A Fish Out of Water

Hanami

I thought this might be a hanami-free year, but I managed to go cherry blossom viewing in Shinjuku Gyoen, my favourite park in Tokyo, last week with a friend. It was too chilly to set up a picnic so this was just a walk-by hanami, but I'm glad I got the chance to see some pretty blossoms outside of my own neighborhood. I'll present some of the pictures from the day without comment, but keep your eyes peeled for public napping, lots of posing, a man not interested in the flowers (or his girlfriend) so much as a nice pair of legs, a hanami-ing turtle, and a girl livening up a snapshot with a confetti-toss of sakura petals.

See more pictures of Shinjuku Gyoen (from today's and previous visits) here, and more sakura pictures here.

Ogasawara: Hahajima Day One

This is the fourth part in a series on my trip to Ogasawara. The introduction is here, and the previous post is here.

Tetsuya's breakfast turned out to be just as nice as its dinner (see previous post), and again the portions were just right. I wouldn't call it a small breakfast but it was lighter and more balanced than most Japanese hotel breakfasts, including the heavy morning meal we'd had the day before. How nice to have fruit in the morning! This was also the first meal that actually kind of reflected the tropical setting.

At left: thick Japanese style toast with lemon curd, made locally from Ogasawara lemons. On the plate, clockwise from left: yogurt with local passion fruit sauce; fresh local pineapple and passion fruit; cheese and nama ham (parma-style cured ham); herbed sausages; tamagoyaki (thick Japanese omelet) with seaweed. At right, green salad and orange juice. "Western" style breakfasts in Japan always include salad, which I usually find a bit odd, but this one was quite welcome as it included a local plant. The dark green and purple leaves seen above are harutama, also called hantama, ginjisou, or suizenjina (Okinawan spinach, Gynura bicolor). Imported from Okinawa, it grows well on Ogasawara. 

Here's the toast all curded up. The lemon curd was delicious and I vowed to hunt some down and buy it for myself.

Then it was time to pack up. Above is the seashell and coral collection I'd set out in my room's open-air bathroom to dry (no, that's not the light of a beautiful sunrise: the bathroom's nightlight was red). There are only a few beaches where the collecting of shells is allowed, and I took full advantage. And then I had to find a way to fit them all into my suitcase.

We were driven to the ferry terminal and boarded the Hahajima Maru, above (picture taken the previous day in better weather). The Hahajima runs between Chichijima and Hahajima, the main islands of Ogasawara, taking just over two hours. It runs on a varied schedule but runs almost every day, usually making two crossings per day.

Above, we're heading out of the bay, passing the larger Ogasawara Maru that connects Chichijima to Tokyo.

The Hahajima Maru is much smaller than the Ogasawara Maru and since it's a short trip there are no private rooms or beds. Instead, passengers can choose to sit out on the deck or inside in reclining seats, shown above.

Or they can go down to the open berth below for a quick nap, which is what these guys did, apparently having been out late the night before.

When Hahjima came into view I thought it looked wilder and lusher than Chichijima. I kept wishing the weather was nicer, but the fog did add a nice touch.

Soon we were landing in Oki Wan (Oki Bay), Hahajima's main port (see it on Google Maps here). It was indeed wilder than Chichijima, with fewer buildings and a prettier landscape.

We were split into two groups and taken straight to our lodgings. I was put up at Island Resort Nanpu, which looked more like a cheap apartment building than a "resort", at least from the outside. Actually its own website describes the place not only as an "island resort" but as a minshuku (family inn) and pension as well, all quite different categories. I would have called it a dormitory or budget hotel.

It was fairly institutional on the inside, but clean, new and nice enough.

This time we were two to a room, and I shared this one with Laura. It was by far the smallest place I'd stayed at on this trip, but pretty normal for Japan and very clean and cozy. It had the basics in the room like a unit bath, TV and mini-fridge, and on each floor was a corner with a computer and a little kitchen set up with a water cooler, electric kettle, drinks and a microwave, all for communal use, as well as a nice jacuzzi that was unfortunately in another building and needed to be reserved.

We only had time to drop off our bags before being driven back to the ferry terminal at Oki Bay, where we began a half-day tour of the island. At the terminal our tour guide, an nice older fellow, started by handing us some maps and printouts, and started in on a rather long speech about himself and how he'd ended up on the island. I took this as a sign that the tour would be very much Japanese style.

And it was. First we were taken on a very long drive to Kita Kou (Kita Port) at the northernmost limit of the island's main road (see it on a map here). Before the war the port was home to Kita Mura, a village of 600 people who mostly made their living in the local fishing and sugarcane industries. We were given a very brief explanation about he history, none of which I could understand, then had a few minutes to explore but sadly there was almost nothing left of the village and therefore nothing to see.

So back into the cars we went, heading south to our next stop. We passed some interesting looking ruins and had to beg our driver to stop and let us look, and discovered it was the sight of the village's elementary school, founded in 1887. The jungle had mostly taken over, but among the structures left standing were parts of the school gates, made of re-used sugarcane rollers, seen above. (All of the above I found out later, as this wasn't an official part of our tour.)

Our next stop was Higashi Kou (Higashi Port), a very long and desolate strip of concrete jutting into an otherwise pretty but nondescript bay (map here). There were no boats docked, no other people to be seen, and absolutely nothing to do. Apparently the port had been used in the island's short-lived whaling industry in the 80's (this we found out afterward though, as our guide would only tell us the port was "sometimes" used by fishing boats). We had wondered at the time why such a huge and useless dock was built, but since nothing goes as well together in Japan as commercial whaling and excessive government spending, it really wasn't much of a mystery. Only in Japan would this port be included in a tour, and Mark's expression (and Mike up on the pole searching in vain for something to look at) above really captures our impression of the place.

