Weekend in NYC

Finally I was back in NYC this weekend. We started with going out to a Japanese restaurant – Hibino in Brooklyn Height. They have “Obansai” along with unique sushi, so it was very good for very tired my stomach. We sent to a hot dog place in Park Slope where we passed by a few weeks ago. It was good, but over $4 for a hot dog was not sure to go back again. Saturday was home made cooking night, so we cooked salmon steamed/baked with Miso paste and roasted vegetables. They were very healthy and tasty. I like to eat something I know what’s in. Nothing better than home made meal after a long trip…

Working from San Francisco Bay Area

I have been away on business. I was in the bay area a half of the week last week. Meeting and meeting in the building even thought the weather there was very nice. Only the time I was able to be outside was for lunch. There was a nice bakery / sandwich place close to the office, so I got TWO cookies with roasted vegetable sandwich on the whole grain bread.Here is the sneak view from the office… Totally different from the one in NYC or Tokyo, don’t you think?

The Rest of Time in Seattle on Sunday

In Pioneer Squire, I found very interesting store - skirt store for GUYS. I know it is common to wear skirt among Irish, but it did not seem that this store is only for Irish. I heard that there are some kids start wearing skirt in Japan as well... The person inside was actually wearing skirt... Very interesting.

I drove a few miles north to University of Washington campus. They had a football game on Saturday and they beat University of South California (ranked #3) as a huge surprise. I was glad that I did not plan to visit there yesterday, since I bet it was crazy after the game, like we had at Penn State. Even it is only a few miles away from Seattle downtown, it totally feels like a segregated college town - one main street with shops and restaurants, and students houses/apartments all over. I noticed that they have very interesting football stadium (open two sides and only two sides have seating areas/wings).

You could feels like you got back to school time when you were walking on one of these streets.

Spending Sunday in Seattle

After full day of rain, it cleared today, so I decided to head to the downtown Seattle, which is 15 minutes away by driving.

I had a special place in mind - doughnut place I found a few years ago by accident. No breakfast this morning and left the room around 8:30 (I have not fully adjusted to the time yet, so I still woke up around 7 AM this morning.)

It was crowded as it should be for Sunday breakfast. I wanted to try old fashion but did not expect to have THREE of them - chocolate grazed, raspberry grazed, and pumpkin grazed.

I loved them all (I don't tell I finished all of them there or not though), but chocolate was the number one. I got latte whose form was very firm and pretty as you can see in the picture.

After having a good breakfast (at least for me but not sure for my body...), I headed to Pioneer Squire area. I liked this area because there are old buildings and famous book store, which was closed unfortunately.

I tried to catch a ferry to an island (30 minutes away), but it just left and I did not want to kill ONE hour for next one. I was still able to get a great view of buildings and famous stadium where Ichiro plays baseball.

Outlet Shopping and Koren Food

This title does not make sense that much, but this is what I did today (Saturday) in Seattle. It was supposed to clear up but it seemed like a typical Seattle fall/winter weather - drizzling rain all day. I headed to the Outlet center 30 miles north of Seattle to buy shoes for rainy day like today, and some others. Yup, I was only supposed to buy the shoes but ended up more than that, but not too much.

When I came back to the town I am staying in, it was already 1 pm and I was hungry for KOREAN. I heard this place from the lady working at a Japanese food restaurant. I ordered the same menu as usual - Tofu soup and Kal Bi (short rib)... They were not as good as the ones in NJ we usually go, but it was very decent and I am sure I will go back there again to try something different next time (it could be tomorrow or some time next week...)

Feel the Fall in Seattle

Sorry it took so long to post another one this time. I have been in Seattle for several days and so busy on work.

It feels like the same weather as that in NYC, but I found that the trees started turning the color already. They are very pretty and I really feel that the fall has come (bit sad, since it was summer till several days ago.)

