Travel
Turkey, for its historical sights and its food: cheese, olives, yoghurt, honey, fruit, nuts and vegetables prepared in a myriad delicious ways. It was my first group tour (Japan Tourist Bureau) and I was mostly satisfied: a hassle-free, economical way to sit back and experience a great deal in a short time.
Adventure
A two-day cycling trip around the Miura Peninsula in the heat of the summer: The joy of exertion, a wild coastline, frequent swims in the warm ocean, and a superb fish dinner.
A two-day hiking trip up Mount Senjogadake in Nagano Prefecture that took us to a Shangri-La above the clouds.
Beer
This was the year I grew to love IPA hop-rich beers. Thanks to a beer tasting at the Baird Brewery taproom in Naka Meguro, I found my favorite readily obtainable IPA: Baird’s Suruga Bay. And by serendipity, a craft-beer bar opened here in Chigasaki this year: Hopman has a rotating selection of 21 different Japanese and world beers on tap and good food to go with it. My beer of the year at Hopman? Green Flash West Coast IPA.
Web Shopping
Amazon.com was my online store for books and DVDs. But they axed WikiLeaks from their server, and I value free speech and transparency more than comfort. So I’ve moved – thanks, Blockhead David, for pointing me there – to The Book Depository, and its sister site gam.co for DVDs and music. It’s bare-bones, if efficient, service—no gift wrapping or removing prices from gifts. But it is one better than Amazon in one important respect. If I needed Amazon customer service, it took a lot of work to get through to human help. TBD has a “Contact Us” link right up front that brings a human response.
--Julian
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