A Fish Out of Water

Thailand Day Two

Our second day was pretty uneventful, so I'll take this opportunity to show our hotel. We stayed in Kalim, a tiny bay just north of Patong, at Kalim Resort, and as I said in the last post the "resort" is a misnomer, but it was nice enough. When planning the trip it seemed to be the nicest hotel of all the affordable packages I saw, and it turned out to be clean, with spacious rooms, friendly staff (who totally doted on Shuma), a basic but nice pool, and decent breakfast.

The other guests mostly seemed to be on package tours as well, so I guess that's how they get most of their businesses. At least half of them were Japanese, with mostly Koreans and Europeans making up the rest. We heard so much Japanese at breakfast that we felt like we'd never left, and I got so used to it that one morning I couldn't understand the table next to me and asked my husband "Sore wa nani ben?" (What dialect is that?) to which he replied "Kankoku ben." (It's Korean). Which doesn't sound as good when translated into English but was pretty funny. I swear, Korean can sometimes sound a lot like Japanese.

Here's a mystery: despite all of the Japanese people at our hotel (and presumably other hotels, as Phuket is very popular with Japanese tourists), we never ever saw Japanese people when we were out. We'd occasionally see vans in the hotel parking lot being loaded or unloaded with them, but I have no idea where they went. And many of the girls were really dressed up, with the latest fashions and full make-up and fancy bouffant hairdos and high high heels, so they were going somewhere. Very strange.

Our room had both a double and single bed (when booking it seemed like all the rooms do), and we would much rather have had the extra space for Shuma to run around than the extra bed (not that the room was small though). They forgot the crib the first night and we were too tired to ask about it so we put Shuma to sleep in the single bed, and of course he fell out (landing of course on the hard floor instead of the extra pillows we'd put on down in anticipation of just such an accident). It bothered us more than it bothered him, though, and he was fine.

 

The crib appeared on the second day and everything was good after that. To prevent Shuma from breaking anything, we made a few rearrangements like unplugging the TV, hiding remotes and the alarm clock, and so on, and the cleaning staff left everything in place, which was appreciated.

The bathroom had both a bathtub and a spacious shower, big enough for Shuma and one of us to both fit comfortably. And plenty of space to put toilettries and stuff, which is great after years of Japanese hotels (and homes for that matter, including ours) that have absolutely nowhere in the bathroom to put anything.

The balcony was nice but had no chair (I think they would have brought us a plastic one if we'd asked, as some other balconies had them). We had a frangipani tree right outside our window and, like all rooms, a view of the pool.

So the downsides: it was rather bland and lacking in Thai character, and there was a mosque near by and the calls to prayer (particularly the one at dawn) were rather distracting. With the air conditioning on and balcony door shut it was hardly noticeable, but quite loud with the door open. The location was good in that it was away from the crowds of Patong yet close enough to get there if needed, by a long walk or short tuk-tuk ride. And bad in that it was not really close to anything else, so you had to pay to get anywhere and there weren't many options for meals nearby.

Here's the second day's breakfast: pad thai, seafood and vegetable stir-fry, rice and a fried egg.

Shuma ate well every morning, enjoying the noodles and rice and really liking the fruit. He also loved the juice, which we normally don't let him have full strength (he gets a juice diluted with water for breakfast only). On this day he drank way too much, too quickly, and shortly after this he spit up all over everything. It was amazing to see how quickly the staff, who before had been lavishing attention on Shuma, disappeared. When finally approached they were very very reluctant to give us extra napkins to mop things up. I didn't expect anyone to help us clean up- who wants to deal with baby vomit?- but geez, a few napkins are not a big deal. We ended up getting everything cleaned up and were careful with the juice after that, but boy were the staff cold that day.

So back to the room for a quick change of clothes. Then we headed to Phuket Town, which was kind of a mistake but I was hoping to find some sort of open-air market. We'd missed the famed weekend market the night before but I thought there still might be something. I also wanted to visit a western-style shopping centre to see if we could find swim diapers, as the ones we brought were too small. It turned out that the market we found had half their stalls closed (all of Phuket Town was like this, and we weren't sure if they were closed for a holiday or out of business or what) and Hideaki couldn't handle the smell so we had to leave (if I ever get my wish of a trip across Asia, he is NOT invited). Also, no luck on the diapers.

I had hoped Phuket Town would be more "authentic" than the other big centre, Patong, and I knew that hope was kind of a tourist's folly but I just had no interest in Patong. Phuket Town seemed to be halfway between a real working city and a tourist town, but not in a great way, and it illustrated the problem with our whole trip: if I'd wanted to see the "real" Thailand I wouldn't have come to Phuket, yet we didn't want to be stuck in tourist traps. Maybe as inexperienced travellers with a baby this problem is inevitable, but what a waste of a morning.

I did get to try milk tea at a nice little cafe, which was delicious. This was one of the few pictures taken that morning. Yes, I'm still nursing Shuma, which really comes in handy while travelling (especially on the plane), and I was a bit nervous about doing it publicly in Thailand since I knew Thais are fairly conservative and don't appreciate skimpy clothing, public displays of attention, and the like. But I was discreet and always covered up, and although I never saw any other nursing mothers I also didn't notice any disapproval. Who knows what the locals really thought (if they even noticed), but I don't think I caused any great offence.

Lots of Thais really seem to like children, and Shuma got so much attention. He (and we) liked it, but I could see some parents not being comfortable with all all the unsolicited cheek pinching and funny faces. One thing I noticed: I didn't see a single Thai child or baby in a stroller, they are carried everywhere. The tourists I saw with strollers seemed to be having a difficult time on the narrow streets and bumpy sidewalks, and I was glad we hadn't brought ours. I also only saw just one (apparently) Thai baby in a sling, otherwise baby carriers don't seem to be used much. I wonder if it's different in the deep countryside or in more affluent urban centres.

The food stalls we came across seemed to mostly have snacks (are food stalls more of a night thing maybe?) so we ended up at a rather touristy restaurant. Hideaki had fat noodles in soup with shrimp and some sort of lime soda, both good.

Shuma and I shared rice, and it came out shaped like a bear! I saw this a few times, maybe it's standard for kids.

I had larb gai (spicy ground chicken), one of my favourite Thai foods. This was ferociously spicy and very good. So we did get some good food. After that we did the only shopping of the whole trip: I bought a shirt for Shuma at a souvenir shop next to the restaurant, and we got obligatory souvenirs for people back home at a supermarket. The supermarket was pretty fun actually, and I wish we'd bought more stuff. We bought spicy fried broad beans which were amazing and couldn't find them anywhere else when we looked, and they don't seem to be available in Japan. I will have a look at the Asian markets when I'm Canada next month.

Back in Kalim we spent some time on the small beach. We'd been warned that this was a working beach used by fishermen, and that there was no swimming, but there were lounge chairs and parasols and a few tourists in the water. I did find a fishing hook in the sand so wouldn't come back without water shoes or sports sandals, at least for Shuma. It certainly isn't the prettiest beach in the world, but n0t bad for just a few minutes' walk from our hotel.

Here is Shuma eating the best popsicle in the world. Passion fruit flavour, bought from the local Family Mart (this Japanese convenience store chain was all over) for next to nothing, and so so good. I made the mistake of giving some to Shuma before I'd even had half, wanting to see how he'd react to his first popsicle ever. And of course I never got it back. I meant to buy another but never got the chance, and now I would do almost anything for another one.

Dinner was at a local street stall, a semi-permanent one (I wonder if there are different terms for the various types of food stalls?). I had curried pork on rice, and Hideaki had fried noodles, both coming with a simple but tasty soup. I keep saying this about every meal, but man was this good. The stall, like most in this area, was geared to locals but had a sign in English that could be pointed to to order. None of the vendors we bought from on the trip could speak English beyond numbers, but all were either tolerant of tourists or downright friendly. This place was really friendly and they were the only ones that offered us the proper set of condiments (fish sauce, chili powder, vinegar and sugar) for the noodles, other restaurants and stalls seemed to offer them only to Thais (or be too touristy to even have them).

We got a few snacks from another street stall on the way home: deep-fried bananas and sweet potatoes and a fresh mango, all of which made a fine dessert. Too dark for pictures.

More pictures here.

Thailand Day One

Yes, that's right, day one of a vacation we took a month and a half ago. I'm going to make you slog through several posts about the trip, because I took hundreds of pictures and if I post them all at once then your scrolling finger will get all tired out.

So anyway, we went to Thailand last month. This trip was a long time coming, in a few ways. First of all, we've never had a proper family vacation. I don't just mean with Shuma, I mean Hideaki and I. We've been married 12 years, and have done some travelling together, but no real vacation with just the two of us, as defined by getting on a plane and going somewhere tropical or romantic or otherwise nice. No honyemoon even.

Also, I've wanted to visit Thailand for a long time, I guess ever since I fell in love with Asia on a trip to Bali seventeen years ago. Shortly after that I moved to Vancouver, where my aunt and cousins lived, and hearing my cousin Jen talk about backpacking around the world, especially about Thailand, made me want to go even more. You might have heard this story before, so here's the short version: I had big plans to become a world traveller, or at least spend a year or so backpacking through Asia, but funds were short. I ended up in Japan, partly because that was where it was supposed to be easiest to make money, and partly because- Japan! It wasn't my ultimate goal, but it seemed like a cool place to stay for a while. It was, and I stayed longer than I had planned, because I was spending money on having fun instead of saving up for my big trip, and also, I met Hideaki. And I stayed and stayed and never went to Thailand or anywhere else, and the years went by and now I'm too old for backpacking and still don't have the money for it anyway plus I have some extra baggage now (adorable and still fairly portable baggage, but probably not welcome in a youth hostel). I've accepted that I am not ever going to go gallivanting across Asia.

But a package tour to Phuket, the most touristy resort in Thailand? That's doable. It was a typical Japanese tour, which means way too short, but Hideaki was a bit worried that Shuma wouldn't do well on a longer trip. It was six days, but only four actually in Thailand, and it was arranged with the busy Japanese worker in mind: the flights were at night, so on the way we left in the evening and arrived at our hotel at some crazy time like 4:00 in the morning, with a short stop in the completely closed-up Hong Kong Airport on the way. Not a nice way to travel, but Shuma was well-behaved and you can't ask for more than that when traveling with a toddler.

So this is Shuma on our first morning, after just a few hours sleep. He looks pretty good, considering. We're at the hotel's buffet breakfast and he's eating a finger banana, which I got really excited about because Shuma is always starting a banana and then only eating a third of it. But with these little guys he could eat the whole thing! But no, it turns out that no matter what size the banana is, he'll eat exactly a third of it.

We stayed at Kalim Resort, which was not a resort at all but a budget hotel, and it was OK. The breakfasts were pretty good, with a good range of fresh fruit, western-style stuff like pastries, breads, cereal, ham and eggs, and four Thai dishes as well as rice. The pastries were really good, with croissants equal to what we get in Japan (which means way better than in Canada). That was unexpected. The fruit on the first morning included, above, finger bananas, papaya, dragon fruit, green and yellow melon, and star fruit. I discovered that I actually like dragon fruit, and after looking it up it seems that it only gets tasty when fully ripe. So the times I've tried it in Japan it just wasn't ripe yet.

Next was the Thai food: some fat fried noodles, cherry tomatoes simmered in some sort of tasty sauce, park and vegetable stir-fry, rice, and a fried egg with a nice runny yolk on top. It was very mild and I have no idea how authentic it was, but it was fresh and tasty and they did have various sauces to spice it up with.

So instead of a nice relaxing day after our long night of travel I arranged a day-long boat tour. It was awesome though. It was with River Rovers, and we we toured Chalong Bay and a tidal river in a little river cruiser. It was very slow, in a good way, because Shuma is not quite ready for a speed boat and the views were so pretty it would be a shame to rush by them.

This is the captain, Gordon.

We were joined by Barbara from Australia.

And there's me on the deck.

Soon after we took off (set sail? I lack a good seafaring vocabulary) we were served juice and beautifully cut fruit by Luk, Gordon's partner. We were also offered beer but as we were barely keeping awake we refrained. Water was constantly offered as well.

We chugged across the bay, which was a thousand times more beautiful than these pictures show and also a real working bay, with sailboats from around the world at anchor and plenty of local fishing boats coming and going.

Also lots of floating fish farms, which is how many locals make their living. These, like almost everything else in Phuket, were all built after the tsunami in 2004, which devastated the area.

We entered the Mudong River, which is completely tidal- it fills up its entire length and empties out twice a day.

And then we anchored and we paddled over to the mangroves on two sea kayaks. I wore Shuma in the carrier and Hideaki paddled, and we were both a bit nervous, but it was really shallow and there wasn't really much danger (Shuma did have a life jacket on).

Each kayak had a big bowl of bananas, and some hungry locals were waiting for us.

These are Long-tailed Macaques, which are very similar to Japanese macaques (except for the, well, long tails). I was a bit nervous, as the wild or semi-wild monkeys I've had experience with in Bali and Japan were very aggressive, but they were quite timid and gentle. At first we had to throw the bananas, but after a while they were grabbing them from our hands and even coming on to the kayaks. They warmed up much more quickly to Barbara, perhaps because they find females less intimidating (this is certainly true with some monkey troupes in Japan, which are known for attacking women but avoiding men). Or maybe they just liked her better.

 

 

When we'd all had enough of each other we continued up the river. It was pretty but not stunning, and we saw a few birds: snowy egrets, cormorants, and a beautiful kingfisher (three were spotted but I only saw one). I think it was a Blue-eared Kingfisher (there were a few bird and nature guides on board), which is has a brilliant royal-blue back, quite different from the turquoise coloured kingfishers I see in Japan.

 

As a working river there were fishing huts, boat launches and a few other structures here and there, and we were passed by a few longboats (the ubiquitous style of boat seen below).

We had to turn back before we got to the end of the river as the tide was about to change and we didn't want to get stuck. Back near the bay we saw another small tour boat with some folks trying out sea kayaks, which was one of maybe two times we saw other tourists the whole day.

Luk brought out some fries and chicken wings, which were amazing and even though we weren't at all hungry (it was still morning, and we'd had a huge breakfast at the hotel and all that fruit) we devoured them.

  

And you can't have chicken wings without beer. Holy cow, if we weren't suffering from a lack of sleep and responsible for a small child we could have had a lot of this stuff.

The next stop was a floating fish farm. Mostly it was tropical fish that had been caught at sea and were waiting to be sold to the local aquarium, but there were also fish for eating, and lobsters and oysters as well.

We learned the names of them all but I forget, and in any case it was hard to get pictures. These ones above look drab here but the blue markings were quite stunning.

These ones are good eating and apparently popular in Australia. I think these are young ones and they get much bigger.

This is a mix of tropical fish and eels, including a rather disgruntled lionfish. The enclosures weren't as small as they look here- the nets were just pulled up to give us a look at the inmates. Angelfish and a morray eel can be seen below.

This red coral was being grown for the aquarium, and is especially valuable as Phuket had a coral bleach event a few years back and is only just starting to recover.

Jeuvenile blacktipped sharks maybe?

I got to hold on to this one's tail. It felt like an emery board.

I also got to hold this pufferfish!

The lobsters and oysters are raised for local restaurants, and shortly after this our boat became a floating restaurant.

We bought one each, and the owner of the fish farm boiled them and we ate them on the boat. They were quite a bit cheaper than in a restaurant, but not exactly dirt-cheap. They were good and had a lot more meat than I expected, and the flesh in the legs (and feelers even) was tasty. With the clawed lobsters we get in Canada the meat in the smaller legs tends to get overcooked and is usually not worth eating. But Canadian lobsters are tastier overall (and they have claws!), and I think warm-water lobsters are just not as good. Oh my god, I sound like I'm complaining- I'm not, these were good.

I did not expect to eat raw oysters on this trip. These were delicious- very meaty, with a shellfishy flavour, if that makes sense (I mean, no melon notes or sweet flavours like you sometimes get with other types of oyster, just pure seafood flavour), and clean tasting.

 

Our next stop: this tiny little island. It had a small sandbar which became our private beach for a few hours.

 

Shuma napped on the boat for a little while leaving us to swim together for a while, and when he woke up we took turns on the sea kayak.

This was Shuma's first time on an ocean beach and he was a bit nervous at first, but he got used to his new environment pretty quickly.

Yes, that's a big rip in his swim diaper. It's a leftover from last year and I didn't realize he'd grown out of that size since then. I'd forgotten to bring his (and my) bathing suit that morning, but luckily had this diaper on me. Not that he even needed it, on our own private beach.

And I look like a dork in Hideaki's shorts, but again- private beach!

I also didn't realize how silly I looked on the back seat of the sea kayak, I just chose it because it was the deepest and I figured the closer to the water I am, the better. Guess what, nobody complained- private beach! It was my first time sea kayaking and boy was it fun. I would love to kayak from island to island, and some day when Shuma is old enough to come with us (or be left with a sitter) I will do that.

And then lunch. All that food before? Just snacks. Luk first brought out tom yum gung (spicy shrimp soup), which was very good but not nearly as hot as it's supposed to be. Which was appreciated, as I definitely can't handle authentic Thai spiciness, but this could have had a bit more heat. Not complaining- this was excellent!

Next, steamed rice and spicy clams. These little clams were so sweet and tasty.

Pork and egg stir-fry.

Pork, shrimp and vegetable stir-fry. There was one, maybe two other dishes I didn't get a picture of, and they were all amazing. All of them spiced for tourists, although they did contain some chilies and I earned a reputation for wimpiness when I ate one and turned bright red. The problem is that it's hard to tell the difference between sweet red peppers (you can see one above) and the fiery hot ones when they're chopped up small. But the hot ones are very potent!

After lunch we headed to a snorkeling spot. The coral was indeed completely bleached, which was eerie (I saw only two live corals, everything else was greyish white). But there were plenty of beautiful tropical fish and crazy spiny purple starfish. I even saw a few anemones and clownfish, little black ones. Also some tiny needlefish and lots of angelfish, parrotfish, and puffers. Unfortunately Hideaki's mask and snorkel malfunctioned and he had a rough time, and I lent him mine so had to swim back without a mask. Next time I'll bring our own equipment.

Shuma's mask worked just fine, and it took some practice but he eventually got the hang of the snorkel too. Just kidding, he stayed on the boat with Luk.

And then we headed back to shore. By now the bay was quite crowded with returning fishing boats and tourist speed boats (which all looked really crowded and we were glad to be on our slow, spacious little boat). It was a fantastic day and we were sorry the tour was over.

We returned to our hotel and then set out on foot looking for somewhere to eat. We were in kind of a remote area called Kalim, which is north of Patong (the major tourist area on the island). All the restaurants were too fancy and after walking what seemed like forever we ended up at a strip of food stalls. These were completely touristy, but we were too tired and hungry to pretend we were anything other than tourists. This was a Sunday night and later we found out that lots of places are closed Sundays, and the other nights we saw lots of smaller restarauants and stalls open, so we picked the wrong night to look for a place to eat.

So there's Hideaki looking almost asleep, with a lemon shake (they call these slushy-like drinks "shakes" there) and a beer.

We had pad thai, some kind of stir-fry that isn't in this picture, sauteed phak bung (water spinach, that hollow-stemmed green), and tod man gung (fried shrimp cakes). These last two were amazing, and the staff were so nice to us, especially Shuma. He got lots of attention and a toy to play with and a free plate of watermelon, which we felt bad about because Hideaki and I hate watermelon and Shuma could only eat a few bites.

We worked off some of the feast on the long walk home, and slept very well that night.

See more pictures here (and note that some pictures from the tour are not my own).

Beachwear

Here is Shuma modelling his various beach fashions in Thailand earlier this month. First we have a simple look consisting of a Nemo-adorned swim diaper paired with a drawstring hat.

The ripped look is is still going strong, so it wasn't a problem when mom accidentally poked a hole in the too-small diaper (a leftover from last summer).

 

Of course, the only essential item on the beach is a hat; diapers and swimsuits are completely optional.

The feeling of the waves gently lapping at your bits? That's what freedom feels like.

Of course, there's a fine line between enjoying the freedom of the naturist lifestyle and plain old flaunting, so to avoid looking like too much of a show-off Shuma did occasionally wear this modest one-piece. It features a snorkeling otter and slimming side panels.

