GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Shizuoka Prefecture is renowned for green tea, grown in topiary-neat rows like this. More Japan on a Friday stories Today was a perfect sightseeing day on a Friday. I took the Shinkansen bullet train from somewhere near Tokyo ($US50!) where, despite speeds of 207 km/h passengers still find time to fall asleep - I think it's the hi-carb rice crackers. I landed at Tom and Sumiyo Bickel's rustic house in Kakegawa, midway between Tokyo and Kyoto. They run a language school called Oregon House of Kakegawa (in Japanese, contact them at oregonhouse@amail.plala.or.jp) named after Kakegawa's sister city Eugene, Oregon where they spent 10 years as stewards of the city's cultural exchange farm. Last night they hosted a very Eugene-style potluck dinner with a number of their friends and students so they could "meet the Chinese-Australian on the folding bicycle." Pot Luck in Japanese translates more or less to "mochiyori" or "bring something over". It...

Watch my illicit little movie It's a traveling exhibition of individualized Moleskine notebooks by artsy types that you can fondle and admire - with white gloves. I've used a Moleskine for years - my favorite ones are the simple notebooks that come in packs of three and fit into the tightest jeans pocket. Guess what - they still tell you phone numbers and addresses even after your cellphone dies. The most memorable one - on fast glance because unbeknownst to me, you weren't supposed to photograph anything - was designer Julia Lohmann's glass (or was it crystal?) studded Moleskine. It gave me all kinds of ideas of what to do with the draw full of found objects I can't quite bring myself to trash ... More at http://www.galfromdownunder.com/japan I'll be wringing the most out of my $US330 (!!!) Japan Rail Pass from Oct 29-Nov 4, using internet cafes rather than lugging my precious MacBook Pro, so stand by ...

Above: Pink is the new pink in Japan - read about my adventures on the  Bike Friday tikit  at the link below Know how to fold 'em (with a bullet train)  I've barely managed to blog about my Singapore cycling experiences and now I'm doing it again in Japan! Check out my Japan on a Friday  chronicle below, where I reveal what you can see with a 7-day bullet train pass and a folding bike: Japan on a Friday: One Perfect Day in Kakegawa, Shizuoka Japan on a Friday: Kyoto, Temple Central Japan on a Friday: Chasing nabe pots in Kyoto Japan on a Friday: Hiroshima via Nagoya Japan on a Friday: An Obamajority in Hiroshima Japan on a Friday: Miyajima to Fukuoka for monument hopping and wallet dropping Japan on a Friday: Himeji-Jo and back to Tokyo! Japan on a Friday: Sayonara to sushi and all that VIDEO Galfromdownunder in Japan playlist  : in-the-saddle video reveals what it's like to bike in Tokyo with the Half Fast Cycling Club and Bike Friday folk Below: One of the 'g...

Here's a clue to where I'll be when, or was: Bike Friday Event Calendar  ... specifically my spot on it +++ Oct 2009 Singapore and Japan Sep 2009 Cape Cod Jun 2009 Georgia May 2009 New York April 2009 Colorado April 2009 Yoga Teacher Certification March 2009 Arizona +++ Jan 2008 San Francisco/Sacramento Feb 2008 Hawaii Mar 2008 Arizona Mar-Aug 2008 Galfromdownunder downunder Sep 2008 New York GAL MOVIES Check out the latest Gal movies on YouTube or go right to the all-time best ones My old Livejournal Latest News use to do the job of this WHERE sticky - now it just stores interesting history about my Cuba book for posterity Permalink for this post: www.galfromdownunder.com/where

Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Houses, Oak Bluffs. They're not all pink ... I'm just back from a weeks riding on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket with 40 or so cyclists, courtesy of Friday Friendly Tour Company BikeandtheLike and 5 magnanimous Bike Friday customers. I have these customers to thank: Sue, Glen, Leo, The Knables, plus Charlie (he must be inside getting some chowder) for sponsoring my visit to the Cape How magnanimous? I cajoled them into signing up for a Friday Friendly trip in the Berkshires, but due to the recession? Hills? The tour was undersubscribed, and thus cancelled for this year. A bit of fast webgotiating and within an hour I had them switched to a completely different Friday Friendly tour company, $400 less expensive, and subbing my attendance to the tune of $100 each. "If you can get them to sponsor you, I'll kick in the rest," said Suzy the tour operator. Of course, my part of the bargain was to write a full multimedia...

