What's up for 2014 - Stephen Abram Cybertour

Stephen Abram. Stephen's lighthouse blog for slides

http://stephenslighthouse.com/2013/10/29/internet-librarian-2013-cybertour/

Here's some things he thinks libraries should think about doing or being involved in during 2014!

• Moocs.

Potential for 28-38% of universities to be bankrupt within 10 years

Khan Academy

Learn4life. High school equivalent; ed2go

Lynda.com. Growing 400% a month

Libraries can be the place people go to receive their certification testing or badges (be a facilitator of a program or developer of a program or both)...like a proctor+. 

• Some social media sites to watch:

SomeeCards. Show personality of the library culture

Snapchat. Personality of the library 

Tumblr get a connection to teen boys

Pinterest. Middle age women. Promote books

• Cloud storage, infrastructure and software:

Get 60-80% savings to IT costs (less server and software installation and maintenance)

"Online server backups pretty freaking secure. Govt use it why aren't you?"

• Cloud data for curated data warehousing:

Oclc worldshare

DPLA. Discoverability of free metadata

• Visualization. Primary learning styles for visual learning. We need to provide visual displays

Word clouds

Cube technologies

Visual search

• User experience- eye frame studies

Are you displaying next step search for a visual learner?

• Do Sentiment search on social media sites:

Look for Bias. Topsy.com. Analytics for political focus or positive/negative sentiment

Quality

Facets. Critical thinking

• Use good Infographics 

Extract real stuff impacts out of annual reports

Useful for fun extractions. Here's the 10 pieces of info I want you to get out of this annual report or program or new piece of information.

• 3d printing 

Many Patents expire soon

Smithsonian. Take pic of boat, scan, print model on 3d printer

Library collection -good for looking for inspiration for students/artists

Get girls engaged with STEM stuff

• Arduino. Raspberry Pi

Create a laser gate counter for next to nothing using arduino

Robotics

Lego

Dimensional toys as tools to connect with all ages!

• Librarybox

Hotspot. -

Kelaine insert:  I'm so glad to hear him mention this...validates my Little Free Digital Library idea for local author audiobook/poetry marketing/promotion

• Crowd funding

Rally.org. Libraries are using

Indiegogo

Kickstarter

Tech Librarian Gaffaw

So I was looking through MELcat (elibrary.mel.org) today for a recent book I heard about at the Internet Librarian conference and hoped I could find through inter library loan. I'm hoping it can give me some ideas for the cataloging technology bits of the local author digital audiobook creation project I'm trying to get off the ground.  

So anyway, I drop in Accidental Systems Librarian, 2nd edition* in the keyword defaulted search box 

* (by Nichole C. Engard with Rachel Singer Gordon)

Here's one of the early results...Crisis Counseling and Tramatic Events Treatment Planner

Followed by...Practical Homicide Investigation: tactics, procedures, and investigative techniques

Yep. Technology will be the death of me!

License

 Some rights reserved by fabiwa

Digitization & Social Media: Strategies and Tools

Kenn Bicknell

Digital Resources Librarian, Depart of transportation LA library and archive

There was a TON of stuff in his presentation..

Kelaine Note:  He would be awesome for an all-staff presentation!!

Prezi: bit.ly/1g0scfn

Metroprimaryresources.info

His department saw a 57% budget cut in 2010.

What he wanted to accomplish with his new endeavors/goals:

Accessibility. Competing for eyeballs and want to be mindful that we can be the experts for something

Embodiment. Becoming trusted source for and protector of resources/archives

Patronage. Keep them coming back for more

3 phases of digitalization

On demand

File size and email restrictions: Externally accessible server. Started flickr collection

Aggregating the news coverage. daily transportation headlines on daily basis. Email via reference-cc'd him and he's building knowledge base-mini Wikipedia 

Phase 2 scanning whole collections

Adding links to catalog records

Harvesting born digital and grey literature

Initiate document sharing site

Establish self as 

Behinds scenes slide

Paper.li.  Compartmentalizations your tweets and reposts?

