Fitz

Man I’ve been sneezing my head off today.  No idea what it is, thought my ragweed nemeses had all gone away for the winter but maybe I was mistaken…

ka-pow!

I haven’t had many good picture taking opportunities the past couple off days (as you will see coming up, the ones I did take weren’t “all that” either). I should say that this post is brought to you by Yokohama Brewery (unofficially) and their Alt (アルト):This was the beer that I tried to try awhile back but had problems in that the lip of the bottle completely came apart when I opened it.  The wife picked me up a replacement when she went by her school sometime before we even moved I think but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. To be honest… I can’t really tell what I’m dealing with here anyway because my nose is all fucked up from sneezing… if it clears up before I finish the beer I’ll be able to give an element but for now I’ll hold off judgment except to say that it seems pretty decent.

Today not much happened.  The wife and I had watched お試しかっ！ the other night and they had a special on Ministop so we decided that since we haven’t really gone out for lunch or dinner once (except maybe the picnic in the park) since about the first week we moved up here, we’d take a short walk down to our local Ministop for a little lunch.  This is the best I could do as far as pictures: Wow… lame right? Yup.  Well, the food was alright but after this we grabbed a couple ice cream cones that were much better.  It’d been a real long time since either one of us had been to a Ministop and if you’ve never been it’s pretty much like a regular convenience store with a couple more hot food options and sometimes a little nook where you can eat your junk.  This one had one seat…

After Ministop, we walked over to g.u. which is uniqlo’s cheaper younger brother and I picked up a shirt and some super sweet long-johns bottoms while the wife got some “room wear.”

The rest of today was spent cleaning my stuff up in the bedroom, getting a bunch of old clothes together to throw out, moving some stuff to new places (still need to go through my cables and games accessories drawers and sort that shit out) and hanging out with MJ and the wife.  In a bit  I think dude? and I are gonna play some COD BLOps online and I will be using my new badass monitor!: Hard to tell exactly but the one on the left is my Dell monitor that came with my PC and it’s 21.5″.  The new one (on the right) is a BenQ (yup, I’d never heard of it either) and it’s 24″ and it’s beautiful.  There are a couple of things that aren’t perfect (black levels and viewing angle) but for 18, 890円 I think it was a total steal (fingers being kept crossed).

That’s about it I think, nose isn’t any better so no update to the review yet…

here’s MJ being rad and looking weird: Only a guess but I think within two months this little man will probably be taking some of his first solo steps, stay tuned!

beat…

I’m beat.  Today was a long one on little sleep.  I woke up earlier than usual to go all the way to Ikebukuro on my day off after having had to go there the last three days.  The goal for today was to look at some apartments.  Wow.  A bit shocked at the service. For some reason they didn’t have a car for us to go around in, I think he said that it wasn’t back yet but hey, thanks for heads up on that one…  It was hot as shit too and we walked a lot.  It was actually a lot cooler outside than it was inside the apartments.  The biggest shock was that we ended up taking a train down the tracks (because there was no car) one station and the guy didn’t even offer to pay for our train ticket… These are people who expect to get a month’s worth of rent payment for “helping” us find an apartment… dick. Long story short, we checked out four places (mostly because of time constraints, MJ was hanging with his grandma) and none were perfect.  The best place was this great house that had tons of space, pretty cool layout and a place I really liked except for one thing; this was the view from the kitchen:For me, it’s still better than living next to a big street.  At least the trains go quiet at night, and the house was pretty cool… Oh well.  Keep looking.

Came home tonight, I tried to take a nap but MJ was not having it because he slept the whole way home and I guess it’s good because I probably woulda slept for hours and wouldn’t be going to bed anytime soon.  I made dinner for the first time in a while, some spaghetti, which was pretty decent overall but the sauce was THE BOMB!  It was really good if I do say so myself. After we finished eating the wife was playing with the boy by the table and he smacked his forehead on the edge of the table.  After a brief freak-out he was back to his jovial self but his brow was red and a bit swollen, poor dude:We took a bunch of videos today and there was a great one of MJ attacking his mom and trying to bite her neck which I put up on my facebook but I can’t be bothered to even try to put it up here… so I’ll just tell you.

