My friend Masanori Nakayama just recently opened up a restaurant right in the heart of Tokyo, called Kassai. The restaurant features a variety of vegetable centric dishes, and a wide selection of Japanese Sake and Shochu. The restaurant has only been open for a few weeks now, and it has already been quite popular with both the locals, and also the foreign crowd as there have been a few visitors from Australia slide by! For those of you that want to hit up a unique Japanese restaurant, and be greeted by English and Japanese speaking staff, this is the place to go.
The restaurant is located right in the heart of Tokyo in the Akasaka district, which isn’t far from sights such as the Tokyo Tower, Roppongi Hills, Imperial Palace, and popular places such as Ark Hills, The Akasaka Ana Hotel, and Shiba and Hibiya Parks. Whatever the reason for your Tokyo visit, you should be within close proximity to Kassai! If not, here are some simple directions as to how to get there:
How to get there
Depending on where you are staying you may be able to walk, but first I’ll cover off access by train:
If you take the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line to Akasaka Station, and exit from the #2 exit, its only a two minute walk to Kassai (marked off by the red pointer “A”).
If you take the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line or the Namboku Line to Tameikesanno Station, take the #11 exit and its a 6 minute walk to Kassai (marked off by the red pointer “A”).
If you are walking, you can hit up google maps and get your directions from there. Here is a Google map with Kassai already highlighted for you:
After an incredible 46 hours, 28 minutes, and 08 seconds, I finally completed GTA4 on the XBOX 360. I bought this game on release night, and have been playing the snot out of it. Why did it take me so long to finish the game? Well, I didn’t just blow through the main story in a few hours, but instead explored everything I could, and took part in as many of the side missions that I could as well. Sometimes I find those to be a little more fun than the actual story missions.
Anyway, I’m still completely blown away that I played that game for more than 46 hours. That is definitely the most time that I’ve poured into any video game, and I hope that I never do that again. Yes the game was fun, and if I had to re-live this summer all over again, I wouldn’t skip GTA4.
Did anyone else feel shocked when they looked at their play time at the end of the game?
And to explain the image above… do you see any correlation between the 46 hours and the unlockable achievement?
Today was spent on Okanagan Lake on a Party Barge and a couple of sea-doos. It wasn’t quite as hot as yesterday, but still checked in at an overcast 30. Perfect for me as its warm, and not having to worry about getting a massive sunburn.
Anyway, when I first heard about and saw this Party Barge, I thought that it was going to be a joke, and basically a few planks attached to a few pontoons, but it turned out to be quite a beauty. The thing had enough power to pull a few tubes, and we smashed around on the thing from 10:30 am till about 7pm when it started getting a little rocky out there on the lake.
So today = no new sunburn, and a good day on the lake. I also got an early birthday present in a bottle of Merlot from a local winery (the name escapes me now). Tomorrow its time for some golf… Okanagan Springs I think.
Oh its a hot one out here… Yesterday as we drove down to Kelowna we roasted in the heat as temperatures rose to 38 during some parts of the drive. The air conditioner in my car was overheating or something though as it would occasionally crap out, and I’d have to open the windows until it came back to life… I thought the whole idea of an air conditioner was to cool you down when its hot, not crap out and force you to go 70s style and open the windows.
The 900+ kilometer drive down to Kelowna wasn’t that bad, except for a few traffic snafus along the way. The first being a truck that decided that he had to slow down to 30 to go throug the tunnels near Rogers Pass, but I was soon able to blow past that clown. The second was a guy teaching his woman how to drive a motorcycle through the windy parts just south of Sicamous. Of course she was very uncomfortable riding her little bike through the curves, and in turn slowed down to about 40km/h on every turn… As I went out to pass, I had to slide back in between the two bikes, and had the male ride right up onto my ass and greet me in my rearview mirror with numerous swears… Funny how he could disrupt traffic for the other 30 cars stuck behind him, but when someone got in HIS way, oh look out. I was able to pass her after the next bend, and from that point we didn’t see a single car behind us for about 45 minutes. Teaching someone to ride is a good idea, but pick a better spot!
Anyway, Kelowna is awesome, and it is absolutely beautiful here today. Had a great time lounging by the pool at a nice 36 degrees. Tonight we’re off to a winery for a family dinner on the outlaw (inlaws) side, and then tomorrow we’re heading out on some kind of party barge from early morning to late evening. Just about blew all my sunscrean today at the pool, but luckily I brought another can of the spray stuff (which I like WAY better than that glue that I’ve had to use since I was a kid).