The same old headgear can get boring though, so for extra sun protection a glamorous oversize sun hat is just the ticket.

The versatile one-piece segues perfectly from beach to work. Here Shuma takes an important business call on his phone.

His coconut phone. It's the latest thing in Thailand.

Resort Wear

This Resort Wear edition of Fashion Show features Shuma on location in Phuket. He wears an outfit that announces "I am on vacation in Thailand!" consisting of a nifty hat, a Thai fisherman's shirt, and beige shorts. Yes they're shorts, but he's wearing them low, though less due to personal style and more to do with a full diaper. Accessories (snazzy sunglasses, sandals and sippy cup) not shown, either because they were losing or stored away in mom's bag. Two bags, actually, giant ones, but I'm used to that; what really bothered me was losing his sunglasses before he even got to use them. But I'm used to losing stuff too.

Anyway, the fisherman's shirt is a type that was ubiquitous in souvenir stalls, often plain for adults and with some kind of elephant-related design for kids. Surprisingly we didn't buy it in Thailand- it was a hand-me-down we got in Tokyo- but I'm glad we brought it because it looked really cool and comfortable on him. I bought another in a larger size but that was the only thing we bought the whole trip (other than a few food-related obligatory souvenirs) and now I regret not getting one for Hideaki. Oh well, we'll just have to go back.

More pictures to come soon!

Canada Part Three

Well, it's about time I finished posting about our trip to Canada this summer (the first parts of the trip were blogged here and here). We've been back for over five months and it still feels like yesterday. And I want to be back so badly, and looking at these pictures again makes me so, so homesick. Warning: this post contains about eight hundred pictures, and is good proof that I am just blogging for myself these days.

Shuma continued to spend a lot of time outdoors, especially as it started to warm up. Watermelon season came, which is always cause for great joy for everyone except myself. It turns out that Shuma likes the vile fruit (I have no idea where that came from, as Hideaki hates it as much as I do).

Not only to eat, but to roll around. And wear.

Shuma was just learning to eat, and had some setbacks (his initial jet lag caused some serious lack of appetite) but eventually he ate well, and cost my family a fortune in fruit. I ate well too. Oh the food I ate! I didn't take pictures of every memorable meal, but here are a few in no particular order:

I finally got to try Portuguese chicken that is so popular. Wow was it ever good (as were the greasy potatoes that came with it), and now it's just one more thing I can never have here in Japan.

Here's another: tomatillo tortilla soup, made by my brother Greg and his girlfriend Sherry. I've never even seen tomatillos in Japan, so I'll just have to wait till my next visit home and hope to get served this again.

After the soup they served these beautiful steaks, with refried beans and salsa.

My mom baked some lovely halibut with bacon and leeks.

And made a wonderful rhubarb crisp. The ice cream was totally unnecessary, but what the hell.

Another Greg and Sherry meal fajitas and black bean salsa.

I think this yummy meal was a whole family collaboration: chicken souvlaki with tzaziki sauce, tomato and feta cheese salad, sauteed greens of some sort, rice pilaf and corn on the cob. 

Sherry made this blueberry pie, and it was every bit as amazing as it looks.

It's hard to tell what you're looking at, and the picture doesn't do it justice, but this is my mom's cheese bread and it's deadly. It's bread baked with butter, onions, poppy seeds and cheese, and it's rich, gooey, crisp on the outside and so so good.

Served with steak, baked potato and veggies.

This is Sherry's strawberry shortcake, with strawberries she picked herself.

I went out for sushi with my sister Julie and her daughter Zoe, and was surprised at how good it was. I think it's pretty funny that they serve this bento with sushi AND rice, and a few things weren't quite right from a Japanese perspective, but it was great. I think the salmon sashimi is as good or better than what we get in Japan (which is often imported anyway).

Zoe introduced me to the dragon roll, which has unagi (eel) and avocado. I know very little about kawarimaki (the creative sushi rolls mostly found outside of Japan) but want to try more.

This beef, barley and porcini soup my mom made was so rich and satisfying, more of a stew than a soup really. I want some right now.

Zoe made her specialty, chicken brian, and Sherry helped out by making the pasta and side dishes. Everyone loved it, including Shuma (who loves any kind of noodle).

We liked my mom's pineapple cake so much she made it twice.

And I've never liked the combination of fruit and chocolate but Sherry converted me with these.

My last dinner at home was a Korean feast cooked by Sherry. I had requested ddukbokki, a dish of rice cake in spicy sauce which is also popular in Japan (where it is called topokki). Next came pajeon (spring onion pancake, called chijimi in Japan), which was eaten up before I thought to take a picture.

Then came thinly sliced beef, to be cooked at the table and eaten with a variety of kimchi, sauces and greens.

Here is one bite: a lettuce leaf, about to be rolled up with a sesame leaf, chrysanthemum leaves, cooked beef, kimichi and gochujang (spicy bean sauce). Yum!

All those calories needed to be burned off, so we tried to get out for exercise as much as possible. Baboo took Zoe, Shuma and I to Kelso for a bit of hiking.

And even though I kept worrying they'd fall, I even let Baboo carry Shuma.

We drove down to Toronto's lakefront and spent some time walking around. Shuma loved this splash pool and Cletis (my sister's dog) loved the geese that were everywhere.

And we all loved posing for some highly original pictures with a monument to the QEW (a local highway).

Closer to home, Shuma made many visits to our local park, here with his cousin Zoe.

But it was nice just to hang out at home. Look how pretty these flower baskets are! They are mostly Sherry's work.

There was always something fun to do, like hang around with Cletis.

Or jump around on the air mattress. I couldn't get any actual jumping on camera, because any commotion would attract Cletis and then Shuma would stop jumping and play with the dog.

Cletis managed to perfect the art of the photobomb, and starred in many, many pictures intended for Shuma.

Sherry was mostly in charge of bath time, and from the sounds of it they had great fun in the big bath. But when his eczema flared up we gave him an oatmeal bath in the kitchen sink. He'd never had a sink bath before as our sink is the wrong type, but it was the perfect size. He thought it was pretty nifty too.

And of course he liked his pool time out in the backyard. Basically he likes anything involving being naked, as it gives him access to his favourite toy.

But he really does seem to love the combination of water, the outdoors and nudity.

And then came Canada Day.

We all get dressed up in our finest patriotic finery.

The hockey stick was a big hit, and Baboo has great hope that he'll grow up knowing how to use it.

We played bocce in the field behind our house, which as always was really just an excuse to mock each other. Mom, Cletis and Shuma sensibly chose to watch.

And enjoy some snacks.

We taught Shuma how to stick a maple seed to his nose, which he took to right away. He's definitely one of us.

Zoe, as you may guess from these pictures, is a model and just got back from a few months in Bangkok.

She is known for professionalism and laid-back, sweet personality.

As well as her high standards of personal grooming.

Which is something we have in common.

Dinner was outside on the patio, which was a treat as most of the evenings until then were too cool to eat outside.

Shuma really enjoyed dining al fresco.

We had a lovely seafood dinner, including these clams roasted with potatoes and chorizo, and corn on the cob that came with little baby corns attached (the mini cobs were kind of disappointing actually).

And then it was fireworks time. This was Shuma's second pyrotechnic experience and he was very brave. His first time was Victoria Day five weeks before, and he'd been a little scared at first, but obviously interested. This time he really enjoyed them, despite being a little nervous.

On our last morning we went out for one last swing. I wanted to take the swing set with me, and I'm sure Shuma felt the same.

Back home we posed for some family pictures before I got ready to go.

And then it was goodbye. The flight home was uneventful and Shuma was well-behaved, which is pretty normal for a 9-month old. I know the next trip won't be so easy, but I can't wait.

See more pictures from the visit here. Please note that many of these pictures are not mine (namely: the good ones, which are by my brother Greg Bishop, his girlfriend Sherry Park or my father Jim Bishop).

Kinchakuda

At the end of September I took Shuma to Kinchakuda, a park in Hidaka City, Saitama that is famed for its flowers. I've been wanting to go for years but never had the time, and now that I often find myself at a loss as to how I'm supposed to fill up the days with a baby I thought this would be a nice little outing. I was right, and aside from a really sore back from carrying him for most of the day things went great. I'm guessing the early toddler years are a good time to do touristy stuff like this, before he's old enough to get bored of it.

The park can be visited as part of a hike or long walk, but I chose to go directly from the station (Koma Station on the Seibu Chichibu Line). It took about fifteen minutes and was a rather pleasant walk, along paths lined with farm fields, rice paddies and chestnut orchards. There were also vendors for much of the way selling local flowers, produce and crafts. I was interested in the sesame, which we'd seen growing a few years ago in nearby Hanno, and I wonder if the area produces a lot of it.

There were also plenty of flowers, and as we got closer to the park they increased, as did the crowds. After paying my 200 yen entry fee, this is what I saw:

The flowers in question are called here manjushage (曼珠沙華), and more commonly known as higanbana (彼岸花; English names include red spider lily, cluster amaryllis, and storm lily).

This is what a single flower looks like, and it's beautiful enough on its own, but people come here to see thousands of them together in a sea of red. Indeed, if you've seen a picture of a field of higanbana then it was probably taken here, as Kinchakuda is famed throughout Japan. Speaking of pictures, I wasn't expecting to take amazing ones, but here are some examples of what more talented photographers can do with these flowers.

So of course even though we went on a weekday we had to deal with major crowds, and it was slow moving along the narrow paths in the park. Luckily the place is well-designed and the number and layout of the paths make it possible to occasionally escape the worst crowding and also get some pictures that aren't filled with people.

There was evidence here and there of the previous week's Typhoon 15, one of the biggest storms to pass through in recent memory. Here a few trees have been knocked over but left where they lay, presumably so as not to disturb the flowers.

Near the middle of the park was a market area full of vendors selling snacks and local products, so I bought a simple lunch and found a place by the nearby Komagawa River to sit down and eat it. Shuma charmed the pants off of the surrounding picnickers, and the couple seen on the right in the above picture gave him a manju (sweet bun stuffed with red bean jam). Which I brought home for Hideaki, because Shuma hasn't discovered sweets yet.

Across the river was a small landslide from the typhoon. The river was nice and shallow and looked to be a great spot for swimming in the summer, so we'll be back.

The other side of the park was far less crowded, perhaps because the flowers weren't quite in full bloom yet.

Can you spot the dragonfly above? It's an akatombo (red dragonfly, or autumn darter), the same as the one below:

This is the Aiaibashi Bridge, a pedestrian bridge said to be the biggest of its type in Japan.

Every once in a while there were white higanbana, which are even harder to photograph than red (the flowers also come in pink and yellow).

Watch out squeamish people, a spider shot follows:

You didn't think I would do a whole post without a picture of Shuma, did you? Of course, it was hard to take his picture- he can stand by himself but every time I backed up to take his picture he would grab the flowers and try to eat or otherwise destroy them.

By the time I left the higanbana section of the park it was late afternoon. This would be a good time for serious photographers to visit, as the light was lovely and the crowds were thinning out.

Nearby there were fields of cosmos. The park actually has several types of flowers that bloom throughout the year, although higanbana are by far the most famous.

More pictures can be seen here.

 

Kinchakuda
Saitama-ken Hidaka-shi Koma Hongo 125-2
042-982-0268
15 minutes from Koma Station on the Seibu Chichicu Line; can also be accessed on hiking routes from Komagawa Station (JR Hachiko and Kawagoe Lines) and Hanno Station (Seibu Ikebukuro Line)
Open daily from 7:00am to 5:00pm during the higanbana season (two to three weeks around late September, but varies; season announced in September here)
Admission 200 yen during the higanbana season; free during the rest of the year
Parking 500 yen
Wheelchair and stroller accessible, but most paths are unpaved and crowds may be hard to navigate

Shinagawa Staycation

Hideaki had a Friday off this past weekend, which fell right between our anniversary and Shuma's birthday. We really wanted to take a trip to the beach to celebrate, but without time or funds for a drive or flight far away we were left with somewhere near Tokyo. Well, the water around Tokyo is already nasty enough, and although I doubt there is any appreciable amount of radiation in the ocean in these parts it just didn't feel right letting Shuma into the ocean. So after a long search for Tokyo hotels that both still had pools open (a lot of hotels have outdoor pools only, and the season is really short) and allowed babies in them, we settled on the Shinagawa Prince Hotel. I found a good deal that included a night in one of the best rooms (35th floor, main tower), four tickets to the pool and fancy buffet breakfast, and it cost 20400 yen for all of us.

It was a great choice as I had to go through Shinagawa anyway, on my way to immigration to pick up my new visa. So a little announcement: I now have a permanent residence visa! I no longer have to worry about extending my visa (or getting arrested for forgetting- oops!) and won't be kicked out when my spouse visa expires due to a divorce or Hideaki dying. Not that I'm planning anything, but, you know. It's a relief.

So back to the hotel: it's  not a terribly fancy place, but very very big and with lots to do (movie theatre, bowling alley, aquarium, two pools, tonnes of restaurants, shopping etc). We didn't leave the building (well, complex of buildings) for twenty-four hours but still really enjoyed ourselves. We started with just checking our room out. Shuma loves exploring new places and we might as well have been at Disneyland for all the fun he had.

Our view wasn't great, mostly office buildings and Shinagawa Station, but if Shuma were a little older he would have loved being able to see all the trains, especially the shinkansen (bullet train).

We had a late lunch downstairs at Anna Miller's. We were playing it safe because of Shuma, and the food was as unimpressive and overpriced as we expected, but I finally got to try the pie people have been raving about for years. Here's the thing- I love apple pie, and by apple pie I mean the North American kind with rich, flaky pastry and gooey, cinnamon-scented filling. The Japanese kind, with tough pastry and a firm, bland filling, just doesn't cut it. So I've been suspicious of Japanese peoples' claims that Anna Miller's apple pie is the best ever. But I had to try and it turns out that- yes! It's the best apple pie I've ever had in Japan. Maybe not the best in the world, but it's a true American apple pie. Yay. So I'll be back for a kid-friendly dessert sometime.

After lunch we tried the pool. There is an indoor pool, with a sauna, jacuzzi and kiddie pool, but it was off-limits due to swimming lessons at the time so we used the outdoor pool. It also had a kiddie pool, which was the only place babies were allowed and was freezing cold, and although Shuma and I are pretty tough when it comes to water temperature we didn't last very long.

The boys needed a nap after all that strenuous lunch-eating and pool-frolicking. Actually, I'm the one who needed a nap after getting a very squirmy Shuma in and out of his swimming diaper and swimsuit and stopping him from crawling away while I was changing, all the while trying to preserve my modesty and hide my tattoo, which is of course not allowed (the tattoo, I mean). It was exhausting, but he loved being in the water so much that it was worth it.

Next up was Aqua Stadium, the hotel's aquarium. This was Shuma's second visit, and the place is notable not so much for its aquarium displays (although the shark and ray tunnel is very cool) but for its seal and dolphin shows. I had been prepared to hate the shows the first time but found myself really enjoying them, and of course Shuma loved watching the seals and dolphins perform. This show was a little different from the first one, in that there were almost no kids and thus far less splashing (the first time I went everybody in the first few rows got soaked), the lights were darker, and the music they played before, during and after the performance was kind of romantic. Or at least the Japanese version of romantic: 80's ballads, 10cc's "I'm not in Love", and gospel! Apparently dolphin shows are a very popular date venue.

So he loved the show but he also loved watching the fish and other non-performing creatures, and the lights and waves and reflections. He probably would have had a great time without the trained sea mammals, and now that I think about it the part I liked best about the shows was just being able to sit down and watch at our leisure. Wouldn't it be nice if aquariums had seats to let you sit down and watch the fish? Actually, they did put out seats in the tunnel for the last few hours the aquarium was open, with the lights turned low and little tables with candles, and they were serving drinks so we sat down and had some champagne and watched the rays glide overhead. I think that's the best idea ever, but then we noticed that everyone else was in couples and we remembered it was like 8:30 on a Friday night so we gulped down our drinks and got ourselves out of there. I may be an obnoxiously doting parent, but I do realize that nothing spoils a romantic atmosphere more than a baby. Even a good one.

There is also a restaurant we didn't try that has fish tanks at every table. But more aquariums should have seats! It's such a brilliant idea. I'd never leave (maybe that's why they don't).

Watching Shuma's face was just as interesting as watching the fish. He was really mesmerised by everything and I wish more pictures had turned out.

After the dolphin show they announced that you could touch one of the dolphins for 700 Yen, and because we're idiot parents we stepped right up. Of course Shuma was scared, and in the special commemorative picture they took (which we didn't buy) he looked absolutely terrified. I think it was being held over a giant tank of water that scared him, rather than the dolphin itself, and who would blame him. They dolphin trainer was really nice about it (as was the dolphin), and let us just look at the dolphin from the side of the tank, taking quite a bit longer than the other kids. He also encouraged us to take lots of pictures, which is nice (too bad most of them didn't turn out).

I'm still totally on the fence about animals as entertainment, especially dolphins. When Shuma is a few years older and expresses an interest on his own I may try another dolphin touching/kissing/swimming type thing. Ooh, and a few years after that maybe he'll be old enough to take to Mikurajima or Ogasawara to see them in the wild! Can't wait.

We had a quick dinner at the hotel's family-friendly food court, and then went to bed early. The hotel has a daycare centre, right next to the aquarium and movie theatre, so we'd thought about putting Shuma there and watching a movie or getting some cocktails (or going upstairs to our room), but it turns out that you need to make an appointment for anything after 6:00 (and even then it closes at 9:00) and we were too late. This isn't a country that encourages people to have a life after kids.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel's nicest buffet. The food was pretty good and they had corner booths with low sofas reserved for families, so we got a nice place to sit. After checking out we tried the pool again, and because it was daytime and very hot it was excellent. We were able to stay for much longer, and also able to try the indoor area, and Shuma had such a good time and charmed the pants off of tonnes of people. Before going home we went across the street to TGIFriday's for lunch. Perhaps because we'd had something similar the day before, but I wasn't into greasy American food so didn't really enjoy it. Ooh, but I liked my cocktail and truly wished I could wean the boy right there and then so I could have more.

Shuma had a blast! We'd mentioned it was his birthday, so he got the full birthday treatment with a half-dozen staff members (and all the tables near us- I love that about Japan) singing happy birthday and a free dessert and picture. He had exactly the kind of reaction you hope for: several seconds of utter shock and confusion followed by total delight. It was so awesome that I want to do it a few more times (after all, his birthday isn't until next week).

The dessert (an ice cream sundae) was just a bonus, and of course we couldn't let him eat it with his dairy allergy and all so we had to finish it ourselves. We're such good parents. We did give him the maraschino cherry, which is the sweetest thing he's ever eaten so it goes without saying that he liked it. It was really nice of them to take a picture but it was not only a really bad photo but possible the worst one ever taken of Hideaki and I. Luckily Shuma looks OK, he's Mr. Photogenic.

And then we had to go home. It was sad for our little staycation (ooh, I hate that term, but what else can I call it?) to be over, but it felt like we'd been away from home for days. In a good way. Just one night, but much cheaper and easier to prepare for than a real vacation, and so much fun. We're thinking of making this a tradition.

 

Shinagawa Prince Hotel
Plans start at about 5000 Yen per person (double occupancy) in one of the annexes up to several tens of thousands of yen; if you're with family it's worth spending a little bit extra for a nice room in the more expensive main tower

Anna Miller's
Apple pie a la mode 819 Yen, whole pie 4148 Yen; other American style pies also available
High chairs for older children only (no belt)

Shinagawa Prince Hotel Pool
Indoor pool open 8:00am to 11:00am, 1:00pm to 4:00pm; 6:00pm to 9:00pm; Outdoor pool open 8:00am to 6:00pm from mid-June to mid-September
Admission for hotel guests from 1100 yen, various plans for non-guests
Babies and toddlers in diapers allowed in kiddie pools only (both indoor and outdoor pools)

Epson Aqua Stadium
Open weekdays 12:00pm to 10:00pm, Saturdays 10:00am to 10:00pm, Sundays and holidays 1:00am to 9:00pm
Adults 1800 Yen, 1000 for elementary and middle school aged kids, 600 for preschool kids above 4, free for kids under 4. Guests of the Shinagawa Prince Hotel (and several other nearby hotels) get 300 Yen off admission. Weekdays after 6:00pm admission is 1000 Yen

Food Court Shinagawa Kitchen
10:00am to 10:00pm 8 food counters plus (licenced) drink counter
High chairs for older children only (no belt)

TGI Friday's
Weekdays, Sundays and holidays 11:00am to 1:00am; Fridays, Saturdays and days before holidays 11:00am to 3:00am
Baby high chairs (with belt) and booster seats available

Canada, Part One

Has it really been almost four weeks since Shuma and I returned from our visit back home? I don't know how I went so long without posting about it. Whoops, yes I do: I was hindered by a cranky baby with adjustment issues, jet lag and a cold. It took him nearly three weeks to get back to normal, and while he's probably forgotten all about the visit by now, he probably missed Canada more than I did at first.

