Blue Lotus

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.

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.

Kushiro Day Four

My last day in Kushiro started at Washo Ichiba, the city's famed market. Seafood is the main draw, attracting both locals and tourists, the latter wandering the market with bowls of rice in hand, the better to sample the wares with. We did the tourist thing, of course, but first we had a good look around the market.

Beautiful whole salmon were everywhere. The ones shown here were priced between 6000 and 10,000 yen, although I saw a giant one going for 36,000 yen. All were caught wild, either in Hokkaido or Russia.

Some merchants specialized in one type of seafood, while others had a little bit of everything. The scallops above were lovely and if I had access to a kitchen I would have bought them (I bet they'd be wonderful sauteed in Hokkaido butter).

Crab was almost as plentiful as salmon, and I imagine there would be even more of them in the winter when they are in season. In the foreground above are whole tarabagani (king crab) going for 4300 to 9800 yen, in the background are bags of tarabagani legs for 1500 and 2500 yen, and in the background are whole kegani (hairy crabs), priced at about 3000 to 5000 yen each.

There were also a mind-boggling array of shellfish. Above, from front left are bags of shucked oysters at 650 yen each, giant hokki-gai clams for 300 yen apiece, and iso-tsubu (a variety of tsubu-gai, or whelks) at 140 yen per 100 grams. The row behind that has asari (littleneck clams) for 120 yen per 100 grams, a small tray of asari for 400 yen, a tray of shijimi clams for 300 yen, trays of shelled hokkigai for 600 yen, and trays of iso-tsubu for 500 yen. Behind that row are shijimi for 140 yen per 100 grams, and to the right are bags of shelled and cooked tsubugai and trays of shelled and cooked scallops, with roe and frill still attached.

This shop carries himono (partly dried fish). The whole flatfish are karei (flounder), the whole fish in the foreground are sanma (Pacific saury), the split fish are hokke (atka mackerel), and the small fish on sticks in the background are shishamo (smelt).

Getting into more unusual stuff, on the left we have sujiko (salmon roe sacs), much smaller than the usual size. I've never seen them so small but I suppose that's the size they are this time of year (spawning not occurring until autumn). Or maybe they just came from midget salmon. Those big chunks of meat are fresh whale, priced at 180 to 450 yen per 100 grams. I'm not sure what the difference in price is for: different species, different cuts, or different levels of freshness? As is the norm in Japan, the species is not identified.

One of the few non-seafood merchants had variety of local and imported meat: lamb from Hokkaido, iberico pork from Spain, and local higuma (Japanese brown bear), packaged in a not very appetizing way.

And having seen the sights, it was time to do the tourist thing and have kattedon, which is a donburi (bowl of rice) topped with whatever little bits of seafood you fancy. It's a brilliant concept, as I've often find myself walking around a market and accepting samples here and there, thinking those samples would be so much better with a bowl of rice to enjoy them with. Unfortunately the free samples aren't forthcoming once you've got your bowl of rice, and the merchants sell tiny amounts of their wares for kattedon-toting tourists. You can end up paying a lot, but it's still a neat idea.

The done thing is to buy a styrofoam bowl of rice (priced from about 100 to 300 yen depending on the size) and wander around the market, buying toppings here and there.

We were in a bit of a rush so ended up buying everything at the place above, which had everything we wanted and more.

The seafood was packaged in single servings, and the merchant simply grabbed each little container as we chose it and emptied it onto the rice.

Once we'd finished choosing it was all topped off with soy sauce and the price was calculated. We ended up paying just under 1000 yen each, including rice, which is by no means a bargain but not a good deal considering the quality of the ingredients. And as a bonus, the merchant slipped an extra slice of tuna onto my kattedon, so I'm not complaining.

My kattedon consisted of, from bottom, salmon, tuna (not local but it looked good), ikura (salmon roe), tarako (pollack roe), crab meat, and saba (mackerel). It was very, very good, although the crab was a little too doused with soy sauce to fully enjoy it.

