yushansjunk.com Blog

If you don’t have room for a garden try…

Sprout Home is a cute site that sells these little gadgets and cute knick knacks such as a egg shaped animal that grows grass hair in a kit. They’re really really cute and much more interesting than Chia pets. Go to the children’s section to find cute gifts for a your little nieces or nephews.

If you live in the Chicagoland area, consider ordering their organic produce box.

Add comment August 17th, 2006

Are the grunion running this year?

On Friday night, my sister, a friend, and myself drove down to Seal Beach and sat at the south side of the pier waiting for the grunion to run. From 11:30 pm to 1:30 am we sat and waited for these mysterious little fishies to show up. Alas we saw none.

My little sister a few years past had seen a great grunion run and tells the stories of the glittery fishes on the sand over and over to the delight of Chinese mothers. Hence we started our hunt for grunion by starting out at Big 5 Sporting Goods to obtain a one day fishing license. This fishing license allows you to touch and interact with the grunion in the open season June and onward.

The debate of whether to go or not go was long and drawn out. First the criteria was to find this mysterious beach in Palos Verdes where the grunion were discovered that summer many years before. However we couldn’t find it as it was a private beach and the friend who lived there was unreachable. Next I thought well I work for Yahoo! and my job involves lots of bloggers, let’s see if these bloggers can help me. I searched blogs using Yahoo! and technorati. This method was unsuccessful as people only said they went to a beach and saw grunion. Nobody stated which beach and where on that beach. Last chance for us and grunion, we said well if we call the lifeguards they might be able to tell us. So I called and called a bunch of lifeguard stations at various California beaches until we realized that we were hitting up the same lifeguard station over and over again. (Beach and station numbers can be found through USC sea grant’s beach listings.) The lifeguards said sure grunion run here, but we’ve never seen them. One nice lifeguard at the Seal Beach station said try the south side of the pier people have spotted them there before. He even told us to park near the 10th street parking lot.

Well we tried and had a great time in the warm salty air waiting for the elusive grunion to come up upon the shore to grace us with their presence. Instead we ran around the beach at midnight like little children building sand castles and doing cartwheels.

Not a bad use of $11.30 and 3 hours.

2 comments August 14th, 2006

Echigo – I want to go

A friend has recommended a new Japanese restaurant for me to try. I’ve found two reviews on the place thus far. One from la.foodblogging and another from igougo. I must say la.foodblogging is becoming my new food review love. It is helping me discover a lot about food in the Los Angeles area. I’ll post hopefully with pictures after my trip to Echigo.

Note to all those restaurant/food critics out there, please give us poor people some guidance on how relatively expensive these place are.

To come Sasabune vs. Echigo. Can the apprentice stand up to the master?

Add comment August 7th, 2006

My first trip to Sawtelle

Last night was my first experience with the Sawtelle area on the west side and I loved it. It was a really nice little area with cute and inexpensive food. We had dinner at Asahi Ramen complete with cold noodle ramen and curry ramen as recommended by la.foodblogging. After dinner we walked along Sawtelle street and went into some of the boutiques and the Japanese markets. In one of the stores we saw this bag.

For those of you who know me well, this bag is soo appropriate and ironic in many different ways. Unfortunately it was $25 and I couldn’t justify a splurge for a fabric tote at the time. To see more check out their website.

Overall it was a great time and evening at a very low cost. Street parking is free after 6 pm and the food came out to $22 with tax and tip for 3.

Next time we’re going to try out either Sawtelle Kitchen or Hide Sushi. 

Add comment August 2nd, 2006