The Silent "I"

Target-to-Go Hits San Francisco

2009-12-11T12:13:42-08:00

Yesterday, I got a special preview of the Target to Go shopping experience in San Francisco, and was able to do about half my remaining Christmas shopping in about 20 minutes. Target pioneered the "Pop-up" store concept a few years ago, but living in the 'burbs where Target stores abound, I didn't really know what that meant. Essentially, a "Pop-up" store is a temporary shopping site set up for a special occasion, with a limited product line, primarily in urban areas that are not so lucky to have a Target.

At the Target to Go store, you're given a menu of about 50 items to choose from, and can walk past a display window showing the various gifts, mostly grouped by price. If you see something you like, you mark it on your order form, and take it to the cashier. The gift comes out wrapped in a lovely candy-striped bag with a gift tag on it for you to fill out, and voila! you are DONE.

This weekend, Target-to-Go stores will be open in DC, New York, and San Francisco. If you live in or around San Francisco, follow @TargetToGoSF on Twitter for clues on where to find some special Target Gift Tags hidden around the city. If you find one, take it to the Target to Go shop at Mint Plaza (on 5th, between Mission & Market, next to the old US Mint) and you will be rewarded with a Target Gift card, redeemable at any Target location. As a bonus, Target will donate $100 to the Salvation Army for every gift card redeemed at the SF location. If you plan to do some shopping in the city this weekend, this could be a fun little scavenger hunt to go on!

I was delighted to be invited to this event, because as I explained to one of the Target PR people, Target is my "happy place." It's like a little vacation from the world for me to go to Target on my own, and just wander the aisles, picking up laundry detergent, throw pillows, a cute top, or Legos. You can find just about anything there, and I have been a devoted Target shopper since the 1970's, when our local Ayr-Way turned into Target.

Disclosure: I received a $25 Target Gift Card for attending the Press Preview, but no other compensation for writing this review. Opinions expressed herein are solely my own.

Guest Post: A Letter from Hokkaido

2009-11-25T12:59:11-08:00

Frank took a business trip to Hokkaido, Japan last week, and agreed to let me share his ramen-powered Sapporo adventure.

Hi, Sweetie:

Here I am in Hokkaido, safe and sound. The flights from the US were uneventful, the usual trans-pacific 12 hour drag, and after a decent layover, I made the connection to the domestic ANA flight within Japan to Sapporo’s International Airport (actually Shin Chitose International Airport, about 20 miles south of Sapporo) with no trouble.

Actually, I take that back; there was a bit of trouble – I forgot to take my leftover Yen from the currency drawer at home, so I got to Sapporo at 9 pm with only US$ in hand, and by then the foreign exchange office was closed. I thought I might be stuck, but I asked at the information counter, and they directed me to a hidden row of ATMs, which took some time to find. Fortunately, they worked, and I could withdraw Japanese cash and be on my way. But not without noticing that the Sapporo International airport is HUGE – giant shopping malls (all closed at this time of night), and 4 floors of long curved corridors that go on forever. By the time I found the ATM, I’d walked nearly a half mile. Not quite what I wanted after traveling for nearly 20 hours.

The JR train station was in the airport basement, and once I got my ticket a train was ready to depart in a few minutes. The train was comfortable (all seats, not a sand-up commuter train), and, and in half an hour I was in town at the Shin Sapporo station.

The conference hotel was only a block from the station – I had a great printout from Google maps, showing the area in great detail – but to get out of the station I had to go through a maze of twisting shopping passages (all closed at this time of night) and a bridge to a back alley for bicycle parking before I finally found the tower of the Sheraton Sapporo Hotel in front of me. What a welcome sight that was. Even if it did look like a mini European cathedral from this end – clearly a hotel with an eye to the wedding market.

I checked in and the porter led me up the elevator to the 25^th floor. The room was a typical Japanese Western style hotel room – 2 beds, bathroom with a small but deep tub, desk area (with Ethernet cable), flat screen TV, mini-bar, and a tiny dresser with not enough drawers. That wasn’t really a problem - I simply unpacked by dumping my suitcase out onto the 2^nd bed and used that as my dresser. As you know, I don’t mind a bit of clutter, and I was tired.