Finally we were taken to a forest reserve near Kuwanoki-san (Mount Kuwanoki), where we were walked through a bit of the forest. Birds and trees were specialties of our guide, above, and he talked at length about them, and although I would have liked more walking and less talking it probably would have been quite interesting if I'd understood more. Apparently a number of once numerous native trees are being displaced by invasive species, but I couldn't really tell which were which and can't remember any of their names beyond the mountain's namesake kuwanoki (which means mulberry tree).

The tour over, we were driven back to the terminal and set loose with bentos for lunch. This one was a more manageable size than the previous day's bento but still quite a lot of food.

As usual, the only island touch was shikakumame (wing beans), this time worked into one of the onigiri (rice ball). As with the previous two days, I thought it would have been so nice to have been given an hour of free time to find our own lunch, or to skip lunch entirely. As it happened we did have a bit of time after our bentos were gone- not enough to go far but just enough to walk around and see a bit of Oki Mura, the island's only village.

We'd driven by a few of these signs, with me always wanting to ask to stop so I could take a picture. I'd refrained though, because I'm probably the only person in the world who'd want to take a picture of a roadside sign (except for my Dad). But we walked by this one so I finally got my chance. Isn't it cute?

We came upon this kid-filled banyan tree and stopped to have a look. The kids were friendly and invited us to join them so played around a bit, or tried to, but an adult in flip-flops is not quite so agile as a little kid and after a few attempts at climbing I fell. I've fallen out of many trees before but this was the first time I'd fallen into one- we definitely did not have banyan trees where I grew up (but if they did I'd be a pro at climbing them for sure).

Our free time over, we returned to the terminal and were packed back into the vans. The same guide brought us to the southern tip of the island for a hike. This time there was little talking but as happy as I was to be walking there was little time to stop and enjoy whatever sights we passed, as we were hurried along at a very fast pace.

I did manage to stop and admire this takonoki (Pandanus boninensis). Takonoki literally means "octopus tree", so named for its tentacle-like roots, and this particular tree had very interesting, er, tentacles. (Yes, I'm an eleven-year-old-boy at heart.)

After a while we came to Suribachi, a formation named after the traditional earthenware mortar used in Japan (see the location on Google Maps here). The red soil was neat but what I was really happy to see was the ocean.

Soon we were at a lookout with a tantalizing view of the water. None of us knew exactly where we were going but were all hoping for a beach, and that's where we seemed to be headed.

And then we were at the top of a hill, and our guide told us we had reached our goal. This was Kofuji-san, literally "Little Fuji Mountain", said to be the southernmost of Japan's many little Fujis, all named after a vague resemblance to the real Mount Fuji (map here). Um, yay.

The view was certainly beautiful, but it drove us crazy to be looking down at a beach and not actually be on it. I had enjoyed the hike, despite the fast pace, but now felt kind of ripped off.

There was a little crater on the hill with this rusted bit of machinery. The guide confirmed it was from the war but refused to say anything else and was soon trying to hurry us back down the trail. We protested and eventually, after much begging on our part and discussion on our handlers' part, it was agreed that if we could make it down really quickly we could have a short time at the beach.

On the way down we got separated and half of us ended up at Minamizaki, the beach we'd seen from atop Kofuji-san. It turned out to not be quite as nice as it had seemed from above, although I tried to have a little swim. After having a few too many big rocks roll onto my feet I gave up, and later learned that the beach is great for snorkeling but because of the rocks and strong tide not used for swimming. Oh well. At top right you can see part of Kofuji-san, the hill we'd just come from.

The other group apparently ended up at a much better beach, and as we waited for them to return to our designated meeting point I asked a local government employee (one of the many officials accompanying us that day) about the nuts that were all over the ground. We'd seen them on Chichijima too, although at an earlier stage (either new and green or a bit riper and lined with fragrant red flesh). These ones were older and I found a big pile of their empty shells, above. The official told us that they were seeds from the momotamana (Indian almond, Terminalia catappa) tree and the empties had been eaten by rats.

She said that the nuts inside had been a popular snack when she was a child and proceeded to show us how to eat them. First you select a mature nut- the one above is just right, any darker and it's probably gone bad.

Placing the nut on a rock, you bash it carefully with another rock, trying to break it cleanly in half. If you aren't careful you'll just smash the whole thing and the pieces of nut will be too hard to retrieve. Done right, you get a few long, thin nuts that taste like a mild almond. This turned out to be my favourite part of the day, and I spent a good fifteen minutes smashing and eating the nuts. Unfortunately my hands got too dirty to take a picture of an opened nut, which is just as well as they aren't much to look at. But lots of fun to eat.

The tour ended and once back at Nanpu I had time to try out the bath next door, which turned out to be a fancy jacuzzi type that put on a fancy light show. It was nice at first but I ended up feeling quite lonely, as this is exactly the type of bath found in a typical Japanese love hotel, and I'd never found myself alone in such a tub. So I didn't stay long, and when I got back Laura and I headed to Nanpu's restaurant for a pre-dinner drink. The restaurant, Austro, was open to the public (apparently as one of Hahajima's three restaurants) and quite nice, and the meal was much better than I'd expected given the simplicity of the hotel.

