Archive for February, 2006
February 26, 2006 at 12:46 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
…My friend lent us two books. "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong" and "The Da Vinci Code". I began to read the former. It’s an interesting look at France and the French by a couple of Canadians who lived in France for two years. My friend said that it’s a book that Americans would find interesting and French would find annoying, yet should cast some light on French culture from a North American perspective. So far it seems very fair in its treatment of France…
… as for The Da Vinci Code: My wife has started reading it, and she hasn’t yet stopped! It’s getting close to 5 am… No wonder it has sold so many copies. I guess it is really is a captivating suspense novel. I’d like to read it next, but I’ll have to wait until my wife is finished. Apparently at least part of it takes place in Paris. That’ll be interesting to read (though I’m sure secondary to the plot).
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February 26, 2006 at 12:36 pm
· Filed under food, france, paris
After parting ways with my friend who was visiting Paris, my wife and I spotted a Japanese ramen shop. I hadn’t had ramen in quite a while, definitely not since I had arrived in Paris, so we decided to have dinner there. It wasn’t too bad and not too expensive, either (19 euros for the both of us).
ここには日本料理やさんがあるけど、雰囲気が日本と違う気がする。とにかく今日パリにある日本食やさんで食べた。久しぶりラーメンを食べたよ～ん！おいしかったよ。やっぱり和食が好きなんだ。和食が恋しいな。
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February 26, 2006 at 12:30 pm
· Filed under france, paris, sightseeing
No museum today. We had planned to go by musée Picasso with my friend, but there was a long queue to get in. We decide to walk around Paris a bit instead. It was a nice walk and my friend acted as an informal tour guide of sorts, pointing out various historical places, while we walked along and caught up.
We had started from Place de République, went down to the Seine and across to Ile Saint Louis (one of the two islands in the Seine; the other is Ile de la cité). On the Ile Saint Louis we had a bit of glace at Berthillon, a particularly famous ice cream maker (that also apparently supplies the ice cream to all the other shops around). Despite the cold weather, the ice cream was quite delicious. We continued walking over to Ile de la cité, past Notre Dame, back to the right bank and over to the Louvre. By that time we were getting a bit cold and so we walked up North, towards Opéra and stopped in a cafe for a bit.
Paris is a very walkable city. I’ve been saying this a lot recently. The scenery, architecture, well preserved ancient buildings, monuments, etc all make it perferable for me to walk just to take it all in.
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February 25, 2006 at 9:57 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
We’ve had a steady stream of friends visiting us in Paris, coming over for dinner, etc. These people have all been Japanese (or associated with our Japanese friends) until now.
Tomorrow (geez, it’s actually ‘today’ already? I’m up too late…) we’ll be meeting up with someone who is French, but not Parisian. We had once worked with a few years ago during graduate school. She is now designing submarines though she actually started the analysis of my experimental data using wavelets, that same analysis that eventually lead me to my postdoc here in Paris. Anyways, we’ll catch up a bit in a cafe and visit a museum afterwards (or before).
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February 25, 2006 at 9:50 am
· Filed under france, musuems, paris
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February 24, 2006 at 10:19 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
やっとメダルだ！ 荒川静香選手フィギュアスケートで金。まじできれいにスケートをした。
Finally a medal for Japan at the Torino winter Olympics! We had been watching the womens figure skating, as it was the last hope for Japan to win a medal. The women skaters from Japan were quite good. And in the end the Shizuka Arakawa, who gave an impressive performance (and didn’t once fall on her jumps) was the first Japanese skater ever to receive a gold medal in the Olympics. 静香ちゃん、おめでとう！
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February 23, 2006 at 9:51 am
· Filed under food, france, paris
Tonight we ate out at a restaurant with some friends.
My wife had been wanting to eat oysters for a long time since coming to Paris. Her mother had recently seen some people eating oysters in the streets of Paris on TV and asked whether or not we had done that yet. I’m not a big fan of oysters so I was just along for the ride on this one (in the end I only had one). Before I met up with them, they had first gone to an oyster bar, but it was full. After I caught up, we walked and walked before finding a restaurant with oysters out front.
The service was quite slow, but it did seem like it was busy. I wasn’t all that impressed with the food. That’s actually a first for me in Paris. Until now, all the cafes, restaurants, and, yes, even the cafeteria food has all been quite good. The price was a bit steep, too…
… but the company was good, and my wife was satisfied to have finally eaten some oysters in Paris, so maybe I shouldn’t complain.
…after dinner we didn’t get home until close to 1 am. And now it is much later… time to get some sleep, it’s not the weekend yet!
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February 20, 2006 at 9:08 am
· Filed under france, musuems, paris
On Saturday we went to the Musée du Rodin. We went on a tour conducted in French, sponsored by the cité internationale universitaire de Paris.
The sheer volume of Rodin’s work is as impressive as its quality. Many of his statues were replicated numerous times in various sizes and forms as études.
There was a garden outside of the museum building that had a number of Rodin’s larger works.
Above is Rodin’s most famous of statues, Le Penseur (The Thinker). In the background is the gilded dome of Invalides.
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February 17, 2006 at 8:25 am
· Filed under sightseeing
外国なら日本語が変でしょう？上記の取ったのはＬａ Ｔｏｕｒ Ｅｉｆｆｅｌの二段にあるおみやげやさんの看板みたいだった。イメージをクリックすると分かる。
書いてあるのは：
モニュメント － 本物を売るつもりか？
モード （？） － ファッションということなの？おっしゃれなお土産やさんだね！
食卓のアート （？） Ｌａ Ｔｏｕｒ Ｅｉｆｆｅｌの？おもしろい。。。
げー、子供 （？！） － 確かに「ゲーム」だけど、「子供」を売ったら大変じゃない？？
歴史、文化 － これも売っているの？
ハリの小道 （？） － これは「パリ」に違いないが、パリの小道？
タワーのディック （？？？）
。。。ま、僕の日本語でも変でしょね。きっと。
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February 15, 2006 at 9:43 am
· Filed under france
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