Always lagging several months behind. It is ok. Above, the view from the hotel window in Niagara Falls. Cheese plate at CN tower in Toronto.

All of the sushi pictures are from Take Sushi in Toronto. Very Japanese-style sushi, and all the people working there were also Japanese. The uni was of remarkable quality. I used the opportunity to order tobiko with a quail egg on top – they do not serve it many places in Japan (despite having both tobiko and qual eggs on the sushi menu), but it is one of my favorite pieces. I had a nice chat with the chef, and he gave us little origami penguins to bring with us back home.

Walking around Niagara, it was almost like getting a little taste of Japan again with all the flashing neon lights and the crowds of people. I missed Japan for an hour or two, and wanted to go back home for the first time in weeks.

We found an amazing food store in the gay district in Toronto. I don’t even like cupcakes.

Doodling with new pens and noticing that even the banks in the gay district in Toronto had rainbow flags. Adorable.

We finished off Canada with even more drinks and started planning our return to Japan.

Final seaweed salad in Toronto, and *boom* – I was back in Japan. It still felt like summer.

It was as though we never left, yet something had shifted in me.

Heading into a traditional sushi shop around the corner from our house, I felt blessed that I have gotten to see much of the world and made myself familiar with places and people I never thought I would encounter. If someone told me 10 years ago that this would be my life, I would laugh at them. Moving is easier than one might think. After you have picked up your things and ran half across the world once, nothing seems impossible. I ate my uni and thought that just a week before I had eaten the same dish, 8500 km away.

The days rolled by, the earthquakes were back, and I am still trying to hold on tightly as the world starts to spin faster and faster around me again.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”

While in Niagara Falls, I wanted to get some use out of my ESTA (and say I have been to New York State!), so I pleaded and begged to walk over the bridge to the US, and I got my wish granted! Tsktsk. Now, I do not mean to say anything mean or disrespectful about the US side of Niagara Falls (and this is meant in a very light-hearted way), but oh boy, the Canadian and the US side were not very similar!

Walking over the bridge, I saw Maid of the Mist! I still have never been on board. Third time is a charm, right?

One of the first things that met me after I had entered the US, was this little booth with this fine poster. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore! It was just one of those tiny things where you realize how culture vary so much from country to country. I took a 10 min stroll over a bridge, and holy smokes! There are gun commercials! I had an Oz-moment there. Seriously? You don’t call the cops? You use your colt?! I have never seen posters like these before, since there are virtually no hand guns in neither Norway or Japan. I haven’t seen that many of them in Canada either.

My US escapades continued to a somewhat dingy mall where we ate oversized portions of some kind of asian-fusion food on paper plates.

After finishing our lunch, and simultaneously starting to realize that Niagara Falls NY is somewhat of a ghost town, I wanted to go back to Canada.

THANK GOD I FOUND CANADA! Back I went!

I still took the time to stand in two countries at once. That felt… pretty exciting, actually!

And back to Canaaaannnda! Where the restaurants are more expensive, where the live-bands are playing and where they have pretty flower beds and shrubberies and all things nice. (Yes, I am biased!)

Although certain things in Canada also seems a bit backwards and upside down…

But certain backward things are pretty neat! Since I am in North America, I can request cheese on my seafood pasta! This would have been considered blasphemy in Italy, right? But not in the land of plenty and its hat! I actually really do love how people are super helpful if you want to change or modify your order in the US and Canada. In Japan, usually what is on the menu is what is on the menu. If you ask for extra X or less of Y, they don’t always accommodate you. Rules are rules, you know.

I went back to the hotel room and considered how expensive and time consuming it would be to paint my own ceiling like this. Then I fell asleep and forgot all about it.

