset that i wasn’t allowed to try the half-meter bratwurst.

damn knut was sleeping when we went to the zoo but we got to see giraffes. i love giraffes. campbell, owner of darklands, and his lovely girlfriend estefania led an expedition to one of their haunts, the wonderfully enigmatic clarchens ballhaus for a chamber music recital. i also experienced THE nuttiest new year’s eve ever. let’s just leave it at russian dance party and enough fireworks to simulate the invasion of baghdad.

i loved the la boquiera market. reminds you of where meat comes from. an actual animal not a cello wrapped styrofoam tray. had some great meals with the highlight being Cuines Santa-Caterina where we had an all-time tuna tartare on a bed of guacamole (thanks to @grapesofkath for the recommendation). the ginormous Zara’s and H&M’s are a sight to behold. found a new lust object that i ended up not buying and can’t find anymore.

not much to write about really, so now its been there, done that. next stop, berlin. oh and the paella… such a let down.

can’t wait. oh and we got in here.

luckily while over there we discovered an indispensable tool. diddlefinger.com

just click on the “English Address Search” option and it lets you enter in the english version of a japanese address via a process of drop down menus and displays the results in google map. i tested it out tons and it never let me down. stoked.

and they have an iphone version!

japan was freakin’ amazing though. love tokyo. we were there for two weeks then left to travel around for a week and then one last day in tokyo before flying back to van. when we arrived back in tokyo for that last day, it felt like coming home.

i was pretty apprehensive on the way over about getting around but man once you figure it out its so frickin’ easy. you can go anywhere you want so quick and if you get a Suica card you don’t even have to think about what the correct fare is. which is good cause your brain so so busy taking in everything there is to see and do over there.

did a bunch of shopping and wandering around just soaking it all in. shibuya and shinjuku (our home base) are awesome little areas to hang out in. so many experiences i don’t think i can remember them all or put them to paper.

perhaps more will dribble out over time. definitely need to go back sometime soon.

a couple pics are up on my flickr.

oh and my new favourite dish can be found here. i think it was number 22 from the vending machine.

i thought after working an almost 60 hour week to wrap up all my work shit before i go away i’d be relieved and ready for my vacation but somehow i’m not. if anything i’m filled with a sense of foreboding dread of the shit storm i’ll likely have to come back to. being an Account Manager sucks that way. everybody else is relying on you in order to do their shit.

anyhoo, the countdown is on, 2.5 days till i’m on a plane to the land of the rising sun.

filled up the iphone with subway maps from these guys. downloaded some extra iphone apps (lonely planet japanese phrasebook and chalkboard) to help with communicating with the locals. also grabbed a bunch of the superfuture maps and just emailed them to myself. sucks that the photo app can only handle pics up to 640×480.

we’ve done a bunch of research on getting around and talking to some friends about getting around there but i’m a little worried ’cause there’s some pretty obscure stores we’re trying to find and the addressing system there isn’t very easy to understand. but hey, isn’t that half the fun of travelling.

i hope to update via twitter and possibly photoblog to here from the iphone so stay tuned.