Another picture I took when I was driving - it was pretty dangerous by considering that I usually don't drive in NYC. You can see a mountain which is called "Mount Fuji in Seattle". It was really beautiful in my eyes, but it does not look that much in this picture. I am sure I will have another chance to take a shot better.

I will stay in Seattle this weekend, so you will see more about this beautiful city, so stay turned...

Bergen Bagels

Another bagel lunch today... It was supposed to be one of the best in the city (or at least in Brooklyn). It is called Bergen Bagels.

We had pumpernickel bagel with LIGHT sun dried tomato cream cheese and sesame bagel with white fish salad and tomato. I have never eaten white fish salad - it did not look pretty actually, but it was delicious (if you like fish) and I will order again someday. Sun dried tomato cream cheese is my favorite filling. I used to do that at Ess-a Bagel as well for lunch.
Since it is very close - a few subway stops or 10 minutes drive, I am sure we will come back again. I took FOUR extra bagels for tomorrow's breakfast and for freezing for some other time.

Aren't they looking delicious and mouth watering?

Celebration

We had something very important thing to celebrate tonight, so we went to Sushi Den - one of our favorite restaurants in NYC. It has been a while since last time (maybe more than one year). We sat at the counter, and our chef for the night was Mr. K, who is actually my favorite there.

We had two broiled dishes - some fish's head and fatty tuna. Both were very tasty and tuna melted in my mouth.

No Sashimi (as usual since we are not a big fun of Sashimi), and dived into Nigiri Sushi - started with "Hikari Mono", white fish, shellfish, and ended with fatty tuna, which was just captured in Boston area yesterday and it was the first in this season. All were so good and it was way worth to wait for more than year to come back. We will come back sometime soon to celebrate something else - maybe birthday or something. GREAT EAT OUT!!

Weekend Dinner

Remember we bought apple cider with alcohol in it at the apple farm? We had it for dinner on Monday (which was still weekend since it was the labor day weekend). It was very much like sparkling wine with a hint of apple/sweet taste. Very nice!! The bottle was like Japanese beer bottle. You can see what is in it, and they do use champagne yeast to create the alcohol and the tastes like champagne.

We cooked Japanese style curry (vegetables only) with sauteed chicken, and edamame radish salad. I have my OWN curry recipe, but this time old fashion diner like curry. New potato was so tender and we really enjoyed it.

College Football Season Started!!

This weekend was the first week(end) for college football games. WE, Penn State easily won over Akron on the first game and we kept Top 8/9 in AP and USA Today polls. First a few games should be easy for us till Big 10 conference kicks off later this month.

It totally reminds me the time when I started the school TEN years ago, when I did not know that much about football, but now I am addicted to it and I need to check the scores and rankings all the time.

Friday Dinner on the Hudson River

Forgot to post this entry so I am doing this today (Monday).

It was a nice day on Friday, so we decided to go back to the restaurant on the Hudson river. Pretty crowded even though it was three days holiday weekend's Friday eve (we thought that people would get away from the city for a long holiday weekend.) We were seated at very nice window side, while we could wait for over one hour to be seated outside. Sun was about dusk and sky with several clouds were beautiful.

We had skirt stake and skate and they were OK. For some reason we were full by the end and did not have a room for desert, very rare. (No pictures of the food since the restaurant was so dark and my camera doesn't work well in dark.)

It is worth to go for the view - you could see the skyline of Manhattan.

Korean Food and Apple Picking

Title says all.

We went to one of our favorite restaurants on the planet today for lunch - So Kong Dong in Fort Lee NJ. They serve only two types of dishes - spicy soft tofu soup and beef ribs. They like any Korean restaurants served some starters like Kimchi and gave us freshly cooked rice in the hot stone bowl. After serving the rice, they poured the tea into the bowl to soak the left over rice.

The ribs came first followed by the soups - no picture of the soups was saved for some reason... They were both really delicious as usual. This restaurant is still on the top of our favorite list.

The weather was so nice and it was also the beginning of Autumn season, so why not go for apple picking - one hour away from where we were. Nice local route drive gave us this great view of apple farm. They just opened the farm this weekend and remain open till mid October. It was combined with winery and there was a tasting room. We skipped the tasting but we bought apple cider with alcohol, which I have never tasted and we are excited to drink it tonight or tomorrow.

New York seems a big city with a huge population, but one hour of drive gives a farmer like life, which is very strange to me. I love four seasons the north east in the U.S. provides.

Final Beach Day

I know I said that beach season for this year was over, but since it was really nice today (Saturday), we decided to go to the beach for the last time this year.

It was not too hot or cold, and a few clouds prevented from sunburn, even though there was barely wind. Since I posted a few beach pictures last time, no picture...

Remember I love the BBQ joint on the way home? Yes, we went to

our favorite joint called, Famous Dave's - it is a chain but it is really good. They serve french fries to dip the BBQ sauces for tasting, which is free and fun.

We had a coupon for desert and we ordered pecan pie for free. It was

impossible even for us to complete all three, so we took home pork rib and pecan pie.

On the way, we took the bridge to the Bronx. You can see many people were enjoying the last days of summer on the water.

Carriage House

This is what I have heard... These two stories houses are originally used as horse's house, but not it is a single family house - not as big as a brown town house, but still luxury.

Isn't it funny that centuries ago people built these for their horses, but not people are living? Biggest benefit of these houses is that it has attached garage, which is very rare in the city . Aren't they cute?

US Open Tennis - Part 2

It was 7:30 and we saw that the game at the Ashe stadium was about to start on the big screen. Showed the ticket and got a stamp on my wrist in case we needed to go outside of the stadium. Took a few escalators to the top of the stadium. There was a gorgeous moon just beyond the famous planet object.

Our seats were in the row Y, so we needed to climb like 50 steps to get there, but the view from there was stunning, even though you can't see the face of the players.

First game was Maria Sharapova, everyone knows her right? She was in her new black outfit inspired by NYC (Chrysler Building) per her interview. She won easily over unknown player. After the game, she talked about her comeback after the shoulder surgery, and in my ears her English was better than before. Maybe she now has an American boyfriend...

The 2nd game was Andy Murry from Britain. He had a difficult time to win over again unknown player, even though score did not reflect that. We were cheering the opponent (actually majority of the people there were cheering that guy not Andy for some reason).

We had a great time watching the games and catching up - about friend's wedding and other personal stuff.

I will come back again next year for sure, or at least I will buy the tickets when it goes on-sale.

In this video, I was looking at the skyline of NYC, CITI field (NY Mets Stadium)...)

US Open Tennis - Part 1

It's finally here. One of the biggest events in the U.S. - US Open Tennis in NYC. This was my 2nd time to see the games in person (last time was 3 years ago). I bought tickets a few months ago even though I did not know my schedule in August/September at that time. I asked my buddy - Brendan to come with me like last time we did.

I got there early so I started watching a men's doubles game, Robby Ginepri was in. He looked familiar when I saw him, and yes he was top 20 one time. After a few games, I moved to another court to see other (hopefully more popular player's) games.

Yes, I found one - Stanislas Wawrinka from Suitzland. He looks a bit like Brendan and he recognized the similarity in his eyes and nose parts, but actually these two are the most important elements in the face, so do the math.

After checking the scores, both lost their games. I could not believe by thinking Stanislas was #19 seeded.

It was time to go to the Ashe Stadium to see tonight's main games... Wait for tomorrow's entry to see these games and pictures/video.

Addtional Pictures from the Trip

I had a few more pictures from Sunday's day trip. First one is at the main corner at Tarrytown. The restaurant you can see here is famous and popular, and we will try next time when we pass it (so stay tuned for the follow up entry with pictures).

The other one is at the farm. They are apple trees and you can see sheep in the field. Very peaceful and you can't imagine it is less than one hour away from Manhattan. No food related top/picture this time, sorry.