I apologize for failing to blog from Japan, but we were really, really busy there — we actually left the hotel at 5:30 a.m. two days in a row, if that gives you any idea of how busy. I did post a ton of pictures over at Flickr, so go check ‘em out, ’cause I’ll only post a few here.

I must, must, MUST post a funny story here, though, that cannot be told in pictures alone. As the cautionary portion of this tale, I can only tell you NOT to dine at the restaurant on the corner of the “M” building near the Shiodome Sio-Site in Shimbashi, unless you want to pay a pretty penny for your food. I don’t know what the restaurant is called, but when you see the building, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Now, I have nothing against paying good money for good food, but, well, do you see anything particularly outstanding about these yakitori skewers that justifies them costing over 400 yen apiece?!

NEITHER DO I. Nor was my cup of tea (zero refills!) worth over 400 yen, thankyouverymuch.

There are a couple of unnerving things about this restaurant that my photos and lack of exaggeration about the prices cannot tell you. One was the way that the lack of clientele (probably because of the outrageous pricing — seriously, no other restaurant in Shimbashi was this deserted, not even the Subway sandwich shop!) led to excessive hovering by the waitress. And I mean, she hovered. She kept trying to take our yakitori glaze/sauce away, but we were dipping other stuff into it. I know that that’s not how Japanese usually eat things, but we were obviously tourists, and it was the only good thing about our meal, so leave us alone, dammit.

Also, the menu . . . Some places should not bother to print English menus; this was one of those places. The English menu was not helpful at all in identifying menu items — we still pretty much relied on pictures to identify basic dishes like oyakodon that are commonly served at Japanese restaurants at home. All the English menu did serve to do was crack us up, which was kind of inappropriate, considering that all the waitress’ attention was focused on us. Why were we laughing? Because instead of the chicken parts being identified as tsaerb, gniw and hgiht (sorry, gotta spell ‘em backwards, ’cause otherwise, the pervs will find this stuff in Google, and I’ll get all kinds of comment spam on the public blogs), they were identified as tsaerb, gniw and HCTORC. I kid you not. You could get servings of 80% tsaerb meat with 20% hctorc, or 100% hctorc . . . Yeah. You try not laughing at that in a dark restaurant after a long day.

The Challenge wasn’t even in Portland, it was in Beaverton. And Beaverton is, well . . . not what we expected. But anyway.

I was too busy to post anything, and I didn’t even post photos ’til I got home today. But here they are! )

I have arrived in Portland for the LIVESTRONG Challenge and am already having fun with my friends and roommates, Nikki and Vicky. We haven’t even broken out the crack yet. ;o)

BTW, in case you haven’t heard, the Cubs clinched the NL Central today!!! Happiness all around.

Quote of the Day:
“Because Y is a bullshit letter. It doesn’t know what it is. Is it a vowel? Is it a consonant?”
- Mary Delgado, explaining why Valli needs to be spelled with an I, not Y, in “Jersey Boys”

So . . . “Jersey Boys.” GO SEE IT. That’s all I can tell you. I can’t speak for the San Francisco company, but the one that’s in Los Angeles right now is totally amazing. I know I went in biased because I have been a fan of my buddy Chris since we sat next to each other in 9th grade homeroom, but his performance as Frankie Valli will knock your socks off whether you’re seeing him for the first time or you’ve known him before his voice changed. The rest of the cast is incredible, too, including the understudies. Go, go, go.

So we spent some of today hanging around Culver City and Hollywood, the latter of which I must say is the strangest place probably on the entire planet. I swear to God, there were people dressed up in really awful knockoff Elmo and Tigger costumes posing with children and then holding out trick-or-treat buckets for tips. I have never guarded my purse so closely in my entire life, not even in NYC and Vegas! When you walk down Hollywood Boulevard, you gotta put on your game face. I hate my game face, but apparently it works, ’cause people generally leave me alone when I use it. Maybe I should use it more often at work. Ha!

Anyway. I will post pictures of all that later. I didn’t take any pictures with the freaks, sorry to disappoint y’all.

Clearly, though, the highlights of my day were, as usual, spending time with friends and seeing a show. While I don’t have any photos from dinner with Noreen (we were in a rush to eat and get to the theater), here are some of us with Chris during lunch and after the show:

And here’s a poster he gave us, which is autographed by the actors who created the roles of the Four Seasons in the national tour:

LOVE him.

Must go to bed now. We have been up since 5 Friday morning and must go to Barnes & Noble in Orange on Saturday morning to pick up my copy of “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows” (yes, I have one on reserve there). Must not read the entire last day of vacation. Must come up with something else to do!

Sorry it’s so blocky. I tried uploading my original video, but it was too large for YouTube, so I had to down-convert:

Oh my GOD. I have been to Disneyland probably about 40 times over the course of my — well, we don’t need to say how many years, but anyway. I have been there a lot, and I have never seen so many people there. Ever. Not even during spring break! Today was nuts. And when did Disneyland become such a stroller park? Yeesh.