Clockwise from left: rice, assorted sashimi  (two types of tuna and local kappore, or black jack); "pork saute" (actually more like tatsuta-age, or deep-fried pork); miso soup; atsu-age (fried tofu) stewed with chicken meatball and komatsuna greens; gomadofu ("tofu" made from sesame seeds); island grown okra and shikaku-mame (wing bean) fritters; locally grown cucumbers dressed with sesame seeds. There was also caramel mousse for dessert, not shown. This was a tasty meal, and I liked the effort put into using local ingredients.

After dinner we were brought to the local town hall for a meeting with local tourism people. It was similar to the previous night's meeting but a bit more relaxed, and instead of making us give speeches it was in a question-and-answers format. I was much less nervous but still didn't manage to offer any brilliant observations. However the locals were friendly and again seemed appreciative of our opinions.

Next the owner of the inn where the other half of our group was staying invited us over for a little celebration. Arriving early, I got to check out the place a bit. The inn was called La Mere and was cute and cozy, with a large communal area that made it seen warmer and friendlier than our place. A nice outdoor deck and large skylight were sweet touches I would have liked to have seen by day.

The owner and her staff set out drinks and snacks for us. The drinks included shochu (a vodka-like clear alcohol) on the rocks with a squeeze of buntan.

Buntan is a juicy, grapefruit-like variety of citrus, and although it's not originally from Ogasawara it is widely grown here. I can attest that it's very refreshing with shochu, but after downing my drinks a bit too quickly I gave up the shochu part and can also report that buntan is also good to eat.

Just before leaving I noticed that one of the locals had my favourite sign on his t-shirt. He said the shirt was widely available as a souvenir but I insisted on getting a picture, and I'm glad I did as I never saw it on sale. I would love a t-shirt like this!

Part five of this series to come soon. See more pictures of the day in my Hahajima album and all the pictures from the trip in my Ogasawara album.

No lauds for Lauderdale

Ever in search of a good brunch place in Tokyo, I've been wanting to visit Lauderdale, a newish restaurant in Roppongi, for a while. Billed as a cross between a French bistro and an American diner, it's received good reviews in several newspapers, blogs, and magazines and seemed especially well liked for its weekday breakfasts and weekend brunch. So on Easter Sunday Hideaki and I met up there with his sister and her family.

And we were all terribly disappointed. Not by the food, which mostly lived up to the reviews, but by the atrociously bad service. But first, here's what we ate:

On the weekend brunch menu all main dishes come with two sides. Except that they weren't really side dishes: they ended up arriving long before their main accompaniments (and before any of our drinks). My sides were orange-glazed carrots and falafels with yogurt dip, on the left, and Hideaki's were fries and chili. The carrots and fries were good. The falafels turned out to be miniatures, which were cute, and although they were tasty and fun to eat they were overcooked and dry and really really needed the dip. The chili- well, one look will tell you that something is wrong with it, and upon tasting it I had to conclude that whoever had made it knew chili con carne in concept only and had never personally eaten any. Served with, for some reason, a few slices of pita bread. To be fair, it wasn't awful tasting, and Hideaki liked it. It just wasn't chili. Also, I should note that everything was nicely presented and any messiness shown above is because we'd already been picking at some of the earlier arrivals when I took this picture.

Lauderdale is famed for its souffles so I ordered one with mushroom and cheese. And this was truly delicious. The crust was crispy (thanks to a light dusting of sugar, which was a bit weird with the savoury flavours but not weird enough to detract from the dish) and the insides soft, fluffy and just a little bit gooey. The rich mushroom flavour was wonderful.

It was served with thick cream, to be spooned into the souffle once it was broken open. The souffle would have been good enough without it, but the cream brought it to a higher level of decadence.

Hideaki ordered buttermilk pancakes, which were very good. I thought they were fantastic actually, but Hideaki said mine were better (yeah, the two out of ten that I don't burn). He was surprised at the two tiny slivers of bacon that came with them: upon ordering he'd been given a choice of bananas, blueberries and bacon as a topping, and considering the price (1500 yen) had expected a little bit more than the tiny paper-thin shavings of bacon that he got.

We split two desserts: a brownie sundae, above, and a sweet souffle, below. I'm not much of a brownie- or sundae- girl, but the ice cream part I tried was nice and everyone else seemed happy with the rest of it.

The dessert souffle was flavoured with banana and pepper (the one other sweet flavour was sold out) and was very nice. I liked my savoury one better, but everyone else preferred this.

So the food was mostly good, even excellent. Now, the service. Hideaki had made reservations several days before, noting there was a young child and asking if there was some kind of booth or nice table for a family. He was told there wasn't. Since he wasn't asked to choose smoking or non-smoking, he assumed smoking wasn't allowed and didn't think to mention anything.

So we arrived at the restaurant just after Atsuko, her husband and her five-year-old daughter. They were seated on stools at one end of a large communal table, right next to the front door. I was a bit surprised at this, and more surprised to see that in the back of the restaurant there was indeed booth style seating, as well as many individual tables far more comfortable than ours, with actual chairs. As we got settled in, I noticed two more things: the cold wind blowing in from the door right behind us, and the cigarette smoke drifting our way from the bar that we were right next to. Why on earth they had sat a family with a child in such a place I have no idea, especially when we had reservations. When we asked to be moved the waitress promised to do so as soon as a table became available.

