Sonoma and Napa - wine country

The poor Hula Guy felt a little out of his league today in the very upmarket towns we visited in Sonoma and Napa counties (Healdsburg, Calistoga, St.Helena). There are over 3000 wineries in California and in this part of the state, there are neat grape vines growing everywhere. It's really beautiful.

Near the spa town of Calistoga, we visited a petrified redwood forest. Over 3 million years ago, Mt. Helena erupted and coated the trees with ash. The trees eventually turned to stone. More about that HERE. We also visited a geyser which spouts boiling water out of the earth every 40 minutes. More about that HERE.

Photos of our day HERE.

Bodega Bay, Sonoma Coast

We are staying in the Sonoma wine region. It's a really beautiful part of the world. Today the Hula Guy, David and I explored the coast around Bodega Bay (did you ever see Hitchcock's "The Birds"?) Photos here.

Road trip with the Hula Guy

Oh yes, we really did drive around with The Hula Guy on the dashboard today. He's on a spring and dances and bobs away as you drive - it's pretty entertaining (see video below).

Muir Woods

We stayed a night near Mill Valley. We had been warned that motels were expensive near here and we paid a lot to stay in a basic Holiday Inn. Fortunately it was next to a really good Italian restaurant where we went for dinner.

When we got up the next morning, it was raining. The first rainy day of the holiday, so we can't really complain, but disappointing all the same as we had planned to do some walking. Instead we bought umbrellas and went to Muir Woods, the setting for one of the scenes from Vertigo. We saw trees of 112m tall - the tallest living things on earth.




Following a white pickup through the fog






A scene of Muir Woods from the movie Vertigo

The Hula Guy

We always play this silly game at Christmas with Amy and George. It's called the Yankee Swap and involves buying one good gift and one joke gift and wrapping them both up. At the end of the game you end up with two gifts. David bought this Hula Guy as his joke gift from a cheesy shop in San Luis Obispo. Lucky Amy ended up with it, so I am wondering HOW IT GOT INTO OUR SUITCASE.....












I sense that this isn't the end of the road for the Hula Guy.

Silicon Valley

You won't find Silicon Valley on a map, and I have often wondered where it was. It is basically the area not very far south of San Francisco incorporating Palo Alto, Santa Clara and San Jose and is the birthplace of the silicon chip. Last night we stayed in San Jose, the third largest city in California (after L.A. and San Diego). We stayed a little bit away from the city center and there wasn't too much going on, so we got an early night ready for the Tech Museum.

The Tech Museum is showing an AMAZING exhibition called Body Worlds 2. We missed the controversial Body Worlds in both London and Yokohama, so were very excited to be able to see it here and it was the reason we were in San Jose. The exhibition basically displays plastinated human bodies and was pretty shocking. Unlike the first exhibition which used the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners, these exhibits bequeathed their bodies willingly to the project before their deaths. It is probably the best exhibition I have ever visited. Read more here.

After the exhibition and a quick lunch, we motored on up the 101 through San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Marin county. We stopped for coffee in a very European-looking town called Sausalito, explored the quaint hamlet of Mill Valley and found a motel nearby to stay for the night. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

Some photos here.

The way to San Jose

Today we said goodbye to Amy and George and got back on freeway 101 heading north. Our first stop was at another Spanish mission (San Miguel Arcangel).



















In our excitement of being on the road again, we forgot to fill up with petrol before we left SLO. This meant we were in the middle of nowhere when the red light started flashing. We are used to regular service stations in Japan and the UK, but there aren't any of these on the 101. We pulled off the freeway at a town called Bradley (population 120). It was not much more than a collection of tatty trailers and a church. A scary white pick-up truck overtook us then vanished. We saw no other people, and this is a photo of the gas station.










We got out quick.

The next town was called San Ardo (population 501). The first gas station looked like this.










Fortunately, the second one was open. Just as well as we have seen the movie with Kurt Russel where one of them goes off for gas in a pickup truck with a local.....and never comes back.

We drove past the town of Gilroy. We spent 24 hours there on the way down at the outlets. We stayed at the classy Motel Super 8.










We haven't shopped like that since we were last there almost 2 years ago.

California

No time for blogging, but here are some photos:

1. Visit to Alcatraz, San Francisco

2. South on the 101 to San Juan (mission)

3. Christmas with Amy and George

Bonenkai (“forget the year” parties)

I could never complain of not having a social life here in Nagoya; in eight days I’ve had six parties. It sounds like a recipe for excess and weight gain, but strangely I always lose weight at this time. I’ll explain why. Restaurants do “bon-enkai” specials for large groups which are shared set dishes. This means I don’t get much to eat. The portions are pretty small and I have to flight over morsels with my (still) substandard chopstick skills. Plus there are always a few dishes I pass on. I’ll probably make up for it in California. I leave on Wednesday.

Christmas in Tokyo

Today we went to Tokyo just for the day. Have a look at my photos taken in Shinjuku and Glitzy Ginza. The highlight was seeing Ebi-chan (Japanese supermodel) coming out of Samantha Tiara (diamond shop) in Ginza.

We'll live and die in these towns

Are there really still people out there that haven't heard of The Enemy? They are like The Jam reincarnated. They are the only band I know of to come out of Coventry. The lead singer looks about 12, but he's great! We went to see them tonight in Club Quattro. The Enemy have lots of fans in Japan - the place was packed and hopping.

Carmen (Georges Bizet)

On Tuesday I went to the opera with my colleagues and over 200 students. It was a compulsory school trip which worried me a bit. Forcing 19 year olds to go to the opera could have devastating effects on future art appreciation, couldn't it? I needn't have worried. The girls loved it, and they understood more than I did (it was sung in French) as there were Japanese subtitles in LED lighting at the side of the stage. I've never seen that before!

Yorosan

I have been so distracted with Facebook (plus other things going on in my life) that I have neglected my blog!

On Sunday we led a hike to a waterfall and three peaks in Gifu. We last did this walk in February in the snow, so it was quite a different experience to see the beautiful autumn leaves in all their glory.