Despite the crowds, we got to go on a number of rides, including the old favorites like Star Tours, Matterhorn Mountain, Big Thunder Railroad, The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean (now retrofitted to include animatronic Johnny Depp in several scenes).

(Sorry it’s so blurry. The “Pirates” ride was so jerky, I had to take video instead of stills just to avoid even further blur, so this is a screen cap from my video!)

So y’know how I really wanted to go on the recently re-opened submarine ride (which was always, always a favorite of mine), which now has a “Finding Nemo” theme? The wait in line is 90 to 120 minutes long, both during the day and at night, so we waited until the sun went down before we gave it a shot. Very cute, even at the surface of the water:

It was too dark and fast-moving from inside the submarine for me to take any still shots, but I was able to capture some video, which I’m in the process of posting to YouTube (I will link to that in a subsequent post). The ride was super cool. I don’t know how they did what they did to make the Pixar animation appear under water — it all seems like just an illusion — but whatever they did, the result is totally amazing. Definitely worth the long wait.

Well, off to bed soon. Tomorrow: Sony Picture Studios tour in the a.m., followed by lunch with Chris, Mann’s Chinese theater and maybe some shopping, dinner with Ree & Lee and “Jersey Boys!” So exciting.

Today was “moving day,” our day to shift from Central Time to Pacific Time, so I don’t have too much to report. We did have a run-in with the TSA at O’Hare that involved us being detained for 25 minutes because the agents couldn’t figure out some of Todd’s electronic equipment, but fear not, we have nonetheless made it to Southern California. No anal probe required — at least, not that I can recall.

We haven’t done much since landing we landed in L.A. Lunch was at Wendy’s because neither of us had had Wendy’s in a while. I will say this: Despite their claims, non-frozen meat is no better than frozen meat once it has been cooked. I worked at Burger King for two summers during college, and I know for a fact that their patties are frozen and stamped into a perfect circle, but damn, do they make good burgers. It’s all in the cooking (in BK’s case, flame-broiling), not in how the meat’s been stored ahead of time. Sorry, Wendy’s.

But we did go for a better burger for dinner. My friend Eric, whom I actually have not seen in 13 years, came down to Anaheim after work to meet us at In-N-Out Burger. Eric and I were in the journalism “cherubs” program (National High School Institute - Journalism Division) at Northwestern in 1994. Two big differences between us now: (1) Eric is still in the field, working for the L.A. Times. (2) Well, take a look:

Haha. I told Todd he would have to set this photo up as portrait instead of landscape. Clearly, I was not wrong!

Unfortunately, Vicky, my LIVESTRONG Summit buddy, has managed to injure herself and will not be able to make it out of Happy Valley to join us at The Happiest Place on Earth™ tomorrow. Frankly, I suspect she wants to spend more time with (a) the Tour de France (on TV), (b) Donny Osmond* or (c) both. Then again, she did provide me with photographic evidence of said injury.

With or without Vicky, though, the trek through Disneyland must go on. They do have that new “Finding Nemo” redux of the submarine ride, after all, and the submarine ride was always one of my favorites. But let us all state the mantra of Crissy at Disneyland together: I will not buy a lot of crap at Disneyland. My suitcases may not be heavy, but I am a terrible packer, so they are full. Therefore, I will not be bringing home a lot of crap from Disneyland. *cough* Unless we go to the post office again. Hahaha.

More tomorrow!

* Seriously, she knows Donny. Also Marie. I’m not making that up!

Just a quick post today, peeps. I gotta finish packing, but we’re doing the airplane thing — followed by the fighting Los Angeles traffic thing — tomorrow, so I don’t know when I’ll have my next chance to blog. Real quick, though:

Woke up later than usual (obv, because we were up late last night watching the lightning and giving Mom and Dad some tech support) and headed over in the muggy weather to meet Kathleen, who’s in town for work, for lunch at the (in)famous Billy Goat Tavern — you know, from SNL, “Cheezborger, cheezborger!” . . .

Here’s some advice: When they recommend you get the double, get the double. The single-patty cheezborger doesn’t quite fit the bill; all you taste is the bread and the dressings of your choice.

After we dropped Kathleen back off at work, we had a lot of time to kill, and the weather had dried up a bit, so we decided to take a trip on the Wendella Boats Chicago River/Lake Michigan tour. We’ve done this tour many times, but it’s always nice to do an architectural refresher (even though some stuff is crap, like the “fact” that Chicago has “the cleanest drinking water in the world”) and just to get out on the water. I have a lot of photos up on Flickr, but here are some of my favorites:

333 North Wacker Drive. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox. The curve of the building follows the curve of the Chicago River.

Chicago Mercantile Exhange, 10/30 South Wacker Drive. Designed by Fujikawa Johnson & Associates. Because of the unique design, each floor of this building has 16 corner offices!

Marina City, 300 North State Street. Designed by Bertrand Goldberg Associates. This one gets a lot of screen time in Hollywood.

