Letters from Japan @lettersfromjapan - Tumblr Blog

Today I roamed alone. Danny had work all day, so I explored Tokyo looking for Christmas gifts. Later that night, I walked through Senso-ji temple and was able to enjoy it without hoards of tourists. I met up with Danny and we had dinner with our friend Hsiao-wei. She works closely with Danny and I had the pleasure of meeting her for the first time in Prague! The three of us had an impromptu fancy sushi dinner. It was a happy accident, to be sure. The uni was memorable.

It's never a good feeling to wake up at 3 am in a foreign country with a fresh case of homesickness.

I think it's time to go home for a while.

Christmas has started in Tokyo! Enjoying my Earl Grey tea latte (soymilk) with Christmas music at the starbucks in Ginza. We're here because Danny has a speaking engagement, a handful of folks he works with are here too. I'm looking forward to having dinner companions for a change!

Pre-breakfast snack! Brown sugar soymilk and a pickled plum.

Coffee in a shop with a window overlooking a small garden. The window was so impeccably clean, it took me a moment to figure out if this little moth was inside or out!

This photo doesn't do this lunch proper justice, but for 700 yen I ate two onigiri (rice balls). One stuffed with pickled plum and once with soy sauce flavored fish flakes. Both were sooooo soft like little down pillows of rice wrapped in crispy seaweed. The karaage (fried chicken) was so juicy I wanted to cry. The miso soup had tender slivers of daikon swimming in it. The proprietress of the place seemed amused and pleased with the look of utter joy on my face as I ate every last bite of my meal. The pickled plum was 10/10.

We explored a new neighborhood today, kagurazaka. We strolled around the old town area, once a hub for Tokyo geisha whose numbers have dropped from 700 to just only 30 remaining. Next (pictures above) we toured koishikawa korakuen gardens. We were a little early to enjoy the fall foliage, but the scenery was beautiful nonetheless. My favorite was the "moon bridge" that creates full moon using the reflection of the water. Can you see it? P.s. Danny got new pants!

#japan #garden #tokyo

Favorite snack, impossible to find in the states. Chips covered in panko with tonkatsu sauce. So crispy and worchestershire tasting .

P.s. turns out my blog and my tumblr won't play nice and it's one giant headache. Updates will be on tumblr, blog will be updated when I'm back in the states. :)

Back in Tokyo. The train from Haneda at 7 am was stunning

Truffle Hunting

As I mentioned before, Dannys team was treated to an offsite field trip adventure that I had wormed my way into. Thank god I did!! Turns out, the activity of the day was truffle hunting! Other people opted for a beer or food tour but I’m positive we had the best experience.

This is Nella and she’s trained to find truffles. She basically works like a bomb sniffing dog. She knows what she is supposed to be looking for and is rewarded when she finds it! Hunting for truffles seems to be her favorite game….she was chomping at the bit to get going! I think Nella must have eaten about 30 pup treats while the demonstration was happening. The tubes are filled with truffle scent and she picks which has the smell. From the demonstration, we moved into actually hunting for truffles in the park. They grow on tree roots scattered all over the park, underneath a layer of soil about 5 inches deep. Nella found 3 truffles, with what looked like no effort. She has a seriously good nose.

Muddy truffles that Nella found vs the spotless ones we received as favors. There is a lot of cleaning involved!

Once the hunt was finished, we walked to a hill at the top of the park to eat a truffle filled lunch. We had spinach ravioli in a butter sauce that was covered in slivers of truffles. We then had truffles placed on the table for us to shave into our pasta. Next, our host/Nella’s owner came by with a special white truffle that just so happened to be in season! We were able to shave that into our pasta as well. Triple truffle. It was intense. I think I preferred the white truffle’s taste…it almost had a cheese like smell and was more complex, whereas the black truffles taste more earthy.

Misc. Prague

Before we got into a hotel in Prague for the conference, we spent two nights in a hostel flat with some of Dannys fellow researchers. We went out as a group to see a little bit of Prague and to hunt for office supplies for the workshop Danny was leading the next day. They were an incredibly nice group of people, I enjoyed our time together!

Prague- Pt 2

Danny gave his talk on the main stage! It was all about how to contribute to open source software and he did such a good job. Especially considering he had been working non-stop for about 5 days before that.

Event hough his talk was on the last day of the conference, his work wasn’t done. He had one more day of back to back meetings before the group offsite! This was basically a field trip and treat for the members of the Ethereum Foundation followed by a dinner on a glass boat. I assumed I wouldn’t be able to join him but, somehow, I wormed my way into both!

The Neptune Room

Part immersive art installation, part naptime room. The neptune room was filled with giant beanbags and soft places to sit and relax. No laptops allowed! In the center of the room there was a woman mixing sounds and creating ambient music. The lights that you see in the picture, cascading in the center of the room, reacted to the music she was making, giving the whole room a very underwater type feel.

Prague

Its been a while since I posted an update! From Berlin we headed to Prague and most of our time there was spent at the conference. It was, after all, the reason we're in Europe. Danny was in meetings all day while I spent my time watching talks and presentations while pillaging the free food. I learned a lot about what Danny works on and I met some pretty interesting people. Its worth mentioning that the Prague conference center food was outstanding. At one lunch, there was a table dedicated to paté both in rustic thick slices and little personal sized glass pots of a creamy version.

More on the conference in my next post....

#Devcon

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