With breakfast over with, we drove west into the countryside to visit a farm. Like almost everywhere else we'd been so far, there were cows all over the place, but it wasn't a dairy farm we were headed to.

We went to Hitsuji Marugoto Kenkyusho, a sheep farm run by Shogo Sakai, an acquaintance of my brother-in-law.

We came during a sheepshearing session and got to watch the ewe above get a very complete haircut.

She was pregnant and didn't put up much of a fight, at least not the way I've seen the few times I saw sheepshearing on TV. Of course Mr. Sakai was quite a bit more gentle than those sheepshearers, and managed to relieve the ewe of her wool while leaving barely a scratch.

Her wool came off in one big piece, and was placed on a rack to be graded and have any debris picked off, a job usually performed by Mrs. Sakai.

He picked off a small tuft of wool and deftly spun it into yarn the old-fashioned way. It was amazingly strong and soft.

Meanwhile, the ewe showed some mild interest in her former coat, but didn't seem to upset at loosing it.

Next we visited a barnfull of lambs born last year. I think a good number of these are destined for the dinner table.

And then we got a look at the sheepskins. Called muton (from the French mouton) in Japanese, they looked so soft and inviting that I couldn't help but dive in to the pile.

They felt just as nice as they looked, and Hideaki's brother ended up buying three of them for us: the soft cream coloured and short black ones shown above and a curlier, fuzzier cream-coloured one. I'm sitting on that one right now, and wow is it ever comfortable. If I could I'd cover all my chairs and sofa in sheepskin, cover the floor in sheepskin rugs, and have my sheets made of sheepskin too. It's wonderful stuff. I can even understand the Uggs craze a little.

Next we hit a cheese factory, which as luck would have it was holding a small festival. It was a perfect time for lunch, so we had a lovely meal of lamb stew, grilled kabocha squash, pate, cottage cheese and bread, and a just-grilled lamb kabob. And to go with it, cheese-filled buns baked in an improvised brick oven. Eaten under the warm spring sun, this was a lovely, lamby lunch.

We drove back to Kushiro along the coast, stopping at a lookout point for a view of the ocean.

 

There were more wildflowers up there, like this kikuzaki-ichige (Anemone pseudoaltaica), and the kibana amana (yellow star-of-Bethlehem) below.

We then stopped at a roadside seafood market that also happened to have soft-serve ice cream, and I had my last Hokkaido ice cream of the trip on the beach. It was early evening by now and freezing cold, but ice cream on the beach is nice any time so I didn't mind.

One last stop was at a fishing pier in Kushiro, featuring yet another salmon-themed manhole cover.

Back at my brother-in-law's house I had a quick dinner (they would do their real eating--and more importantly drinking--after I left), starting with sake-steamed clams and then moving on the tail-end of the hokke we'd had a few nights before.

It was grilled at the table, as was most of the food we'd eaten on the trip. I haven't really explained the grilling, so now is a good time: for nearly every night of the year my brother-in-law grills his dinner with charcoal, either on the camp-style hibachi shown in previous posts or the shichirin grill shown above. He uses top-quality charcoal and fires it up in the stairwell, and when it's ready brings it inside (being careful to keep the fan on and windows open). He has a camping table with a sunken middle set up in his dining room, and the grill is placed in the middle and the food is slowly grilled, while the alcohol and conversation flows.

It is slow food in the extreme, and the meals we had there were all four or five hours long. It's a very nice, civilized way to eat, and although I wouldn't want to do that every day (nor would I have the time), it's great to see people doing this.

With a bowl of rice topped with umeboshi (salted plum) and pickles, the meal ended and it was time to go. I flew back to Tokyo with a very full tummy feeling tired but satisfied (Hideaki stayed on for a few more days). I'd had a busy four days, filled with stuff that a regular tourist would never get to experience. Thanks for the wonderful trip, brother-in-law!