Timmins is not really well known for their food (although they do have yummy Poutine!), but we went to a decent sushi restaurant when we were there, Osaka Sushi (57 Mount Joy Street South. The google maps are not updated on street view but the address is correct). Compared to the other sushi places I had tried in Timmins previously this one was the best one. If you compare it to other places in the world, it wasn’t that much to call home about, but if you compare it to the rest of the food in Timmins, it is way above average and worth stopping by. The prices were very reasonable, and the food was decent. About the rice – it was slightly acidic and strong in taste compared to Kanto-style sushi rice, but nothing too-too overpowering. The rice was fresh and not dried out. Chinese people in the kitchen. It is an all-you-can-eat type of place ($15 for lunch and around $25 for dinner), and they also have a lot of Chinese and Thai food, so it is easy to go with friends or family that doesn’t want to eat sushi.

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Yakatabune is a small boat cruise you can go on, we went on one in the Tokyo bay this summer. It is not terribly expensive, around 4000 – 5000 yen per person, and that includes both tabehodai and nomihodai (as much food and as many alcoholic drinks as you wish). It is popular among salarymen and groups of friends. The one we went on you cook your own food, and we cooked a variety of okonomiyaki and monjayaki. Okonomiyaki is probably easier to like for most westerners, the monja have been said to look like… well… vomit. It doesn’t taste like it though, promise!

Monjayaki with mentaiko!

Okonomiyaki ga dekita!!

Since we were in such a good mood after the boat cruise, we ended the evening with a couple of more drinks (ok, a lot more drinks), and ended the evening with an early morning breakfast in a small place in Shinjuku, looking at the people in the bar around us that had finally fallen asleep.

I took a walk in our neighborhood quite a while back to clear up my mind, process the year so far and relax. In the midst of a pretty heated board meeting in my head debating if my recent sushi consumption could actually harm my health and put me at risk for mercury poisoning from the, well, quite healthy amounts of maguro I had consumed recently,  I turned a corner… and what did I see?! A huge whale with obvious super-powers, protruding through the concrete and cement pavement, ready to make a leap to freedom. The thing was taller than me.

I ran away scared. Nah. just kidding. But I did continue my walk. I have been in Japan for a couple of years, and it is easy to forget all the little things that makes this city awesome. Like overgrown greens in residentiary neighborhoods and the mandatory collection of bicycles parked outside every single house. And the clutter. Omg, the clutter. If you have ever read design books about clean and minimalistic Japanese design, I can tell you – they are lying through their teeth. There is a lot of clutter around here.

I discovered an abandoned park. The clock was still working. So were the mosquitos. They were working overtime. I left the park with less blood in my body and five, fancy new huge mosquito-bites on my legs. I have unsuccessfully tried to start a new trend here half the summer with the slogan “mosquito-bites are the new black”. I wonder why that never caught on. They are both inexpensive and readily available to anyone who wants one. Or fifteen. And a lot of people are sporting them here.

No space for a garden, you say? No problem. Just build a vertical one on your wall. Problem solved. Since this is Japan, nobody will steal your potted plants anyway. I ended my walk with the mandatory girl-takes-pictures-of-their-feet-image. I then decided to down-vote the board’s decision about possibly lowering the abnormally large sushi consumption, and headed straight for the kaiten sushi.

// I have a huuuuge backlog of a couple of hundred pictures from the last weeks. A lot of them random. I want to post them so I can remember them.

I’ve always thought there is something strong and handsome, looking at the hands on the steering wheel from the passenger seat. Someone else takes control, and I end up just where I am suppose to go.

I haven’t driven a car in years. I would like to partly say it is because there is no opportunity in Tokyo to drive a car (public transportation and taxis FTW!), but the other half of the truth is that I have gotten a bit scared of driving. Visiting Canada I eventually tried driving a car for the first time in 5 years. And it wasn’t half bad. It was my first time driving automatic, and it was like driving a go-cart. I felt a strange sense of freedom after I realized I could, in theory, drive wherever I wanted, if I wanted. …but I’m just frozen here on the same old spot.

“To be vulnerable, taking risks, doing what you love and greeting each day with gratitude is to move through life as who you are and were meant to be. This is where joy ultimately resides.”

-Brene Brown

I got to go to Bird Kingdom in Niagara Falls yesterday, and I started searching for images of birds online after my visit. I found these images, they feature birds of paradise and were made by Richard Bowdler Sharpe at the end of the 18th century. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous drawings and gorgeous birds.