The River Center, 111 North Canal. Designed by Daniel Burnham.

The locks system allows boats to travel between the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. These were put in place in the early 1900s when the direction of the river was reversed so as to avoid filling the lake (which provides Chicago’s drinking water) with pollution from the river.

We then continued south on Michigan Avenue to Millennium Park, where we briefly enjoyed an orchestra rehearsal as we sat on the grass in the Pritzker Pavilion.

Then we went to make faces at The Bean.

Did I say this was going to be quick? Well, OK, here’s the speed round through dinner at the Signature Room, which is on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building:

View from our table, but ONLY if you looked straight down; otherwise, you mostly saw the lake. This was nothing compared to . . .

The view from the ladies’ room on the 96th floor, in the Signature Lounge.

Appetizer: crispy duck spring roll with apricot chutney and sweet/sour mustard.

Dinner: Crispy buttermilk quail with grilled frisee, pickled beets and smoked paprika butter.

No dessert. The dessert options didn’t sound all that appetizing. We went back to Grand Lux Cafe for peanut butter sandwich cookies instead!

In brief, the Signature Room looked nice enough, but it wasn’t all that. Given the prices, which are comparable to those at Alan Wong’s, I wouldn’t go back. The service was just OK, the food was all right (but not great), and come on, the view was better from the ladies’ room at the lounge upstairs! (Todd reports that the men’s room does not have any windows, but you get a similar view from the lounge itself.)

OK, back to packing! See ya from L.A.!

Sorry I didn’t get around to posting last night. After we got home from dinner, we were busy watching the lightning outside, which was very cool. Here’s what it looked like outside our room:

We started our day at the Museum of Science & Industry with the Omnimax film “Hurricane on the Bayou.” The movie was pretty good, and the cinematography was amazing, but only about five minutes of it actually involved Hurricane Katrina. Most of it was about wetlands preservation — which naturally flowed into how if the wetlands had been preserved better, Katrina might not have hit as hard as it did, etc. Not gonna lie here: the title was a little deceiving and really hinged on sensationalizing, but it was worth seeing.

The highlight of the MSI trip, though, was “C.S.I.”: The Experience. When you enter, the staff gives you a case card, which you use to take notes on the forensics and solve one of three murder cases. Here are some photo highlights:

The shots on the top are of the models from the “miniatures” mega-mystery that spanned the entirety of last season. At the bottom left is a shot of me with Anthony E. Zuiker, creator and executive producer of the series. He just happened to be on hand that day for autographs. I got one, of course:

The inscription reads, “Crissy, Get a clue! LOL. Anthony E. Zuiker.” Funny!

We had a late lunch at Grand Lux Cafe, which was nice. The highlight of that, though? Peanut butter sandwich cookie. If you have access to Grand Lux Cafe, you must try this. It is so good.

Dinner was at Flat Top Grill in Old Town with Justin and Marjorie. Flat Top is so much fun, and anyone — even Justin! hahaha — can make some pretty decent stirfry:

Now it’s time for today’s dinner, so I must run. Off to the Signature Room! Blog ya later.

Today was (inadvertently) Northwestern (but not CRC) alum day. We started off by meeting Jon Hawkins — and I really do mean meeting, as this is the first time we met the guy I’ve known from nwu.comp.sys.mac for nearly 10 years — for lunch at Water Tower Place and a matinee of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

Jon was great company, and the show was so funny. If it ever comes to your town or if you go to a town where it’s playing, SEE IT. The title doesn’t sound enticing, but the show is hilarious. I couldn’t breathe at one point, I was laughing so hard. I won’t spoil it for you, but let me just say this: they THROW things. Oh my God. One of the cast members threw things at me after he looked me in the eye and addressed me directly. SO funny. This is coming from a former spelling bee champion . . . so, y’know, you have it on good authority.

I bought a few things at Water Tower today, too, by the way. Here are a couple:

The back cover of my Razr. You can’t even tell anymore that my phone is pink!

My new Oakley Radar Path LIVESTRONG shades. Oakley donates $20 to the LAF with each purchase.

A closeup of the lens portion of my new shades. Notice the etching. Sweet.

My name is Crissy, and I am a big dork.

Continuing with NU alum day, though, we had dinner tonight at Giordano’s with Medill alum Betsy (with whom I also went to high school) and her husband, HPME alum Tommy. We had to wait about an hour for Giordano’s, but that gave us plenty of time to catch up. I had no idea we have so many mutual friends! Strange.

Right now, I’m listening to Erich Bergen, who plays Bob Gaudio in Chris’s production of “Jersey Boys,” guest host a jazz show on 94.7 The Wave Los Angeles. Lite jazz makes me sleepy, so I think I shall get ready for bed. Tomorrow: “Hurricane on the Bayou” Omnimax and “C.S.I.”: The Experience at the Museum of Science & Industry, followed by dinner with Justin and Marjorie at Flat Top Grill! Can’t wait. Remind me again why we’re only spending five days in the city this time around . . . ???