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Kushiro Day Three

On the morning of our third day in Kushiro we had a little time to look at the area we were staying in. Above is the Kushiro River as seen from our room, and below as seen from the north bank, looking at the Nusamai Bridge and one of its four famous broze statues. The statues apparently depict the four seasons, but we never got a chance to see them up close and they appeared to be nothing more than four naked ladies in different poses.

The banks of the river were often crowded with tourists looking for Ku-chan, an otter who had lately taken to hanging around the area. I was only able to see Ku-chan once, from across the river, and apparently the otter disappeared altogether the day I left, eventually showing up again in another city of Hokkaido. It must have been a crushing blow to Kushiro's tourist industry, which seemed to have been relying heavily on Ku-chan to bring in the tourists in recent weeks. So beloved was the otter that it was became the latest animal celebrity to receive an honorary juminhyo (national registry) entry , an honor I am not eligible for (being not cute or Japanese enough).

Salmon are a more traditional local obsession, and they are honored with statues, salmon-shaped street lights, and sewer grates.

After our brief look at the river, we drove up north to Akan National Park. We stopped on the way at Soba Doraku, a locally famous soba restaurant surrounded by farm fields, many of them growing buckwheat (the raw ingredient of soba noodles). They make their own soba, and the water wheel out front (traditionally used for milling buckwheat and often found outside soba restaurants) actually appears to be functional (a rarity as these water wheels are usually purely decorative).

I ordered the inaka soba ("country style" soba made with coursely ground soba), which came with the usual cold dipping sauce, garnish of wasabi and sliced negi (long onion) and pickles. There was also a surprise: half a boiled potato, which is not something you would expect on the mainland. But this is Hokkaido, where potatoes seem to grow very well and are therefore very popular. And very good: regular Japanese potatoes are usually disappointing and I'd never happily eat a plain boiled one, but this was delicious just as it was, no seasoning necessary.

The soba was even better, with the thick, chewy noodles tasting strongly of buckwheat, just the way inaka soba should. This was some of the best soba I've had, and apparently lots of locals feel the same: the shop was extremely crowded, and soon after we sat down a long line had formed outside. Soon the old couple and part time girl running the place were completely overwhelmed and even people who got a seat had to wait a very long time for their food. But rather than get annoyed or start complaining like city people, the customers (or at least the female customers) started helping out, carrying trays back to the kitchen and washing and drying the dishes. That's something I've never seen in Tokyo--or anywhere else, come to think of it.

Akan National Park has three lakes: Akan-ko, Masshu-ko and Kussharo-ko. The first two are famous throughout Japan and I was looking forward to seeing them, but it turns out we were in fact going to Kussharo-ko, which is the biggest of the three. My brother-in-law explained that the two more famous lakes would be extremely crowded with tourists since it was Golden Week, and he went on to say that the popularity of those lakes is not really justified: they are pretty but there's not much to do except look at the lakes from an observation deck.

Kussharo-ko, apparently, is as beautiful as the other lakes but remains largely unmolested by tourists, and has more to do. We first drove along a gravel road to get to a beach with a beautiful view of the lake and surrounding mountains. It was was completely deserted, as promised.

Akan-ko is famous for its marimo (algae balls, which grow larger in the lake than anywhere else in the world), but Kussharo-ko has a similar species of algae balls. We found a number of them in the shallow water, and while they weren't big and green enough to pull in thousands of tourists they were definitely neat to see.

The weather was the warmest we'd experienced so far and I just had to try out the water. It was as cold as it looks, but if it was summer I'd be swimming.

Hideaki stayed on land and I came out soon too, after noticing a big pile of deer poop next to the water. I'm guessing this beach gets more traffic from deer than from people, and in fact on our drive back out to the main road we saw three deer next to the road.

Next we drove to Wakoto Hanto, a peninsula on the lake. With a parking lot, visitor's centre and campgrounds, there were a few people here, and my brother-n-law declared it "crowded". We headed straight for the hiking trail that runs along the peninsula and soon the "crowds" thinned, and we hardly saw anyone else on our hour-long hike.