Tucked between the concrete, concessions, cars and cacophany of NYC are some Edenic little gardens, lovingly maintained and enjoyed by the surrounding neighborhood. This is one of many on the lower east side I visited with my mother and friend Christina, who has the coveted iron key. The garden spreads to the surrounding neighborhood My mother in front of the cute mini chalet My mother communes with flowers Christina in the gardenshe shares with her Lower East Side neighbors Inside the little treehouse. The Traffic Cone Bag ever present - in city mode.

The house that Alison sat looked a bit like this, but unlike Thoreau's digs, was way more than a stone's throw from a home cooked meal and hoogs (that's hugs in Scottish). WHEN you're asked that standard contest question, "Who do you admire the most in the world, and why?" - just who comes to mind for you? Someone famous? Infamous? Completely unknown? When asked this 10, 5 and 2 years ago, I thought of the same gal each time - a friend I met in my travels called Alison. More about her in a moment. This question came up recently in a heated, though chummy debate with a couple of friends about Henry David Thoreau, the eloquent writer/philosopher/inward excursionist who's practically deified by the general public for his contribution to voluntary poverty, or rather, simplicity. Don't get me wrong - he wrote a great book, but when I read that his little cabin was a stone's throw from a home cooked dinner with a loving and supportive family - gimm...

Continuing my tikit on Trial experiments in NYC, we test the welcome at some upscale locations, proving there's almost nowhere a Bike Friday can't go ... MOVIES tikit on Trial in NYC Check out the new videoblogs about a certain Princess Pink tikit living large PLUS Meet Bicycling writer Steve Friedman, father and son Cantos and Bfold staff - the people you meet while loitering under the stoop at a bfold.com ...

Still on a a "transcendental tear" after my Yoga teacher training , last night's spiritual excursion was to a Gongyo - a formal chanting ceremony in the Nichiren Buddhism tradition, as practised by members of Soka Gakkai International . Wiki oh wiki, what is Nichiren Buddhism? Nichiren Buddhism focuses on the Lotus Sutra and a belief that all people have an innate Buddha nature, and are capable of attaining enlightenment in their present lifetime. Nichiren Buddhists believe that the spread of Nichiren's teachings and their effect on practitioners' lives will eventually bring about a peaceful, just, and prosperous society. Sounds good to me! I was first introduced to SGI by leadership coach and friend Chuck Craytor , an SGI devotee for over 20 years. I was mesmerized by the power of even a small roomful of people chanting the key mantra, or Daimoku: Nam-myoho-renge-kyo . From Wiki: The basic practice of SGI members is based on faith, practice, and stu...

This is NOT Obama, sorry. I think it's a photo of Swami Sivananda, founder of the Sivananda movement - from a postcard I bought at the shop. "Nothing is impossible to a person who practices concentration." Could have been said by Obama himself ... If you've ever wondered where those Hari Krishnas disappear off to when they float down the road in their orange robes, their chants and bells fading into the distance ... I think I've sussed it out. It would be a place like the Sivananda center, which in NYC, is actually a real live ashram tucked away in a row house, with resident Swami . Having recently completely a basic yoga teacher certification , I'm in the process of educating myself about as many different forms of yoga as possible - from the Friday night downward-dog-dating scene at some studios, to the fluorescent-lit gym drill to rubbing trunks with Ganesha himself - it's all good. According to Google, Sivananda is a non-profit organization ded...