Phase 3 

Shelf by shelf inventory

Protocols for OCR, standardized metadata, files structure

Primary resources blog serves as new website

Flickr account getting amazing hits. Nearly 4 million views

Interesting side notes. Fashion and PR exploration

Engage users to enhance metadata about photos they find or are donated

One image a day on tumblr. Exponentially added to flickr traffic

Oac. California digital archives

Groundswell. book by Charlene li

News and information

Blog, twitter, paper.li

Digitalization started with employee newsletters

Anniversary events

Other disseminators picked up their content

Online calendar. This date primary resource calendar that he puts in people's face everyday

Uses Feeddemon - a free RSS feed reader for Windows

Batch emphasis:Quantity over quality

Historypin.com . Photosharing that accommodates video. Has Chronology data layer too.  Money from google superimposed augmented reality with google streetview.  Passes the 16 year old boy test

Publishing constantly on Facebook but through interaction with other services, not directly?!

Determining mutually beneficial relationships

Create google custom search

Leverage search capability of tool?

Tiki-Toki. Timeline

People plotter spelling?

Got a collaboration gig with the Getty because they found their stuff online

Search the rest:audio video and images cybertour

Greg Notess, Montana State University

@notess

Pic worth a thous words

Images for info

Videos n audio for learning

Images

Can sometimes find deep web, or authoritative text a simple google search buries. Click through the pic for the website/text

Use for a Visual id. What is a Petrel?

  Use query to see a petrel. Remember though, 10% images are wrong in bing and google

Find Charts, diagrams, graphs

  Myocaster distribution

Image similarity search filter option. Defaults to similarity of color first. Enter keyword to get true theme

Google image search   Use camera icon to upload an image

See search tools more info in Preview

Use this to check for exactly same image for copyright violation or Creative Commons reuse statistics.

Tineye -reverse image search

Upload image or web address. Can use to find similar image collections or where your pics have been reused on the interwebs.

Finding Creative Commons licensed images

-Google. Advanced image search. Usage rights free to use or share option. 

-Wikimedia commons

-Flickr advanced search. Cc license

-Bing images.  License tab

Videos

Uses: Learning (how-to), visual processes, event activities (recent and old)

YouTube

Vimeo

Bing video

Blinkx.com

InternetArchive: US tv news and also movies

Search:

How-to

Lecture

Duration, closed caption, source

YouTube filters

Audio

No audio database yet that he's found

Do youtube and video searching for audio

InternetArchive audio

Musician Digital Discovery programs presentation from Internet Librarian 2013

Diane Cowen, Virtual Services Librarian. Soundswell local music project: Santa Cruz public library Cowend@santacruzpl.org. @groovacious

David Dodd, Sonoma County Library

Other communities have music/musician discovery services

Seattle band map.com

Austinmusicmap.com

Sonomalibrary.org/community. Local author community website already in place...wanted to do the same type of thing for local music community

General emphasis on the local community, artists, artisans, food, small business

Local music food bank fund raisers CDs

One of David's favorite books...The atlas of new librarianship. By David Lankes 

Pretty much unknown but wonderful musicians

How gather info for database

• Personal
• Crowd sourcing
• Personal interviews
• Google search [Sonoma and music]
• ReadCd and liner notes
• Use Facebook and google together to discover more bands/musicians

Put info into excel database

Also added Photos and Posters/fliers--Collect and digitize

Partnership for larger regional music archives

Community media center

Need to follow up with him as he ran out of time to explain the discovery system he uses.

Santa Cruz music project

Local music project. Received a LSta eureka grant for funding

Wanted it to be a Geographical discovery tool

Wanted to include Compensation & copyright for the musicians. Songs are inclued in a downloadable database for certain about of time (2yrs) under public rights. Then not downloadable but placed in historical archive.

Payment to musicians. Sliding scale. Based on number of songs the musicians donate, $50-100

Discovery and access tool

Historical archive

Goals

Seen as a shaper of the local arts community

Stimulate value of local musician communities.

Based on Iowa city project idea!