  

 

Aside from pretty views of the lake and ancient trees, the trail offered plenty of wildflowers. Above is hime-ichige (Abemone debilis), as we'd seen the day before.

I finally found out what the purple flower I'd been seeing along the road since we arrived in Hokkaido was: ezo-engosaku (Corydalis ambigua), which actually comes in both blue and violet.

 

This is fukujusou, (Adonis amurensis, called adonis in English), a cheerful little flower.

I had seen a plant the day before with leaves and a single bud that looked a lot like a trillium, and I finally found one in bloom. It was a trillium after all, probably shirobana-enreisou (Trillium tschonoskii Maximowicz, called Tschonosk trillium or Japanese white trillium in English. These were plentiful but I only found one in bloom, so I bet right around now Wakoto is covered in blooming trilliums.

Near the end of the peninsula the water, glimpsed through the trees, changed colour to green. Soon the trees thinned and the ground was covered in moss, and suddenly we could hear a chorus of insects, the first we'd heard in Hokkaido. The ground here is several degrees warmer than normal, heated beneath by hot springs, and is warm enough to support a colony of tiny crickets year-round.

The shore is not accessible from land, but there was a family there who'd arrived by canoe. Apparently they were boiling eggs in the hot spring.

On the way back to the car we passed a marshy area, once again filled with mizubasho (Lysichitum camtschatcense, or skunk cabbage).

Dinner that night was lamb, one of the foods that Hokkaido is known for. Lamb is not very popular in the rest of Japan, with most people claiming to dislike the flavour, but in Hokkaido it is the meat of choice and most often cooked as jingis kan, a hot pot named after Genghis Khan for some reason.

There are two types of jingis kan, and we had both. The first, and the way I prefer, has slices of lamb cooked over charcoal and then dipped in a sauce. The most popular sauce comes in a red can, as shown above, and is a rich, sweet, garlicky and mildly spicy, with a vaguely Chinese flavour. Another type of sauce, shown in the jar two pictures up, has similar flavours but with the addition of gyoja-ninniku, a wild leek similar to ramps.

The other method of cooking jingis kan has the lamb meat along with its marinade (a sweetish and mildly spicy sauce with a vaguely Chinese flavour) placed in a pot on top of a layer of vegetables, in this case bean sprouts, and slowly cooked. This style is the most popular in Hokkaido and the only style used in the rest of Japan (where jingis kan has become more well-known in recent years).

As if we hadn't had enough protein, out came the two half-steaks of the salmon that we didn't get to eat the night before.

This is a type of salmon called tokishirazu, also known as tokizake, that I'd never heard of before. The name literally means "don't know the time", and refers to chum salmon with bad timing, either failing to swim upstream to spawn or swimming upstream at the wrong time. They are rich in fat and have juicy soft flesh.

We ate it over rice, along with a clear soup made with asari clams and aosa seaweed. The salmon had been flavoured with nothing more than salt, but with its rich flavour and perfect grilling was truly fantastic. I have no idea if tokishirazu is available in Tokyo (or if the salmon in other countries have salmon with a similarly poor sense of timing), but I'll definitely buy it if I see it again.

This was my last full day in Hokkaido and I was already feeling sad. And very, very full.

More pictures of the trip can be seen here.

Kushiro Day One

This Golden Week Hideaki and I were whisked away to Kushiro, where we spent the holidays visiting his brother. Kushiro, though the largest city in eastern Hokkaido, is not a major tourist destination, but my brother-in-law was able to show us some fantastic places and feed us some even more fantastic food. It started with ramen at a local place called Maruhira Ramen, which has just two items on the menu: shio ramenshoyu ramen and . I went with the shio (salt flavour), shown above, and Hideaki had shoyu (soy sauce flavour), below.

