Traveller

View from our driver's windshield - by Sharon Castellanos

A crunchy crab! San Francisco can be expensive to live in and to visit. However if you look around there are lots of opportunity to find fun things to do at little or no cost any day of the week. Sourdough Animals you can eat! A name synonymous with San Francisco is Boudin's Bakery .  Never heard of them? Have you heard of sourdough bread?  They basically invented it!  Yep, in 1849! Wild yeasts in the San Francisco air had imparted a unique tang to their traditional French bread, giving rise to “San Francisco sourdough French bread.” Today, the Boudin family's initial recipe lives on in the hands and hearts of our expert bakers, with a portion of the original mother dough still starting each and every sourdough loaf we make. And the cool thing is that besides their stores and cafes, they have a large main restaurant on Jefferson Street that includes a shop and bakery where you can watch them in action!  They are walking distance from the Argonaut Hotel .  It i...

Mural across the side of a school along Folsom Street in San Francisco What do you think of when you hear of or read about the San Francisco neighborhood called the Mission? Nowadays the stories are not as centered around the funky shops or even growing high-end rental property and live/work spaces. You don't see constant references to Dave Eggers , McSweeney's or his literacy project 826 Valencia with its Pirate supply store in tandem to each story about the Mission. This summer what I have been pleased to see on every excursion to the Mission, besides all the colorful people and food - I see beautiful unexpected murals. There are lots and lots of murals all over the Mission District. You can find them on the sides of huge buildings or covering a small transformer box. Look down an alley and see one or along the wall of a play ground you pass by. It impresses me that the people have the talent to create these large scale works of art. The murals tell a story, often a cultura...

Wow. Now when I look back on my time spent in Japan as an expatriate, I guess it was pretty ballsy.  It was ten years ago. The internet was still a baby, especially in Japan.  Granted we got NTT Dokomo 3G clamshell design "kick ass" cell phones for USD $30 ten years ago but they were only good within the ISLAND known as Japan. Good luck with that! However what stopped me short recently, was finding this directory [the image above]. Inside the cover, it tells you in English, what to say and where to call in an emergency.  The directions are in English but they still direct you to say as much as possible in Japanese.  Seriously, they tell you to speak slowly and clearly. If at all possible to speak Japanese using their indicated patterns.  If you cannot make yourself understood properly, do not hang up. Give your address the Japanese way: city, ward, street address and house or apartment number.   Give a nearby landmark for reference - train station or ...