Building the database and data entry

Omeka. Digital archiving software. Dublin core metadata authority

Ripping and scanning - more time consuming than she anticipated

Soundcloud. Has plugin for omeka. But Soundcloud is Not able to handle authentication to library cards, so needed to create an authentication tool.  They wanted to become curators of the material and only allow access to their own library patrons.

After authenticating library card, it downloads a zip file of the selected song

She mentioned issues with getting the musicians to follow through with providing their digital files.  

Says Problems are worth it though

The future

• 2yr cycles of collection overturn
• Collect other digital files, fliers, interviews, 

Community engagement tools and tips

Learning from the best and the brightest at Internet Librarian Conference!! OMG - David Lee King!!!

FYI: Here's the link to a vast majority of the conference presentations available for download... www.infotoday.com/il2013/presentations.asp  Username/Password: IL2013

Also follow tons of tweets and links to many other presentations: #il2013 and/or #internetlibrarian

Here's the notes from my pre-conference workshop...More will follow as I obtain free internet access :-)

David Lee King. Digital Services Director, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

• Digital media lab
• Social Media focus teams

 

Ruby Leon. University  Nevada-Reno

Discovering types of communities you serve. They can be:

• Mission defined
• job defined
  • Social media
  • Colleagues 
• Task defined
• Happenstance. City energy.  Untapped communities. Economic shifts.  
  • I.E. burning man in Reno. Infusion of artists. Sociology changes, engage outside of job, she went in the community to discover more about the people and synergies around this event.  She started the Burning Inquiry event- lectures
  Get outside your silo. See the webs that exist.  Be observant around town to discover new opportunities for engagement.
  Digital communities- notice where you see businesses and other groups posting social media slogans. That's where you need to make a social media presence to
  Programs lead to engagement opps
  • • Podcamp @ Topeka 
    • Hacker spaces

Effective engagement tips for social media-Have Cohesive plan

Creating business/sponsorship partnerships.  Talk to the development/legal department  regarding things you shouldn't promise in exchange for partnership.

Centralized selection engagement tips. Blogging, ebook of the day

Signs of success and engagement. 

• People seeking you out to partner with

Define your community

GIS studies with market segmention studies

Raising the profile

1. PR campaign 

• Ruby Leon suggested - Create Good themed bumperstickers

Discovering communities activity breakout

• Meetup.com
• Engagement programs--Speed dating with authors,  date a book. Blind date with a book.
• Check out the expert. Didn't work @ KDL.  Don't know why.
• Think about what are the activities/things these people we are trying to connect with are doing.  Program at a laundrymat? 
• Brewery partnership Any pushback from community?  Book and beer pairings you should try this weekend Facebook post
• 20-30s
  • Family gaming
  • Story times/early literacy with their children

Listening techniques

• Follow Social media trends
  • Respond to misinformation
  • Raise awareness of opportunities
  • Listen to Community issues
    • Get outside your silo. See the webs that exist!
  • Social media analytics. How do you find them?  Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Yelp
    • Think about what are the implications of action-need in the community
      • Make sure someone on staff has an account and monitors traffic. Set up a team to monitor on a daily basis various social media accounts.
      • Twitter advanced search   Search.twitter.com. Topsy.com?
        • Seach for name of library or "books" or other theme words. Or leave keyword blank to see that people are generally posting about. Also in Places field input zipcodes
        • Set up a daily paper in twitter
      • Socialmention.com. Search engine for social media accounts. Twitter, flickr, youtube. Analytics- sentiment (positive, negative)  top keywords, top users, top hashtags 
      • Hootsuite. Your posts, schedule future posts
      • Alerts.google.com
  • Organizations need to be responsive and encourage entire system to respond to what you hear while listening to your community
    • Complaint-discover it-refer it to the correct person in your organization-respond to it---be responsive to what you hear and act upon it. Develop responses to what you hear or define who needs to respond to what you hear.  
      • Decide a voice for your posts, ie ruby's college has a snarky, funny voice. 
        • How--Ask your marketing people, look at who your audience is and develop voice for that..ie. business casual, conversational! Tumblr, younger 20s, edgy, snark voice?
    • Homeless community
      • How to create an Email account, one on one computer tech
      • Library cards, flexible policies for address requirements.