Our request was quickly forgotten, and as new tables opened up they were given to new arrivals, most of whom had no reservations (I know this because my seat next to the door let me hear everything). I couldn't help but notice that all the other parties at the comfy tables were either foreign families or mixed Japanese and foreign groups (there were some Japanese parties, but they were relegated to the bar or the chilly patio). I also noticed the way that the foreign parties seemed to be fawned over by the waitstaff (all Japanese), while we had trouble attracting any one when we needed them. Could this restaurant really be so blatantly treating foreigners better than Japanese? We could only conclude that this was the case. Sure, I'm foreign, but had arrived after my Japanese in-laws and I can't help but think that if I'd made the reservation in English and showed up first we wouldn't have been stuck at such a crummy table and received such crummy service.

It didn't end with the seating. When I ordered my souffle the waitress warned me that it took 20 to 25 minutes to cook, to which I said fine, but just to be sure she asked if I was really OK with that. Of course I was. The 20 to 25 minutes had already been mentioned on the menu. And on the restaurant's website. And in every single review I'd read. And it was, you know, a souffle, which nobody expects to appear instantly. And besides, it's Sunday brunch, I was there for a leisurely meal and didn't mind waiting. And indeed, we did wait. Our side dishes slowly came, one by one, and then our drinks. And half an hour later, my souffle came. Nobody else's main dishes, none of which had come with warnings about how long they'd take, had arrived yet. And although I ate as slowly as possible, the souffle was long gone by the time everyone else's food arrived. I've given up on expecting restaurants in Japan to serve main dishes at the same time, but found it really strange that the one menu item that was supposed to take the longest actually arrived long before the other main dishes.

Hideaki's pancakes arrived when he and my brother-in-law were out on a smoke break (they'd asked if they could smoke on the balcony but were told to smoke at the bar, and since they didn't fancy blowing more smoke our way were forced to go out and walk down the street to find a suitable place). And they were covered with bananas. The waiter had already vanished but I tracked him down and pointed out that it was supposed to be bacon, not bananas. Ignoring me, the waiter looked at Atsuko (although he didn't seem to have a problem communicating with the other foreign diners) who confirmed this. So he picked up the plate and shoved it in the face of a random foreign guy waiting for a table behind me and asked him if he did indeed order bacon (I guess my sister-in-law and I didn't look very trustworthy and he needed further confirmation).

When he finally realized that the poor, confused guy didn't belong to our table and hadn't ordered the pancakes, he disappeared, coming back a minute later (the fastest service of the day) with the correct topping. It was the exact same plate, exact same pancakes, misted with the exact same random foreigner's breath, just with the bananas removed and bacon added. I could still see the moist imprints where the bananas had been. Thank goodness Hideaki doesn't have a banana allergy.

The bill arrived while the others were still eating their main dishes, and 15 minutes after that came our desserts. And while were eating those there came a long-forgotten cocktail my brother-in-law had ordered with his main dish.

I've become used to oddly-timed courses in Japan but this was by far the most outrageous I've experienced. And a place that charges this much should really be able to get it right. I would normally be able to give a restaurant the benefit of the doubt and figure that they'd been caught understaffed on a very busy day, but we were also treated shabbily and there's just no excuse for that.

The souffle was so good (and where else in Tokyo can I get souffle?) that I may end up giving Lauderdale another chance. But I'll make sure it's on a weekday and, just to be on the safe side, make sure I'm in a party of foreigners.

Lauderdale
03-3405-5533
Keyakizaka Terrace, Roppongi Hills, 6-15-1 Minato-ku
Open daily 7:00am to 11:00pm

Sakura season

Tokyo's cherry blossoms are blooming and it finally looks like spring, but the weather still feels like winter. This past weekend saw the sakura at their peak but the cold weather made hanami (cherry blossom viewing parties) unthinkable.

The two pictures above were taken at the campus of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where Hideaki, his sister's family and I took a quick peak at the flowers while passing by. And with a high that day of 10 degrees Celsius, a quick peak was all we were up for. Look how bundled up everyone is!

The weather finally turned nice yesterday, which is just as well as I had to go pick up my bike from the local train station (I had to leave it there few days ago because of an unexpected rainfall). The route to this station passes through two parks, both of which have a good number of cherry trees. These pictures of the nearest park, Oizumi Chuo Koen.

The racetrack, rimmed with cherry trees, was abandoned even though this is the nicest time of year to use it. Where was everyone?

The shibazakura (moss phlox) was not quite at its peak but still pretty enough to compete with the sakura.

The pond almost looked pretty for once (it is usually nothing more than a big mud puddle). 

This street separates not only two parks, but two prefectures: Tokyo is on the left and Saitama is on the right.

Traffic was unusually heavy (I had to wait quite a while to get these almost car-free shots) with drivers going slowly by to enjoy the tunnel of sakura.

When I turned around around from photographing the street, the pond had been taken over by little boys (with one big boy looking wistfully on). It's hard to see, but the boy in the centre has stripped down to his undies even though it was only about 16 degrees. I wondered what the boy on the left was trying to catch, until I saw them: three good sized turtles, clustered in the middle of the pond, well away from the net's reach. This is the first sign of life I've seen in the pond (which looked brand-new when we moved here five years ago) and I hope they're there to stay.

On my way home with my bike and a basket full of groceries I got to enjoy the luxury of a petal-lined path. I may not have been able to do hanami this year, but sidewalks strewn with cherry blossoms and camellias aren't so bad either.

See more sakura pictures, from this year and previous years, here.