By the way, here’s a really good beer I just finished up, it’s the エチゴレッドエール (Echigo Premium Red Ale).  Like the color, like the taste, like a lot about this one:

Echigo Red Ale: Ne

ketchup (lots of baby pics and a beer review)

Man! I’ve been busy these last couple weeks.  There hasn’t been a whole ton of stuff going on, just working a lot, working late.  Tired of working but hopefully a phat paycheck on the 15th of next month will make up for the slim one I got on the 15th of this month (because of the July vacation). I’m drinking a Kirin Highball now but not gonna review that one right now, I will have a different drink reviewed at the end of this post but first let get to the only news that’s happening, baby news.  I’ve got way too many pictures of MJ to put them all up here but there will be some extra ones on the Flickr if ya care.  There’s still gonna be a bunch so prepare yourself for that.  Last week, the 20th, was MJ’s 5 month b-day!  When the wife and I went shopping for dude?’s baby’s present the other day we got MJ and LD? (little dude?) matching hats and MJ was rocking his on his b-day, looking good!Here’s another one I like: Fear not, he does have other shirts.

There were some pretty good shots I got of the baby on the wife’s lap when she was playing the piano but this was my favorite, looks like he’s slapping the smack out of you:A good one of him on his play mat:Again, more on Flickr (for now)

And now we’re up to today…

Got up at a decent hour today and we all sat down for some light lunch before heading over to the wife’s school and MJ wasn’t really feeling it in this pic:At the school MJ and I hung out while the wife talked to her teacher for about an hour.  We started out in the lounge of the building where the wife had to go but because they are still on summer break the A/C didn’t seem to be on and I was HOT and sweating way too much.  I did get a quick shot of MJ standing though:After I was broken by the heat inside the building I grabbed the boy and we headed out to the little park-like area in front of the building to sit in the shade and feel the beautiful, beautiful breeze… it was nice!  So much cooler outside than it was in that building.  The boy and I took a few pictures together but none of them turned out too well and I didn’t bring the big camera either because I realized that the battery was nearly dead when we were heading out the door.  Here’s the best one, I’m barely in it… coincidence?Finally from the day was this shot I got of the hospital that I spent the night in last year that you can read about here, it’s pretty nice and right across the street from the wife’s school:

Alright, that’s about it, last thing is the beer!

Across a different street from the wife’s university is a Tokyu store that we went into to grab a couple drinks and I came across a very pleasant surprise:This is obviously a Yokohama Hefeweizen and it is bomb!  I really like Yokohama’s beers and I’ve tried this one before at Oktoberfest (draft).  Good color, good taste beautiful beer.  DRINK IT!  I have another kind in the fridge and I can’t wait to get into that one but not tonight, still working on this highball…

横浜ビール hefeweizen: He

baffling beer…

The boy’s taking a nap and so I’m back with the second beer from the YaMaYa trip today.  This one from a brewery (Kiuchi) that I’ve tried several times and generally enjoy (except the Japanese Classic  Ale) and this one is no different.  This is actually the one that I was looking forward to the most because I’d seen a bunch in pictures on the internet but I’d never come across it in a store. Can’t say I was disappointed at all by this one, however, I was terribly surprised when I checked it out on Beer Advocate.  A C from the bros!? A C+ from the readers!?  Wow…  I really like this one, it’s a Stout with a BLACK-BLACK color but it doesn’t taste much like a stout to me.  It’s got a lot lighter taste to it.  The sweetness on the back-end is nice, maybe a touch too sweet but not bad at all.  I think that when I first started drinking this one I thought we might have a He on our hands but I think that sweetness wore on me a little bit but it still receives;

Hitachino Nest Beer Lacto Sweet Stout: Ne

Yamaya haul

On Monday I finally had enough time at work (and really the only time this week) to take a walk down the street a bit and go to the famed Yamaya .  I was there mostly for the cheese and import food items but I was also able to pick up four J-beers that I’ve never had and tonight I’m trying the first of those.  This is a first time entrant from Ishikawa Brewery here in Tokyo: Very nice rich color for the beer but the flavor just doesn’t match it.  It has some good bite but there’s just not a whole lot going on in this one, kinda a one note beer.  It’s not bad, think it’s worth a:

Tama no Megumi (多摩の恵): Kr

One of the highlights of my trip to YaMaYa was finding a bag of probably my favorite potato chips on Earth; Tim’s Jalapeno! Doesn’t hurt that Tim’s come from my home state but these are some BAD-ASS chips!  I’ve found them in Japan before at a place in Shinbashi but last time I went there, they were no longer sold there… Tim’s Cascade Style Potato Chips “Jalapeno”: He

Finally for this evening, a super studly picture of the boy.  I just saw this one when I copied the beer/chips pictures to the computer for the first time because the wife took it when I was at work and I thought it was really cute, very “playa”.  This one was taken when he was modeling for his great-aunt (an artist) and sitting on the couch, here ya go:

Sho-time! and wash outs…

It’s raining and my plans for a bike ride have been thusly washed out.  I’ve had this new bike for over a week now and I’ve only really taken it out for one decent ride.  Just been too busy with everything else, and napping, also just had badly timed bad weather.  I guess it’s a good thing, might not ever have gotten around to a post-American Vacation post at the rate I was going if it wasn’t raining tonight.

We’ve been back for three weeks now and there’s been a lot of stuff going on since then, including a wife’s reunion last night (I’d planned to take a ride while she was there once I got home from work but I got lassoed in on my way home…) that was fun but I didn’t take a camera.  Before I get to the action, let’s take a look at what I’m drinking:

A shocker, a happoshu on here.  The ONLY reason I picked this up was its ridiculously low price, 88円 per can.  This is a Jusco brand (Top Value) that I came across in the store the other day when we were buying a fan.  I figured that if it’s not terrible it might be an OK pick-up for a night of heavy drinking (Like when Melvis comes over for NCAA action) if we’re on a budget, I mean, 24 case is only 1,880円!!!  That’s cheap as shit!  That’s about what I’d pay for about 4 bottles of good beer, so might as well keep a case around the house just in case right?  The good news is that it’s not terrible.  For happoshu it doesn’t have that horrible metallic taste that keeps me away from it most of the time.  5% alc., can’t really say it tastes great, but 88円 a can, how can you really go wrong, it’s better, and cheaper, than probably most other happoshus out there, not that I can really compare…

Barreal: Kr (mostly on price)

So the top news for the past three weeks…

First thing was that we received a playmat from the neighbor upstairs that the boy has been enjoying quite a bit, very nice of them to hand that one down to usWe also picked up a TINY pool that the boy and I played in (only once so far) inspired by Casey’s post, you can see how pale I remain even after a trip to the Sonoran desert…Two weeks ago the wife and baby came to Ikebukuro to visit me at my office, but more importantly, to check out the wife’s grandpa (who is a painter of some consequence) and aunt’s paintings being showed around town as part of an art-walk kinda thing.  Here’s a couple of shots from when they visited my office:

After the gallery (which we couldn’t take pictures in) we headed off for lunch at Harvest We’ve made it up to the current month and we started out August with a trip to the in-law’s for a playdate for MJ and his cousin (K-chan).  It’d been nearly 3 months since they’d met and it was cool to see K-chan again and to see how much she’d grown.  Shortly after we arrived K-chan stole MJ’s ball and he cried like a little girl, guess he needs some more practice with other kids and needs to learn the concept of “sharing.”  They had fun though:I think this is my favorite picture of MJ ever!He was also really cute on the way homeAnd I think that’s about it for what we’ve been doing these past three weeks.  The biggest news around however is that dude? is now a father!!! Congrats man, his baby boy (we’ll work on a name and maybe a picture or link for the next post) was born, amazingly, on his du(d)e date, August 3rd, 2010!!! Nice that they didn’t have to wait 11 days like we did… Welcome to the world lil’ dude?!  Unfortunately he and MJ are gonna be in different school years if we all stay here in Japan.  Although dude? and I are 1 year and 1 mo apart in age, we were in the same school year back home, Japan’s a bit more strict about that though.  One more for the road, whatdayasay?Now that we’re all caught up, I feel like we’re back to normal where I can start posting with more regularity.  I’ll try to get some shots of the new bike up soon, with some help from the weather gods. Also Melvis and I are planing to go to the Frontale game next weekend.  Didn’t make it to that baseball game last week because it was washed out too…

I woke up at 4:30 today…

I stayed up again last night to watch the US fall to Ghana.  lame.  Tuesday night gonna watch Japan take on Paraguay but thank god that’s gonna be a 11pm kick-off.  Coming up on a week till take-off and only 6 days of work for this guy! More on all that stuff next post probably.  This one is all about お食い初め…

Yesterday I got off work early and came home for お食い初め (おくいぞめ） action.  お食い初め is a kind of “weaning ceremony” that literally means “first eating.”  The wife made a bunch of traditional food for the occasion: 鯛、カボチャ、梅干、赤飯、etc.  Some of them are strictly traditional and some were takes or variants on them.Since the wife doesn’t eat meat and I rarely do, we replaced the 鯛 with たい焼き but her mother still made some for herself.  The whole ceremony we basically pretend to give the baby tastes of different food that have different symbolic meanings for obvious and not so obvious reasons.  The “ceremony” is supposed to take place 100 days after the baby is born but for timing purposes we did it 98 days (later) after he was born and pretty much he just sat there being held by his grandma and made face after face at the food:

After we finished shoving food in his face, it was our turn to actually eat and the food was pretty good, the wife had slaved all day to prepare, おつかれさま mornin!

Finally, trying one of the beers the wife got me for father’s day, this one is the “Sun Sun Organic beer” from our friends at ヤッホーNot bad, easy to drink, light, well-rounded, might as well give it a shot but it’s not gonna knock your sock off, what do you expect from a beer whose big selling point is that it’s organic?

Sun Sun: Ar

#500! Father’s day, and the boy hits 3! +beer!

The other night I was curious to see, combined, how many posts I’ve put up since starting the original No Airplay nearly four years ago, and to my surprise, it was 498.  That means, after yesterday’s post, we’ve just hit the big 5-0-0!  Congratulations to you all.

Happy Father’s day to you all out there as  well, hope your kids think kindly of you on this day.  It was my first time being a father on this day and the wife knows me well enough to get me some beer!  I got a four pack of some ヤッホーブルーイング tasties.  One was Yona Yona, one was Tokyo Black, both of which I’ve had numerous times and enjoy very much.  There were two others, one is an organic and there was one that really grabbed my attention; 軽井沢高原ビール Irish Red Ale 2010:Pretty good Irish Red, not surprising  coming from such a great brewery.

Karuizawa Kougen Irish Red: Ne

Because today was not only Father’s Day but also MJ’s 3-month birthday! The wife was requested (by me) to be on camera duty.  There are a million pictures of her and MJ together and about 5 of me and the boy…  Well, she didn’t do such a great job.  Think she took about 10 pictures all day, most of them pretty poor.  I do like this one even though you can’t see really see my face in it:Best part is that if you cover his face with your hand, the hair on the top of his head perfectly blends with mine and it looks like I’ve got some sweet sideburns…

Three months have flown by.  He’s so much bigger and more aware, and he changes everyday.  It’s pretty cool to see how he’s changed so far and to imagine all the changes that are on their way.  Anyway, I’m off to play some more of the NCAA Football 11 demo and finish watching the Paraguay x Slovakia game.  Here’s to all the fathers out there, especially all the new ones!  And here’s to our babies being healthy and happy for a long, long time!

Golden Week, first half… over.

