September 2009

Tokyo: Simple Pleasures

Dream City

I’m having a strange moment here in Tokyo. It’s 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and I’m doing calisthenics in the park with about 50 old ladies I’ve never met before. Bending, twisting, stretching. Following the cadences of a warbly 1920s piano tune that’s playing from a radio up front. I’m completely out of place. I’m completely lost, might as well face it. But while the old ladies hide their smiles and the sun eases up over the ginkgo trees, a cool wind riffles the leaves and I feel paradoxically at home.

Posted: Tuesday, Sep. 8, 2009 9:00pm

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Foodville Part Three: Mapping Vancouver's Culinary Landscape

I walked across Spain this past summer. An old college friend of mine talked me into it. Over dinner, of course. That’s where these kinds of plans are inevitably hatched. He said to me: “I’m going to walk 800 kilometers on foot through Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia, and I’d like you to come.” Which was crazy, clearly. But we’d just had an amazing meal at Fergus Henderson’s restaurant St. John in London, where I was fortunate to have been sent on assignment.