Yakiniku

Yakiniku is often translated as "Korean Barbeque", although it's not really barbeque (usually being cooked indoors over charcoal or a gas flame) and, at least as served in Japan, is not truly Korean. It's not something I want to eat often, but when I do it's a craving that's hard to ignore. Recently I've really been craving it, and not being able to afford a visit to a yakiniku restaurant (good yakiniku is pricey) decided to do it at home. It's really easy to cook at home but we haven't done so in years as yakiniku at home has one major drawback: it creates a lot of heat and smoke, so can really only be done in the spring or fall, when it's warm enough to open all the windows but not so warm that the extra heat of the grill will make you sweat.

Luckily my craving came along during good yakiniku weather so I was free to indulge myself. This is how we do yakiniku at home:

From left: sanchu (lettuce used for wrapping cooked meat); kimchi (spicy pickled napa cabbage); kashira (pork cheek); a plate of three kinds of meat: kalbi (boneless beef rib, top), buta rosu (pork shoulder, left), and gyu momo (beef round, right); and namul (Korean style seasoned vegetables): zenmai (fern shoots, left), daikon and carrot (top) and mung bean sprouts (bottom). In the bottle and little dishes is yakiniku sauce. It's a lot of food, and lest you think us total gluttons let me assure you that we shopped with leftovers in mind, and didn't actually eat everything shown that night.

The sauce and namul were homemade but the kimchi is store-bought and all meat came sliced as shown and labeled yakiniku yo (for yakiniku), sliced at exactly the right thickness. Regular supermarkets sell convenient yakiniku sets with a few types of meat in the same package, but we had done the day's shopping at a discount market with no fancy sets but very very good prices. The pork was heavily discounted and the beef was half price, the only way we could afford good wagyu (Japanese top-grade beef). Eating yakiniku in a restaurant usually involves smaller portions and more cuts of meat, and a bigger emphasis on beef, but when you do it yourself it's hard to include everything.

Yakiniku often includes vegetables, but with us they tend to get neglected in favour of the meat and end up burning. So this time we skipped them, figuring the sanchu, kimchi and namuru added enough healthiness.

Here's a better look at the kalbi. The word kalbi comes from Korea, where it's actually pronounced galbi and usually served in long strips with the bone, requiring scissors be kept at the table to cut the strips down to size. In Japan kalbi is a little more refined: it's nearly always boneless and pre-sliced and often from very good well marbled beef, like the meat above. This is shinshu-gyu a brand (yes, beef here has brands: think Kobe beef) from Nagano that is fed on apples.

Here is the gyu momo, buta rosu and kashira cooking on the teppan (tabletop grill).

And this is some grilled kalbi, dipped in the yakiniku sauce. Since everything is cooked little by little at the table yakiniku is always a leisurely meal, and we spent almost two hours on this meal. When we were finally stuffed we cooked the leftover meat and packed it away in the fridge, marinated in yakiniku sauce.

And it made a very nice lunch a few days later, the meat reheated and served over hot rice and the namul (served in the tub that kimchi had come in) on the side.

Ogasawara: Chichijima Day Two

This post is the third in a series about a trip to the Ogasawara Islands. See post one here and post two here.

My second day on Chichijima started early, just after the sun rose. With a few hours to go before breakfast I donned my swimsuit, grabbed my snorkeling gear and walked across the street to the Ougiura Beach. Ougiura is a bit on the small side and probably not the island's most beautiful beach, but completely decent. Unfortunately it was a cloudy morning, so my pictures make it look far less attractive than it was (here is what the beach looks like in good weather). It was also cold and after a few minutes in the water I had to come out to warm up. There wasn't much to see underwater, and while the perfectly sandy bottom must make it a lovely beach in good weather, it was no good for snorkeling.

So I walked along the beach to warm up, coming across this relic from WWII. Stuff like this was all over the Ogasawara Islands, and I could never find any signs with explanations or people willing to talk about them. I found it quite different from Guam or Okinawa where anything to do with the war is made into a memorial.

Perhaps one reason that the reminders of the war are ignored here is the sheer number of them. Hunks of rusted machinery are still common, but more numerous are the entrances to the foxholes and tunnels that dot the rocky outcrops near beaches. Most are tiny, either just big enough to crawl into or fit a gun through, and they were hard enough to spot on naked rock. Camouflaged with foliage, the foxholes would have been virtually impossible to see, and thinking about that brought on an uneasy feeling that didn't seem to match the otherwise beautiful island. Unlike its similarly fortified neighbor to the south, Iwo Jima, Chichijima was never subject to a full-scale Allied invasion, but it did play an important role in the war. A role far more horrible than the long abandoned relics suggest, and for a quick description of what happened on Chichijima, read this review of the book Sorties Into Hell. Warning: it involves cannibalism (and that right there might be another reason why the islanders don't seem to embrace their wartime past).

Breakfast was at our hotel, Horizon, and was Japanese style. Clockwise from bottom left: rice; teriyaki grilled local fish; tamagoyaki (thick omelet); buri daikon (braised yellowtail with daikon radish); hiyayakko (cold tofu); stewed eggplant with katsuobushi (bonito flakes); pickled vegetables; miso soup; and a package of nori seaweed to go with the rice. All the food seemed to have been imported except for the grilled fish (and its garnish, munin hama-udo, a variety of angelica found on the islands).

It looks like a lot of food, and it was, but this is typical of Japanese hotels. The nicer the place, the more food they tend to serve, and on Chichijima it doesn't seem to matter if you're about to go on a dolphin swim: you're going to get stuffed. It was very tasty though, if a little heavily seasoned, and obviously made with care. Although dinner and breakfast is usually included at Japanese hotels, you can often arrange to stay without one or both meals, and if I was arranging my own trip to Chichijima I'd save this breakfast for one special day and skip it on the others.