It was very simple but amazingly good, like what I imagine ramen to have been like 50 years ago. I've never really understood why Japanese people are willing to stand in line for food, but the 10 minute wait inside the tiny cramped restaurant were totally worth it.

Next we went to Yonemachi Koen, a small park with a lighthouse overlooking Kushiro harbour. Most of the city's shoreline is industrialized so this wasn't the most beautiful view in the world, but it was a good look at the city.

The houses are a bit bigger than in Tokyo but not as large as I expected them to be, given how large and unpopulated Hokkaido is. They were also extremely utilitarian, and the only attractive houses I saw were a few wooden ones built when Kushiro was first settled, most of them falling apart.

Then it was off the Kushiro's NHK building where my brother-in-law works. NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai) is Japan's public broadcasting organization, and because it was nearly abandoned due to the holidays we got a quick tour of the place.

This is a view of Kushiro River from NHK's rooftop. Note the two little buildings with false fronts on the bottom right: these were once stores of some kind, likely small businesses run by a family that lived in the back. This style of architecture could be seen all over Kushiro, most of the stores sadly no longer in business. Kushiro's economy is in rough shape, partly due to the flood of young natives who head for Sapporo, Tokyo and other bigger cities.

Here we are in the news studio.

Next we drove east to Akkeshi, stopping on the way at Moritaka Bokujo for a soft-serve ice cream cone made from local milk (Hokkaido is famous for, among many things, its dairy products). This was probably the best soft-serve I've ever had: smooth, not too rich or sweet, tasting of milk and nothing but.

Akkeshi is the name given to the bay and the brackish lake it is connected to, both rich in sediments and plankton which make it an ideal area to raise shellfish. Oysters are available year round, thanks to the different temperatures of the lake and bay which allow the farmers to move their oysters around as the seasons change. Along with oysters, other seafood is caught and raised in Akkeshi, chiefly asari (littleneck clams).

We visited Hidetoshi Nakajima, acquaintance of my brother-in-law's who is apparently legendary in the oyster world. A fourth generation oyster farmer, he raises both clams and oysters, with oysters of the local kaki-emon variety his specialy.

This tray holds asari of a size typically found in Tokyo.

The next tray contained much larger clams, so big we assumed they were hamaguri (a larger type of clam). But we were mistaken, and apparently the locals like the big asari while the smaller ones are shipped off to Tokyo and other places.

Three of these big ones were expertly shucked by the owner and handed to us. I was hoping it was just for inspection, but when I realized we were meant to eat them I had flashbacks of being tricked into eating live clams and oysters as a child. I had wandered into the garage where my dad and our French-Canadian neighbor were sitting around a couple of buckets, each with a beer in one hand and a knife in the other. Apparently the neighbor had just come back from the east coast and was sharing the shellfish he'd brought, which must have made my dad very happy. I liked seafood at the time and I think I was eager to try some, and while I don't remember if I liked it or not I do remember I was horrified to learn that the clams I'd just eaten were alive (or had been alive until very shortly before I'd swallowed them). I felt like a dirty trick had been played on me and the idea of raw shellfish has grossed me out since then.

But it would have been rude to refuse, and the sight of Hideaki, no fan of raw shellfish himself, bravely downing his clam gave me courage. I popped the clam into my mouth fully expecting to be grossed out, but instead found it to be tasty: the fresh, pure flavour and softly chewy texture were quite different from cooked clams. I was in no hurry to have another though, because as good as it was I still think clams are better cooked.

We turned to the oyster tank, and with growing dread I prepared myself for the raw oyster tasting I assumed would follow. Raw oysters gross me out more than any other raw shellfish, and although I've tried to like them over the years (people look so happy when they eat raw oysters) it's always failed. They just make me gag. I've also never understood why North Americans go crazy for raw oysters while shunning sushi and sashimi: oysters are pretty much the most dangerous sea creature to eat raw, for worse than the tuna and other fish commonly eaten as sashimi in Japan. It's especially ironic that here in Japan it's far more common to find oysters cooked than raw, precisely because people here are well aware of the dangers.