And no wonder, with a house full of people fawning over him. For those just tuning in, my parents live in Brampton, a suburb or Toronto. It's the same house I grew up in (well, from the age of four) and aside from my parents it contains my brother Greg and his long-term girlfriend Sherry in a basement apartment, along with frequent visitors. My sister Julie came a few weeks after I did, soon followed by her daughter Zoe, so it was kind of like a family reunion.

There were friends visiting as well when I arrived on a long weekend in May (Victoria Day, the de-facto beginning of summer in my parts, I guess kind of like Memorial Day in parts of the US). I naively expected Shuma to delight in having so many people to play with, but I under-estimated the effects of jet lag and stranger anxiety. He had a few charming moments, but for the most part he spent his first several days napping and crying (and seemed to be widest awake just when I was at my sleepiest). And even after he got over the worst of his jet lag he was cranky and wouldn't eat. I guess he's just a sensitive guy who needs time to get used to changes.

There he is above, during an epic nap on his grandfather Baboo (a nickname given to him by his first grandson about sixteen years ago). While I was having a wonderful nap all by myself, poor Baboo couldn't move for a good part of the afternoon and got his shirt soaked with baby sweat for his trouble.

When Shuma was awake, he did tend to cheer up for walks with Baboo and I. We tried to get in at least one a day, an easy feat since we live near a very nice system of parks centred along Etobicoke Creek, which flows by our city on its way to Lake Ontario.

I still get excited to see bunnies- they just weren't around when I was still living at home. This little guy was enjoying the dandelions in a very neat way: he'd bite off a stalk at the base then chomp the stalk all the way up to the puffy end, then eat that too. Too cute.

Not quite the tortoise and the hare, but along with all of the rabbits we came across this snapping turtle, the first time we've seen one in these parts. We actually spent a good deal of time trying to rescue it as it seemed injured and we didn't want to leave it out in the open for it to get run over or bothered or kidnapped. We even went home and coming back with equipment to safely move it to a more sheltered area with, but when it finally had enough of our pestering it just up and walked away, obviously perfectly healthy. Served us right for anthropomorphising.

Shuma fell in love with the baby swings that are at every playground. Swinging was probably his favourite part of the visit, and I'm really sad to be back here in Japan where this type of swing is rare. I've done a bit of research and they can be found here and there, but nowhere near me. If you're interested in checking it out for yourself, they are called omutsu-gata buranko (おむつ型ブランコ, literally diaper-shaped swing). Let me know in the comments if you find these swings anywhere.

So I took a million pictures of Shuma on the swings, of course.

Back at home, Shuma quickly found a few favourite places. The best was the hallway above the kitchen (our house is a split-level), where he could watch the action and play with the bars of the banister.

I had really been looking forward to letting him loose on the lawn, hoping he'd learn to crawl there, and maybe even stand and walk. But they had a month of almost non-stop rain before we arrived, and it was hardly better after we got there. The ground was often too wet to sit on, so when it was warm enough to be out we put him in this kiddie pool.

And it would occasionally warm up enough for us to use the pool as a pool! Unfortunately most of the pictures we took are X-rated. He did have a swimsuit and swimming diapers, but we had him naked as often as possible to help clear up a diaper rash.

Greg's into mountain biking and would take off nearly every day to careen down some hill or other. One weekend he invited us to come along, and we went up to Blue Mountain, a ski resort near Georgian Bay. We took a gondola up the hill and while Greg and Sherry endangered their lives on their bikes, Baboo Shuma and I walked around on top of the hill (Mom, not much of a walker, guarded the car).

 

This is a small remnant of the first chair lift in Ontario. Both Baboo and I are completely incapable of using a chair lift and always manage to fall as we get off, which has to be one of the most embarrassing things in the world. We've seriously developed major phobias, and won't even try skiing anymore. I actually didn't even know this about Baboo until this trip, and it was kind of a relief finding out: if both of us are the same maybe I can blame my genes? This lift, being out of service, wasn't so scary and we totally conquered it.

 

After our little hike we drove to the nearby Craigleith Provincial Park for a picnic. The park is on Georgian Bay and has a shore lined with shale, rich with 455 million year-old fossils.

The thing to do is break apart the fragile rocks to find trilobites and other ancient critters, and although we found some good ones I forgot to take pictures (here is a trilobite found there a few years back).

Normally I find myself wishing there was just a bit of sand so we could take a dip (the shale underwater is covered in algae and way too slippery for swimming), but it was freezing this day so I was fine with it. We saw a loon in the water, which was a huge highlight (it turned up as a tiny black smudge in the pictures I attempted).

Shuma had a spontaneous nap while we ate, so a thousand pictures were taken. Not many pictures of the actual bbq and picnic though, as my hands were nearly frozen. A very nice day though.

Back home, Shuma really enjoyed watching the cats. They weren't particularly thrilled with him, but Toki (shown above) started to warm up to him a little, so much so that she could even stand to be in the same room for a few seconds.

More swinging.

Some frolicking on the lawn waiting for the pool to fill.

Drying off after the pool.

And all dressed again. Note that the pictures above, and all other suspiciously good photos in this post, were taken by Sherry or Greg and not me.

Shuma's appetite returned little by little, and he developed an obsession with berries. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries: if it was expensive, out of season, and imported from far south, he approved.

He also approved of the thousands of toys my mom had stocked the house with. She actually fixed up my room really nicely with a beautiful new crib with cute bedding, a fully stocked change table, and the aforementioned toys. I meant to take a picture but by the time I got around to it I'd messed the room up too much. But Shuma was never without a nice place to sleep, a nice place to be changed, and a nice toy.

And some nice tickles.

He even had a bunch of equipment loaned to him from a friend, including this exersaucer.

And after a few weeks, he was back to his happy self.

Here he is with uncle Greg.

Speaking of Greg, this is one of his (many) aquascape aquariums. They are constantly changing so I'm sure this one looks totally different by now, but this particular display was entered in a contest at the time. Shuma loved the aquariums and was happy to look at them until my arms hurt from holding him, and often when he was fussy Sherry would whisk him downstairs to be calmed down by the plants and fishies (although I'm sure Sherry herself was just as effective).

My sister Julie arrived in a rental car from Buffalo, where she'd been dropped off by her fiance. He is a trucker and she travels with him all over the states, which sounds like lots of fun.

Julie brought along her corgi, Cletis Van Damme, and he became Shuma's new best friend. But the cats, just as they'd almost accepted Shuma (Toki had actually allowed Shuma to make eye contact), disappeared into the basement, never to be seen again.

Right on schedule, Shuma learned to pull himself up to standing at nearly nine months old. He was naked the first time, and although the event was heavily photographed and video'd, this is all I can show you.

To be continued. See more pictures here.

Yuzawa

Last weekend was spent in Yuzawa, a town in Niigata known for its snow and onsens. It was a fun trip, but travelling with a baby is even harder than I thought it would be. And this is even taking into account the fact that Shuma was extremely well behaved- it's all the extra stuff you have to carry, all the careful planning, the lack of freedom and the effort involved in keeping a baby amused that made it hard. (And I know you experienced parents are all snorting and thinking 'yeah, wait until he's a toddler', but please let me wallow in self-pity for a while.)

We started by meeting my sister-in-law, her husband and daughter Marya, 5, and son Yuuki, 2 1/2 months, and taking the shinkansen (bullet train) together. This was the easiest part of the trip, since Shuma and I are already experienced shinkansen riders, having taken the bullet train to Osaka for new years. This time the ride was shorter and Hideaki was with us, so I got to relax and have an ekiben (train station lunchbox). In this case it was a special chirashizushi (sushi rice topped with decorative morsels) box for Hinamatsuri (Girls' Day), and it was so nice to eat something that didn't need to quickly be scarfed down with one hand. Snacks were chips, nitamago (boiled egg simmered in soy sauce) and (a sip of) beer.

Shuma behaved beautifully, and the ride went by quickly. The only downside was that we were in the bottom of a double-decker car so didn't get much of a view. But when we arrived at Echigo Yuzawa station it was hard to believe we'd been in the centre of Tokyo just an hour and fifteen minuted earlier. We were surrounded by mountains and everything was covered in about a metre of snow. If you could block out the town's ugly buildings, it was beautiful.

I'm not a skier, and Shuma probably isn't so good either, so we helped Hideaki get geared up (and when we saw how much his rental equipment and lift pass cost, we were glad we weren't joining him).

We spent the afternoon relaxing with hot chocolate, playing with the babies, watching kids pound mochi (sticky rice), and then of course eating the results.

During the trip Shuma had more naps than he'd had since he was a newborn. He always naps better when Hideaki is around (which drives me nuts- why can't he nap when it's just me and I have stuff to do?) but this was impressive. Here is Shuma during dinner- we were each able to take turns holding him while we took many, many trips to the hotel buffet.

We slept on futons and tatami, which was very nice and made me wish we had a tatami room at home- it's very baby friendly.

The next morning Hideaki skied some more and we went out to watch.

Can you guess which one's him?

The bottom of the hill was full of kids learning to ski, and there was a kid's play area that you had to pay to get in but it didn't look much fun for babies. So we watched Marya ski (her first time!) and played in the snow.

 

Of course Shuma fell asleep while we played. He was a bit underwhelmed by the snow- he loved looking at it but didn't have much of a reaction to grabbing it and eating it. And I guess his snowsuit was just too comfy for him to resist a nap.

And then it was time to go. And even though it all went smoothly and Shuma was mostly an angel, we were exhausted. Does travelling with a baby get easier with practice?

A few more pictures here.

Weekend in Uchibo

We took advantage of a recent semi-long weekend (Hideaki works in weekly shifts, so when a day shift ends on a Friday and a night shift starts on a Monday it's an almost-long weekend) and had ourselves a mini vacation. We expect this will be the last trip with just the two of us for a very, very long time so wanted to make it special, but time and budget constraints meant we had to give up our grand plans for Okinawa and settle for something a little closer. So we rented a car and drove to Chiba prefecture's Bousou Hantou (Boso Peninsula) for a few days of fun in the sun.

I had packed a lunch that we were hoping to eat at on the beach if we made really good time, or at least at a rest area along the way. But we hit traffic as soon as we got on the highway and with the car's GPS telling us we'd be on the road for seven more hours we ended up eating in the car. Inside a tiny rental car on a crowded Japanese highway is not the most scenic of places for a picnic, but it was kind of fun, and certainly gave us something to do in the gridlock. Of course as soon as we finished the traffic cleared up and the trip took three hours rather than seven, but eating on the run did save us a bit of time so it wasn't the end of the world.
 

 

We took the fast way, which involves driving down to Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture and crossing Tokyo Bay on the Aqualine, a cool tunnel that goes deep under the water and emerges halfway across the bay as a bridge. You hit land at Kisarazu, Chiba, and save yourself at least an hour (much more with bad traffic) compared to driving around the bay. The picture above was taken on the way back and shows the bridge about to disappear under the tunnel.

I always love the feeling of leaving ugly, industrial Kawasaki, above, and emerging to the greenery of rural Chiba, below. Actually Kisarazu is itself an ugly, industrial city, but the route we usually take bypasses much of the unsightliness so it really is quite a dramatic change or scenery.

Once you go a bit south of Kisarazu, Uchibo (the inner coast of the Boso Peninsula along Tokyo Bay) is lined with numerous beaches, most of them not very remarkable. We stopped at one in Tomiura called Namuyakita Kaisuiyokujo (Namuyakita Beach), chosen for its lack of umi no ie (beach huts) and other facilities. It wasn't the most beautiful beach ever, but as we'd hoped it was nearly deserted and we had a wide stretch of sand and water to ourselves. So after a few attempts at sandcastles we gave up (wrong kind of sand) and jumped into the water for a swim.

This was the first time I'd been in any body of water bigger than a bathtub since I got pregnant, and man did it ever feel good. It was much harder to float with a full uterus (I'd hoped my tummy would stick out way more in the picture above, but my middle kept sinking) and couldn't do much real swimming, but just being in the water was heavenly.

No, this wasn't Okinawa, but it wasn't bad.

Even Hideaki, who normally considers a water temperature anywhere below 30C to be unswimmable, enjoyed  the water.

When the sand fleas got to be too much (we'd timed the trip carefully to avoid the annual mid-August arrival of the jellyfish, but hadn't counted on stinging sand fleas) we drove to a michi no eki (a non-highway rest area, a smaller, quainter version of the big highway service areas) in Tomiura. Called Biwa Kurabu, its shops and cafeteria were dedicated to products made with the locally famous fruit, biwa (loquat).

So we cooled down with a biwa ice cream, took some pictures of the giant biwa sculpture out front, and planned our next move.

And our next move was dinner at Kanaya, a seafood restaurant in Futtsu. I'd chosen it from an online search because it was cheap and had outdoor seating with a view, and although it turned out to be a bit touristy it did deliver on the view.

We started with anago (sea eel) tempura, Tokyo Bay and the Futtsu area in particular being known for its eel. It was lighter, milder and less oily than any anago I've had before, and actually reminded me of fish & chips.

Next we tried kajimejiru, a soup made with miso and the local kajime seaweed. Kajime is one of those slimy, sticky foods, like okra, that you either love or hate, and we loved it.

I finished off with the zeitaku namerodon teishoku, a dinner set with namero (chopped sashimi flavoured with miso, ginger, long onion and a quail's egg yolk) over rice, fried and marinated smelt, miso soup with clams and pickles. The namero was a mix of four or five kinds of local fish, which I think included tai (bream), kinmedai (alphonsino), aji (horse mackerel) and medai (butter fish)

Unfortunately clouds prevented us from watching the sun finish setting over Kanagawa on the other side of the bay, but the sky had no shortage of shows for us that night- we were treated to a full moon and a local fireworks show. The fireworks were quite spectacular, or at least the ones I saw were- we found a spot on a pier next to a large group of local fishermen and their families, and were first befriended by the fishermen, who brought us cans of beer and a big plate of yakiniku (grilled beef), then by their daughters. These two little girls were fascinated by my foreignness and full of questions, and every single thing that I told them ("Indo" is "India" in English; we came all the way from Tokyo; yes, it's possible for a Canadian to marry a Japanese) completely blew their minds. Living in in the city it's been a long time to get that kind of reaction from Japanese kids, but they were really cute and polite (I had heard them whispering about us long before they approached us, and they actually used the respectful term "gaikokujin" instead of the usual word for foreigner, "gaijin") so I didn't mind their questions at all. I would have liked to have seen more fireworks though!

We stayed at a love hotel in Kisarazu, which sounds naughty but is actually quite practical- love hotels are easy to find, don't require reservations, come with tonnes of amenities, and are far cheaper than regular hotels or inns. Plus: jacuzzis! This place was rare in that not only were its windows not blacked out, it actually had a balcony. The night view was kind of pretty, with airplanes landing and taking off at Haneda airport in the distance, boat lights in the bay, and a rainbow light show on the weird bridge to nowhere seen in the picture above, taken the next morning.

The next day started with breakfast at McDonalds, and then we drove back down to Tomiura to Haraoka Kaisuiyokujo (Haraoka Beach), chosen for its promise of decent snorkeling from an online search. That's the last time I trust a stranger's definition of "decent snorkeling", as there was absolutely nothing to see underwater, but it turned out to be a really nice beach with an endless shallow area, a few wide sandbars, and the finest sand I've seen in Japan. Perfect conditions for sandcastle making.

We made a fairly impressive castle on one of the sandbars, and Hide went a bit crazy and took about seventy thousand pictures of it. Here are a select few:

This beach also had sand fleas, so after a short swim we drove down to Tateyama to Okinoshima, a former island now connected to land by a sandbar. The beach was terribly crowded and we barely found seats in one of the umi no ie, where we had overpriced yakisoba (fried noodles) and other snacks for lunch.

We escaped the packed beach to the island, which had a few snorkeling spots that were blessedly empty of people. It wasn't great snorkeling but we did see some neat fish and got lots of swimming in. This was only Hideaki's second time snorkeling but he already had the hang of it, and I was the one being all nervous and tired (a big pregnant belly will do that).

All tired out, we drove back up to Futtsu to Shinmaiko Kaisuiyokujo (Shinmaiko Beach) to check into our minshuku (family-run inn), Kinkaitei, shown above. We'd stumbled across this place on a trip a few years ago and really liked the food and the funky, laid-back atmosphere, so had vowed to come back some day, and here we were.

Minshuku are always Japanese style, with tatami mats on the floors, spare furnishings, and a closet full of futons and bedding that you set up yourself. Our room was typical, but it came with a little balcony (accessed by climbing out the window) with a loveseat, mini hammock, and view of the beach.

Dinner was served on the patio as the sun was setting, and although the clouds again prevented a spectacular display we could hardly complain, as the view was still lovely and the food fantastic. And plentiful- I kept taking pictures, thinking all the food had been served, and then more dishes would arrive.

Our dinner, front row from the left: rice; grilled local fish; miso soup. Middle row: vinegared octopus and wakame seaweed; deep-fried eggplant stuffed with pork; kabocha no soboroni (kabocha squash simmered with ground chicken). Back row: nukazuke (rice bran pickles) of cucumber and shiro-uri (Japanese pickling melon); assorted sashimi.

I forgot to take notes so don't remember what kind of fish it was, except that the second from left is kinmedai (alphonsino) and there were two other varieties of tai (bream). It was all delicious, especially the kinmedai, which unfortunately I could only have a little of as its fairly high in mercury and I'd just had some the night before. Lucky for Hide.

I finished with a banana crepe (Hide had locally made vanilla ice cream) and we sat enjoying the view, then went out for a night time walk on the beach.

The next morning I woke up bright and early (I don't know if it's a pregnancy thing or what, but these days I'm lucky if I sleep past 5:30) and left Hide sleeping while I went for another walk on the beach. Above you can see Futtsu's famous Tokyo Wan Kannon (Tokyo Bay Bodhisattva), one of the largest Buddhist statues in Japan. I also took a swim, ignoring the sign that prohibited swimming before 8:30 (nobody was awake to report me).

I can still see my feet! Or at least my toes.

Breakfast was on the patio again, and again the dishes kept coming and coming. Clockwise from left: rice; goya (mitter melon) dressed with tuna; aji no himono (partly dried and grilled horse mackerel); miso soup with eggplant and myoga (Japanese ginger bud); nukazuke of cucumbers, shiro-uri and umeboshi (salted ume plums); nori seaweed sheets and soy sauce (to eat with rice); fried egg with salad; and hijiki seaweed simmered with soybeans and vegetables.

Breakfast kept us too full for another swim, so we hung out on another patio, trying out the hammocks and comfy seats and staring at the beach until it was time to checkout. We drove home in time for Hide to have a quick nap before heading to work, thus ending our last trip as a couple. Hopefully not our last vacation ever though- we plan on having the portable kind of baby.

See more pictures from the trip here. 

Canada Part Two

During my trip back home earlier this summer (read Part One here) my belly received plenty of attention, and everyone got to feel the baby move (and hiccup, which it does daily) at least once. I also accidentally cured one of the minor pregnancy woes that had been waking me up at night for a few weeks.

