Category Archives: Random Walk

Tokyo Is Huge, The Food Is Great, And The People Nice To A Fault Continued

Random Walk, Travel

After the show and before we did our view walk, we had lunch at the museum cafe. We chose The Forest Course, and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had, definitely in the top ten. It started with an appetizer of rabbit, mushroom, and sweetbread terrine (shown below). That was followed by another appetizer and, in my case, a main course of roasted, branded pork. My roasted pork was especially good, replacing the sous vide pork chop I had at the Yellow Brix in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Here is Michele’s take: “While I loved the mussel cream soup, I found the fish dish to be somewhat tasteless. It was not a fish I had heard of, but it was described as a firm white fish served Meunière style, which is how Black Sole is served in Ireland. What I got was not what I expected, no noticeable lemon or butter, and the fish itself was sort of tasteless. The puree of carrots with port underneath it, however, was wonderful and so flavorful that the fish just became a delivery system for that.”

After lunch, we went for an inside city-view walk, which just emphasized how big Tokyo is. It stretched to the horizon on three sides of the tower viewing walk. The amazing thing is how well the city works; there are no homeless people, everything is clean, there are cheap taxis everywhere, and there is lots of greenery and small temples.

Speaking of temples, across the street from our hotel is a small temple complex, the Toyokawa Inari Betsuin Temple, which is a mixture of both Buddhist and Shinto traditions. What I found most striking was the number of young people, especially young, sophisticated – maybe hip might be a better descriptor – women, who were making offerings and saying prayers.

For our anniversary dinner, we went to Kikunoi, a Michlin two-star restaurant that is billed as the best Kyoto-style restaurant in Tokyo. As a sort of an aside, the idea of a Kyoto-style restaurant in Tokyo seems weird, like a San Francisco-style restaurant in Los Angeles (what does that even mean?). It was different but hardly weird. It was the first time either of us had ever been to a Michlin two-star restaurant, and I was blown away! The theme was Kyoto in autumn – or, maybe just Japan in autumn, who knows – and the food was surprisingly simple with a lavish presentation.

The meal started with what the restaurant called a Sakizuke of poached turnip with walnut miso sauce and crushed walnuts. I like turnips a lot, but this was a new level of turnip goodness. About six courses in, we had Grilled barracuda sandwiched between cedar boards, shiitake mushrooms, champignon sauce, and citrus, the presentation of which Michele memorialized on her iPhone.

Somewhere near the end of the meal, we were served a small steak with Japanese pepper flowers. It was, hands down, the best steak I’ve ever had. It was cut into small squares so it could be eaten with chopsticks and then reassembled into its original shape without losing any of the glorious juices.

Our next stop is Nikko, but we plan on finishing our trip back in Tokyo.

 

 

A Couple of Comments on Lewis Hamilton, and Los Angeles

Random Walk,

“Having seen the hosts before, I remember I would look on and think, ‘It would be cool one day to be a host.’ Anna’s been so gracious as to include me within that group.” Lewis Hamilton

People cut themselves off from their ties of the Old Life when they come to Los Angeles. They are looking for a place where they can be free, where they can do things they couldn’t do anywhere else. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.  Frank Lloyd Wright

Like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original. Reyner Banham

I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York, there’s taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It’s a form of restriction. James Turrell

In past posts, I’ve written about Lewis Hamilton winning races, moving to Ferrari, and as a black role model. I’ve even written about Lewis and random numbers, and I’ve written about Lewis at The Met Gala, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s annual fundraising event, so there is not much left.

Ah, but there is. This year, Sir Lewis Hamilton was made one of the co-hosts of the 2025 Met Gala. The theme is “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” The Gala costs $75,000 a pop – it started in 1948 with tickets at $75 – and it is generally considered the hottest fashion event of the year. I think Hamilton has been going for about ten years. An interesting side note is that Donald Trump is the only person who has been publicly banned from The Gala by the chief honcho, Anna Wintour.

View of Los Angeles from the backyard of Lewis Hamilton’s home used as a segue picture (he has homes in LA, NY, Aspen, London, and Monaco).


A couple of months ago, Peter and Ophelia were talking about their trip to Mexico. Peter mentioned that Mexico City was his favorite city in the world. I was shocked; the concept of favorite city had never occurred to me. I have a favorite athlete, Lewis Hamilton*; a favorite place, Southeastern Utah, especially Coyote Gulch in the Escalante River basin**; and even a favorite car, the Birdcage Maserati – or Tipo 61 – the last great front-engine racecar, but a favorite city had never occurred to me.

Maserati Tipo 61, showing the unusual space frame that gave it the nickname Birdcage.

But now that I knew the concept of favorite city, I started thinking about what mine would be. As a disclaimer, when I say favorite city, what I really mean is favorite city to visit. It seems to me that it should be something cool like New York, Paris, Florence, or maybe even Shanghai, well, the French Quarter in Shanghai, anyway. But none of those cities work, maybe because I haven’t spent enough time in them, maybe because they are filled with furriners. I don’t know why, but I kept coming back to Los Angeles; how uncool is that?

But I don’t want to give the impression that Los Angeles is my favorite city by default; it isn’t. It is my favorite city because I love visiting it. The same goes for Coyote Gultch; when I told Michele that we should consider moving to Escalante, all she said was, “Why don’t you check the weather there for a year.” I did, and after about three months, I decided moving there was a bad idea. I don’t want to live in Los Angeles; I just want to visit it…often.  