So with full bellies we were driven to the headquarters of Sea-Tac, our tour company for the day, to get our equipment. I was a little taken aback to notice that all the men got super-long scuba diving type flippers and the women got short ones, but had no time to protest as we were herded back into the vans and brought to Futami Harbour to be loaded on to the Dancing Whale, Sea-Tac's boat. That's not it above, sorry (we were corralled so efficiently I didn't have time to get a picture of our boat).

Like all the tours we did on the islands this one was conducted in Japanese (although I later found out that Sea-Tac does English tours as well). It was quite different from the dolphin tours I've done on Mikurajima, in both good ways and bad. Bad in that the large boat held more people, making it a bit crowded when we were out in the water with the dolphins. I also wasn't crazy about the long speeches in the beginning blasted through the boat's speakers (you can't see it in the picture but our guides wore earpieces). But the boat was more comfortable than the tiny ones on Mikurajima, which was nice later on when I got a bit seasick. And after the dolphin sightings stopped we were brought to a coral reef where we snorkeled among tropical fish, which never happens on Mikurajima: there is literally nothing to see there except the dolphins and an occasional sea turtle. Overall I prefer the smaller, more intimate and friendly tours of Mikurajima, but this wasn't bad at all. (And sorry for all the comparisons to Mikurajima, it's the only place I've swum with dolphins before. Here and here are posts from my two most recent trips if you're interested). In fact it was the highlight of the trip, and I only wished that it was a full day tour instead of just the morning (OK, and I wished the weather was nicer too).

The speeches were given as we pulled out of the bay, and although it wasn't as pretty as it looked in the previous morning's sunny weather, we were soon treated to impressive sights. 

We followed Chichijima's coastline, cruising around rocky outcrops and between tiny volcanic islands while keeping our eyes peeled for dolphins. These pictures, as usual, completely fail at capturing the beauty of the place, from the amazing blue of the water to the lush green of the hills. It would take better weather, a better camera and a much better photographer to really get it right.

This is John Beach, one of the island's secluded beaches that can only be reached by a ninety minute hike.

And this is the neighboring Jinny Beach, which takes two hours to get to. Here's how it looks in good weather.

In other seasons several varieties of seabirds nest on the little rocky islands, but we saw surprisingly few birds of any type.

This is the entrance to Minami Jima, one of the most beautiful spots in the Ogasawaras. It is just south of Chichijima and can only be reached by swimming with a guide from a boat through the hole the rocky wall seen above. The number of visitors is strictly controlled and unfortunately the island is completely off-limits from November to early February, so all we could do was cruise slowly by. Here's how it looks from the inside.

Soon after passing Minami Jima we spotted a couple of dolphins, so we geared up and slipped into the water. It was a mother and adolescent and they stuck around for a short time to check us out and then took off again. We came across them a few more times but were never able to see any other dolphins. It was hard to be disappointed at not seeing more, as even two dolphins are an amazing sight, and we did get to spend a decent amount of time with them. I had decided not to use my underwater camera, as it broke the last time I took it snorkeling, so no pictures, but here's a random blog post from someone who bothered to use his camera.

But once we'd given up on the dolphins and anchored at a coral reef I changed my mind about the camera. This may not have a been world-class snorkeling spot, but I'd never seen such a variety of fish and was amazed. I think I even liked this better than the dolphins, and I soon lost track of all the kinds of fish I saw. As for the quality of the following pictures, the usual excuses apply, but believe me: it was beautiful.

I actually saw way more fish than shown here, but those suckers move fast and many stick the the deeper parts of the reef, which were inaccessible to me, not being able to dive like the dude above, and to my camera, which can only be used close to the surface. And damn it, despite being extra careful my camera still conked out after ten minutes in the water. Luckily I had a backup, though it wasn't an underwater camera so that was it for the fish pics.

After the tour ended we were brought to our new hotels. I lucked out again and got to stay at Tetsuya with Helen and the two Tokyo government ladies. Tetsuya bills itself as a "healing house" (their translation of kutsurogi no yado) and is what would be called in English an eco hotel. Tetsuya's website and printed materials frequently use the word "lohas", a term that I despise (it is used somewhat differently, and usually meaninglessly, in Japanese than the English acronym LOHAS). So I was skeptical and prepared to be disappointed but Tetsuya impressed the hell out of me. I liked it better than Horizon, which is supposed to be the island's best hotel, and when I make it back to Chichijima this is where I'll be staying. If I can afford it.

I am actually rather spoiled to be comparing Horizon to Tetsuya, as I am the only tour member to stay at both. The others had at least one night at a minshuku (family run inn), and although minshuku can be nice and homey apparently one of them was, to put it nicely, on the rustic side.

Tetsuya has a few rooms in the main building, and two more rooms in small detached buildings. Helen got to stay in one of the detached rooms, above, which had an open-air bathroom on the ground floor and the sleeping quarters, accessed by a neat trap door, on the second floor.

My room was in the main building and just lovely, filled with wood and natural materials and with three walls of windows that let in plenty of light and air.  

Maybe the only downside to the place is that all rooms have twin beds only, which would be a major bummer for a foreign couple wanting a romantic vacation (Japanese couples actually seem to prefer twin beds though, which I find hilarious). But all by myself my little bed was more than comfortable enough.