I'd been having leg cramps and noticed that they disappeared after I arrived in Canada, and suspected it was because the super-soft and comfy down mattress topper that was on my bed in the guest room, and maybe also the very big fluffy pillow that I was putting between my knees to help with my lower back pain (as opposed to the firm latex foam mattress and hard pillows I have at home Japan). I didn't have "proof" until I was moved to another bed to make room for more guests. It turns out that an air mattress, even a really good one, is just as bad for leg cramps as a foam mattress. The cramps improved when I added the down topper to the air mattress, and completely disappeared again as soon as I was back on the down topped-regular mattress. And back home in Japan, with a brand-new fluffy mattress topper on top of our latex mattress and a rolled-up sheepskin between my knees replacing the pillows I used to use, my leg cramps haven't returned. I'm guessing that the mattress topper and sheepskin allow for better circulation, and simply by changing my bedding I've cured something that no amount of stretching or walking was able fix.

So as a public service to any pregnant ladies out there suffering from leg cramps: change your bedding! If you don't have a soft mattress that allows for circulation get a mattress topper, and if you sleep with a pillow under or between your knees change it to something fluffier.

Anyway, back to the trip home. The main reason I'd been invited back home was for a baby shower, which my mom threw in our backyard. It was a beautiful day and it was wonderful to see everyone and they all brought lovely presents that were both cute and portable (as I'd have to carry everything back with me), and I wish I could show pictures of the loot (but I won't because that seems wrong somehow).But I treasure it and already have it packed away in the baby's dresser and I can't wait to start using it all.

I was busy being the guest of honour (OK, technically I'm merely hosting the guest of honour) and opening presents so didn't take any pictures, and pretty much all of the pictures other people took were of me. So please bear with me for a while, and to make up for all the me pictures I've included some cute kid and sister pics as well.

Maggie learned how to make a maple seed into a rhinoceros horn, and did it more cutely than it's ever been done before.

My Dad got back with the other menfolk near the end of the day, just in time to grill some burgers for us. It was a wonderful day and I very much appreciate that people came and gave nice stuff to the baby.

The next day my brother Greg took over the grilling and did his famous beef ribs. He'd been smoking them for a few days and by the time they got to the table they were smokey, soft, and delicious.

After all of his hard work it seems a bit mean to post this sign, but what the hell. The sign was miraculously discovered in near-perfect condition behind the sink during a recent bathroom renovation and kept for historical and/or humiliation purposes. It dates from nearly three decades ago, when Greg was a little kid, and was written by my sister Julie (who doesn't remember writing it but recognizes her handwriting). To be fair, Greg claims it was all a case of mistaken identity and that the real culprit in the apparent messy bathroom crisis was our dad. To be even more fair, I can imagine that every single bathroom used by a male member of the species could use a sign like this.

Julie, who is probably a little more laid back about bathroom cleanliness these days, having raised a son of her own, joined my Dad and I on one of our morning walks.

We stopped at a park for some swing time, and I discovered something: if you're pregnant, swinging can be a major workout.

My mom took all us kids out for dim sum one day at a local place called Kingsley Chinese Restaurant. We have good Chinese food in Japan, but not really any proper dim sum places, so this was a big treat.

At the bottom of the above plate is one of my favourites, which I identified as radish cake but was corrected- the trolley lady called it turnip cake. I've always thought it was made with daikon or radish (it's called daikon mochi in Japan) so am now a bit confused. Anyway, it turns out that everybody hated it, so I had to eat the whole order (a plate of six giant pieces) by myself. How can anyone not like daikon mochi/turnip cake?

We finished with egg tarts and the mango pudding above. I always avoid mango pudding as I assume, since I don't like pudding, that I won't like it. But it's nothing like regular pudding at all! Now that I know what I've been missing, it's my goal to eat as much mango pudding as possible.

I had really been looking forward to some fruit picking and jam making, but backed out of a trip to Niagara to pick cherries (I was tired and suffering from leg cramps and figured I shouldn't be up in a ladder in my delicate condition). So I just helped with the jam making. We made batches and batches of plain cherry jam, and one batch each of cherry-rhubarb and cherry with mixed berries (wild and farmed blueberries, farmed raspberries, and some raspberries from our garden, all added to stretch out the last of the cherries), above.

The next morning a taste test showed that they all turned out deliciously, although the jam with the mixed berries didn't set (we were out of pectin by then so it wasn't a surprise).

On another day my Dad took Julie and I out for Indian food at a place called Village of India, which does a very good and cheap vegetarian buffet.

My sister is far more familiar with Indian food than we are so I got to find out what everything actually was, and I tried all of the desserts for once (usually Indian desserts kind of scare me, as the ones I've tried were super sweet). They were indeed sweet, but in a very soothing way after the spicy food, and with hints of herbs and spice and honey. Unfortunately Indian restaurants in Japan tend to have a very small dessert selection, if they have desserts at all, so I'll probably have to wait until my next visit home to try more.

Near the end of my visit I met my friend Aspasia for brunch at a nearby breakfast place called Flips. I thought the prices on the menu seemed a bit high, and then my food came and I realized that a single order is actually about the size of three meals. It was tasty, especially the prefect home fries, and I'm really going to miss breakfasts like this here in Japan (and knowing this would be the last such breakfast in a long time, I managed to eat almost everything on my plate).

Sherry, my brother's girlfriend, took to lunch at Man Doo Hyang, a Korean restaurant in Mississauga. It was really interesting seeing how Canadian Korean food, which seems to be more authentic, differs from Japanese Korean food. One big difference in Canada is the free banchan (kimchi and other little side dishes), above.

Sherry had a few questions about the different kinds of dumplings, so we were brought a small plate to sample. These are called "Boiled Chinese Style Dumplings" and seem to be a cross between wontons and what's known in Japan as suigyoza (boiled gyoza dumplings).

We finally decided to share jajangyeon (identified as Korean Style Handmade Noodles with Black Bean Sauce) and soon dubu chigae (spicy tofu and seafood soup), which came in a hot stone bowl with a raw egg (to be added just before eating) and pot of rice on the side.

I had expected the jajangmyeon to be similar to Japan's jajamen (both being based on a Chinese dish) but was surprised to see it was quite different. The noodles were chewier than the udon-like noodles used in Japan, and the sauce was much darker and tasted strongly of black beans (Japanese jajamen uses miso and ground pork). It was tasty, as was the chigae.

The rice that came with the chigae was cooked with black beans, kabocha squash and sweet potato (and maybe some chestnut too, can't remember). After scooping it into bowls I was looking forward to eating the crunchy bits that stuck to the pot, but then the waiter came and filled the pot with boiling water! I figured he'd done it to get a head start on washing the dishes and was outraged that he'd ruined our rice, but Sherry assured me that adding hot water to crusted rice is normal and we were to eat it as a soup. So I tried some, and almost liked it. It started off well, with that lovely nutty burnt rice aroma, but then on tasting it had a flavour of... nothing. Apparently this is a wildly popular thing to do with rice in Korea, but I guess you have to grow up eating it to really appreciate it. I'd rather have the un-soaked crusty rice any day.

Except for the rice water this was a very tasty- and highly educational- meal and I hope to go back some day.

After lunch we stopped at a Korean market and Sherry bought ingredients for miyeok guk, a special soup served to pregnant ladies and nursing mothers. It is a simple but very delicious soup made with wakame seaweed and beef, and the version she made was excellent. This is one of the rare new foods I discovered back home that I can recreate here in Japan, and I'll be trying it soon.

My last lunch out was at Rapinis, a local Italian restaurant, with my mom and dad. I had veal picatta, the first time I've had veal in ages (having long considered it cruel). It was delicious, but not substantially more delicious than any other meat, so I can now happily go back to not eating veal for a few more decades.

And my last dinner was pickerel, a local fish that I love and had really been hoping to try while I was home. We hadn't been able to find it until my last full day, so I made my mom buy it and cook it up for me. She dredges it with flour and paprika and fries it in butter, which is one of the best ways to do fish ever.

Served with roasted potatoes and Swiss chard (which I also made my mom make, since I've never tried it before- sadly I was the only one who liked it). A wonderful last supper.

The good eating continued on the flight home. My mom had cleaned out her air mile savings to get me seats in Air Canada's executive class, which of course was wonderful. As with my flight in, I chose the kaiseki dinner, and was again served several tiny dishes of lovely tasty things.

Again, the little dishes were better than the main course, which this time was salmon with tofu and vegetables, served with rice and miso soup. But the salmon was quite tasty and only fared badly because the first part of the meal was so good.

For dessert I had the molten chocolate cake, which wasn't quite molten but very, very tasty.

This time I didn't sleep much, so I was awake for a mid-flight snack. Out of several choices I went with a croque monsieur and salad, and was amazed that the sandwich was freshly made from scratch- this was definitely the best airplane snack I've had. The Japanese first class passengers all seemed to have instant ramen for their snacks, which I find hilarious. Hideaki said it must be because wealthy people never eat stuff like that so it's kind of a treat for them, which makes sense but doesn't make it any less funny.

For breakfast I had banana pancakes with strawberries, which came with fresh fruit, yogurt, a nice flaky croissant (but not as good as the one I'd had on the way over- not surprising since Japan does pastry so much better than Canada), two little jars of jam and a jar of real maple syrup.

Sorry for the lighting: the sun never sets during the entire fourteen hour flight so we had to keep the windows covered at all times, and they keep the lights low for most of the flight as well. This is great for sleepers, not great for taking pictures of food.

I was a bit reluctant to get off the plane, knowing it would probably be my last time ever in first class, but I eventually disembarked and entered regular life once again. On the bus home I rediscovered what discomfort is and found myself wondering why airport buses don't have a first class (but even if they did I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't have any surplus bus miles to share). I did get some neat views of Tokyo Sky Tree, the new tower currently under construction in eastern Tokyo, shown above with the Arakawa river in the foreground and Mount Fuji (you have to look really hard) behind it.

And then I was back home, tired but very happy to see Hideaki and eager to spend a final two months together as a couple.

See more pictures from the trip here.

Ogasawara Day Five and Six

This is the fifth post in a series about a trip last year to the Ogasawara Islands. The introduction is here, and click here for the previous post.

On my second morning on Hahajima, the smaller of Ogasawara's two main islands, I woke up early to the sound of rain. Unable to get back to sleep, I grabbed one of the hotel's loaner umbrellas and headed out for a morning walk, enjoying deserted streets and greenery made lush by the downpour.

As on Chichijima, many of the houses were of a cute and vaguely western style, with no two looking the same- very much unlike homes on the mainland.

They also tended to have impressive gardens, overflowing with tropical flowers and fruit-bearing trees.

Above is a papaya tree, with a single ripe papaya ready to drop.

I passed more critters than people, probably because the islanders are too sensible to go out in the rain. Above is an aosagi (grey heron), also commonly seen in mainland Japan.

There were cats all over the place, which is apparently a big problem on the island. An out of control feral cat population is a huge threat to Hahajima's native Hahajima meguro (bonin white-eye) and other birds.

Lots of snails were out loving the weather, including this Africa maimai (East African land snail), an invasive species in Ogasawara and many other parts of the world. This was the first time I'd seen a live one though, as the empty shells are favourites of the local oka yadokari (land hermit crabs).

The rain stopped while I was out and I came back just in time to see a rainbow.

Breakfast was at Austro, a restaurant (one of just a few on the island) attached to our hotel, Nanpu.

It was a classic Japanese style hotel breakfast. Clockwise from top left: natto (fermented soybeans); saba no nitsuke (salmon poached in sake and soy sauce); salad; miso soup with abura-age (fried tofu); rice; nori seaweed sheets, umeboshi (salted plum) and tsukudani (seaweed braised in soy sauce) to eat with the rice.

We were then brought to the ferry terminal to begin a walking tour of Oki, the little village we were in (and the only village on the island). We started with the whale sculpture next to the terminal, above, then walked past .

We stopped by the island's only school, which accepts elementary and junior high school students (high school students have to go to Chichijima for their schooling), one of the fanciest schools I've seen. It featured an inner courtyard with actual grass (a rarity in Japan, where school yards are usually lined with dirt, sand or concrete) and decorated with the island's native Rolfs stone, above.

We had a brief stop at the Rolfs Museum (Ross Kinenkan, also translated as Ross Museum or Rohsu Memorial Hall), housed in a small building built of Rolfs stone in 1913.

The building was originally used to store sugar, and outside the museum is equipment leftover from sugar and rum making, like the sugarcane rollers above.

Everything was just laying out, exposed to the elements (and critters) with little explanation and no information in English, which I found a bit sad given Ogasawara's English language history. The one bit of English was in the form of a rubbing, below, from a plaque commemorating the annexation of Ogasawara by Commodore Perry, who was on his way to the mainland to demand Japan open up to the west.

I would have liked to stay longer in the museum but we were taken back to the harbour to see the island's sea turtle operation.

In an effort to increase the endangered sea turtle population, eggs are harvested from the island's beaches and the hatchlings raised for a few years in tanks before being released into the ocean. Where they are eventually caught and eaten, as sea turtle is considered a delicacy here. It would seem that a better solution to saving the turtles would be to not eat them, it is argued that the consumption of the turtles is a strong part of the island's cultural heritage and should therefore be continued. This deep cultural heritage seems to be expressed chiefly by touristy restaurants serving turtles, in the form of sashimi, soups and stews, to visitors keen to try exotic local dishes.

Interestingly, no turtles were consumed during the two decades when Ogasawara was occupied by America, which is said to be the only reason why any turtles remain in the waters surrounding the islands. Although before the war thousands of turtles were caught each year, since the return of Ogasawara to Japan in 1968 the catch has been severely restricted. Today only one man is allowed to catch the turtles and numbers are limited to 135 per year. The islanders claim to be serious about increasing the turtle numbers, and the population is indeed increasing slowly. If the hunt as strictly enforced as the islanders say it is, then it seems reasonable to catch a few turtles each year, but considering the number of restaurants and inns on both Hahajima and Chichijima that serve the turtles, plus whatever is consumed in private, it seems a little hard to believe that only 135 are being taken each year. I never did get a chance to try turtle as our meals were all planned for us, so I have no idea if sea turtles taste so great that it's worth continuing the hunt.

And then it was time to board the ferry back to Chichijima. A small group of islanders came out to wave the boat off, and I assumed they were bidding farewell to friends and family leaving for Chichijima or the mainland. I wouldn't find out until later that day what they were really there for.

A few of us had expressed disappointment at not getting to try local cuisine, especially shimazushi, the unique sushi eaten on Ogasawara. The lady who ran one of the inns we were staying at, La Mere, was kind enough to make some and box it up for us to eat on the ferry.

Shimazushi, literally "island sushi", is originally from Hachijojima, the southernmost of the Izu Islands (about 700 km north of Ogasawara). Many of Ogasawara's Japanese settlers came from Hachijojima, bringing this dish with them. Shimazushi differs from regular sushi in that the fish is first marinated in a sweet soy sauce, and the rice is dabbed not with wasabi but with mustard. On Hachijojima several types of fish are used but the Ogasawara version uses most sawara (spanish mackerel).

I was still quite full from breakfast but managed to down a few pieces, and enjoyed them more than I thought I would (I'm not a big fan of Japanese mustard so was expecting not to like shimazushi). It was definitely on the sweet side but after a few bites the fish, sugar, soy sauce and mustard flavours all balanced each other out.

In fact I ended up feeling rather stuffed, which I soon regretted as the sea was rough and I'd taken my anti-motion sickness pills a bit too late. Yup, I got seasick, for the first time on the trip, and spent most of the journey in the bathroom clinging to the special vomit sink (a low, wide sink that is a far nicer place than a toilet bowl to be sick in).

Once on Chichijima we were brought to a restaurant called Bonina for lunch. I probably would have enjoyed the food if I wasn't still sick, but I only managed a few bites. We were served poki-don, a Hawaiin style donburi (rice bowl) topped with sashimi, a few kinds of seaweed, and negi (long onion), flavoured with soy sauce and sesame oil and topped with a raw uzura tamago (quail's egg). Unfortunately even had I been well this would have been a miserable meal, as the waitresses were rude and the TV next to our table was on at full volume, making any conversation impossible. A very sad last meal on Ogasawara.

After lunch we were brought to the ferry terminal where we said our farewells to the local guides and government folks who had been taking care of us. The Tokyo government people gave us some souvenirs and the ferry people gave everyone freshly made leis and red hibiscus flowers, seen above.

After we boarded our ferry, the Ogasawara Maru, everyone rushed to the decks so we did the same, and saw what seemed to be half of the island's population out to wave us off. Apparently they were there for us tourists, and there would have been more of them if it hadn't been raining.

We were meant to throw our flowers and leis into the water as a prayer to return someday to the islands, which seems to be a custom borrowed from Hawaii. I was a bit distracted and ended up missing my chance, so I still have my lei.

Some of the islanders stayed with the ferry as long as they could, following us along the dock by running or driving. This went on for about twenty minutes, and when we saw the last of them I was ready to head to my room and escape the rain.

And then a small boat pulled up alongside us, its occupants waving madly.

And then there was another.

And another.

Finally there were four boats, all full of people waving at us.

The islanders followed us right out of the harbour, and when the ferry finally started to outrun them they jumped out of their boats and waved to us from the sea.

 

What a send-off! Apparently this happens every time the ferry leaves Chichijima (and Hahajima too, as we saw earlier in the day) and in good weather and peak season the farewell can get even crazier than what we saw.

When we had finally lost sight of the boats everyone went inside, as the weather was getting bad. I noticed this printout that tracked the progress of a typhoon headed our way. It was a few days old but we were told that it was continuing on its predicted path and the sea would soon be getting choppy. Thankfully I had taken my meds on time, and had enough to last me the rest of the journey back to Tokyo.

My earlier seasickness had worn off and my appetite returned, but knowing we were in for rough seas I ate a light dinner: just a bowl of motsu-ni (miso-stewed daikon and pork intestine) and a beer. I was soon glad for my restraint as the ferry started to rock badly, and only got worse as the night wore on. We had to give up our plans to stay up late celebrating the end of our trip and instead we all headed to bed, unable to sleep from the rocking and trying hard not to tumble out of our bunks. My pills worked and I didn't quite get seasick, but it was a very unpleasant night.

The next morning the sea had calmed down and a new chart was up, and it didn't seem like the typhoon had come close to us at all. If such a far away storm could cause such rough seas as the night before, then I'd hate to experience truly bad weather at sea.

After breakfast we joined a tour of the ferry, starting far below in a room full of computers and fancy equipment. I couldn't understand a thing, but it was neat to see all the machinery that keeps the boat going.

We moved on to the boiler room, which was so hot and noisy we could only stand it for a minute.

Then we were taken to the helm, where along with the sophisticated machinery there was one rather low tech piece of equipment: a shrine, where the captain and crew pray before each journey.

Lunch was at the ferry's overpriced but decent restaurant. I had a pork chop sauteed with mushrooms, miso soup and rice, my first full meal since the morning before and the final meal of the trip.

Soon after lunch we were in Tokyo Bay and while the cloudy weather prevented any good views, we did catch a glimpse of the Tokyo Bay Aqua Line, the bridge and tunnel that connects Kanagawa and Chiba prefectures, as it disappeared from the surface and tunneled under the Bay.

And a few hours later we were in Tokyo. The president of Mile Post, the consulting company that had arranged the trip, was there to thank us, and after saying good-bye to everyone I headed home, sad that the trip was over but really looking forward to seeing my husband and sleeping in my own bed.

Here are some of the souvenirs I'd come home with: seashells, a jar of passion fruit curd; chili flavoured soy sauce made with island-grown chilies; locally made sea salt, papaya, passion fruit, island lemon and guava jam; a few fresh passion fruits; a star fruit; and wing beans, all specialties of the island. The soy sauce, salt and beans were a gift from the Tokyo government and the rest I'd bought- or collected- myself. The passion fruit and passion fruit curd were especially good and I wished I'd bought more, especially as I've since seen the curd (there is also lemon curd made from the local island lemon, which I also bought and was delicious) on sale at Dean and Deluca for about 1400 yen, more than double what I paid on the island). Sadly all the edibles were soon gone, but I'll always have the seashells to remind me of a wonderful trip.

See more pictures from my last day on Hahajima here, and pictures from the ferry here. The complete Oagasawara photo album is here.

Golden Week(end)

This year for Golden Week, the string of national holidays in late April and early May, we went to Osaka to visit the in-laws. It wasn't exactly a Golden Week trip, as Hideaki only got one day off, but a long weekend is special enough so we're not complaining.