I love the chaos of Los Angeles – and, by Los Angeles, I mean the greater Los Angeles area, including places like Manhattan Beach and Glendale and even Pomona – the anything-goes attitude. I love the sprawling size and the diversity. I love the car culture, and I love that I can get an excellent Chinese snack at midnight after a Stravinsky concert. And, I should add, it is not a generic Chinese snack but a spicy pork snack in a Schezwan restaurant, and the concert is in a building designed by hometown architect Frank Gehry with superb acoustics. Rather than rambling on, I just post some pictures to show my point. 

*duh, **duh, again

A Walk In The Dirt (Almost To The Beach)

Random Walk

While we were staying at Tracy and Richard’s place at Point Reyes Station a couple of weekends ago, we hiked- maybe wandered is a better descriptor – to Abbotts Lagoon. I love being outside and, especially, walking on a dirt trail or on no trail. Still, I haven’t walked on a dirt path – except to cut through a parking lot border – in probably four years, and I’ve missed it. There are all kinds of reasons, from hammertoes to having trouble breathing. After I got my new replacement aorta valve, I started exercising by lifting weights and walking on a treadmill, which I still do, but neither one offers the satisfaction of being on the land.

The short hike to Abbotts Lagoon, in Point Reyes National Park, was harder than I expected. And more fun! And more interesting. When I am walking on a treadmill, once I get to a steady pace, I don’t think about the actual walking part, but walking on an uneven dirt path, I have to think about almost every step. That is not something I did fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, I had much more available bandwidth to look around and marvel at the scene around me. Not that this is a particularly spectacular landscape. At first, it is just dry grass and gentle hills. Still, it is full of detail.

Close to the end of the trail, well before the beach, is Abbotts Lagoon, which connects with the ocean by way of several lazy meanders. There is more wildlife here than I expected, and everybody seemed less afraid of humans. And why shouldn’t they be less afraid? Our species has gone from hunter to birdwatcher in most of the world -well, here at least – during the last century (plus or minus a decade). The fur traders and casual hunters have been replaced by people like us who are not looking for decorative feathers or otter pelts, and the animals have reacted to that.

Something is healing about being out on the land. Being on the land is primal; it touches our animal core. There are a lot of people on the trail and each one of us is singular. Each of us has our own personality. Just like the animals we cross paths with. That difference is the engine of evolution, and it runs deep.

As an aside, about seventy years ago, I tried my hand at raising snails. I had read about it in Sunset Magazine. The article was about taking common garden snails and putting them in a large container of cornmeal for a couple of weeks to clear their digestive tract, and then…that was it. Like magic, they were ready for eating. Except I couldn’t do it. When I took the top off to clean the container, some were on the cornmeal munching away, and some were sliming their way up the sides to see more of the word; one was even all the way to the top, trying to get out. Each snail had its own personality. Snails are pretty primitive, pretty basic, but even at that level, each one is different. It is harder to kill and eat an animal that has a personality, for me, at least. End aside. 

The Presidential Debate and Neoteny

Random Walk
Otters frolicking in the sand.

Neoteny is the retention of the juvenile features in an adult animal. Genetic factors influence the degree of neoteny in individuals. Neoteny is manifested both behaviorally and physically. Temple Grandin, Mark J. Deesing, in Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals.

On the one hand, I am convinced that man owes the life-long persistence of his constitutive curiosity and explorative playfulness to partial neoteny that is indubitably a consequence of domestication. … On the other hand, domestication is apt to cause an equally alarming disintegration of valuable behavioral traits and an equally alarming exaggeration of less desirable ones. Conrad Lorenz in the forward to The Wild Canids.

Debating is all about dominance, and Vice President Kamala Harris dominated former President Donald Trump in last Tuesday’s debate. She doesn’t want to come across as an Angry Black Woman, but she can’t look weak; that’s a pretty narrow path to follow, and, after a shaky start, she pulled it off. Somebody with a much better political memory than I have said it was the first time anybody beat Trump in a debate.

When I repeated that to some friends on a Zoom call, they all said I was wrong, insisting Hillary won in 2016 and Biden won in 2020. That’s not how I remember it, so I listened to the second of three debates between Trump and Clinton. Ok, I didn’t listen to the entire debate – I’m not that much of a masochist – but I did listen to the first third. What I came away with was not so much about who the clear winner was but the impression that Donald Trump was way more coherent eight years ago. He was a much more formidable candidate then.

What I thought this blog was going to be about was neoteny and how it fits into Donald Trump’s persona, but I believe now that the most noticeable thing about Trump is his deterioration. Sure, he is an adult who acts like a three-year-old – a bad-mannered three-year-old who acts in a way most people would not want their three-year-old child to act like – but that is not as noticeable as the deterioration happening in front of us.

We are born, we grow up, and we – eventually – die. However, it is not a linear process. The change a human goes through in their first fifteen or twenty years is dramatic, and I believe the same sort of dramatic change takes place during the last fifteen or twenty years of our lives. We are comparatively stable during what I would call our middle years. Comparatively, the change that occurs in us at thirty to forty-five – or even forty-five to sixty – is pretty minor. But Trump is past those relatively stable years – stable not being a descriptor I would not normally use to describe Trump – and rapidly falling apart on live TV. If he were to win, I imagine that decline would on accelerate. That’s pretty scary.