The old Delta 747 - second floor business class

It seems like a distant memory now, but working for Delta was pretty cool. As an employee, I would just look for open seats to interesting places, call Kristin from work, and say something like, "The business class seats upstairs are open on the 747 to Tokyo later today, you want to go to Japan?"

Of course everything has a cost and sometimes it is not a number. Traveling completely freely with Delta for about two years will always be something I look back at fondly, no matter how many companies I build or places I go. I took about eight weeks of vacation in a year there, and nobody really gave a shit. That is pretty cool. I got paid great to do pretty cool work that was not hard; that is pretty awesome. But in the end I could do my daily job in about 40 minutes and its impact on the grand scheme was dubious at best. Everything has a cost, time above all else. Don't settle. Even if it comes with free business class flights anywhere in the world.

Kristin enjoying a trip to Japan in the old business class seats upstairs on the 747

Japan's Colorful Packaging

Wasbi Nori

Shinjuku dreams

The clouds that hovered in Tokyo never seemed to lift, blanketing skyscrapers where Japanese corporate leaders once flew dangerously close to the sun.  Japan's culture pervades society in a way that encompasses even the most minute detail - even the reflections off of a damp pavement seem decidedly "Japanese."  It is a culture that owns its country, and a country that owns its culture.  Nowhere else is the visitor lead into the ephemeral quality of culture so obviously, and yet, when just mm away from understanding, it dissipates like a cool morning fog you can just barely smell.  That is Japan.

Now when I close my eyes, the lights of Shinjuku still linger like phantoms on the back of my eyelids.  So bright and yet to fade.

The world's creepiest abandoned cities

I wrote this piece right before Kristin and I married, almost 2 years ago.  Over a million people read it, and I just noticed that I never published it on goboogo.  So, here it is.  Here is the original run.

Some cities die. The people leave, the streets go quiet, and the isolation takes on the macabre shape of a forlorn ghost-town - crumbling with haunting neglect and urban decay. From Taiwan to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, these abandoned cities lurk in the shadows of civilization. Their histories are carried in hushed whispers and futures stillborn from the day of their collapse. Some have fallen victim to catastrophe while others simply outlive their function. I think we can all agree on one thing - they are all very creepy.

Pripyat
Location: Pripyat, Ukraine - 100km from Kiev
Story: On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl reactor began its tragic meltdown. The incident was a huge blow to the viability of the nuclear energy platform, and still today, the town of Pripyat is an abandoned shell of a city frozen in a 1980's Soviet time-warp. While the failed reactor has been entombed in a an appropriate sounding casing called a "sarcophagus," the area remains unsafe for human life. The town has thrived in one aspect though. Wildlife has returned to the area in droves. Wolves silently hunt among the towering apartment buildings, and boars forage for food in the abandoned amusement park - which strangely opened the day after the reactor explosion in the midst of evacuation.
Abandoned since: 1986

Tokyo Kawaii - Overdosing on cute in the heart of Japan

Kristin and I jumped over to Tokyo for a few nights last summer.  While there, we had a great time, checking out a bunch of amazing stuff.  Tokyo immediately vaulted towards the top of our list of favorite cities.  I took thousands of pictures, but some of my favorites are from the cute, or kawaii, side of Tokyo.

We prowled the shopping district of Ginza, bathing our eyes in untouchable Hermes bags, eating delicious baked sweets, and racing into toy stores to buy stuffed capybaras and to gawk at the multiverse of cute shoehorned into every floor.  We hit the apex of cute at Hakuhinkan Toy Park and just sort of rode the tide all the way back to the Haneda airport, where we departed, better for having visited Tokyo.

You start seeing things and it just seems normal.  "Of course," you think, why wouldn't Elmo be sitting at a table inside a bank seemingly in the middle of a conversation about CDs?  Why wouldn't the emergency exit explanation in the subway include an exit diagram with dinosaurs and other interesting trappings?  Japan seems to stamp some badge of character onto anything, and it is refreshing, and usually pretty damn cute. 

Enjoy the pictures.