We managed to do quite a bit in two and a half days, starting with a trip to Katsuoji, a temple not far from my parents-in-law's place in Minoh, northern Osaka.

Katsuoji (you might want to hit mute before clicking) is set in the mountains with sprawling grounds that feature flowers in bloom nearly all year long. We caught the tail end of the cherry blossoms and the beginning of the rhododendrons, with a few early blooms seen above. 

That's Hideaki above with Shiro, my dog-in-law. Shiro loves to take trips, especially in the car, and is such a good boy that I didn't even know he had come along until we were there and he got out. He's not such a good boy that he didn't relieve himself all over the temple grounds, but I don't think Buddha minded.

Katsuoji seems like a typical temple at first, with the usual buildings and statues.

It does feature a large pond with Shinto shrine in the centre, but it's not unusual for the two religions to mix like that.

There is also a miniature version of Shikoku's 88 temple pilgrimage, where all you have to do is step on all of the 88 stones representing each temple, reducing what could be a months-long journey to mere minutes. But other temples have similar shortcuts.

It's not until you've walked around a bit that you start to suspect Katsuoji is a little different. You might first notice that the tiles topping roofs and walls, usually black, seem unusually colourful, as above.

Or you may wonder at the flash of red visible as you near the top of a long set of stone steps.

Then you'll probably notice tiny figures nestled in peeking out of stone lanterns, hiding in the crevices of trees, and nestled into stone walls.

And finally you'll see that hundreds of tiny eyes have been watching you.

The eyes belong to daruma dolls, and they're everywhere, in all sizes. Some are tiny, some big, some look angry, some amused. But they all stare endlessly with two big, black eyes. The effect would be creepy if they weren't so colourful and cute.

Daruma are lucky talismans, bought by those hoping to fulfill a wish or goal. They are usually sold with blank eyes, with their new owners drawing or painting one of the eyes black upon deciding on their goal, and filling in the other eye when the goal is reached. With the wish fulfilled, the daruma is returned to the temple it was bought at, and all the dolls seen in the above two pictures are returnees, representing hundreds of granted wishes.

The tiny ones shown here are sold with their eyes already painted in, and are simply left on the temple grounds or taken home as a souvenir. I'm guessing these are for relatively minor wishes.

My parents in-law have a pretty impressive collection of these little daruma in their living room, bought at Katsuoji during their many visits over the years. I hope all their wishes have come true.

The next day we went to Minoh no Taki (Minoh Falls), located in the same Semi National Park (yes, that's an official designation) as Katsuoji.

We took the usual route, a path starting at Minoh Station that passes several grand old ryokans (the area was once a popular hot spring resort) that have mostly been converted to souvenir shops.

I really love the old ryokans, as they're mostly well preserved and retain all the amazing little details they were built with, right down to the wavy antique glass in the windows (for an example of what I mean, check out this full-size picture to see the beautiful maple leaf cutouts in the second floor balcony above).

The buildings give way to a forest, with the path winding up into the mountains along a small river. Most of the trees are momiji (Japanese maple) and they look just gorgeous at this time of year with their brand-new greenery.

I've been to the park many times, but this is the first time I saw kawayuka (temporary riverside terraces). There were a few of them, and they all looked like nice places to stop and have a meal, but unfortunately they were all booked up. Apparently they were put up by the city and are only up for the spring, but this is the first year they've done it so hopefully they'll try it again. Kawayuka are more commonly put up in the summer, and are especially popular in Kyoto. I'd love to see these again in Minoh, hopefully in the summer.

The path ends at the falls, which were just as pretty as ever.

Besides sightseeing, we did a lot of good eating. The dinner above included my mother-in-law's fabulous cabbage rolls (made with good wagyu and without tomatoes), rice, stewed eggplant, sweet black beans, sauteed celery, cucumbers for dipping, and a sea bream head poached in sake and soy sauce.

One lunch out was at a wonderful soba restaurant (if only I could remember the name). We started with a plate of futomaki (thick sushi rolls) which I usually don't like so much, as they are overly sweet and tend to fall apart while eating. These were the most delicious futomaki I've had, stuffed with thick omelet, unagi (grilled eel), and squid sashimi, all perfectly seasoned and rolled so nicely that it could easily be eaten in two bites without it all falling apart.

The soba was excellent as well, with a firmer texture and stronger buckwheat flavour than we usually get in Tokyo.

One night we ate at Ume no Hana, a restaurant specializing in tofu and other soybean products. Ume no Hana is a chain, but does a good job at making pretty, tasty and healthy food served in fancy courses. They also have private rooms, which is always nice when the family is together. The pot above was the first dish to arrive; it was yudofu (simmered tofu) with yuba (soy milk "skin") and was cooked at the table.

These are the first few courses in their cute dishes, all lidded and stacked and waiting to be eaten.

Here are those dishes ready to eat: komatsuna greens dressed with sesame seeds; a kind of firm sweet tofu called mineoka tofu; chawan mushi (egg custard) and simmered yuba.

Next came tofu shumai (steamed pork dumpling) and rolls of tuna sashimi and yamaimo (mountain yam).

This is the finished yudofu.

Next was a dumpling made of tofu and lotus root, served in a tasty dashi broth. It doesn't look like much in the picture but was my favourite dish.

At left is ageyuba (deep-fried soy milk skin), at right is namafu dengaku (wheat gluten broiled with miso sauce).

Next was yuba gratin, yuba and kabocha squash baked in cream sauce with cheese.

The savoury dishes ended with fuki gohan (rice cooked with butterbur), pickles, and yuba in clear dashi broth, and the meal ended with soy milk ice cream (not shown, and better than it sounds).

Our last lunch was shimeji mushrooms sauteed with spinach; cucumber and tomato salad; grilled shishamo (smelt); potatoes sauteed with bacon; store-bought kushikatsu (skewered and deep-fried pork and vegetables); raw yamaimo (mountain yam) with katsuobushi (bonito flakes) and rice.

I think we ate as much that weekend as we would have if we'd stayed for all of Golden Week. Which is great, because visits to parents and parents-in-law just don't feel right unless you leave a few ponds heavier.

See more pictures of the trip 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.

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.

Ogasawara: Chichijima Day One

In my last Ogasawara post I introduced the islands, described how I came to be included in a free trip there, and wrote about the long journey from Tokyo. This post is about my first day on the main island, Chichijima.

We'd been on the ferry from Tokyo for twenty five and a half hours, exactly as scheduled, when we finally entered Futami Harbour, the main port of Chichijima. Chichijima is the largest of Ogasawara's thirty-some islands and is home to about 2000 permanent residents. As we neared the dock a little boat came out to great us, its crew waving as it circled our ferry. It was kind of a nice way to be welcomed to the island but I just assumed it was a cheesy advertisement and put it out of my mind until a few days later, when the boat was part of a much more impressive display.

I may have had overly high expectations, but was kind of assuming the island would have a distinctly tropical atmosphere and was slightly disappointed to see the same tetrapods and concrete as on the mainland. It by no means looked like Tokyo, yet it also didn't feel like I'd left Japan. And of course I hadn't left Japan (if fact we technically hadn't even left Tokyo), but I had expected I'd feel like I had. I'm not terribly well-traveled, but when I've stepped off the plane in places like Jamaica, Bali or Okinawa I've felt instantly that I had arrived somewhere very different and very special, someplace with its own vibe. Things looked different, people talked differently, even the air felt different: hot and tropical and sweet-smelling.

But I didn't have that feeling as I stepped off the ferry. It was probably due more to the mode of transportation than the island itself: an airplane landing is much more dramatic than the arrival of a ferry, which after all has been chugging alongside the islands for hours, acclimatizing its passengers long before docking. And to be fair, there was one clue that we were on a semi-tropical island: it was hot. I had long since packed away my winter jacket but now even in my short sleeves I was sweating.

As we waited to regroup and meet our hosts I watched the ferry empty itself of passengers and cargo. There was an awful lot of it, mostly in the form of shipping containers. We later learned that the ferry operates at a loss as a passenger vessel and is only kept in business to deliver cargo (and even then it relies on government subsidies).

We were met by various Tokyo government workers and local tourism folks who whisked us off to lunch. On the way things started to look a little more exotic: the streets of Tokyo are definitely not lined with birds of paradise. I was also surprised to see a helicopter landing, above, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who wished we'd arrived by air rather than sea. Apparently helicopter access is restricted to military and medical use, though.

Lunch was at a restaurant called Charlie Brown. We were served egg drop miso soup and a plate of, from bottom left: mekajiki no tatsuta-age (deep-fried swordfish), a salad including shikaku mame (wing bean, a vegetable most often found in South East Asia but also popular in Okinawa and Ogasawara), tuna sashimi, spaghetti napolitan (Japanese retro-style spaghetti with tomato sauce), and pork sauteed with onions and mushrooms. We estimated that almost all of the food was imported from the mainland, except of course for the shikaku mame. This by the way was the "omakase salad" which would have cost 800 yen if I'd been paying my own way (like all meals during the trip this was pre-arranged and the food ordered for us). It was tasty but a bit too heavy for the first meal after a long ferry trip.

We were given a short bit of free time, which the guys smartly used to hit the beach. With my full tummy I preferred to tag along with the ladies who were checking out the village in search of shopping opportunities.

The port is in Ogasawara Mura, the main village, which consists of a few streets lined with shops and restaurants for tourists and locals alike. There are also regular folks' houses scattered here and there,and it was neat to check out peoples' gardens. Some of the houses, like the one above, reminded Helen of those found in New Zealand. Up close, I had to admit that this place was quite tropical and exotic, and if I was still having trouble detecting a distinct Chichijima atmosphere, at least it felt different from Tokyo. The sight of Tokyo election posters and the ubiquitous vending machines were a bit jarring though.

The island's supermarket was small but quite impressively stocked with exotica like dill pickles, taco shells, chutney, and other things that can be hard to find even on mainland Tokyo. We wondered if this reflected the number of foreign visitors or the number of island locals with foreign roots. There are said to still be a fair number descendants of the original non-Japanese settlers on the island, and although most people we saw looked purely Japanese (and everyone spoke Japanese) there must be some explanation for all of the foreign food.

There were a few souvenir shops that lured us in with neat stuff like passion fruit jam and then repelled us with with a bunch of junk that ranged from merely tacky to downright offensive.

There were also plenty of tour companies, but before we got a chance to check those out it was time to meet up with our handlers and start a tour of our own.

We were loaded into a few minivans and driven a short distance south to see a WWII era shipwreck (located here on Google maps if you're interested). It was an interesting sight but as a kayak approached it from the shore we all watched wistfully, wishing we were were seeing the wreck up close rather than from the side of a road.

This particular road was lined not with with birds of paradise but with hibiscus bushes. I may not have been in the water but I was definitely starting to feel tropical.

Next we were driven to the end of the road and got to begin a walking tour. This was the southernmost point on the island accessible by car (map here) and was itself a pretty spot, next to Yatsuse-gawa, a slow-moving river. Finally, a chance to stretch our legs, and maybe even get near the ocean.

A number of trails started at this point, and visitors (or at least those visitors who can read Japanese) are meant to stop by this sign put up by a local conservation group and leave a record of where they went. The thing to do is to pick up a particular kind of rock or piece of coral representing who you are (as in a tourist, a native, a guide, etc) and drop it into the the tube marked with your destination.

So I left a lump of white coral in the tube for Nakayama-toge (Nakayama Pass), the trail we were taking. This was definitely one of those "only in Japan" things, as in any other country people would just claim the pretty rocks and corals as souvenirs.

So we started our tour, and I excitedly noticed the path turn sandy. Were we finally hitting the beach?

Yup! Off went my sandals as I made a run for the water, slowing down a bit to check out the little tracks above and ask our guide, Takizawa-san, what they were. He said to wait for the night tour, but I guessed that they were sand crabs and giant hermit crabs. They were indeed, but I wasn't able to get a picture of the critters that night so these tracks will have to do.

And then I realized that the tour was happening right here on the beach, and there'd be no chance to actually get in the water. This was a Japanese style tour, long on talking and short on fun, and although Takezawa-san was great, but the lure of the water was greater. I had to at least get my feet wet so I went as far into the water as I could while still being able to hear about the flora geology of the area. The water was a bit cooler than I expected but very nice, and it took all of my willpower not to jump in for a swim.

Alas, the tour moved on and I raced back to retrieve my sandals as the group headed to the hills. The group, by the way, consisted of ten foreign tour participants, two members of a tourism consulting company, two Tokyo government people from the mainland, three local Tokyo government people, and our guide. I think. We had so many people looking after us throughout the trip that it was hard to keep track.

The volcanic rock that jutted out of the sand was adorned with a spectacular pattern, and now I really was paying attention. Unfortunately I didn't get much of the explanation: my Japanese ability is such that I can normally understand about sixty to seventy percent of a regular conversation, but with a geology lecture I'm hopelessly lost. I would love to do this part of the tour again in English.

As we headed into the forest the subject changed to plant life, but this was also also mostly lost on me. The lushness of the island's flora was easy to appreciate without explanation though.

Here is a small collection of treasures found on our hike. From left: a takonoki (Pandanus boninensis, an endemic tree abundant in Ogasawara) seed husk, the seeds eaten out by birds, bats or rats; some kind of little pine cones; a momotamana (Terminalia catappa, or Indian almond, which is found in tropical regions around the world) fruit; and two hasunohagiri (Hernandia nymphaeifolia, or Jack in the box tree, common throughout the tropics including Hawaii, where the seed is used to make leis) fruit; and an unidentified seed pod. The leaf is from the momotamana tree, same as the green fruit.

This little geode is one treasure I really wanted to take, but it was embedded in a rather heavy rock and I didn't want to add to my already overly full suitcase.

Our path led us to a lookout with a fantastic view. The sun was starting to set and soon obscured by clouds so I only got a few pictures that showed the beautiful colour of the water, but even under cloudy skies the surrounding ocean and islands were an impressive sight. Above is the view to the north, where you can see Kominato Beach, where we'd been earlier, on the right. The beach visible at the top is Kopepe Beach, and beyond Kopepe you can see the entrance of Futami Bay, where we'd arrived that morning.

Straight out west the path continued a bit but we didn't have time to go further. We saw off in the distance that the path was already being used by a small gang of goats. Like everyone who colonized tropical islands in centuries past, the original settlers of Ogasawara brought goats with them, since goats are even hardier than people and can thrive in almost any environment, ensuring a supply of meat and milk. These days the goats still thrive but nobody eats them, even though they are said to cause considerable damage to ecology. All us foreigners agreed that a few barbeques and a pot or two of goat curry would be a great solution, but we were told that the goats are actually protected. Which has to be the stupidest thing I've heard in a while, but whatever.

Our minds were soon off of goat meat though, as our handlers brought out bags of passion fruit and cut them up for us. I'd only had fresh passion fruit once before, in Okinawa, and these looked and tasted exactly the same (although they apparently looked a bit different from what the Australians and New Zealanders were used to). They had the loveliest fragrance and a very nice sweet tart flavour, and I loved the contrast of the juicy pulp to the crunchy seeds. This is a fruit I'd love to see more of in Tokyo but it's quite rare to find, unfortunately. So I ate my fill while I had the chance.

I would have been happy to stay and eat passion fruit all afternoon, but the sun was on its way down and we had to get to our next destination. Below is the view south of our lookout, and again I would have been happy to stay to see the sunset (if only we had flashlights for our trip back down the hill).

Our next stop was up north of Futami Bay to Mount Mikazuki Observatory, also known as the Weather Station (located at the end of the road on this map). I suppose at one point the place was used to observe the weather but these days it seems to be just a sunset viewing point for tourists.

The sunset was as stunning as all sunsets are when seen from tropical islands, and I was just about as successful in capturing it as most amateur photographers are. But if you've ever seen a pretty sunset you can use your imagination here. And I'm glad I at least got a picture, as this was the last we were to see of the sun for pretty much the entire trip.

The tour over, we were packed back into the minivans and driven to our various hotels. We were divided up and rotated around a few different hotels and inns in order to allow us to experience a variety of places, and on the first night I lucked out and was put up at Horizon (see the J-shaped building on this map), the island's swankiest hotel. Also staying at the horizon were most of the guys, who before we even got to there were passing around illicit beers (some of the guys had managed to snag a six-pack during the tour to celebrate one of their birthdays).

 

We were given a welcome drink upon arrival at Horizon and then shown to our rooms (we each had our own) and then given a bit of free time before dinner, which the boys used to continue their celebrations. I was tempted to join them until I saw my room's giant bathtub and decided to spend my free time soaking away the stiffness and puffiness caused by so much time being cramped cars and ferries the past two days. It was a wee bit lonely to stay in a room by myself but very luxurious, especially after our tiny quarters on the ferry. With all this space and a soothing bath I finally felt like I was on vacation.

The room was large and very nice, if a bit bland, and although I took pictures it was too dark for them to turn out well (the pictures above were taken the next morning). Horizon bills itself as Ogasawara's only "resort hotel", a category whose meaning I'm not entirely sure of, and although I didn't have time to really look around much, I liked it. I would have been convinced it was the best place on the island if it wasn't for the place we stayed at the following night.

Like most hotels in Japan, a stay at Horizon includes dinner and breakfast. The menu here alternates daily between washoku (Japanese cuisine) and yoshoku (western style cuisine), and today was yoshoku day which for dinner meant a six-course meal with French and Italian influences.

The course began with a local fish (some variety of bream, I think) carpaccio salad topped with crispy lotus root chips, above.

Next was a soup of double consomme with onsen tamago (Japanese style poached egg). This was nice and inventive but the flavour was very strong: afterward I realized we were meant to break the egg first, but out of habit I avoided breaking the egg until the broth was almost gone.

Next was hijiki no peperoncino jikaseimen (handmade spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, hot pepper and hijiki seaweed). I like hijiki and I like pasta so my hopes were high, but alas hijiki just doesn't seem to go with these flavours and this was the weakest dish of the night.

The fish course was shimazakana no acqua pazza (island fish poached Italian style), which turned out to be locally caught kachou (Bodianus perditio, called golden-spot hogfish in English and takibera in mainland Japanese) with clams, olives, capers, garlic and cherry tomatoes. This was very tasty.

The mean course was ribeye steak with demiglace sauce with a little sculpture of vegetables and baked baguette slices pasted together with mashed potatoes. The steak and vegetable contraption were both nice but the sauce was a bit bitter. Dessert was homemade gelato and we washed everything down with a few bottles of wine kindly bought by one of the travel consultants accompanying us. It was a nice meal overall and for the average Japanese tourist would have been quite a treat, but as I already eat quite a bit of psuedo-Italian food I couldn't help wishing for something a little more islandy, or at least Japanese.

I know what you're thinking, but no, this was not part of our dinner course. As soon as we'd finished eating we were loaded back in the vans and driven inland to the Ogasawara Subtropical Agricultural Center, where we had a night tour. If the weather had cooperated we would have been treated to an amazing night sky, certainly better than I'd ever seen in Japan. Sadly it was overcast so we concentrated on things a little closer to the ground.

First we saw a few Ogasawara ookoumori (Bonin flying fox), an endemic fruit bat on the critically endangered list, flying from tree to tree looking for fruit (I didn't get any pictures but here is what it looks like). We saw lots of okayadokari (Coenobita, land hermit crab) which are huge and as adults almost exclusively use the shell of the invasive East African land snail. The critter in the picture above is an Ogasawara mokuzugani (Eriocheir ogasawaraensis), apparently called "Ogasawara mitten crab" in English due to the hair on its claws and legs. Finally we spotted, after a long search in the dark, a single green pepe (Mycena chlorophanos), a luminous mushroom that glows an eerie green at night.

And that was the end of our first day on Chichijima. See more pictures of my first day in Chichijima here, and here are pictures from the whole trip, and click here for the next post in the series.

Ogasawara, Part One

Last month I briefly mentioned a recent trip:

And just last week I was whisked away for a surprise free trip to, well, you'll find out soon enough. It involved a few days of heaven, a few hours of hell, and exciting events like almost getting eaten by a (probably) imaginary shark and finally finding out what and where Canada's famed (in Japan only) "Maple Kaido" is.

Well, the trip was to the Ogasawara Islands, and it was one of the best things that happened to me in ages. So it's about time I blogged about it.

