{"id":1942,"date":"2013-06-27T18:29:30","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T22:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2013-06-27T20:31:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T00:31:54","slug":"things-i-love-thursday-vicarious-trips-to-japan-tilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/things-i-love-thursday-vicarious-trips-to-japan-tilt\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I Love Thursday &#8211; Vicarious trips to Japan. #TILT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JC is in Japan right now (for work), so for the last few days he&#8217;s been on the other side of the world, and I have been in Toronto. While I would have loved to go too (and wish I had,) I had agreed to cat sit for a friend, we&#8217;re in the middle of making plans for our new home, and of course someone has to tend to Kes &amp; Emmie, &amp; a bunch of other excuses like money and meetings and projects and all that usual boring day-to-day stuff.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/maps.google.ca\/maps\/ms?msid=208201912438235298667.0004dfcb87655069c107a&amp;msa=0&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;t=m&amp;ll=35.652554,139.712448&amp;spn=0.09764,0.145912&amp;z=12&amp;output=embed\" height=\"350\" width=\"425\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<small>View <a style=\"color: #0000ff; text-align: left;\" href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.ca\/maps\/ms?msid=208201912438235298667.0004dfcb87655069c107a&amp;msa=0&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;t=m&amp;ll=35.652554,139.712448&amp;spn=0.09764,0.145912&amp;z=12&amp;source=embed\">Vegan in Japan &#8211; Customized for my favourite human<\/a> in a larger map<\/small><\/p>\n<p>Before he left <a title=\"Vegan Friendly Japan - Tokyo around Shinagawa\" href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.ca\/maps\/ms?msid=208201912438235298667.0004dfcb87655069c107a&amp;msa=0\" target=\"_blank\">I put together a tiny list of vegan friendly places for him<\/a> to potentially visit around his hotel. I&#8217;d been given the impression from almost everyone that I asked online that it was difficult or impossible to find vegan food in Japan, and thought that seemed a little strange. And also thought&#8230; &#8220;I used to hear the same thing about Alberta.&#8221; Which <a title=\"Prairie Vegan on facebook\" href=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/prairievegan\" target=\"_blank\">PrairieVegan<\/a> has proven isn&#8217;t true!<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Visiting Japan by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9155335892\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Visiting Japan\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7394\/9155335892_95524d6ac2.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Some people recommended just shopping at grocery stores for vegetables (not so helpful) and after asking the <a href=\"http:\/\/vidavegancon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">VVC crew<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook, I was encouraged in the right direction reading <a title=\"The Blissful Chef - Vegan in Japan\" href=\"http:\/\/theblissfulchef.com\/tag\/japan\/\" target=\"_blank\">Christy&#8217;s blog posts from Japan in 2010<\/a>. Ultimately, I realized&#8230; why am I asking other people? I love hunting down things to eat in places that people seem to think are impossible. This is my scene. So I put together a list of Japanese options and restaurants, and it wasn&#8217;t even that difficult. Hopefully when J get&#8217;s back he&#8217;ll feel like blogging about his time there.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Visiting Japan - Starbucks Soy Card by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9153123307\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Visiting Japan - Starbucks Soy Card\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3807\/9153123307_07269aa825.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tokyo is full of vegan stuff. I&#8217;m not even there and I managed to find great stuff for J to check out, he&#8217;s there and found more options too. Sure, there is bonito or fish in a lot of stuff, but there is also a great many opportunities to eat totally vegan. <a href=\"http:\/\/vege-navi.jp\/?5..2.\" target=\"_blank\">Here is a mini language lesson<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So why is this trip super vicarious? It&#8217;s simple, because of our iPhones. We&#8217;re linked by the magic of technology across the ocean.When he takes any picture (and vice versa) it&#8217;s shared on our collective photostream, \u00a0so I get to see it much faster than if I was to wait for him to upload it himself (i.e., never&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Visiting Japan by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9155348546\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Visiting Japan\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2817\/9155348546_97402582d7.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While he&#8217;s looking at high speed trains, or walking around the nerdy awesome technology district (there are many &#8211; but the one I&#8217;m thinking of is Akiba (aka Akihabara)\u00a0and eating at the Hawaiian-inspired vegan Japanese place (yes &#8211; this exists &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/ameblo.jp\/oluolucafe\/\" target=\"_blank\">Cafe Olu Olu<\/a>) I was super excited about, I can check it out too.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Visiting Japan - Cafe Ohu Ohu by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9153128389\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Visiting Japan - Cafe Olu Olu\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3824\/9153128389_6b7646f1c6.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While I&#8217;d love to be there, I&#8217;m enjoying his joy at finding and exploring interesting areas of Tokyo, because even thought I&#8217;m not &#8220;feeling&#8221; it. I&#8217;m seeing so many interesting and exciting things anyway, and get a lot of happiness that he&#8217;s having fun there.<\/p>\n<h3>Other &#8220;Things&#8221; I Love:<\/h3>\n<h4>JC<\/h4>\n<p>It probably goes without saying after this post &#8211; but JC is at the top of my list. Mush. I do really like having him around, so while I&#8217;m glad he&#8217;s having a good time and doing work stuff, I&#8217;m also happy he&#8217;ll be coming home soon.<\/p>\n<h4>Cat Sitting for friends<\/h4>\n<p>&#8230;that leave me delicious food presents. Live in my favourite neighbourhood. And have a veranda, and a hammock chair.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Hard day at the office by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9153133975\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Hard day at the office\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5457\/9153133975_d0e6ed7dd9.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>S&amp;B have three rescue cats, one of which I&#8217;ve known since all of us lived in Edmonton and I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/vegan-christmas-2010\/\">cat\/house sat for them before<\/a> but this time it was even mutually convenient since we were in the process of selling our condo (p.s. that was a success!)<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Untitled by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9155363598\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Untitled\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7444\/9155363598_9954086f40.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Also, related to my above post about Japan, they also have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kanshacooking.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth Andoh&#8217;s Kansha Cookbook<\/a>: a\u00a0Celebration of Japan&#8217;s vegan and vegetarian traditions.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Cat - Sleeping Cat by MeShellG, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/prairiev\/9137799403\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"Cat - Sleeping Cat\" src=\"http:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5480\/9137799403_7dc746cb99.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is Griffin. No one really knows exactly how old he is. But he is an old kitty.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"__mceDel\"> What do you love?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JC is in Japan right now (for work), so for the last few days he&#8217;s been on the other side of the world, and I have been in Toronto. While I would have loved to go too (and wish I had,) I had agreed to cat sit for a friend,&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316,315,356,242,4],"tags":[768,1422,1421],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things-i-love-thursday","category-tilt","category-toronto-2","category-vegan","category-vegan-food","tag-japan-vegan","tag-things-i-love-thursday","tag-tilt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meshell.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}