Oh yeah, I also had a beer down by the pool today so there goes the no more drinking thing. I think that its really going to be hard this month as we are down here for 6 days, and then I’m off to Las Vegas for my birthday in a few weeks… Maybe I’ll have to wait till September before I take on such a task..?
So after watching the season finale of “I survived a Japanese game show,” where Justin Wood from Trussville Alabama won and walked away with $250,000, I started to wonder, “Who actually paid for this show?”
At first I thought it was simply a new idea for a show from ABC, but after putting more thought into it, I think that it was paid for by the Japan National Tourist Organization or a similar group over in Japan. Possibly even the government itself, considering a minister made an appearance in the final episode.
I discussed it with the girlfriend who was doubtful at first, but after asking her if she now wanted to go to Japan after watching the show and seeing the sights, she responded, “Hell Yah!”
Kudos to whoever paid for this show over in Japan… I’m sure its going to pay off bigtime.
Of course I’m nothing like starlet Lindsay Lohan who has had her fair share of trouble with alcohol, but I’m going to take her lead of quitting drinking for a week, but extending it to forever.
I know this is going to be a daunting task, but I feel its something that I think I should do, and I truly need an accomplishment right now. I’ve thought of all kinds of things, but this seems like it will be the most rewarding. I’ve compared weeks where I didn’t have a single beer to ones where I had anywhere between one to a few, and the booze free weeks are stellar in comparison.
Anyway, I’ll try and update things in here regularily with any issues that may arrise, and no I won’t be one of those bloggers that fails to report the truth and not tell the world when they slipped up and had a beer or cocktail. I’m going to lay it all out and see what happens. Today is Day 1, wish me luck!
I’ve got a new addiction… thankfully its not the kind that costs $10 a pack a day, or causes you to want to cut your skin off… no, its my addiction to Mario Kart on the Wii. Its only been a few weeks since I got the Wii, but Mario Kart has definately seen the most action. At first I thought it was frustrating as it didn’t seem to matter how well you drove, it was how well you threw bananas and turtle shells around, but now I see at as pure and simple fun.
So far I’ve been dominating the single player mode, but am completely average when it comes to online play. I love the online aspect of it, but I’ve yet to finish in the top three in any race I’ve competed in. Oh well, this game is fun… or shall I say swiit?
Thankfully the Tilted Twisterlego robot has been invented to help advert this phenomenon. Man… I wish technology like this existed back when I first started dealing with the rubik’s cube
Its definately been a while since I’ve encountered this phenominon but still its something that makes me laugh.
After going away camping for the second time this summer (this time only for 2 nights), and coming home to 895 new items waiting for me in Google Reader, I’ve started wondering if I really need to give a flying one about all these important things that have been going on since I last sat in front of the computer.
It also makes me think about the time that I’ve probably wasted wading through all of these on a daily basis. I think that I’ve probably not noticed that I have that many posts fly by me on a daily basis because I take them on numerous times a day, and don’t get a realistic count of the time I’m wasting and the clutter that I’m causing.
My downfall in the past was coming across a site that had a post or theme that was interesting to me. If I saw the familiar little RSS icon in my firefox bar, I’d subscribe to it, and file it into my categorized folder system and then just read away. This snowballed and now I’m seeing that I’m a slave to RSS feeds and need to cut the crap.
My plan of attack is to evaluate my feeds as the posts come in. I thought about just hacking away right now, but instead I’ll take the time to actually read every single thing that comes in for a while, and make an educated choice in what gets cut and what stays in my list. Two that I know will stay are Lifehacker and the local news updates for my local paper. Other than that its fair game on the other hundred or so feeds that are dragging my productivity down. In about a weeks time I’ll post an update to discuss my methods and results in my assault on my RSS list.
The restaurant is located right in the heart of Tokyo in the Akasaka district, which isn’t far from sights such as the Tokyo Tower, Roppongi Hills, Imperial Palace, and popular places such as Ark Hills, The Akasaka Ana Hotel, and Shiba and Hibiya Parks. Whatever the reason for your Tokyo visit, you should be within close proximity to Kassai! If not, here are some simple directions as to how to get there:
Oh its a hot one out here… Yesterday as we drove down to 
So after watching the season finale of “I survived a Japanese game show,” where Justin Wood from Trussville Alabama won and walked away with $250,000, I started to wonder, “Who actually paid for this show?”
Of course I’m nothing like starlet 
Anyone else ever 
After going away camping for the second time this summer (this time only for 2 nights), and coming home to 895 new items waiting for me in Google Reader, I’ve started wondering if I really need to give a flying one about all these important things that have been going on since I last sat in front of the computer.
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