I was chosen as one of 10 foreigners to take part in a six day "fam tour" (I didn't know what it meant either) to the islands, with the Tokyo government footing the bill. With us were two Tokyo government employees, two representatives of a travel consultant company, and one of Japan's leading travel experts.

You might be wondering how on earth I managed to get in on this, and I still have no idea, other than really good luck. You might also be thinking that a free trip sounds too good to be true, and wondering what the catch was. The only catches were this: the trip was full of pre-planned tours leaving very little free time to our own thing, and we had to give our impressions of the islands and our advice for improving tourism services for foreign visitors. This involved two meetings with local tourism people as well as filling out a lengthy questionnaire, and although I tried to fulfill my duties well I am sure I got the better end of the bargain than the Tokyo government did.

You might also be wondering where on earth the Ogasawara Islands are, so read on: they are about 1000 km south of Tokyo, and like the Izu Islands are actually part of the municipality of Tokyo. But it would be hard to find a place that's more different from Japan's capital: these beautiful islands are lush with tropical vegetation and dotted with gorgeous white sand beaches. And they're sparsely populated: only two islands are inhabited by civilians, with Chichijima and Hahajima (literally "Father Island" and "Mother Island") sharing 2244 residents between them. Among the other 30 or so islands is one you've probably heard of: Iwo Jima (now called Iwoto in Japanese), currently used by the Self Defense Forces and the American Navy for training but off-limits to regular folk.

The Ogasawaras are also know as the Bonin Islands in English, Bonin being a corruption of the old Japanese name Bunin, which meant "uninhabited". That's exactly what the islands were until they were colonized in 1830 by a small group of Americans and Hawaiians, with Japanese, Europeans and other Pacific Islanders eventually settling in as well. Residents were evacuated from the islands during WWII, and although non-Japanese were allowed to return under American occupation, Japanese residents were only allowed back when the Ogasawaras were returned to Japan in 1968.

Because of the islands' distance from other islands many plants and animals evolved in isolation, and thanks to the relatively late introduction of human inhabitants most of those species are fairly well-preserved. Well over 100 unique species can be found on the Ogasawaras, and the waters abound with sea life, including dolphins, whales, sea turtles and the giant squid (including the first giant squid to be captured on film), earning the islands the unofficial title "The Galapagos of the East". The Ogasawara Islands are currently being evaluated for World Heritage status, and if its granted (a decision will be made in 2011) an increase in tourism, particularly by non-Japanese, is expected.

Most of the information above I learned from research after I was accepted as a participant for the tour. Before that I had heard only three things about the Ogasawaras: that they were very far away, that some horrible stuff had happened there during the Second World War, and that marijuana is rumoured to grow wild all over the place and thus the islands are popular with a certain subset of people. Of those three things the first two proved to be true and the third, although I saw a few people who definitely looked like they enjoyed the devil weed, I never did see any growing wild. Not that I was looking or anything.

So now that the introductions are out of the way you may be wondering why, if Ogasawara is so great, I haven't visited before? Because a ferry ride is the only practical way to get there, and it takes 25.5 hours and costs 23,250 yen (plus fuel surcharge) for the cheapest one-way ticket. There is no airport or high speed ferry service (both have been considered but ultimately failed to come about), so pretty much the only choice is to take the Ogasawara Maru from Tokyo to Chichijima. That 25.5 hours, by the way, is only in good weather (in bad weather the journey can take much longer or even be canceled) and its another couple hours on a different boat to get to Hahajima. Throughout most of the year the ferry goes back and forth once a week, so the absolute shortest trip you can take is six days.

There are a few alternatives, but the occasional private cruise ship or military helicopter flight is likely beyond the reach of most, and although it's possible to save a little bit of money by booking a passage on a freight ship that regularly visits the island, the trip takes over two days and has very limited spots for passengers.

Still, those who have the time and the money (or are lucky enough to snag a free trip) will find a visit to the islands more than worth the hassle. This was one of the most beautiful places I've been, and I liked it so much that someday I hope to actually go on my own dime.

We set sail from Tokyo's Takeshiba Sanbashi Pier on November 25th last year. That's the Ogasawara Maru above (or at least the part of it that would fit in my viewfinder), but those aren't Tokyo skies- we were a bit rushed that morning so I took this after we arrived in Chichijima. No, the skies over Tokyo were grey and dull, making me really glad to be leaving. Below is the view while we were heading through Tokyo Bay:

At Takeshiba we were all introduced, and given a speech and send off from the president of Mile Post Consultants, the company arranging the trip. We looked like a promising bunch, and I was pleased to have already met two of the other participants. Here we are, in a picture taken the next day while on a tour of Chichijima:

Back row, from left: Fukawa-san, general manager of marketing and planning at Mile Post; Charles, New Zealander and founder of Bungy Japan in Minakami; Helen, a translator also from New Zealand, who I know online from a few forums (including eGullet) and had met once with a few other eGulleters for lunch; Maya from Bulgaria, Outbound Travel Rep at the Japan Association of Travel Agents; me; a mainland Tokyo government staffer whose name escapes me; Mark, an Australian who runs HappyRaft in Shikoku; our local tour guide that day (not accompanying us on the ferry); Saito-san, marketing and planning manager at Mile Post; and another mainland Tokyo government employee whose name I can't remember. Front row, from left: Tim, an American studying law in a Japanese university; Laura, a British translator; Kobayashi-san, secretary general of the Japan Ecotourism Society and director of the Evolution Tourism Institute; Australian Robert, general manager of Elanex Japan KK, a translation company; Mike, a New Zealander who owns Canyons in Minakami, who I'd met briefly when I did some rafting and canyoning up there a few years ago; Han, a business lady from China; and a local Tokyo government employee (not with us on the ferry).

All in all an impressive bunch, and soon I was wondering why I was there with them. I was certainly the least accomplished of the foreigners, and also the least fluent in Japanese. Which mattered, because the entire tour would be conducted in Japanese, as well as the questionnaire at the end. But what the hell, I was there so I vowed to make the most of it.

This was my seventh trip out of Tokyo Bay (the ferries to Oshima and Mikurajima follow the same route) so I didn't feel the need to linger up on deck to enjoy the view, which is not very enjoyable (at least by daylight) anyway. Besides, it was freezing, and the winter jacket I'd figured would be too hot was barely enough to keep the wind out. So I went I checked out my room instead.

There are only two classes- 1st and 2nd- but a number of options within each one, and our rooms were lower 1st class. They had four beds, a little table and chairs, a TV and DVD player (not knowing about the DVD player- there was also a library of DVDs to borrow- I had brought my laptop and a several DVDs, which I instantly regretted), and a view. The room would have cost 46,500 yen per person plus fuel surcharge and although the picture makes it look cramped, it was quite nice by ferry standards. I've done lower 2nd class, the cheapest option available, on a 9 hour trip from Hokkaido to Aomori and a 24 trip from Kyushu to Okinawa, and sharing a floor with dozens of other people, many of them drunk, is not nearly as fun as it sounds; upper 2nd class on the ferry to Mikurajima has similar bunks but in a much more cramped room with about a dozen other people and no extras like seats or a TV. So it may not look like much, but we were traveling in style.

Although the rooms were for four people they kindly put only two of us in each room. My roommate was Laura, who came across as laid back but soon revealed a wicked sarcastic edge and a bit of a party girl attitude. Soon after we'd settled in she whipped out a mickey of whiskey and took a generous gulp, then thoughtfully held the bottle out to me. I declined, seeing as I was terrified that my seasickness meds weren't going to work, and well, it was barely 10:30 in the morning. But I took it as a good sign. This was definitely going to be an interesting trip.

I spent the day exploring the ship, reading through the heaps of tourist brochures and we'd received, and getting to know my fellow tourists. Poor Laura soon was hit was a killer bout of seasickness and spent most of the trip in bed (apparently whiskey doesn't guard against motion sickness- who knew), so I tagged along with Helen and Maya. We made frequent trips to the decks to watch passing islands (pretty much the entire Izu Islands chain can be seen on route, but night fell before we could see them all) and check the weather. By the time the sun was setting, above, it had warmed up considerably, and my jacket was packed away until the return trip.

After the sunset we broke out the snacks, some brought from home, some bought on board. And when adults and snacks get together in Japan there is always alcohol involved, so we stocked up on that too. I was surprised at the wide amount of adult beverages available on board: beer and sake, of course, but with a far better selection than is the norm, along with wine- in bottles and cans(!)- and two products of the islands: rum and passion fruit liqueur. I settled for some rum and Diet Coke, vowing to take a picture of the rum bottle later when the light was better (but never getting around to it, which is just as well because the rum, sadly, was terrible).

Like all ferries in Japan, this had a small concessionary selling souvenirs and basic toiletries, vending machines all over the place selling snacks, soft drinks and alcohol, and a snack bar offering curry rice, ramen and such. It also had a few things I'd never seen before, like a number of lounges, a children's playroom, a DVD library and viewing room, a karaoke room, and a full service restaurant. The restaurant was actually quite decent, if a little pricey, and although I was pretty full from snack time we had a late dinner there.

I had a bowl of oden (seafood, eggs, vegetables and other tidbits simmered in a salty broth) and a small bottle of wine of a type that I would never normally buy, but when in vacation mode almost anything tastes nice.

Next morning I awoke to discover the grey skies were long gone and it was t-shirt weather. I slept through the sunrise, unfortunately, but the view of the blue sky and wispy clouds was pretty enough.

Soon I could spot seabirds like this katsuodori (brown booby) and the occasional flying fish. The birds were flying alongside the us, waiting to spot flying fish as they escaped from the boat, and I was treated to many a dive, although I never got to see a successful catch. What I was really hoping to see was whales or dolphins, which can sometimes be seen from the ferry, but none materialized.

A tourism official from the islands was on board and gave a talk about the islands' wildlife (he'd also given a slide show about tourism in general the night before). I'm not sure if this is a regular thing on the ferry, but it was nice to learn a little, and even nicer to have something to do.

Finally we spotted land. I think many of the little islands were named as we passed but I didn't bring my notebook for the lecture so have no idea what they are, except that they began with the Mukojima group of islands and ended up at the Chichijima group.

Probably the Mukojima Islands.

Maybe the northern tip of Chichijima.

Definitely Chichijima.

And then, finally we entered Chichijima's Futami Bay, and our long journey was over. 

Part Two to is here. Check out more pictures from the ferry here, and pictures from the entire trip here.

Hokkaido

In September Hideaki and I were invited back to Kushiro, Hokkaido to visit his brother Hidetoshi. We had really wanted to go in the summer but couldn't find the time, so by the time we made it the weather was already turning cool. Still, there was abundant greenery, the trees still had their leaves, and the temperatures were mostly warm, so it was quite different from our springtime visit.

The first thing we did was drive to Akkeshi, the oyster-producing town we'd visited on our first trip, to pick up a few dozen oysters. Things got far too messy while we were shucking them to take pictures, sadly, but they were lovely and delicious inside and we ate them in all sorts of ways, from raw and naked to grilled with black pepper and ponzu.

The next day we drove up to Akan National Park, stopping on the way at Soba Doraku, an excellent soba (buckwheat noodle) restaurant we'd visited last time. Only this time we weren't just there to eat: we took a soba making class, learning how to turn sobako (buckwheat flour) into noodles. Again, things were too hands-on to take pictures, but my first soba making experience was lots of fun. It was much harder than I thought it would be, but under the guidance of our instructor we did a pretty good job.

When we were finished kneading and cutting the dough we sat down to wait for our handiwork to be boiled and served to us. Those are our noodles, above, and we thought they were very tasty and were really proud of ourselves for doing such a good job on our first try, until we decided- just for fun- to order a regular serving of soba. That is, soba prepared by the pros in the kitchen. And we realized we'd been fooling ourselves, because compared to the soba we'd made, this stuff was a thousand times better. The flavour wasn't so different, but it obviously takes an experienced set of hands to make soba that doesn't fall apart when boiled, has a springy, chewy, and slippery texture.

Note that the soba was served with a slice of yubari melon instead of the potato we got last time. It's a nice touch to have a side dish that changes with the seasons.

Continuing on to Akan National Park, we stopped at a hilltop that offered a view of Kusharo-ko, one of the park's famed lakes that we'd seen close-up in the spring. We'd walked right around the island-like peninsula seen above, and it looked much bigger from here than when we were on it.

The clouds hampered the view a little bit, as clear skies would have shown the lake's beautiful colour as well as bringing distant mountain ranges- a few of which apparently were already capped with snow- into view.    

The surrounding hills were covered by low-lying bamboo grass, which looked dry and scraggly up close but very lush and inviting from afar.

We then went to another viewpoint to see another lake, Mashu-ko, below From this spot part of Kussaro-ko is also visible, above.

Mashu-ko is a caldera lake, with banks so steep that there is no access at all to its waters. It's extremely rare to see any shoreline in Japan without any kind of development, and my disappointment at not being able to get close to the water was balanced by the beautiful sight of the pristine shoreline.

It would have been nice to have clear skies to see the famed deep-blue colour of the water by, but at least we could see the lake- apparently it's often obscured by fog.

After driving back to Kushiro we were taken to a hill with a coal mine on one side and the city on the other. Until a few years ago the hill was the coal mine's a slag heap, but a retired employee of the coal company has been planting the hill with grass and cosmos and has managed to transform the former eyesore into a very pretty spot.

The same coal company created this lake:

My brother-in-law's apartment is on the other side of the lake, and on the side this picture was taken the same retiree has created another garden, this one featuring a variety of trees and shrubs. At first the man worked alone, but now is helped by a few volunteers, including Hidetoshi.

It's a work in progress, with most trees still quite small, but it's easy to imagine that one day it will become a very nice park or garden. It's already a pretty place, especially in the spring as many of the trees are cherry trees.

Dinner was at my brother-in-law's place, starting with sanma (Pacific saury) sashimi. This was locally caught and perfectly in season, and while I'm not normally a fan of raw sanma I loved this (and ate nearly the entire plate of it myself).

Then out came a couple whole sanma, along with the hibachi. Hidetoshi cooks most of his dinners over charcoal (with the fan on and windows open, of course), and he cooked the sanma to perfection.

We'd been given a couple steamed cobs of corn at the soba restaurant earlier, and these went on the grill with a splash of soy sauce.

The meal ended with soup and rice, and sanma featured here as well, being ground, shaped into tsumire (fish meatballs) and added to miso soup. Tsumire is not something I trouble to make often, as it's a lot of work, but this reminded me that I need to do it more often.

After dinner Hideaki tried on some of the gardening gear that his brother uses to help out in the garden across the lake. That's one heavy duty weedwhacker!

The next day started with a hearty breakfast at our hotel. The buffet included robata-yaki (charcoal-grilled fish, meat and vegetables), which is hugely popular in Kushiro (not usually for breakfast though!), in the plate at bottom right.

Then we drove east to Shibetsu, a coastal town known for its salmon industry. Our destination was Shibetsu Salmon Park (English PDF here), a hatchery with a museum, shops and restaurants.

First up was lunch. I had the seafood curry, which came topped with salmon katsu (deep-fried salmon "cutlet"). The curry was great and the cutlet, well, although I can think of about a dozen ways that I'd rather eat salmon, it was interesting to try.

The boys had seafood ramen, which was a big hit.

Passing through the shop, it was tempting not to buy a whole salmon- these were going for about 2000 yen each, an impossible price in Tokyo. Hidetoshi picked up a few things though, which turned up later at the dinner table.

The museum is located next to the Shibetsu river, not far from where it meets the Pacific, and both ocean and river are visible from the museum's tower. We then walked over to the bridge, hoping to see the river busy with salmon on their way upriver to spawn.

Unfortunately this is not a good year for salmon in Shibetsu, and where normally you'd find the river clogged with salmon and get to watch then jump over the hatchery's barriers, there were just a few to be seen here and there, and none of them in a jumping mood.

Back at the museum we got to watch a handful of salmon that had been diverted from the river. These were a little more active and made a few jumps, but none made it over the barriers. Still, it was neat to see them up close and try to identify them by species and gender. I got quite good and would have been happy to watch for hours (this picture doesn't do the exhibit justice, it really was quite cool).

There was more to the museum but we zipped right through it without pausing to take pictures. Most information was in Japanese, but a few English language posters caught my eye. On closer inspection I was tickled to see they were Canadian Ministry of Fisheries posters. I really regret not taking pictures (or swiping them).

On the way back home we did some shopping at a "home centre" (like a big DIY or hardware store) and I noticed this display of salmon-related goods near the entrance. Behind me were fishing supplies, and the products in this picture are all for storing, transporting, shipping (as gifts), and preparing both salmon and salmon roe. It's easy to see what a big deal salmon are in this part of Japan.

Dinner started with shake no kunsei (smoked salmon). This was much smokier and firmer textured than European style smoked salmon, and was so packed with flavour that it had to be eaten slowly, nibble by nibble. This was easily one of the most delicious ways I've ever eating salmon.

Next up: jingisukan (Genghis Khan, similar to Mongolian hotpot). We cooked thinly sliced lamb and bean sprouts on an iron grill with a sweetish, vaguely Chinese flavoured sauce. Lamb is sadly not very popular in most of Japan, but happily Hokkaidoites love it, especially as jingisukan.

This is what my brother-in-law had bought earlier in the day in Shibetsu: two kinds of ikura (salmon roe). On the left is ikura no shiozuke (salt-cured roe), on the right is ikura no shoyuzuke (roe cured in soy sauce).

To compare them, we had ikuradon (hot rice topped with salmon roe) with one type on each side, separated by a garnish of nori seaweed. Both were delicious, but I thought the shoyuzuke on the left had a mellower flavour that went better with rice. I also thought I was a very lucky person to be able to be conducting such a taste test!

I'll blog about the rest of the trip soon, and in the meantime you can check out more pictures here.

Catching Up

Despite my lack of regular posts recently (does the past half year count as "recently"?) I've been keeping myself busy, so I thought I'd round up some pictures to show what I've been up to. So here are some things I've been doing since Spring, some of them already blogged, some not.

In May I took two trips to Mount Takao a mountain in western Tokyo. Once was as a special outing with my Nature Club students, when I was too busy guiding the kids and their parents to take pictures, and once was a few days before that to scout out my route. Late spring is a fantastic time to visit Takao, as the greenery is still fresh and bright, there are a wide variety of flowers, and the temperature is just right for hiking.

More pictures from the hike can be seen here.

During Golden Week Hideaki and I went to Hokkaido to visit his brother. In Tokyo it had seemed like summer had already arrived, but up on Japan's northernmost prefecture winter had barely ended. It was nice to experience spring twice, and even nicer to fill up on Hokkaido's famed seafood.

More pictures are here, and blog posts are here.

Then came my trip back home to Canada, which was extra special because Hideaki could come, as well as my sister, niece and nephew.

More pictures are here, and blog posts are here, here and here.

Back from Canada, we met up with Hideaki's sister's family for a day at the beach.

None of the beaches near Tokyo will ever win any prizes for beauty (or cleanliness), but we're lucky to have any beaches at all within day trip distance. We went to Koshigoe, a beach near Enoshima (that's the island pictured above) that is one of the better spots along the Shonan coast of Kanagawa, an area notorious for dirty, overcrowded beaches. This was an overcast day early in the season (there is actually an official beach and pool season here), but by the end of the day the it was pretty crowded, but we were able to relax and have a little space to ourselves while getting in some good people watching. We especially enjoyed the constant parade of suntanned surfer dudes trying to pick up two bikini-clad Brazilian ladies lying nearby

One thing that I do love about Shonan's beaches are the umi no ie, literally "ocean houses" that offer change rooms, showers, food and drink, and a place to sit. It doesn't come cheap (you usually need to pay to use the facilities, and the food is priced for tourists) but each umi no ie has its own atmosphere, with a unique look, soundtrack and menu. Some of them are really cool looking and make you think that you're on a beach in Hawaii or Thailand, and the hipper places crank up the music and become beach bars at night. But we were there for the day only and chose a minimally decorated place serving Southeast Asian food.

We shared Thai style bbq ribs, fried, some sort of noodle soup, and fried rice, as well as a good deal of ice-cold beer, and forgot for a while that we were on a dirty, crowded Shonan beach.

Dessert was nice too!

Next up were five weeks of summer camps, in Chichibu, just northwest of Tokyo, and Izu Oshima, and island south of Tokyo.