After a nice hot bath – really necessary after a long, dehydrating flight – it was straight into bed and I was out fast.

But not for long – the usual westbound Asian jetlag wakeup at 2 AM kicked in, but I was able to force myself to snooze at least until 4 AM, when I was wide awake with no hope of return. I read a bit more of the John Grisham book I brought for the flight, then finally opened up the laptop and got my presentation finalized for the conference.

6:30 am and sunrise was coming outside the window, and I could look out over Hokkaido. My room faced north, so in the distance I could see banks of clouds hovering over the mountains. Although I’ve been to Japan countless times for business and sightseeing, business never took me to Hokkaido before, so this is something new. And it seems a little different – the streets below are wide, straight and spacious, there was a lot of empty space as the town changed into agricultural land in the distance. A Japanese frontier city, if there is such a thing.

Hokkaido is the northernmost major island in Japan, and although it’s at the same latitude as Chicago, it gets freezing blasts of air from Siberia, and it’s famous for harsh winter cold and piles of snow. Too cold for routine rice production, it was viewed as a wild wasteland by the more cultured civilizations of Kyoto and Edo, and was left to the Ainu indigenous people long after they were driven out of the other Japanese islands. So, Hokkaido was only settled recently by Japanese. The whole of Hokkaido has only 6 million people, less than some districts of Tokyo. I gather that, if you rent a car, there are large stretches of road here where you see no other cars or people – real wide open spaces of the Japanese frontier. Not the typical image of Japan, to say the least.

But, I didn’t rent a car, and 1/3 of those 6M people live in Sapporo, so up close it feels like your typical Japanese city, with rows of apartment blocks, towering office buildings, huge department stores and a great rail and subway network to get around.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. By 7 am the Café Dom - down by the fake mini-cathedral (Dom is German for Cathedral) - was open, and I had the breakfast buffet (almost dinnertime b y my body clock, and I was hungry), then went to register for the conference. I won’t bore you with those details, other than to say that, as Chairman of the US sister conference, the conference managers were very nice and respectful to me, inviting me to join the Steering committee lunch and made many introductions.

At the end of the day, dusk was falling, and I cut out on the last talks to catch the subway into the center of Sapporo proper. It would be a shame to come all this way and not see anything of the place itself, even though, by 4:30 pm, night was falling and I couldn’t see much. Fortunately, it’s easy to get around. I got out of the subway at Odori Park, and found myself in a grid of streets. Sapporo was laid out after Western influence came to Japan, and the streets are not only a grid but are all labeled with numbers – intersections are marked with signs like “North 1 West 2”, unlike Tokyo, where streets have no names and you stumble around by knowing landmarks.

So here I was, but I was not sure what all to actually do – Sapporo seems most famous for its winter Snow Festivals, with snow sculptures and ice carvings and winter lighting in the Odori park. But this was too early in the season for that.

I decided to make my first stop the famous Sapporo Clock Tower. It’s the symbol of the city, and photos of it were on all the city information I had. It’s the oldest building in Sapporo, and as I came up to it, I almost missed it, it was so dwarfed by the towering hotels and office towers nearby. It was all lit up in the evening, but I arrived to late to get in, so I just walked around the intimate grounds and took a few photos.

It seemed very out of place - an odd transplant from the American prairie into the heart of a Japanese city. The style is so familiar, one that could fit into any of a thousand American towns, especially where my family grew up in Kansas. So it seemed especially odd to find this at the spiritual heart of a Japanese city.

But, the history makes things clear. Soon after Japan started opening up to the West in the 19^th century, and when Sapporo was an infant town of a few thousand people, some Americans from Univ. Massachusetts Amherst came to Sapporo and had a vision of making an agricultural college in the Japanese North. They founded the Hokkaido Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University), and one of the first buildings they put up in 1876 was this American frontier style building with a clock from Boston in its tower. The clock has been keeping time ever since.