Building communities

Social  media. Ask your patrons where they want to see you, Ie Facebook, four square, Pinterest, reddit, yelp, Instagram, Twitter, 

How to start a social media team- 

• Create a small 4-5people team per media site. 
• set goals; 
• define your focus-ie for Facebook
  • readers advisory(what's on your bedside table), 
  • current events, 
  • library events; 
• Create a posting schedule- make it a real work requirement -if you don't do it you get hand slapped.  Digital postings are considered an extra branch- David Lee King is the branch director.  
• Hold regular meetings.  
  • Delve into analytics. 
  • Explore what worked and what failed!  Compare posts with photos, vs not; time of day; 
• May need to invest some marketing money.  
  • Facebook ads got them over 6,000 followers in very short amount of time.  spent$2,000, rational-not buying friends but buying good ad space.

Facebook tips and tricks. 

• Mix of fun posts (which character are you going to bed with tonight) and real stuff. Fun stuff gets interaction which ends up having Facebook post more library related stuff on that person's page.  
• If using multiple accounts, ie KDL has page for each branch, our KatieL mascot, and main branch--Make sure to repost other branch stuff.  Multiple pages are a good thing..meet all communities where their needs are.  
• Create a Facebook group account for the employees to plan posting schedule and discussion for how to answer difficult questions.

Ruby Leon's suggestion--If concerned about people creating ads without permission, Hootsuite can have multiple people posting without being able to create ads.  Just change password if you no longer want to allow an employee to post.

Facebook just created a best practices guide for engagement

Google "Best practices Facebook engagement." To find it

 Suggestions for picture composition. Don't post a lot of text.  Have a call to action or next step (people like to respond) ie fill in the blank, "here's pic of new reference desk we are considering-what do you think?" creates focus group engagement.  Use the Facebook scheduling option (little clock icon on bottom left of post) to make sure your posts are spread out and varied.

In person engagement tips and tricks-Ruby

Curiosity committee-get people out of offices and into community

--I'd love to talk to you, would love to go out for coffee and meet with you and talk about what I can do for you.  Liaison needs, figure out your style to engage with people!  Make a goal for yourself how often you meet/engage with your community/s.  Engage with think tanks groups within your community too.  Learn how to become a liaison - Listen and prod, figure out how to move groups along.  Research data support.  Facilitate meetups of your communities.  Have your think tank groups create user guides/tutorials for digital materials.  

Group activities.  Pick a community group..Id group, how discover them where they are, listening, create an action plan

Davidleeking.com

Measurement tools for engagement

• Facebook insights -export data button on insights page shows unfollows per day and more extra stuff.  Look at this with your team to decide best practices for posts.

Best practice recommendation...Post once a day at least

• Bit.ly used for links because it keeps statistics. How many people actually clicked on your Facebook/twitter post
• Hootsuite uses owly to provide statistics
• Twitter ads. Twitter activity mentions, follows, recent tweets. Click analytics button for interests, location, gender of your followers
• YouTube has analytics too

Thanks for the retweet discussion...King belives it helps with engagement

Urbana library fiasco mention. Board of trustees is getting feedback from engaged social community to try and heal from it.  Telluride library also recently had problem.  Damage control - public healing...admit hey guys we goofed..after talking to your lawyers!

Blogs- not vibrant, but good for more permanent easy to find info in light of difficult to seach social media platforms like Facebook.

Some book recommendation options

Nice post by Sikat Basu http://soc.li/8UBdjy

Things to consider when choosing a tablet or ereader

I've been leading/teaching/conducting/facilitating Gadget Petting Zoos at several Kent District Library branches, giving people the opportunity to try out various types of devices that can be used for reading books, especially downloadable library books.  Here's a list of things I think are important to consider when trying to choose between the multitude of dedicated ereader and tablet gadgets (so you don't get bitten).