These pictures are from the Oshima camp, which was my favourite. We slept in tents, cooked all of our own meals, went on hikes, explored tide pools, learned how to snorkel, and met ancient tortoises at the local zoo.

In between camps I went to Mikurajima to swim with the wild dolphins and hike in the mountains.

I blogged about Mikurajima here, and the pictures are here.

With all that was going on in the summer I missed Hideaki's birthday, so we celebrated a bit late with an ice cream cake. Yup, he's 40!

A few days later was another milestone: our 10th anniversary. With some of the money I made at all those camps in the summer we spent a weekend in Shimoda, a town near the tip of the Izu Peninsula, southwest of Tokyo.

I chose it because it is supposed to have nice beaches that remain free of jellyfish and warm enough for swimming in September (most of the waters surrounding Japan are full of stinging jellyfish after mid-August), and also has plenty of historical sights that would give us something to do if the weather turned bad.

Shimoda is where Commodore Matthew Perry arrived and forced Japan out of seclusion in 1854, but that's about all I know because the weather was great and we had no need to set foot in a museum. I can confirm that the beaches are indeed pretty, but sadly the waves were high and we couldn't really swim, so we bodysurfed and built sandcastles (the ruins shown above were truly magnificent before the tide came in).

We took a side trip to Kawazu Nanadaru (the Seven Waterfalls of Kawazu) for an easy hike. I think we saw all of the falls, but it was hard to tell as some of them were so tiny they barely qualified as waterfalls, though some of them were lovely, and it was a very pleasant place to walk around. Most people seemed to be there because the area was featured in The Izu Dancer, a famous book that apparently everyone except us has read. There were Izu Dancer statues and monuments all over the place,

This girl kept following us and copying my poses, which kind of annoyed me at first, but then really pissed me off when I realized she looked a million times cuter doing the exact same poses. I think I'm going to have to start practicing my posing techniques and wearing fancy dresses when I go sightseeing.

Some of the waterfalls could be seen by a paved path, but for the rest you have to take a trail which is not exactly challenging, but steep, narrow and uneven in parts. It was on the trail that I saw the lady in hot pink high heels, which cheered me up. No hike in Japan is complete without seeing at least one woman in completely inappropriate footwear.

What was even more impressive than the falls themselves were the rock formations that caused them and the colour of the water, which I couldn't quite capture in the pictures but ranged from a lovely topaz to a pale turquoise. 

Once we'd had our fill of falls we stopped by a restaurant specializing in noodles local inoshishi (wild boar) for lunch. We'd never tried boar before and weren't sure if noodle toppings were the best way to eat it, so we only ordered one inoshishi dish, inoshishi soba (buckwheat noodles in miso broth with vegetables and wild boar). It was good but milder tasting than we expected, tasting like a cross between regular pork and duck.

We also had sansai udon (wheat noodles with mountain vegetables), which came with a small plate of toppings: daikon pickles, fuki-miso (butterbur shoots dressed with miso) and locally grown wasabi. I'm not a huge wasabi fan but this was very fresh and fragrant, so different than the impostor usually served.

Dessert was kakigori (shaved ice) flavoured with matcha sauce and anko (sweet red beans).

Overlooking the biggest of the falls is Amagisou, an old ryokan (Japanese inn) with a large a collection of rotemburo (outdoor hot spring baths), one shown below. There were traditional indoor onsen (hot springs) as well, but the rotemburo were coed and required swimsuits, so we suited up and went bath hopping. The place is well past its peak and several baths were empty and abandoned, but there were enough left to make it a memorable visit. We liked large outdoor bath with the view of the falls the best, and also had a good time in the onsen pool where Hideaki showed off his swimming abilities and tried to teach me the backstroke. It's much harder than it looks, and despite my best efforts I soon reverted to doggypaddling. One of these days I'll learn to swim for real, but not during a vacation.

I had better luck teaching Hideaki to snorkel the next day, on the rocky shoreline shown below. It doesn't look like much but there were some surprisingly beautiful little fish under the water, and it turns out that Hide loves to snorkel. We don't have many hobbies in common, so it's cool that we both like snorkeling and can't wait to try it again. Maybe he'll come along on my next trip to Mikurajima.

When the water got too cold it was time for lunch, so we went to Kiyu, a Japanese seafood restaurant. I ordered the kinmedai kamameshi lunch set (steamed rice topped with alphonsino, a delicious local fish). Hideaki had kakiage-don, a bowl of rice topped with a mix of vegetables, shrimp and local sazae (turban snail) fried tempura-style. Both meals were excellent and give us one more reason to go back to Shimoda.

In September Hideaki and I went for a hike in Saitama, west of Tokyo. Our first stop was Noninji, a large temple near Hanno station with very pretty grounds. We could have spent longer looking at the many buildings and gardens, but we'd started late so kept our visit short.

I really liked the little rest area, with a tea house-like gazebo that had special details like this funky light.

The lilly-pad shaped tables tables and chairs were cute too, and even the ashtray was disguised as a tree stump.

We climbed the hill behind the temple to continue our hike, but soon after we got to the top we took a wrong turn and got lost. The rest of the 'hike' consisted mostly of wandering around the village seen above.

We eventually found the tail end of the trail but were too dejected to take any pictures until we came upon a higanbana (red spider lilly) lined river. The sight of higanbana in bloom is a sure signal that, no matter how hot and sunny the weather may be, summer is over. But as sad as I am to see them I have to admit they are pretty.

Getting lost is hungry work, so we were happy to find Kunugi-an, a soba restaurant.

Hideaki ordered zarusoba (cold soba noodles with a soy based dipping sauce) and I had tororo soba (the same with grated yam and a raw quail egg to add to the dipping sauce). It was very good, if a little pricey, and if we ever try the hike again (with a compass and map, hopefully) we'll come here again.

A few more pictures of the hike here.

Mikurajima

I really shouldn't have done it. Good wives are not supposed to take off on frivolous trips while their husbands stay home looking for work. Especially when they've barely gotten back from a one-month visit to Canada and can hardly claim they're starved for a vacation. Especially especially when their summers consisted of working five weeks of summer camps with just a weekend between each one, leaving very little time to even keep up with the laundry, let alone have quality with said husbands. But something keeps drawing my back, and I did it. I went to Mikurajima.

Mikurajima is a small island south of Tokyo, part of the chain of islands known as the Izu Seven Islands. It was my third visit, having gone last year and two years before that. I don't know if that quite qualifies me as a regular, but I'm beginning to feel like it (hell, google "Mikurajima" and my blog comes in second from top). And I mean that in a good way. It's a tiny place with an equally tiny population, and it doesn't take that long to feel like you know the island.

I went with my friends Emi and Etsuko and Etsuko's boyfriend Jeremy. We left on August 6th (figuring we'd take advantage of the brief time in early August when the water has warmed up but the jellyfish haven't arrived yet) by overnight ferry, which is the only direct way to get there from Tokyo. It is possible to get there from neighboring Miyakejima by fishing boat, and you can also helicopter over from Izu Oshima, which I almost did since I was already on Oshima that day finishing up an English camp. But then I saw how much it cost and realized it would be far cheaper to ferry back to take a ferry from Oshima to Tokyo, wait a few hours, and get on another ferry to Mikurajima. Quite a waste of time, but not only was the transportation itself cheaper that way, but by sleeping on the ferry I saved paying for a night's lodging. Plus Hideaki was nice enough to come to the harbour to not only pass the time between ferries with me, but to take home my dirty camp clothes and wash them for me. Either I'm a very bad wife, or I have a very good husband.

But you get what you paid for, and the seats on the ferry were about as comfortable as airplane seats, meaning I didn't get much sleep. At least my motion sickness meds worked though: Etsuko's didn't, so even though she and Jeremy were able to stretch out to sleep (albeit on the floor), she got less sleep than I did. Emi, going all out as she usually does, slept like a baby in her bunk and barely got off the ferry in time (it went on to the distant island of Hachioji after Mikurajima). The above picture is taken at dawn as we pulled away from Miyakejima, Mikurajima's closest neighbor.

An hour after leaving Miyakejima we landed on Mikurajima, shown above. Note the steep sides of the island: there are no beaches, a fact that mostly kept tourists away until the dolphin tourism boom started about a decade ago. Tourism is still well controlled by both the inaccessibility of the island and the islanders' dedication to conservation, with strict rules governing what tourists can do on the island.

We stayed the first night at our favourite minshuku (family-run inn), Nishikawa, shown below. Like most buildings on the island it is of utilitarian construction, but you don't go to Mikurajima for the architecture.

While everyone else spent the morning in the water, I had a refreshing nap (vowing, as I nodded off, to shell out for a first class ferry ticket next year). Then we all met up again for lunch at Yamaya, one of just three restaurants on the island. I had a bowl of ume shiso reimen (cold Korean style noodles with pickled ume and perilla) which turned out to be one of the most refreshing dishes I had all summer, with a tart, tangy kick that shook off the last of my sleepiness.

And then Emi, Jeremy and I headed out to see the dolphins. The only way to see them is by snorkeling in the open water (scuba diving is prohibited), and the only way to get out into the water is by tour boat. There are about a dozen to choose from and we went with Sirius Nature Tours, which we like for its small and relatively comfortable boat (it holds a maximum of seven people) and skilled captain. There are further restrictions about how many times tourists can go out per day and how long each tour lasts, but my plan of one tour per day was well within the limits.

There are about 100 dolphins in the waters surrounding the island, split into several groups which are constantly on the move but usually stick close to the shore. We had to travel halfway around the island before we spotting them, and for a while all we could do was watch them from the boat, since they were swimming erratically and it was hard to tell which direction they were headed. Dolphins are very fast swimmers, and often by the time the captain sees them, slows down the boat and sends his passengers into the water, the dolphins are long gone. So we just watched them come up for air and do the occasional jump above the surface for a while.

Finally the timing was right and we could get in the water. Sirius's captain is really good at predicting which directions the dolphins will swim and stopping in front of them, so we can see them coming and going, whereas other tours we've been on just dump us near the dolphins as they pass, which usually results in great views of their tails as they swim away, and nothing more.

Visibility wasn't great, as there'd been stormy weather the day before, but we still got to see lots of dolphins. Unfortunately my waterproof camera decided to stop being waterproof after just one picture underwater, so most of these pictures are Emi's. My camera was ruined but I had little time to think about it as I tried to keep up with the dolphins (and as luck would have it, when I finally had time to deal with it last month Pentax replaced the camera for free).

Back at our minshuku, after cleaning our gear and showering, we had a dinner so homey and local it could have been on the table of any family on the island (and I mean that in a good way). Clockwise from bottom left: chilled ashitaba somen (thin noodles made of wheat and ashitaba, a fast-growing plant with edible leaves found all over the Izu Seven Islands), served in a soy-based broth and topped with noriashitaba to tuna no aemono seaweed; (ashitaba greens dressed with tuna); potato salad; grilled takabe (a local fish called yellowstriped butterfish in English); kinmedai (alphonsino) sashimi; pickles; and mabodofu (tofu in spicy pork sauce); with rice available self-serve. It was all good, and I loved the bitter, fresh flavour of the ashitaba.

The next morning we woke up early to the breakfast above: shumai (pork dumplings), cheese-stuffed hampen (fish cake) and sauteed peppers on the large plate; rice; grilled salted salmon; mango pudding; miso soup; simmered satsuma-age (fried fish cake), carrot and konnyaku (devil's tongue jelly); pickles, and komatsuna greens simmered with egg.

And then we headed out for another dolphin tour. The day started out clear, with a nice view of Miyakejima to the north, and I came armed with my waterproof cell phone.

Which took really crappy pictures. The one above was taken in the middle of a big school of takabe, the very same fish we'd tried the night before. Below is Emi with her camera safely inside its waterproof casing, and the rest of the dolphin pictures are hers.

 

By the time the tour ended the top half of the island was covered in cloud, which didn't bode well for the hike we'd planned in the afternoon.

Lunch was at Yamaya again, but as I was still full from my giant breakfast I opted for matcha azuki kakigori (shaved ice flavoured with sweetened matcha tea and adzuki beans).

Hiking on Mikurajima is as strictly controlled as dolphin watching, with most routes requiring a guide. I had planned on doing a short hike on one of the routes not requiring a hike, but when Jeremy realized he and Etsuko's guided tour fell on the same afternoon,he kindly offered to pay for me to join. I was glad I did, as I learned a lot about the island's nature and history that I otherwise wouldn't have. And even though my camera was broken, I still got some pictures, as Jeremy lent me his camera.

We started by driving out of the village and into the mountains, stopping first at this giant sudajii (Castanopsis sieboldii, a member of the beech family).

Walking around its base we came upon this empty eggshell, once home to an oomizunadori (Calonectris leucomelas, or streaked shearwater) a seabird that nests on the island.

We continued driving, stopping occasionally for the view (unfortunately the cloud cover remained and we didn't enjoy the view of the ocean and distant mainland that the tour usually affords) and finally at this little roadside shrine. Next to the van was a patch of the ever-present ashitaba, and we were instructed to pick a leaf and bring it to the shrine.

The leaf was placed on the altar and covered with a rock as we prayed for a safe journey. This is apparently the traditional thing to do when venturing into the mountains on Mikurajima, with travelers returning to the shrine on their way down to remove the leaf being and give thanks to the gods for their safe return.

Then we walked into the forest, passing more giant trees as well as giant ferns, and plenty more eggshells.

Not everything was giant, and although I wasn't used to the camera and couldn't get any shots of the many pretty flowers and plants we saw, I did get some shots of the pretty tama ajisai (hydrangea involucrata, or ball-shaped hydrangea). These look like regular gaku ajisai (lace hydrangea) when fully bloomed, but start off quite differently with the flowers tightly wrapped in a white ball. They bloom throughout the summer, later than regular hydrangea, and although they can be found on mainland Japan they are especially abundant on Mikurajima.

We eventually made it to Oojii, a giant tree said to be the largest sudaji in Japan, which is protected by a fence and very hard to get a good view of (but that's it behind us). 

We hadn't been able to reserve our second night at our minshuku, so we had to move to Mikurasou, the island's only hotel. I don't like it as much as Nishikawa,but the meals are totally different, so it was nice to experience both home-cooked food and fancy food in the same trip.

Clockwise from bottom left: ashitaba dressed with local kikurage (cloud ear mushroom); locally caught kinmedai and summer vegetables in sweet and sour sauce; oven-baked chicken and local potatoes; kampachi (yellowtail) and ama-ebi (sweet shrimp) sashimi; miso soup with limpets; itoyori-dai (threadfin bream) over spinach in a tart "Japonaise" sauce, topped with deep-fried glass noodles.

After dinner we saw the sunset as we walked down to Camburi, Mikurajima's only bar (which we'd visited earlier for coffee as it turns into a cafe during the day). It's a nice place made of local wood and has been around for just a year, and we enjoyed our cocktails and snacks very much. Below is takabe sashimi, yet another form of the local fish.

The next morning was our last dolphin swim. This time we were all together (Etsuko had canceled the previous day's tour due to her seasickness) and the dolphins were more active than we'd ever seen them.

By active I mean sexually active, and we saw quite a bit of dolphin foreplay. It was mostly groups of two or three males (visibly excited, as can be seen in two of the pictures before playing around with a single female, or each other. They completely ignored us swam in circles, which was neat because it allowed us to watch them for a long time, but also weird because, well, we were watching dolphins get it on. I felt a bit like a pervert then, and now that I'm posting dolphin porn I feel like a pervert all over again.

 

Breakfast had been served while we were away and was packed up for our return. Our little breakfast packs consisted of rice topped with okaka (bonito flakes flavoured with soy sauce) and kurogoma (black sesame); ashitaba dressed in soy sauce and sesame seeds; grilled mackerel; pickles and atsuyaki tamago (thick omelet).

Then we walked down to Minminan, another restaurant, where I had an iced coffee (all I could fit after breakfast) while the others had lunch, then on to the third restaurant on the island, Marufuku, for a gelato cone to eat on the way down to the dock to meet our ferry. It was sad to leave, even sadder still knowing we'd arrive back in Tokyo late at night and I'd be waking up early the next day for another week of camp. But it was a wonderful trip, and just like to say thank you to Emi for organizing it, and to Etsuko and Jeremy for bringing me along on their hike and letting me use their camera, and to Hideaki for his laundry services and good husbandry. I hope he'll come with me next year.

 

To see more pictures from the trip, check out my Mikurajima album on Flickr.

Past trips to Mikurajima: 2006, 2008.

Tokai Kisen has a daily route from Takeshiba Sanbashi Pier in Tokyo to Hachijoji, stopping at Miyakejima and Mikurajima on the way. The ferry departs nightly 10:20, arriving in Mikurajima the next morning at 6:00. The return ferry departs from Mikurajima at 1:15am and arrive in Tokyo at 10:30pm; one-way tickets start at 7200 yen for seats or floor space and 10,810 yen for second class bunks.

A night at Nishikawa costs 8000 yen per person, breakfast and dinner included; other minshuku range in price from 6900 to 8500 yen per night including breakfast and dinner; Mikurasou charges 10,500 per person (based on double occupancy) including breakfast and dinner; Bungalos are 2000 yen per night with no meals or amenities (bedding and cooking equipment must be rented, showers are pay-by-the-minute).

All dolphin tours costs 7000 yen, including pick-up and drop-off from hotel, but service varies between tour companies. I highly recommend Sirius Nature Tours.

Tobermory

While we were at Sauble Beach we drove up the Bruce Peninsula for an afternoon of hiking, stopping first for lunch in Tobermory, at the tip of the peninsula. We ate at a pirate-themed restaurant called the Shipwreck, with a cheese factor that was outweighed by the good food (and the cute pirate waiters).

We started with fried pickles, a delicacy that was new to me but stayed true to the "anything can be good when deep-fried" rule, and then went on to fish & chips. We all chose the local whitefish and were rewarded with a very tasty fish, with a mild, slightly oily flavour and delicate flesh, unlike anything I can get in Japan (where river and sea fish are plentiful but lake fish rather rare).

Then we drove to the Bruce Peninsula National Park for a few hours of leisurely hiking. It was a beautiful park bordered by rugged cliffs and the occasional rocky beach along Georgian Bay on the east and Lake Huron on the west. There isn't much explanation needed, so here's an uninterrupted stream of pictures:

I was impressed by the washrooms, which were much nicer than the usual toilets found in parks. Large open windows let in light and offered ventilation, the wooden construction looked nice, and best of all there was no running water: instead of flushing away waste it stayed where it was and, with the help of woodchips, turned into compost. I'd love to see this type of toilet in Japan.

I slept through most of the drive back to Sauble (I had insisted on carrying a backpack full of beer and water for the hike, which made an easy hike into a tiring one) but woke up to take a picture of this very pretty field of canola flowers:

Note that some of these pictures were taken by my brother Greg and his girlfriend Sherry. See lots more by them and by me in my Sauble album at Flickr.

Sauble

 

During my trip back home this summer the whole family drove up for a four day visit to Sauble Beach, a place we've been visiting since before I was born. Located at base of the Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron, the beach is one of the longest freshwater beaches in the world but is relatively undeveloped, and everything is still pretty much the same as when I was little, including the vintage sign at the south end of the beach. We stayed, like we usually do, at a rented cottage, and spent our time swimming, building sandcastles, and strolling along the beach.

We barbecued steaks and hot dogs and ate lots of fruits and vegetables (I ate more fruit in the lunch below than I do in an average week in Japan).

We also ate plenty of greasy local food, like beach poutine and Canadian-Chinese food (which I'd been craving for ages as it's completely different from the Chinese food in Japan). And of course there were a few trips Dairy Queen, but instead of the dipped cones I had there as a kid I went for Skor Blizzards, another craving of mine.

One of the few new things in Sauble is the Two Chicks Cafe, which offers relatively healthy food and outdoor seats that are a good place to don your shades and try to look cool.

On our last morning we saw another new thing: the the piping plover, an endangered bird that in the past few summers has been coming to the beach to breed. Two sections of the beach are designated breeding spots guarded by volunteers, who offer passersby binoculars to see the two pairs of very shy birds and their handful of chicks.