After the history lesson, it was time to move on. I was only wearing my suit from the conference, and the cold was beginning to get to me. And I was getting hungry. In the local tourist information on Sapporo, Ramen was described as a big deal here. With the winter cold, Hokkaido had made a name for itself with lots of varieties of ramen, and not just the wimpy noodles and weak soy broth of Tokyo, but hearty warm-you-up-on-a-cold-winter-day-when-you-need-to-shovel-2-kilometers-of-driveway noodles, made with a thick miso broth.

So, I set my next mission to find good Sapporo Ramen as I meandered my way towards the Sapporo JR station. Somewhere near the station, there were supposed to be ramen specialty streets, with shop after shop of noodles, but I wasn’t finding them. Instead, I was simply getting cold. It was now below freezing, with a few flakes of snow falling. Everyone else was walking around in real winter coats – they’re clearly serious about winter here, and I didn’t pack enough

As I neared the JR station, I did see a huge Bic Camera (ビックーカメラ ) store, and it reminded me that my Region 2 (Japan) DVD player at home (bought at Bic Camera in Tokyo) had quit working. This would be a chance to get a replacement, and since I didn't know when I’d be in Japan again, I thought I’d better check it out. After all, how else will we be able to play all my Japanese anime DVDs? Surely you’ve been missing that too, yes?

So, as I got into the elevator and began to look at the floor guide, I see that the 10^th floor (the restaurant floor for this building) is dominated by Sapporo Ramen Kyowakoku (札幌ら〜めん共和国 ), one of the ramen restaurants advertised in my “about Sapporo” pamphlet. What luck! And, as it turns out, this is kind of a theme park of Ramen, with 8 restaurants that are selected branches of ramen shops in their respective cities from around Hokkaido. They stay or are replaced by popular vote, so, this may turn out to be the place to sample some of the best ramen from all over Hokkaido.

I slipped into the restaurant closest to the entrance, which turned out to be a shop from Ashikawa City ( 旭川市 ), in the central region of Hokkaido. After puzzling over the menu a bit, I ordered the mountain vegetables in miso ramen.

I was not disappointed. This was good, hearty ramen, with thick noodles and big vegetable chunks. A bigger bowl than I’m used to, and warm and delicious! The perfect thing to fight off the chill air outside. All complemented by a glass of beer – Sapporo brand, of course. And all for ¥1200.

Back down the elevator, fortified by ramen, I was ready to enter the world of Bic Camera. This electronics super store is like many of the famous Japanese stores, with floors dedicated to computers, to TVs, to washing machines, etc., but has this jingle playing over the PA system that infects the mind as it plays incessantly in the background, hypnotizing shoppers into buying unnecessary electronics. You can find this jingle on YouTube if you dare expose your brain cells to its hypnotic spell…

I found the portable DVD players on the 2^nd floor, and eventually pick a mid-priced Toshiba portable. There is some confusion at the register, since I want to pay with American Express, and the clerk wants to make some point, but I don’t understand. He opens up an English phrase handbook for clerks, and the point he is trying to make is “we only accept single payment”, which I don’t understand at all – “Is there a problem with the credit card? I have Visa…or do you need cash?” I tell him in Japanese, but he continues to point to this English phrase. I am stumped, since I don’t really have a clue what’s going on. After another clerk asks the guy what’s happening, he nods and proceeds to charge the American Express. OK… at least I got my player.

I also picked up a couple bargain bin DVDs to make sure the player works: アニー (Annie), since our son is “studying” that in school, and 第三の男 (The Third Man) with Orson Wells since it was just so cheap (¥440, or just under $5).

At this point, it’s 9 pm and I’m tired. Jetlag is telling me I should be ASLEEP, and so I find the JR tracks, buy my ticket for Shin Sapporo, and head back to the hotel. After another hot bath, and a quick check of the DVD player, once I get this written, I expect I’ll be out like a light.