 

I loved the open bathroom. It had the toilet in the same room as the tub and washing area, which is a little unusual for a nice hotel in Japan and made me wonder what a Japanese couple would do if one had to bathe or wash up at the same time as the other had to use the can. I mean, two people who are not intimate enough to share a bed probably don't want to pee in front of each other. Thankfully the windows and door to the bathroom can be covered with blinds, so at least a person in the room wouldn't have to witness the goings-on of the bathroom.  

Having a bath outdoors is quite a luxury, and although I've experienced rotemburo (open-air hot spring) in Japan and an outdoor shower in Bali, this was my first outdoor bathing experience that involved a visit from a gecko (all I got in Bali was roach).

And here is the view from the throne. This is probably way too much information, but my travel-induced bempi (I'll let you figure out what that means) ended here and I'm sure it was the view and general relaxing vibe of the hotel that did it. Healing hotel indeed. I think Tetsuya earned its "eco" status as well with touches like nice-smelling soap and shampoo in refillable dispensers, real cups and glasses instead of disposable plastic, a small potto (electric kettle) for tea that was unplugged on arrival (most hotels have larger kettles that are constantly plugged in), lots of well-spaced windows that let in so much light and air that I didn't touch the AC and only needed the lights (compact fluorescent of course) at night, and meals that included more local fare than anywhere else.

Lunch was a bento and bottled tea (given to us after the tour) eaten alone in our rooms. A little lonely, and again the only thing part of the meal that seemed not to be imported was the shikaku mame (wing bean) at bottom right. After the morning's giant breakfast this large, greasy bento was not what I wanted at all, so I ended up throwing most of it away and feeling really guilty about it. Why the Japanese equate vacations with massive meals is beyond me (but now that I think about it, it may help explain the ubiquitous twin beds, because there's no better romance killer than an over-stuffed belly).

After lunch came four precious hours of free time, which Helen and I used to walk to the beach. Tetsuya is nicely located, far from town and near a park and Kominato Kaigan, the beach we'd visited on yesterday's tour (see Tetsuya on this map, it's the green-roofed building to the right).

The beach was a short walk, either by road or by river-side path (I took the pretty path home but it rained a bit so didn't get any pictures). The road there was nice enough though, lined with pretty and exotic flowers and eventually meeting up with the river.

This is the same place we went the day before, where the island's southernmost road ends. I checked out the rocky cliff side we'd seen on the previous days tour again, since I hadn't been able to get a picture of the gun hole. That's it below, can you spot it? I couldn't find the tunnel entrance, but apparently parts of the island have a labyrinth of tunnels underground so the entrance could be quite some distance away.

The beach had looked prettier yesterday when the sun was out, but it was more than nice enough for us. After a quick dip Helen left to visit the agricultural center and I had the whole beach to myself, expect for a family that came just as I was leaving. There wasn't much to see underwater so I left my mask and snorkel on the beach and just swam for a while, until I got curious about the rocky edges of the beach. So I geared back up and swam over to the right side, and was rewarded with a rocky bottom that had a decent amount of fish, although not quite the variety I'd seen in the morning and not really any coral. Still, for a sandy beach this was very nice snorkeling and I especially liked swimming through the two little tunnels seen above.

Far to the right Kopepe Beach was visible. I'd heard it's possible to swim over and was tempted to do so, but since I was all alone in iffy weather and not a very strong swimmer to begin with I decided not to. Besides, we had to be back for an early dinner.

So I swam over to the left side of the beach, collecting shells as I went. There wasn't as much to see on this side so I decided to have one last swim before heading back. As I was swimming I happened to lift my head up and look back, and just then a little fish jumped straight out of the water a little ways behind me. As I wondered what would cause a fish to jump like that, I saw another fish do the same thing off to my left. Now why would two fish need to get out of the water in such a hurry like that? It suddenly dawned on me: SHARK! I frantically swam back to shore and crawled onto land, where I sat for a few minutes waiting for my heart to stop thumping. When I finally calmed down I felt really stupid and was glad there was no one around to see me. After all, although sharks are often sighted around the islands they surely wouldn't come it so close to shore. Or would they? I had been swimming in fairly deep water, about three metres perhaps, which seems to me would be more than enough room to fit a man-eating shark. So just for the fun of it, until someone can tell my why those fish were jumping like that, I'm going to just assume that I narrowly missed a horrible death in the jaws of a blood thirsty shark.

Dinner was at the uncivilized hour of 5:30. Most hotels in Japan have set times for meals, which can be a huge annoyance, but in this case the early time was decided our handlers rather than the hotel, as we had a big meeting in the evening. Helen and I each ordered a passion fruit cocktail to begin with, and it was delicious.

The meal started with three courses served together (I think if our schedule hadn't rushed the dinner they'd be served separately). From left: sode-ika no kimi-ae (diamondback squid dressed in egg yolk), garnished with vegetables, shiso (perilla) salmon roe and dried uni (sea urchin); akamutsu no kombujime (rosy seabass sashimi cured with kombu kelp) topped with wasabi and tobiko (flying fish roe) and served in a light broth with local seaweed; and jizakana to kaki no mizore-ni (local fish and oysters poached with grated daikon) garnished with shimeji mushrooms and vegetables. This local fish turned out to be called ogo (himedai in mainland Japanese and lavender jobfish in English). The squid in the first dish was local and is apparently a favourite of the local sperm whales, and although the seabass and tobiko weren't specified as local they are often caught off of Chichijima so I'm inclined to think they were.