The two-hour drive back home to Brampton passes through some very pretty country on long, straight rodes that are a novelty for Hideaki and I, as rodes like this simply don't exist in compact, mountainous Japan.

Another novelty is the old barns and farmhouses and newer wind turbines that we pass by, and for some reason they fascinate me, especially the barns. Greg was nice enough to stop to let me take a few pictures by the side of the rode, but one of these days I'm going to have to get a closer look at a run-down barn.

 

Some of these pictures were taken by my brother Greg and his girlfriend Sherry. See tonnes more by them and by me in my Sauble album over at Flickr.

Canada, week three

This week's park was Jack Darling, another Mississauga waterfront park. We really liked this place and again wished we'd brought a picnic, so we could join one of the many families who'd set up for the day on the grass. A lot of these people were serious picnickers, who'd brought a backyard's worth of outdoor furniture, gas grills and hibachis, parasols and tents, and even hammocks. We really have to do that someday.

There are also sandy beaches, some of them even swimmable, although the beach above was completely taken over by Canada geese.

The park is next to Rattray Marsh, a pretty wetland that can be explored from raised wooden boardwalks. The paths continue into a forest, which was very nice and cool on this hot day, and although it was a weekend and fairly crowded we managed to see some neat stuff, including a family of weasels. OK, I didn't actually see them myself, but everyone else did and seemed to think they were neat.

The visit ended in the traditional way, with sausages and pop from a hot dog stand. Hideaki was really impressed with the stand and wished we had them in Tokyo. I guess I'm lucky to have such an easy to impress husband.

My sister had recently arrived from Texas, making this a complete family reunion. She and my Mom had stayed behind while we went to the park, and when we got back there was a feast waiting for us. It started with the amazing appetizer above, which was prosciutto-wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese, broiled and topped with almonds and honey. This seems to be a popular recipe, judging by a search I just did, but I'd never heard of it before and was blown away. It was just amazing and very hard not to eat it all myself.

Then I put together some more traditional appetizers, and since this was Fathers' Day, these were Dad-oriented stinky canned and pickled things (and happily my Dad and I share similar tastes). Smoked oysters, smoked mussels, several kinds of sardines, pickled beets, pickled onions, dill pickles, plus crab dip and crackers. Most of this stuff can't be easily found in Japan, so I was probably even happier than Dad was.

After Fathers' Day festivities dinner was served. This was a whole salmon (head and tail cut off only because we didn't have a pan big enough for it) stuffed with spinach and baked. This is another dish I request often, and this might have been the best version ever (I think I say that every time, but this time I really mean it). The salmon came from Ocean's, the new(ish) Asian market in town, and seemed to be better than any we've bought in recent years. Great new Asian markets have popped up all over recently, making visits to the old dingy one unnecessary. Funny how things improve after I move away.

This is the salmon and its stuffing, served with new potatoes and green beans. I regretted eating all those appetizers, because I could have had three plates of this.

And more regret when dessert came: a fancy chocolate cake, apple tart, and fresh local strawberries (or what was left of them, for as soon as they hit the table hands were grabbing them).

Another night we went out for dinner, to Osso Bucco's, our local casual Italian place. Here Julie doles out the mussels for Zoe.

The mussels here are fantastic, but have a mysteriously Thai flavour. The sauce is billed as a spicy white wine cream sauce, and indeed it is, but there also seems to be coconut milk and curry. We always order these, and then everyone discusses what's in the recipe and we all vow to try making it ourselves. So far no one has, but one of these days...

Baked goat cheese, which you've all probably seen a million times but I can't get enough of it (goat cheese not being terribly popular in Japan).

I've always thought there's something wrong with people who order a soup or salad as their main dish at a nice restaurant. Why would anyone pass up delicious pastas, steaks, and other wonderful things for a boring dish that anyone can make at home? Well, something strange possessed me that night and I found myself ordering zuppa di pesce (seafood soup).

Possibly the giant servings at Osso Bucco had something to do with my odd behavior: I knew most of the main dishes would leave me stuffed beyond comfort, and I also knew that everyone else would have so much food that they'd be happy to share once I got tired of my soup. But there was no getting tired of this soup, it was fantastic. Yes, I did sample everyone else's dinners, but only to assure myself that I'd ordered the best thing on the menu. Bonus: I was able to finish it all and didn't feel like exploding afterward.

Another night it was Sherry's turn to cook dinner. She made a Korean feast of miso soup, bulgogi beef, rice, sauteed greens of some kind and garlicky broccoli. It was wonderful, and I was especially happy to eat white rice and miso soup as I was starting to miss Japanese food. But I got a shock when I tried the soup: it was spicy! It looked just like Japanese miso soup, with tofu and green onions floating around, but it turned out there were green chillies lurking at the bottom. Once I got over my surprise I realized it was delicious. Chilli goes really well with miso, and it's such a genius combination that I'll be making it myself soon.

Another day Hideaki and I hitched a ride into Toronto with my Dad. We all parted ways in the morning: Dad for an appointment, me to meet my friend Aspasia, and Hideaki to explore the city by himself. I had a great day roaming the city, doing stuff like eating the excellent pho above, lots of chatting over lots of coffee, spending my useless Canadian dollars on pretty clothes in Kensington market, and a fruitless search for a certain kind of tomato that apparently doesn't exist in Toronto.

Hideaki also had a good day, mostly, and upon looking at the hundreds of pictures he took (typical Japanese tourist, hehe) I realized he went to many of the same places we went, mostly at the same time. It's amazing we didn't bump into each other, and when I heard about his later misadventures I wished we had (or at least I wished we'd had cell phones).

His route took him from the Tourist Information office at Yonge and Dundas (where I set him up with a map and left him to it), over to Little Italy at College and Bathurst, where he had lunch, above.

Then he headed down to Kensington Market, then Chinatown, then along Queen Street West, then down to Front Street and on to the St. Lawrence Market.

And finally he ended up at Union Station. Not particularly impressive, except that it was all on foot, on one of the hottest days in June. I'd given him tokens for the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission, consisting of buses, streetcars and subways) but he hadn't used them for some reason.

Unfortunately I been told that the GO (Ontario public transit) trains to Brampton ran all day, and had supplied Hideaki with the same incorrect information. I had had a little trouble myself getting home, having just missed the last train but not knowing it until I was almost on the platforms. Funny how when I asked the teller for a one-way train ticket to Brampton she didn't tell me there were no trains. Of course there are buses, which cost the same, so it's all the same to her, but that (plus the typically Canadian lack of any kind of useful signage) led to some confusion and I barely managed to find and catch the right bus home.

And if I, as a native English speaker who actually used to live in Toronto, had trouble, I figured Hideaki would too. I hoped that he had gone home early and managed to catch a train like I told him.

But when I got home he wasn't there, and it was a suspenseful few hours until we heard from him. When he finally called I was ready to call the police to report him missing, but he was fine, having gone through nothing worse than falling victim to a couple of useless transport systems staffed by useless people.

Just like me, He'd bought a ticket to Brampton after the trains had stopped, and also not been told there were no trains. He'd also later been unable to find the (nonexistent) platform and asked a GO employee what to do, and was told to take the train to Bramalea (the stop before Brampton) and then take a Brampton Transit bus to Brampton station. A completely different (and completely asinine) answer to the same question I had asked.

So he did what he was told (having a snack of timbits and iced coffee first at his favourite place in the world, Tim Hortons), and at Bramalea tried to find a bus to take him to the Brampton GO station, but none of the maps and schedules could help. He did ask the teller at the terminal and two bus drivers, and was told by all three that there is no bus to downtown Brampton. True, and so far so good. But two of those three didn't know which combination of buses would get him there (and didn't bother to find out) and one of them did, but Hideaki couldn't understand and/or remember the instructions. I suppose he could have tried writing them down asked the driver to repeat the instructions or speak more slowly, but I'm just proud of him for overcoming his gender and asking for directions in the first place. He could also have called us at that point, but again: Y chromosome and all that.

So he just gave up and took a taxi to the downtown Brampton GO station, then called us for a ride home as planned. Little did he know that Bramalea is a 10-minute drive from our home and that he could have called us from there and saved himself the twenty-five dollar cab fare.

OK, a long, not very interesting story, but after over a decade of living in Japan I found it all shocking, as Tokyo and its suburbs have a transportation system that's a hundred times bigger and more complicated yet is far easier to navigate thanks to well-coordinated systems, sensible design, good signage, and employees who are generally very helpful and extremely knowledgeable. It's not perfect in Japan and I've gotten lost plenty of times or occasionally dealt with a nasty driver or teller, but every time I've asked a question to any kind of transportation official he's either immediately given me a clear and correct answer, or directed me to another who could do so.

I'm actually kind of glad it happened though, because Hideaki has fallen in love with Canada and I don't want him to be too impressed, lest he be disappointed later. Better to let him see the faults from the beginning.

Back at home we were keeping ourselves amused with Sorry, our favorite board game. Dad likes to keep it interesting by adding little extras to the board, but it soon became clear that Sorry wasn't going to be enough: it's made for four players but there were eight of us.

So I searched my Dad's office (which was doubling as our guest room) and found an old piece of poster board (with a chart on one side made by my Mom for a PTA meeting 30 years ago--Dad is quite the pack rat). After hours of excruciating mathematical calculations and several re-dos (I'm math-challenged) Zoe and I designed a bigger and better board with room for eight players. We all took turns decorating each player's home base, and then we gave the board a try.

Or rather, the board was put away and tried a week later, as nobody really seemed that impressed for some reason. I think it's pure genius, with extra slides that take players all the way to the other side of the board and certain places that allow you to trade positions with other players (without which the game would take longer than Monopoly to finish). When we finally got around to playing it, with clips, chopstick rests, erasers and other pieces we'd found around the house, I loved it. And although everyone else fell asleep at the table I think with a few refinements this could be a winner. I'll be contacting Parker Brothers soon, and within a year or two I'm quite sure I'll be retiring as a billionaire. Contact me if you're interested in a partnership.

Canada, week two

Another week, another park. This time we drove down to Mississauga's Lakefront Promenade Park, a collection of parks and trails running along the shores of Lake Ontario.

The area used to be dominated by the four ugly smokestacks of the Lakeview Generation Station, but as it was demolished two years ago the focus is on the parks, as well as on the lake itself. It turns out to be a pretty area, and I wondered why I'd never been before, despite going to high school (Cawthra Park) just blocks away for a year. Maybe I never ventured down to the lake because the smokestacks didn't prome much, or maybe much of the parkland just didn't exist then: I've read that many of the parks along the waterfront are relatively new.

We saw a bunch of swans, including a family with an aggressive daddy, shown charging seagulls below. But without a picnic there wasn't much to do, so once we'd walked all the paths and munched on some sausages from the requisite hot dog stand, we headed home.

This is the view from the west-facing side of our house, and once upon a time we could see clear across fields and valleys. But little by little, starting with a distant Walmart and ending with this school across the street, the view has disappeared. It's still a million times better from the view from our apartment in Tokyo though, and I saw more sunsets in my month-long visit than I normally do in a year.

Things continued to go well in the eating department. Above are some bbq shrimp done my brother Greg, who is in charge of the outdoor cooking.

Indoor eating happened more often than we would have liked (thanks to the cool and rainy weather), but we didn't mind, because my Mom served us yummy stuff like the dinner above: orzo with parsley and lemon, prosciutto-wrapped halibut, grilled fennel and carrots. The full meal (minus the carrots, meant for those who don't like fennel) was taken straight from a wonderful new cookbook of hers called The Main that features main dishes with suggested sides. It was all good, including the fennel, which I'd never had before. I wonder if I can find it in Japan?

I request Swedish meatballs every time I go home for a visit and my Mom, who is half Swedish, is usually happy to oblige. Here they are served with cranberry sauce (we were out of lingonberry sauce), new potatoes, pickled red cabbage, pickled beets, and asparagus.

Swedish food tends to bring on pangs of nostalgia in my Mom, which for some unfortunate reason can only be eased by playing Swedish folk music. Luckily we only have the one album, and a few songs (preferably including the classic "Ack Varmeland, du Skona") usually do the trick. To help keep things interesting, we read some liner notes my Dad wrote years ago when he made tapes of the album for non-record player owning family members.

For one short day I flew up to Ottawa to visit my friend Krista and meet her new baby boy. He has beautiful blue eyes and is one of the happiest, cutest, and most laid-back babies I've met. I still don't really know what to do with babies (as in, how to hold them, what to say to them, etc) but this little guy was fun just to watch.

They're about to move, so I got to say good-bye to their lovely old house and see their even lovelier new house. Well, new to them I mean: I think it's about 80 years old and comes with beautiful wood finishings, stained glass doors and windows, and a shady back garden. I would love to have a house like this someday.

Just before I left, Krista's parents came back from a visit to Thunder Bay, and among the souvenirs were these pastries. Called Persians, they're a bit like a cinnamon roll but topped with pink strawberry icing, and apparently a Thunder Bay institution.

Another day was spent with my Dad and the kids at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), checking out the Book of the Dead exhibit in the ancient Egypt section (it was too dark for any pictures), the gems and minerals exhibit, and of course the dinosaurs.

I could have spent hours in the Earth's Treasures gallery looking at the minerals, the vast majority of which I'd never heard of, and the adjoining gallery's Light & Stone: Gems from the Collection of Michael Scott was just stunning.

These are tourmalines, which come in way more colours than I knew about.

This bust, called Mephisto, was carved from a single ruby, set on an obsidian base, and embellished with gold.

I don't remember what these are. The colour of the stone on the left looks like amethyst, but the crystal in the middle is the wrong shape and the stones seem too sparkly (although the stones were so well lit that they all sparkled beautifully).

This looks like a cameo cut from a seashell but is actually an agate, carved to take advantage of the differently coloured layers.

This mouse is also agate, with sapphire eyes, an aquamarine sheet of ice, and gold whiskers, tail and skates.

The dinosaurs were in the new Michael Lee-Chin wing, and whatever you might think about the architecture from the outside, I think it's a nice looking space from the inside, well suited to to the old bones housed there.

The gem exhibit will be at the ROM until November this year, so don't miss it.

When it was nice enough to eat outside again, Greg set up a complicated fajita station. He grilled some steaks, chopped up some vegetables, sliced up the steaks, the fried them with the veggies.

We each got to grill our tortillas and top them with the beef filling and our choice of guacamole, four kinds of cheese, and three kinds of salsa (plus cucumber salad on the side).

And then of course there were the hot sauces. I really liked Mountain Man, but the rest were way too spicy for me.

Here's mine before wrapping, and wow was it ever good.

The Brampton Farmers' Market is held every Saturday throughout the summer, with the opening day in mid-June featuring an and all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. Big and fluffy and topped with real maple syrup, they were delicious, but sadly the first two I got were all I could eat.

Oh yeah, there's Hideaki. He came for a two week visit during my stay, his first trip to Canada in four years.

There wasn't as much produce as I'd hoped (did I mention the crappy weather? yes? well, it had been going on long before I arrived, and caused crops to be late) but I consoled myself with a back bacon sandwich.

It started to rain so we gave up on the market as soon as we'd bought our stuff, and after finding some bargains at a church bazaar we went to the nearby Art Gallery of Peel. Part of the Peel Heritage Complex, where my Mom used to work, it was holding an exhibit called Arresting Images that featured mugshots from the Ontario Provincial Police Museum.

We stopped to pose as jailbirds in front of the gallery, and Aaron played the part particularly well. The museum adjoining the gallery is housed in the old Peel County Jail, built in 1867, and a quick tour of the museum's jail exhibit went well with the mugshot exhibit.

The collection was fascinating, with mugshots dating from the 1880s to the early 1900s. They were all proper portraits, most of them beautifully done and featuring studio backdrops. In most cases both the front and back were displayed, so we could see what details were thought to be important enough to record. This information included complicated body measurements (head width, forearm length), whether the suspect could read and write, and details about facial features ("nose: good"). It was also an interesting look at the writing of the time, with much of the script unreadable and a surprising number of spelling mistakes.

My favourite was this double mugshot, and if you look carefully at the man on the left's right hand (click here for a larger view) you'll see why.

There were just two or three women (all sporting great hats), including this lady who was apparently arrested for being suspicious.

Many suspects were from the US, but there were also a few overseas foreigners as well, including this gentleman from India who was suspected of fraud and the young suspected thief from Italy below, whose card notes he "speaks good English".

There were three mugshots of black suspects, and these two were especially poignant. The remarks on the card above say "This Nigro was Arrested on Suspicions of Commited Murder in Washington DC..." followed by "Not the Man" and "Discharged" (hopefully I misread the writing, and the spelling and grammar are not really that atrocious). The man below was also arrested on suspicion of murder. He was a horseman with the nickname of "Peewee", he couldn't read or write, and he ended up with a life sentence. His mugshot not only shows him in handcuffs, one of just a few mugshots to do so, but has him holding an actual gun.

The gallery had an old-fashioned backdrop set up along with a small collection of old timey clothes and hats, so we went ahead and took some mugshots of ourselves. Here is Zoe, very much in character, next is my brother's girlfriend Sherry, who is the least likely of all of us to ever end up in a real mugshot, then Aaron, rocking the bowler hat (not, it's not a miniature), me, a little too happy to be in a mugshot, and Hideaki, looking right at home.

The Arresting Images Exhibit is already over at the Art Gallery of Peel, but will be travelling around Ontario for the next year or so (click the link above to find a schedule). It's definitely worth a visit if it comes near you.

See more pictures from the ROM and the mugshot collection in my Museum and Gallery album, and more pictures of my visit in my Canada 2009 album.

Canada, week one

My trip to Canada last month started as it always does, with a dose of jetlag. But I don't know if it was the result of a pleasant flight (did I really just describe a 12 hour flight as "pleasant"? why yes, yes I did. thanks Air Canada and your endless stream of movies and TV shows) or the homeopathic anti-jet lag pills I took, but this time around I had the mildest jet lag ever. The worst I had to deal with was a week of early nights, spontaneous naps and very early mornings, which wasn't bad at all. And I have a feeling that even without jet lag I'd be waking up at 4:00, because that's when our backyard starts to come alive with robins and other birds announcing the coming day.

The early mornings were also a nice for walks in the nearby park, as that's the best time for picturesque fog, dewy flowers and active birds. The birds (and a local beaver) eluded my camera but the snails, which seemed to be everywhere thanks to some very wet weather, obligingly stayed still for me.

That wet weather kept us indoors more than I would have liked, but as a consolation there was lots of good food. Some of the biggest cravings I get in Japan are for simple, humble food like Jamaican hot patties or perogies, shown above.

I also miss Mexican and Tex-mex food, which although available in Tokyo is either prohibitively expensive or not very good. Luckily my brother Greg and his girlfriend Sherry are masters of Mexican cooking and whipped up several excellent meals for us. Above are condiments for quesadillas: mango salsa, sour cream, mild tomato salsa, guacamole, hot salsa and a side dish of (why not?) sauteed gai lan (a rapini-like Chinese green).

These were chicken quesadillas, cooked up on the barbeque and so, so good.

And of course no trip back home is complete without a few big breakfasts.This one was at Cora's, an lovely breakfast chain that originated in Montreal but has happily spread across Canada. Tempted by waffles and omelets, I chose brioche French toast topped with a poached egg, bacon, and mounds of fruit. Yum.

My niece Zoe and nephew Aaron flew up from  for a visit shortly after I arrived and we tried to keep them busy, starting with a trip with my Dad to Belfountain, a local conservation area with some nice and easy hiking trails. The area once belonged to a wealthy and slightly eccentric inventor, who in addition to building a house and trails also put up a fountain topped with a bell (get it?),

 a small and mysterious cave, (called Yellowstone Cave, and said to be modeled after a similar cave in Yellowstone Park, although I don't know if such a cave actually exists),

a miniature Niagara Falls,

and a suspension bridge (also shown in the previous post).

One of the trails is a loop that runs along the West Credit River and takes about an hour to complete, so we had a nice little walk.

There were flowers blooming everywhere, from the exotic yellow lady slipper orchids, below, to mundane but pretty buttercups and brassicas.

We were also lucky enough to see three salamanders, which I think were easter redbacks. Not much wildlife otherwise.

Except for the kids, of course.

See more pictures from Belfountain in my Hikes and Walks album, and all the pictures from my visit in my Canada 2009 album.