1. Weight – if you are going to be carrying it or holding it for longer periods of time, lighter is better
2. Battery life – will it last as long as you need it to? Tablets average 6-10 hours of use per charge. Dedicated ereaders can last for days or even weeks.
3. Memory storage (internal only vs external) – 8G will store on average up to 6000 epub formatted ebooks, or ~ 60 audiobooks, or ~ 3 movies. PDF formatted books take up MUCH more space! Also factor in pictures, apps, and music files if appropriate.
4. Camera – Still vs video; front facing for skype/video chat, back facing for photos or scanning
5. 3G vs WiFi – Overdrive library books will not download using 3G!

• Where will you be attempting to download books most often – is wifi available there? (ie, you have home wifi) If so you probably don't need 3G.
• Are you planning on using the device to surf the web often? If so, you might want 3G.
• Is the cost of 3G worth it? Extra cost of device, extra monthly fee from provider. Check areas of 3G coverage if you expect to use the device while traveling.

6. Traveling with device – will you be purchasing books while outside of the US? Or attempting to use the 3G or wifi...check if the device's store blocks foreign IP addresses or has incompatible 3G access in the country you will be visiting.
7. Touch screen device - allows quicker navigation, but some people prefer buttons
8. Size of keyboard (onscreen vs external) - large fingers make use difficult; sight impairment – can you see the buttons?
9. Magazines or newspaper subscriptions option from device store – is the content presented in the manner you want? Full page vs text articles. You might want to consider a tablet or tablet ereader for best viewing option.
10. Picture books – if you want to use for picture books, you will want a tablet or tablet ereader. Free online picture books tend to use flash, so make sure your device is flash compatible
11. Flash web content – iOS (Apple mobile operating system) is currently not flash compatible
12. File format limitations effect using books from other “purchase” sites and library downloads – for instance, iOS can't use WMA audio formats; Kindle is limited to Amazon or Audible purchased materials and some library downloads. Note: There are applications available, such as Calibre, which will reformat materials. See this page for a table of ebook format compatibility - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_readers
    Tablet FYI - downloading individual apps allows you to easily obtain books from multiple sites

Other options to consider for ereaders

1. Text to Speech
2. Night screen color
3. Screen type for reading outside
4. Library downloads – all ereader-only devices still need an internet-connected desktop or laptop computer, with software authorized to your device, to sync library downloadables. Tablets use apps and wifi instead.
   
   Any other things you considered when purchasing your gadgets?

Ashfall Book Review

Ashfall by Mike Mullin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The story kept me up all night to read.  Had me looking for water storage bins, googling how to grow kale, and planning where I'd go in the "event of an actual emergency". 



The depiction of the refugee camp was gutwrenching and unfortunately, from what I've heard from those in a similar situation, very realistic. 



Loved how the romantic relationship developed between the Alex and Darla, especially from a male point of view, and with consideration to the consequences of their actions.



If you liked Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, or are looking for a strong male character apocalyptic/dystopian survival novel to place on the shelf with Hunger Games..this is the book for you.



Oh, and Tanglewood Press...if you would speed up the release date on the sequel, Ashen Winter,...we'd be most grateful!  



View all my reviews

Coffeehouse Angel book review

Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


humorous; teens doing good works; overcoming adversity; and a scruffy kilted angel



View all my reviews

HarperTeen Free Online Books

Harper Collins book publishers have a great teen site where they often offer pre-publication and post publication free reads of books they are promoting.

Their browse inside site allows for flash and non-flash views (for those of us with IPODS)

Here's a sample of the Poison Diaries..which looks like a great summer read

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

Goodreads

I've been remiss in telling people about this great social media (or as librarians like to refer to them Web 2.0) site. Many of my co-workers and book devotee friends are sharing book reviews and "hoping to read" updates at a fast and furious pace. Won't you join us?? http://www.goodreads.com/

P.S. I recently added an area on my blog layout with the most recent additions to my Goodreads account.