I’ve still got two full days off before I need to be back at work on Friday but it seems like this break is flying by too quickly.  After the epic Sunday to kick off the holidays, the past two days have been pretty low-key.  Yesterday we spent a good amount of time at Lazona in Kawasaki, having lunch at the food court:

getting my toenail broken by the wife (see the header) and doing a bit of shopping at the famous 赤ちゃん本舗.  We ended up getting a pretty decent little Pooh mobile that the boy is just loving so far:

We spent the whole day today at the house.  I listened to a few podcasts, downloaded Tecmo Bowl Throwback and played a couple games and spent a good deal of time filling out paperwork (and translating others) for our trip on Thursday to the American Embassy to apply for the boy’s US passport and Social Security card.  Of course, we have to submit some pictures for the passport so the wife put on one of my white t-shirts and held the baby while I took some pictures, they turned out OK but most of them weren’t exactly passport material but we settled on this one:I had to do some cropping but I think it should work out fine. Tomorrow we’re all heading out to the in-laws’ for こどもの日 festivities and for the first ever family baby meeting/ throw down! I’ll have more on that in the next couple days.

The last of my once massive selection of beers in the fridge is a good way to go out, this SanktGallen Pale Ale is really nice, doesn’t have quite the bite I’d like but it’s a very drinkable beer with good all-around flavors:

SanktGallen Pale Ale: Ar

A flower…or two…

Grab Bag!

Here at no airplay we like to just give you everything at once.  So, that’s what I’m gonna do!  I’ve got a beer, and a nursing baby, so if those two things cooperate, I’ll be able to post a bunch of pictures, update some stuff, talk about some stuff, and maybe get a beer review (or maybe two?) by the time I’m done tonight!

First a pic of some of the wife’s home-cooking!  It’s great now that she’s feeling better and able to do more things around the house, nothing’s better than being able to enjoy her food (I’m still waiting on my bentos though…):

タコライス！

This is of course the famous Okinawan dish, Taco Rice.  Pretty good stuff!

Today was shitty, weather-wise, but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits.  This was the first time we could all go out as a family since the ride home from the hospital and we weren’t about to wait for good weather!  We’d hoped to do more but we ended up just going over to the next station for a little shopping.  Here’s a couple pics from our time outside today (there are a couple more on the Flickr account as well):

on the way to the station

even I got in a picture!

priority seat at its finest

baby train!

cabbage patch

There’s a bunch more pictures on Flickr that I’m not gonna put up here probably, also some from the couple of days before as well, here’s a representative shot but check them out for yourself if you like, just click the pic!

After our outing, we came home and eventually got the boy in the bath, oh he loved it!  After his bath, we wrapped him up in a present we got from dude? and Mrs. dude? and although he’s still swimming in it, it’s dawg-gone cute and at least we’ll be able to use it for many many months to come!So now on to some other stuff.  First, I’m loving the M’s resurgence since starting the season off so crappy!  Also loving that BS is showing most of the M’s games, reminds me of when I was a student here during the M’s magical 2001 season, before Matsuzaka and Matsui went across the Pacific and they would only show M’s games here.  Last year it was ridiculous, Orioles and Rays and Braves games were on all the time here, crap!  Now we seem to back to normal.

When we were at the next station over today I stopped in a １００円 store to pick up some more frisbees, this time bigger (drivers) ones for what I’m hoping will be some intense Golden Week Ghetto Phrisbee Golphin action with Melvis.  I also plotted out the 18 hole course that we will attempt, here’s a look on Google Maps:

Kugahara GPGCC

The blue line and dot at about 12:00 is the first hole and basically the course goes counter-clockwise from there.  The 9th hole goes along the Tama River down and to the left there.  I’m quite excited to give this a shot and if weather permits, I’ll be out some time during Golden Week and I’m sure I’ll have some pictures of the day’s events to put up here shortly after.

Alright, now it’s time for some beer, the first one is again from SanktGallen and it’s a pretty good Amber Ale. Nice dark flavors, easy drinker:

Amber Ale: Ne

Last beer (review) of the night.  This time it’s a Mexican beer that the wife picked up down the street called Bohemia Clasica.  Seems to be from the same company that makes most of the other Mexican beers you’ve ever heard of and for good reason, it tastes mostly like them too.  I will say that I have found lagers (and especially pilsners) to be better from the bottle, I accidentally poured this one out in the glass and it’s just pretty average.  I read that it’s probably better straight from the bottle and if I ever come across it again I’ll give that a shot but for now…

Bohemia Clasica: Kr

Can’t wait for Cinco de Mayo!!!