Fun and games with partner yoga - teacher Michael Kersten shows me a basic Cir du Soleil move Pictured above: Spring 2009 graduates. Spot the Galfromdownunder doing the easy pose - Navasana . Three grueling months are finally done and dusted - I'm now a 200-hour certified Vinyasa yoga teacher, according to the certificate that now sits on top of a pile of books including anatomy, The Bhagavad Gita, the Sutras, and a very thick training manual from Joschi Yoga Institute, NYC. No longer can I make half-baked Downward Facing Dogs with my knees on the ground begging like Fido. Why didn't anyone ever correct me in the past? There's nothing like a formalized course to set you straight on misconceptions you might have had for years. The course was big on anatomy, as Joschi , the head yogi, is a certified authority in that subject, along with psychology, dance, and other related fields. He and business partner Monika run a tight ship; there's no woo-woo laxness about the cours...

Since my book The Handsomest Man in Cuba was first published in 2003, several people have gone over and used it to track down some of the people I met and stayed with. You can read about some of those encounters in this set of blog posts . But I fell out of my saddle when Ken Lyneham from Australia actually went out of his way to locate the Handsomest Man himself. He's not the photographer on the cover (who could well be taking a photo of the Handsomest Man, or maybe Señor Hassleblad is just handsome inside) - but the hunk I met at the only fancy hotel I stayed in. And let me get the record straight - I shook his hand and that was it. So many people have written saying ... didja ... ? Puh-lese. Allow me to read you the closing line in that paragraph of daydreaming: "I let go of his hand." Yes, fully clothed and standing either side of a chicken wire gate we were, when we stopped shaking hands. Get it? More thrillingly, Ken tracked down Lolita - the most beautifu...

UPDATE! Translation at the end of this post ... I've just received a couple of reviews for the German edition of the Handsomest Man in Cuba - re-titled Cuba Particular by the folks at Piper-Verlag/National Geographic Adventure Press. Here they are: Review 1 - Globetrotter Review 1 - a random online review See translations at the bottom of this post ... If you can read German, be my guest and post a comment below telling us all what they say! Although I studied German for 4 years at school, the only words I know are "Lebkuchen" - a heavenly gingerbread cake-cookie dipped in a thin layer of dark chocolate, and only sold around Weinachten (Christmas), and "Sie antwortet, das fussball ihr langweilig ist." which means "she replied that she found football boring." A German friend in New York mentioned that the translation sounded a little strange, so I asked the publishers to reassure me otherwise. Here's what they replied: Dear Lynette Chiang, As your...

Meeting bicycling scholar Prof. John Pucher from Rutgers uni - he lives in Central Jersey and hasn't owned a car for over 35 years. Beats my 15 or so, but who's counting? Read John's academic bio . A cooler article about him in Momentum mag. More about this on the Bike Friday blog. I've just attended the American Institute of Architect's Fit-City 4 , an annual half-day conference Promoting Physical Activity Through Design. It was well attended, and I was one of three people who actually rode a bike, specifically a folding bike to the conference, stashing it under the reception desk. Naturally, bicycling was a central topic in addition to walking and stair climbing. Yes, there was even an expert stair designer on the panel, and the Dept of Mental Health and Hygiene (cleanliness is next to clueyness?) developed a lime green placard you could take away to hang in your stairwells. It reads, " Burn Calories, not Electricity ." Not bad slogonometry, but if...

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Sandy Thompson, formerly of xploring.com, a division of ideas company Saatchi & Saatchi. (I was a copywriter for Saatchi in Australia, Ireland and Creative Director for an afiliated agency, Tribu, in Costa Rica). xploring is about super curious cats like us getting out there among the pigeons, seeing how they eat, sleep, fight, make up, brush their teeth and win Nobel Prizes , multimediaclasting and customer evangelizing - just up my silicon alley. The meeting was fueled by a mutual friend, my former boss Jorge Oller at Tribu. Thank you Jorge for your persistance, not only am I honoring you with the attached photo, I am honoring your capitulation to my Customer Evangelism by showing your Bike Friday tikit in stylish repose (see below). I was excited to meet Sandy because I'm always keen to meet anyone who's been pursuing a similar path to me - out on a limb, living a nomadic life pushing relationship marketing to the nth degree b...