GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

I was delighted to receive a visit from a gal I met in a cave in 2004. Does that sounds mysterious? I was crossing the Yucatan on my bicycle - a hot, dusty and dehydrating affair. I met Patricia Soto in a cave somewhere in the middle. We walked and talked and ate. She also rides bikes, making her an anomaly among chicas en Mexico. Sometime later did suffer from dehydration. I suspect is was not eating enough, rather than not enough water - food provides salts and eletrolytes the body needs in extreme heat.  I barely made it across to Tulum, and called her. She let me to recuperate in her house Cancun, drinking Pedialyte. Visiting Patricia and her mother in her native Cancun If you have ever gotten dehydrated, you'll know it's not fun. You ache from the middle of your brain to your big toe. Nor is it easy to fix just by drowning yourself in large vats of water or electrolyte solution. It takes time. Meanwhile you feel like utter crap. You can read about ...

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I managed to rustle up a table of four to do turkey at the Standard Grill . It was OK for the price, considering it was Thanksgiving, New York City, last minute etc, although it was a bit mean on the sides, and the best dark meat was clearly spirited away for a more worthy class of diner. I jested with all my friends who had free invitations to eat  with families that only the friendless gotta pay! Walking around afterwards at Times Square - for want of nothing better to do - I came across the Charmin toilet man. This is a man dressed up as a toilet, inviting you to ablute in sanitary style at their pop-up toilet facility. He is accompanied by a pom pom girl, dressed far less imaginatively than she could be for such an important job - come on Charmin, don't tell me your political correctness prevented her from wearing a skimpy maid's uniform and wielding a toilet brush? This Charmin effort was all new to me, but Google tells me it's been a...

  Above: The view from the Standard Hotel's elevator - one you don't mind being stuck in The  Standard Hotel  - a shingle as chicly understated as the building is understatedly chic - has opened its lounge in the stratosphere. Straddling the wildly popular Highline aerial park, which I  filmed  just before it opened, this Polshek-designed, Andre Balazs-owned inn reminds of the Jolly Gray Giant.  I don't even know what the latest name of the lounge is - Manifest? Boom Boom ... Boom? The celebs have christened it of course, but this post is for us plebestrians who pass between the Giant's gray chino'd thighs, peering crotchward to see if those  mile high performances  are just a myth (here's another punny headline to add to the mix: Motel Sex - boom boom). You enter the hotel through a Lego-like yellow cylinder and reappear in a small lobby flanked by two very cool, white egg-crate like partitions. The maid in me wonders if someone is hired to feath...

Exquisitely excessive packaging at Tayashimaya in Japan and Singapore. A ball of rice is presented like a jewel; a cake resembles an architectural sculpture. You know how you come back from some exotic place, and all you want to do is keep prolonging the experience, eating the same foreign food for as long as possible, mincing around in your sari or kimono or toga, playing Pavarotti or koto music while ordering papardelle con ragu for breakfast and a bento box for dinner? Well, as I wrote in my Cheap'n'Choosy blog , today I made a beeline for Takashimaya , a Japanese department store in New York I'd roundly ignored prior to my recent 5 weeks in Singapore and Japan . I'd already cased out Pearl River and Sunrise Japanese grocery on landing, despite putting my back out in Tokyo, discovering that most of what I'd lugged home is readily available here in NYC. There is generally nothing in department stores that I really want, especially ones like Henri Bendel...

Last post I wrote something "a society with a fascination with the minutiae of life is one you will never cease discovering." This is one example of minutiae. I found this miniaturized "curry rice meal" at Kid Robot in Soho, NY, day after getting back from my 3 week Japan trip. Oh how I wish I'd made it to geek central, Akihibara , where you can find wierd stuff like this and more. That's a definite for next time. It struck a chord because I learned curry rice is a staple of Japanese urban families - basically a just-add-water flavor cube of riotously tasty curry paste, that you team with veges, meat and rice in no time flat. I ate this at Richard and Haruyo's house in Nagoya. And on the United flight coming over. The little red pot has a real wooden knob. The lid fits perfectly and has a certain weight to it despite this whole thing being about an inch diameter. The ladle 'scoops' the curry nicely. You can remove the ladle from the sco...

UPDATE: Yoga really works!  Some exercises to fix your back Right: What I need right now ... the Yamaha-owned onsen Tsumagoi (means "Love your Wife") in Kakegawa. Those are my green-tea-soaked tootsies about 2 weeks ago ... ... AND I don't mean pickpockets, hijackers, or even Bangkok tailor-made shirt touts (the best in the world - the touts, not the shirts, which fall apart after 2 washes). I mean: look after your back when dragging suitcases, sleeping in hostels, stepping off strange and uneven curbs (kerbs downunder), and yes, biking around like I've been doing for 5 weeks. After 2 weeks customer evangelizing in Singapore and another 3 in Japan , I'm reporting to you flat on my back, after putting it out on my last day in Tokyo. I was simply folding a blanket and when POW! A sharp, throbbing pain above my left hip. Somehow, I managed to get back to NYC - bracing myself and dragging two bags and a small backpack through Tokyo's train and airport ...

After 3 amazing weeks of work and play in this country, it's time to leave. There's just too much more to see. A society with a fascination with the minutiae of life is one you will never cease discovering. Like the charred log that plays ambient sounds that I only read about in my guidebook, but didn't quite make it to that area - Akhihabira, electronic geek central. I got together with some BF Club of Japan folks for a Hokkaido-style meal just before I left. It was also the occasion to hand over my Princess Pink tikit to the new owner, Ray-san - a great deal for her considering the strong state of the yen against the tanking dollar. Adam Clark rode his Pocket Rocket all the way from Yokohama (1 hour) and Taniguchi-san and his wife KimLee trained it 1 hour from Seitama, north of Tokyo. The meal, at a local Gotojuki station restaurant called Raku, was a delicious and curious combination of potatoes, fish and salad - like Tokyo meets Idaho - Hokkaidaho? Taniguchi-san (belo...