Monster purse epiphany

My friend and fellow book devotee, Amy Williams...aka squirrel momma...began recently making monster purses. As I was looking through her latest postings on Etsy, Frankie said, "Wow, that looks like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland."

Short digression here: We recently had the joy of seeing the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version. I do mean joy! I'm not a huge Tim Burton fan, but Alice is a glorious riot of sumptuous color and a fun movie. My friends know me to get on a soap box over the huge amounts of money paid to actors nowadays...but I feel Johnny Depp earned every cent they paid him.

Back to Monster purse epiphany: Frankie asked me to make him a black canvas messenger bag with the Cheshire Cat monogrammed on it. I'm surfing the web for the right bag..but here's the grin he wants.

I'll post the finished product soon...and leave you with this to ponder..
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

ITUNES U USER'S GUIDE | PRINTER AND SERVICE MANUAL

I just completed a promo piece for iTunes U on the KDL.org computer tips blog and discovered this user's guide to be of service as well.

ITUNES U USER'S GUIDE | PRINTER AND SERVICE MANUAL

Best Books of 2009 - thus far

Managed to make my way home from the ALA (American Library Association) conference in Chicago with bulging bags of swag without getting a hernia. I scored some great ARCs (advanced reading copies of books not yet in publication, but due out this year), including Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, the sequel to the uberpopular and Michigan Thumbs Up Best Teen book of 2008 award winner, Hunger Games. Anne Rice's Angel Time and Andrew McCall Smith's newest, due out in the US in December. Also discovered a new (to me) cozy mystery series, A Scumble River Mystery, Murder of a Royal Pain by Denise Swanson, featuring school psychologist Skye Dennison, and the battle of the PromFest Committee moms.

However, the book that has me totally blown away is Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. He's not an author I'd read before..but I will be reading him from now on. If this book doesn't win awards or appear on NYT bestseller lists, there is no justice in this world.

Ryan, the recent Northwestern University drop-out, being rushed to a Michigan hospital.

Lucy, the 18 year old recent high school graduate, traveling cross-country with a new love, her former English teacher.

Miles, a 30 something magic store clerk, searching for his long-lost twin brother.

What could these three strangers possibility have in common?


Due out in August, this novel is a literary nautilus shell. Told in alternating chapters, Chaon swirls the lives of these three random people closer together as he explores the themes of personal identity and identity theft, with elements of a thriller to further keep you twisting along the paths of Ryan, Lucy, and Miles.

I'm having a difficult time finding books to compare it to. It has a high literary quality, an element of criminal mastermind, romance, slightly horrific thriller, teen appeal, with snippets of teachable moments regarding computer technology. Something to appeal to everyone I'd say!

I recommend this book for highschooler through adult, all genders.

1920 Parlor Grand Piano For Sale

My living room is no longer big enough for this piano (actually is has never been big enough, but we worked around it).


Vose & Sons Parlor Grand Piano from 1920. Totally reconditioned in 1976. Original paint and ornamental decorations, worn in some spots. $1,000 OBO Buyer pays shipping from Grand Rapids, Michigan

Soaked in Takayama

We managed to miss the rain while traveling, it decided to rain on our Matsuri (parade) in Takayama instead. We were supposed to enjoy 23 elaborately carved yatai (floats) many dating from the 17th century. Instead just as we were leaving our gasshoen (200 year old "praying hands" ryoken (inn)), it decided to start raining. Takayama craftsmen are known for their intricate carvings. Included on the yatai are elaborate karakuri (marionettes) that perform amazing tricks and acrobatics. Hidden in the float are 8 puppeteers controlling up to 36 strings. We managed to see one of these puppet performances between raindrops.

On a positive note, I was able to get some spectacular pictures of the gasshoen and it's grounds before the rain came. We also had more time for shopping for sarubobo (happy monkey baby) dolls and haori fabric in the shops and buildings dating back to the Edo period. At one tailor shop, I mentioned I was a quilter and the shop owner and son presented me with a gift of some fabric scraps.

The town is also known for sake breweries making their rice wine from the clear mountain streams surrounding the town and feeding the Miya-Gawa River which is lined with Sakura (cherry blossoms) and flows thru the center of town, spliting the Sanmachi (old town) from the newer section.
I didn't get a chance to sample the sake, but did buy several bottles to have a sake tasting at home. We had very tasty ramen noodles with hida beef and broth for lunch. Hida beef is famous as the cows are given massages and feed beer to provide the tastiest meat. Man, I'd love to have the life of that cow...

We also managed to find a secret ninja house ( complete with collapsing ceilings and hidden doors and staircases) masquarading as the Hida Archaeological Museum.

We realized we didn't get enough yen (many places only take cash). So we tried to get some money from a bank with ATMs we discovered while wandering around town. Unfortunately, couldn't figure out how to get it to take our card. A local lady happened into the bank lobby. She didn't speak any English, but she grabbed our ATM card, went up to the bank tellers, asked where a machine was that would accept foreign cards, and insisted on guiding us across town, well it's a small town, but still a good 15 minute walk from where we were, and she didn't even conduct her banking business before starting to lead the way. She would only accept our heartfelt thanks for her help! Our very own good samaritan!

Left town for our next city, Nara, with bulging bags of souvenirs and soaked to the skin. But still have fond memories of Takayama!


-- Post From My iPhone

Hiroshima Easter

Hi all,

I'm typing this from a Japanese keyboard, so please excuse the mistakes as the keys are very different from ours. ABC's are the same, but symbols and spacebar are different.

I'm having trouble uploading pictures from the computer in the Hiroshima hotel we are staying at...so here are some links to things we saw yesterday for Easter at the World Peace Memorial and museum. Celebrated Easter mass at the crypt chapel at World Peace Cathedral with 80 other people in English and Tagalog. There were actually open benches...not something we EVER see at Easter mass in the USA.

We also toured Miyajima Island near Hiroshima. It was eerily similar to Mackinac...only with Buddhist temples instead of the bark chapel. Even have a special food only made there...Mamiji Monju, Maple leaf shaped cakes with flavored fillings.

Last night Easter dinner was deep fried whale (had the consistancy of slightly rubber pork and yes! I ate it all and loved it) and spicy fried noodles, soba noodles (very bland), cod that was too chewy to eat, king crab legs (Frankie's all time favorite food), black sesame icecream with sticky riceflour balls (was very different tasting, but excellent) and chocolate cake and vanilla icecream for Frankie and me. I also had a green tea icecream cone earlier. It also was excellent. Overall the food has been very, very flavorful and very good!! Haven't tried the octopus or squid yet though.

Here is where we are going to stay tonight in Takayama. A 6 hour shinkansen (bullet train) ride from Hiroshima.

It has been beautiful weather, sunny and mid to upper 70's until today....rain forecasted..so good day to travel in the train.

Love,
Kelaine

Tokyo Day 2

I am writing this at 1am Saturday Tokyo time (noon home time). Even in Japan, I'm a night owl... Or maybe I should say "night crane"???

After 11 hours of blessed sleep, we decided to have breakfast at the outdoor cafe of our hotel and explore the neighborhood. Then we wanted to see some sites in Eastern/Central Tokyo before we met Junko for an evening of cherry blossom partying.



We began the day with crepes for Dan and me, and had Frankie singing a selection from a Bill Cosby sketch because we allowed him to eat chocolate cheesecake for breakfast..."Dad is great! Give us chocolate cake.". If you don't know it...YouTube it for a good laugh!!

Before setting out for the Yamanote Line train, Frankie and I hit a small grocery store around the corner from the hotel and got some orange juice drink called Qoo and an energy tea. Both made by Coca Cola. We are doing our part to increase the US economy, even from afar ;-)



One thing that I noticed while on the train to sitesee...everyone (adults and kids..men and women) dresses in black suits during the day. And women almost always wear 1-2 inch heels. People were a little more colorful on Friday night while out hitting the clubs (them not us....we may feed him chocolate cake for breakfast but we draw the line at taking Frankie clubbing).


