Snow in October

I know it is almost November, but it is still October. It is not a joke. You can't see 10 feet from you as it is so heart and wet snow.

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Back Hone and...

Back in NYC for the weekend. Sukiyaki bowl with Natto rice. I feel I am home. Someone was looking at me like, what on earth you are eating, but I didn't care as I was happy.

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How Many Languages?

I guess it is typical products in Europe, but not this many. English, French, German, Portuguese,... I now know Europe is not one country even some company tries to business in the European market in a similar manner to the US.

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Walking Around Amsterdam

It turned out to be a great weekend weather wise. I decided to go to Amsterdam. It was a great decision, even though it is already pretty chilly and you need a jacket and scarf.

I was not quite sure where I was but there were boats for sightseeing. Usually it costs about 15 euro for 90 minutes tour or so, and I wonder how the view is different from the one from the eye level.

I heard about it but did not know it exists. Yes it does. There were several floating houses on the canal - very similar to the ones in Seattle. Every one looks similar structure - one story obviously and 2 rooms or so.

Wanted to do some shopping, which I ended up not buying anything, at the shopping district where you find all high-end stores. Some of them were closed as it is Sunday while majority of them were opened. This means I can come back here any weekends if there is nothing else to do.

Close to this district, there is a big park, I guess it is like central park for new yorkers. I don't know why but the trees here don't change their colors that much but the leaves just die. Not pretty...

Day Trip to Antwerpen Belgium

It was a nice sunny day so I decided to drive - and the destination was Antwerpen in Belgium, which is just about 100 miles away (south) and it took just about 100 minutes.

The first thing I visited was this castle... I don't know the history well, but it seems it was occupied by Roman at some point and there are many status of showing how big these people were.

This is the main reason I came down all the way here today - the church where main characters in the animation in Japan died, which I don't quite remember. I think this is a beautiful church but it seems only Japanese know about the story.

This is the inside of the church. There were many famous paintings, and one of which was the one the characters saw at the end of the story - sorry no picture as I did not go inside of the church.

Next to the church, there is the city hall, which has obviously Belgium's flag along with EU's one. It gives you more European feeling than Amsterdam/Haarlem at least for me.

In front of the city hall, there is a famous water fountain. If you look at closely you can see the water is actually coming from some of the body parts, e.g. from the wrist at the top.

After some sightseeing, I was ready for good food, which was actually the main reason why I came to Belgium. It is konwn that Belgium is famous for food, while the Netherlands is famous for not-good food. I did not do any research on the restaurants, but I found this nice French restaurants, Alaville, several blocks away from main attractions. Glass of red wine was nice with this chicken dish which came with a lot of root vegetables. It was so worth the trip down here.

On the way back when I was waiting for the traffic right to change, I noticed the red is not circle but HART shape. How cute this could be. I didn't see at any other places so I guess this was the only place?
I will come back to Antwerpen or at least to Belgium during my stay in the Netherlands, for food and chocolates. I bought 500g of high-end chocolate, which I asked at the information booth, and it costs only 10 euro... Really cheap.

Mansion Tour

We visited one of the mansions in NYC as it was an open house weekend. This is no longer occupied but it had a lot of furniture they could have used. This was in one of their bedrooms. There was no plumbing so this was how they did the business at that time.

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Chanko-Nabe

Back in NYC this weekend. It got a bit chilly so we decided to do nabe, Japanese pot dish. We have not cooked Chanko before but it came out pretty nice. A few types of fish and chicken meat balls. Nice to have home cooked meal after being away for a while.

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