Tomorrow, a pretty dull day – breakfast, more of the conference, a train ride to the Airport, a short hop to Narita and the long flight overnight home.

See you soon, stay warm and happy!

Frank

Santiago, Chile: Finding a Happy Place

2009-11-13T17:22:01-08:00

February 11, 2004

We left Easter Island on February 10 and started back to California via Santiago Chile. We arrived late in the afternoon, and Alex decided to have the worst temper tantrum of his life in the luggage claim area of the Santiago airport. He tried to throw himself on the luggage conveyor belt, but we managed to stop him in before he was tagged and sent on his way to Lima, Peru. Sometimes, traveling with a toddler is not all it's cracked up to be.

Santiago reminded me a lot of Los Angeles, a gigantic urban basin packed with buildings surrounded by mountains. We checked into the Santiago Marriott, which was conveniently located across the street from a toy store. It was Sunday, so Alex could do nothing more than gaze longingly out twentieth-floor window.

We woke up in the middle of the night to loud thunderstorms, which lit up the Andes off in the distance. It was a dramatic scene, particularly from the 20th floor of the hotel.

The next morning, we woke up to the Andes emerging from the clouds off in the distance. It turned into a beautiful, clear day, with the rain clearing away some of the smog. We decided to go out for some sightseeing.

Frank arranged for the hotel car to take us to the Bellavista area, a Bohemian neighborhood full of shops, retaurants and bars. The driver dropped us off at Pio Nono Street, where there are a number of jewelry stores selling beautiful blue lapis lazuli jewelry. Lapis lazuli is a semi-precious gemstone found primarily in Afghanistan and also mined in Ovalle, Chile.

Bellavista is also home to Santiago's nightlife, and we passed a number of discos, including one catering mainly to extraterrestrial clientele. I'm not sure you could find that in Los Angeles.

It was a warm and sunny day, with clear skies, quite pleasant on the shady, tree-lined street. We walked passed several small shops including one mannequin shop with a charming, old-fashioned sign.

We walked to the end of the street to find the Funicular, a mountainside train that transported us up to the top of San Cristobal San Cristobal in the Park Metropolitano.

After a ride on the rickety funicular, we arrived at the base of the giant statue of the Virgin Mary. The park offered a spectacular view of the city, and the beautiful, white sculpture of the serene Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.

There is a plaza at the base of the statue surrounded by kiosks selling souvenirs and snacks. We stopped for a soft drink and a group of boys, about 13-14 years old, approached us. One of them spoke up and asked if we were Americans. He told us they studied English in school and wanted to practice. The other two were shy, and didn't say much, but the brave one asked questions about where we were from and where we had been. They all smiled when we said we were from California, which they recognized as the home of Hollywood and Mickey Mouse. They were charming, sweet kids, and ran around the plaza, chasing Alex, which thrilled him to no end.

We continued our journey by taking a gondola tram across from one mountaintop to another. The cars were old, and the door didn't shut all the way, causing Frank to get vertigo and nearly start hyperventilating. It seems odd to me that a guy who travels on planes all the time can have such a terrible fear of heights, but he does. He said it was because we were completely closed in and he could see the ground through the crack in the door. He started sweating profusely, and said, "I'm doing this for you, so don't ever doubt how much I love you."

Alex and I thought the ride was great fun, and every time the car went bumping past the cable towers, Frank would suck his breath in through his teeth, like he was being punched in the gut. At one point, he just covered his eyes and repeated, "Find a happy place...find a happy place...find a happy place."

Alex and I stopped laughing long enough to start letting him know when we were going to hit a bump, which seemed to make it easier for Frank. We made it across without Frank hyperventilating or plunging to our death about 1,000 feet down.

We got out at a place called the Oasis, and had some ice cream. Another funicular ride down, and we found the subway. We rode the fast blue train to Escuela Militar, caught a taxi back to the hotel and headed to the airport to go home. Our fabulous South American Adventure ended in Santiago, and we flew home full of memories to last a lifetime.

Check out more great travel adventures and photos at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday!