We stumbled upon a chopstick store today in Ginza, Tokyo. A super neat tiny store with every kind of chopstick you could imagine, chopsticks for kids, chopsticks with coloured pencils on the back, training chopsticks, great chopstick stands, etc... they also had /these/ chopsticks...

Title: Chopsticks worth more than a years supply of sushi!
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 6 Oct 2009 - 3:15pm
As of today, 18,900 yen is equivalent to $226 CAD. I couldn't even see anything special about these ones!

Title: Harajuku
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 4 Oct 2009 - 1:55am

We arrived in Tokyo Saturday afternoon after a nine hour flight. We'd been slightly mislead about filling out our customs entry forms and Sam needed to fill out a second form when we we arrived at the customs gate, at which point they decided to search our luggage. Anyone who's seen the way either me or Sam pack would know this is not a pleasant task. Every square inch of our bags are generally stuffed with something with the layout being fully optimized to the contents of the bag ;-). Also, Sam often needs to sit on her bag to get it to close completely. The officials were quite courteous and didn't want to make it too difficult to repack, so after painfully searching through two of our four bags (trying to leave most things undisturbed), and only opening the third bag (likely giving them a bit of a fright with how tightly it was packed, they decided to just pass on the rest and let us through.

If you want to know how to totally pass the airline lineups for economy class, bump up your flight, AND get a great seat... you need to talk to Sam. She saved us about an hour of waiting in line and got us on the same flight.

Title: Sunset over english bay
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 23 Sep 2009 - 11:03pm

It feels like we just barely got a chance to settle into Vancouver and already we're heading out to another continent. It was great seeing everyone when I was back and I'm super sorry to anyone I didn't get a chance to see. Both Sam and I had an awesome time while we were here.

Title: Sunset over Lake Louise
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 15 Jul 2009 - 7:36pm

About two months ago Sam and I went on a short (week long) road trip through the Kootney's and Rockies. The trip was amazing, and I think on the kootney side we hit on average 2 hot springs a day. Ahhhhhh. I just got those photos up and you can take a look at them here.

I could go on for hours about the issues I have with Canadian cell phone companies and I'm definitely not alone. It's insane how Canadian (and US) cell companies screw their customers and have absolutely no repercussions. When Telus/Bell first started charging for incoming SMS's there was an impressive amount of outrage over it. Nothing happened, and approximately one year later, coinciding with the iPhone 3GS release, Rogers began charging for incoming SMS's. Somehow no one seemed to notice this (or we'd all just given up hope of changing it). Regardless, Rogers clearly has much better PR than Telus.