We had heard that the Sony building was a fun place to take kids, so we stopped there first. Frankie was intrigued because they were featuring all kinds of stuff for the latest Final Fantasy video game. I showed my camera where it was made :-) Dan liked trying out the cool headphones. The Sony building is in Ginza which is like 5th Avenue in New York City.

We then realized how close we were to the Imperial Palace and gardens, so we made our way there to enjoy the tranquility. We saw some beautiful cherry blossoms there!

We were too late to enter the inner gardens and didn't have a prearranged pass for Palace entrance, but enjoyed seeing the outer parks and fountains and glimpses of the Palace across the moat and over the stone walls.


We stopped briefly at a video arcade so Frankie could try his luck at a couple crane games (no luck) and play a couple games he is familiar with from home.
We then made our way north to the Mitsukoshi store. It's Tokyo's equivalent to Sak's. It began as Japan's first department store and premiere kimono maker. We saw a beautiful carving they have in their central lobby....and wandered around their basement level where they have tons of food for sale and some to sample.


We then hurried to meet up with Junko. She showed us a hidden level (at least to most tourists) of Tokyo Station called the character stores. Frankie had mentioned that several friends back home loved "Domo" (a japanese cartoon character) so Junko wanted him to see the souvenir store. He ended up buying a Rascal stuffed raccoon character from a show based on the book Rascal by Sterling North. He's such a great son of a librarian!!

Junko guided us to Ueno Park to see the cherry blossoms by the lake at night. There were so many people picnicing/partying under the trees! We ended up eating our takeout dinners on the steps of a shrine in the middle of Ueno Onshi park lake.

We have to get up at 6am to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima so we said goodbye to Junko (after making arrangements to see her and meet her family for dinner when we return to Tokyo next Wednesday) and made our way back to the hotel.

I am enjoying a Thailand beer called Phuket while I blog this post. Our hotel has a variety of 60 foreign beers in the cafe, and free wifi access. Can I pick a good hotel or what!

Will be blogging next from Hiroshima in the Southern East coast of Japan.


-- Post From My iPhone

Flight and first day in Tokyo

Our plane trip was LONG. We arrived at the Grand Rapids airport at 6 am! Yes, I actually managed to crawl out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4 am. Our friend Sarah was going to take us to the airport, but her bloodsugar level was only 54. So as she injested tons of sugar, her wonderful husband Derek drove us instead.

We passed through the detectors except for one delay. For those who have always wondered, metal detectors can detect cell phones forgotten in front pants pockets. Hey, it was an honest mistake! I was still half asleep!!

They fed us very well during the flight. Three full meals and all the pop, juice, or water we could consume in 13 hours. We also had opportunity to see 4 movies, including, Marley & Me. Which had me bawling by the end...But in a good way. I would have been very worried about Emily and Candy, but now no worries. A friend told me the story of pets crossing the rainbow bridge to heaven when my sweeties died last month. There is a rainbow bridge here in Tokyo, so I feel like they are here with us...

Our friend, Junko, who is the reason we came to Japan (to attend her wedding on April 18), met us at the airport just outside the customs department... Yep, they did allow us to pass into this beautiful country.

She gave us a crash course on the Tokyo train system..man is it crazy, but pretty easy to understand after studying the maps during the hour ride from the airport to Ikebukuro, the Tokyo suburb our hotel is located in.


We checked into our hotel, then Junko took us to Tokyo station in central part of city to see her office building and for dinner at a restaurant with bowls of udon (buckwheat) noodles. The bowls were, honest to God, bigger than your head!

















Frankie almost ended up face first in his bowl! Poor poppet literally fell asleep at the table after his first bite of curry beef udon. By this time it was 7pm, which is 6 am Michigan time. We got about 3 hours sleep on the plane, so basically we'd been going for 26 hours and were exhausted...obviously in Frankie's case.





Junko wanted to take us to see the cherry blossoms (sakura) in Ueno park, but we decided to go on Friday night instead. So after making arrangements to meet the next evening, we made our weary way back to our hotel...the Sakura Hotel Ikebukuro.











--Post from my iTouch