All three of these were great, and we were especially blown away with the first one with the squid. I suspect the second dish, with the sashimi, would have been even more impressive if we'd eaten fist, but it was very subtly flavoured and the richly dressed squid just overwhelmed it. Unfortunately we had to eat very quickly because of the meeting, and sadly this amazing meal suffered by not being slowly savoured.

Shimajaga to unagi no isobe-age (locally grown potatoes and eel, wrapped in nori seaweed and deep-fried), garnished with shishito peppers, thinly sliced daikon, strands of chili pepper and matcha salt. This was an ambitious dish and I liked the chewiness of the potato (enhanced by some kind of starch) contrasted with the crisp nori, but found the unagi to be too mild.

This dish, excuse the bad focus, is black sesame stew with Japanese beef shank. The meat was tender and delicious and the sauce definitely interesting, and while this is one of Tetsuya's signature dishes it wasn't my favourite of the meal (that would be a tie between the first two courses, which are also signature dishes).

The last savoury course was shikaku mame no surinagashi (pureed wing bean soup with soy milk). I'm not normally a soy milk fan but this soup was fresh, creamy and lovely. 

We finished with a tiny scoop of papaya ice cream, and were sorry to see the meal end. This was easily the best food of the trip and it sucks that we had to rush through it. Unusually it was just the right amount of food: we were full but not overly stuffed, and I wish all hotel meals could get this right.

So on to the meeting. We were packed into an impatiently waiting van (despite our rushed dinner we still managed to be late) and brought to the ferry terminal, which had been set up especially for us. The first part of the evening was fairly painless and involved us watching a few nanyo odori dances. Nanyo odori is the island's traditional dance, but it's not a particularly long tradition. It is heavily influenced by Pacific Island dances and was apparently introduced to the Ogasawaras in the 1930's by a westerner who had learned traditional dances on Saipan. It was originally called dojin odori (native dance or aboriginal dance) and performed in grass skirts, leis and blackface, but thankfully that last tradition has died out and the word dojin is now considered offensive. The modern name nanyo odori, coined in the 80's, simply means "South Seas dance", and the grass skirts and leis are still worn (I was dying to ask the man above if there was any special significance to his hemp lei, but sadly there was no time for questions).

The dances were performed to singing and we were given song sheets, in Japanese, and encouraged to sing along. The only musical instrument accompaniment was the simple kaka drum shown above.

After the dance performance came what we'd been dreading: we were given grass skirts and leis of our very own and made to get up do a dance in front of an audience. Yup, as we'd been watching the dances the terminal behind us had been quietly filling up with onlookers, and I could tell my fellow foreigners wanted to escape as badly I did. But no, it was time to earn our keep. I imagine we looked about as awesome as foreigners on the mainland do when made to dress up in yukata and kimono and do bon odori dances for their delighted Japanese hosts. But it was over quickly, and I was soon looking back on the dance with nostalgia. Because the worst was yet to come.

We were seated in a panel formation in front of the onlookers, who turned out to be mostly people in the tourism industry. And then we were given microphones and each made to give a speech about our impressions of the island from our special foreign points of view, and what could be done to encourage more foreigners to visit. I found it funny that our opinions as outsiders were so sought after despite the fact the tour was only available to fluent Japanese speakers (they made a special exception for me), and most of us had been living in Japan for well over a decade, had a Japanese spouse and were well-immersed in our adopted country.

The others had some great ideas that were expressed in fluent Japanese, and a few of them were fantastic public speakers to boot. The audience was really impressed, and to my great surprise (as good as everyone's points were, they mostly seemed common-sense to me) they seemed to be hearing most of these ideas for the first time. And then it was my turn. I had known we'd have to be giving our ideas, but was totally unprepared for doing so in this format, especially after less than two days on Chichijima. I did actually have some ideas of my own but not the Japanese skills to communicate them, so ended up with a really dumb point, chosen only because it was a simple one that I actually had the ability to express. And even then I was barely able to choke the words out. It turns out that poor Japanese ability, a poor idea and poor public speaking skills, even coming from the unique and exotic viewpoint of a foreigner, do not go over well at this type of meeting. I haven't felt so lame since high school.

The highlight of the meeting was near the end when one of the audience members, who could have been a fisherman or a grandpa or a retired pirate, stood up and spoke. He had long hair in a pony tail and seemed like he might be an old Japanese man, but had one of those faces that gives few clues about its owners age or race. He smiled and told us in English (the only English we got that night) that to really get the full Ogasawara experience we should try the ferry on the cheapest 2nd class ticket, with an open sleeping berth. Then he turned around and walked out. I guess with his English and unusual appearance he was a descendant of one of the original western settlers, and it would have been cool if he'd stayed and talked more. As for his advice, he's right that it probably would have been much more fun and authentic if we'd made our journey together in the 2nd class open area. But far less comfortable. I've done the cheap ferry thing before, on a 24-hour journey to Okinawa, and after the first several hours the fun is directly proportionate to how drunk and male you are. It's less amusing once you actually get tired and want to sleep. But he had a good point: with the entire trip involving us traveling the fancy way, staying in private and semi-private rooms, and having every single thing arranged for us, we weren't getting the full experience and thus were not really qualified to give our opinions on tourism to the islands.

After a brief question and answer time the meeting mercifully ended, and we were invited out to a local bar with some of the meeting's organizers and attendees. The bar was a cute place called Green Pepe (no website) and I'm pretty sure that the well-lubricated communication that went on between us foreign tour participants and the local folks was far more valuable than what went on at the meeting earlier. It was definitely more fun.

Part four in the series coming soon. Meanwhile, see more pictures from the trip here.