But if any oysters are safe to eat, it would be these ones. Freshly plucked from the lake across the street and kept in a special brine until shipped to retailers across the country, these were as clean and safe as you can get.

My brother-in-law bought 60 oysters at what I can only guess was a huge expense (but a fraction of the price they'd go for in Tokyo, he assured us). And while they were being counted out and hosed off we were presented with a freshly shucked sample.

If you read the previous post it's no surprise what happened, but if you're just tuning in let me tell you what happened: I fell in love with raw oysters. There was about a half second of disgust as the soft, cold flesh slid into my mouth, but it disappeared as soon as my tastebuds detected that sweet, salty, umami goodness. I had expected I'd want to just choke it down as soon as I could, but instead I gave it a few little chews and discovered the lovely various textures that are far more apparent raw than cooked. And then I swallowed, and immediately wished for more.

Hideaki also reported he enjoyed it, but not as much as I did and he still prefers them raw. But at least he gets it now. And so do I.

We headed back to BIL's apartment in Kushiro to prepare for dinner (or rather, he prepared dinner while we waited in agony). Above are oysters to be shucked at the table.

The tools are a pair of thick cotton gloves, an oyster shucker, and glasses for champagne (which apparently goes very nicely with oysters). As an appetizer we were served crackers topped with local Hokkaido cheese and freshly picked parsley (BIL is quite the gardener, and his apartment was full of edible plants).

This oyster was shucked by my BIL, and was every bit as good as the one I'd sampled earlier.

 

And this is my first attempt at shucking. Opening an oyster is a lot harder than it looked, and I never did get the hang of it. Every one I opened had to be painstakingly picked free of bits of shell that I'd crumbled, but luckily Hideaki and BIL generously supplied me with plenty of shard-free oysters. I probably ate half of the ones shown above, and would have eaten more if shame hadn't slowed me down a bit.

The oyster feast didn't end with the raw variety: we were soon served kaki no sakamushi (sake-steamed oysters).

These were great, in a different way from the raw ones: they were soft and plump with sake and had a deeper flavour. Hideaki liked these best.

Next up was shabu-shabu, with freshly shucked oysters cooked briefly in kombu (kelp) broth). Once cooked they were dipped in ponzu (soy-based citrus sauce), which complimented the oyster flavour very nicely.

The meal ended with soup made of broth leftover from the steamed clams and kaki-gohan (oyster rice), topped with thinly sliced nori seaweed and benishoga (red-pickled ginger). Both were lovely, and while I was half hoping for some kind of oyster-related dessert, I was more than satisfied.

I'm glad I finally get what the fuss is about raw oysters. And yet, I almost wish I hadn't liked them: where am I going to find such food, fresh oysters as the ones I had in Hokkaido? And how will I be able to afford them? If Hideaki doesn't find a job soon I think we're going to have to move to Akkeshi and become oyster farmers.

More pictures from the trip can be seen here.

Hello from Kushiro

Hello from Kushiro, Hokkaido, where a few hours ago I became a raw oyster lover. That's bad news for the couple dozen oysters I just downed, but I'm pretty happy about it.

7 Things to do During Golden Week

(This is article also appears at Sunnypages. Hope it comes in handy to those of you in Tokyo, and for those of you who are wondering what on earth "Golden Week" is, Nihon Sun has a good explanation.)

Golden Week is almost upon us, and if you're in Tokyo for the holidays and haven't made plans yet the time to do so is now. Stuck for ideas? We've got a bunch, so read on and start planning!

Take a Walk

Join the osampo boom! If you've been to a bookstore in Japan lately you've probably noticed that osampo guides are enjoying a surge in popularity. Osampo means “to take a walk”, and although there have always been osampo guidebooks on the shelves, they used to be only for standard tourist destinations and were mostly written for the senior set.

The current crop of guidebooks are aimed at a younger crowd and explore lesser-known areas of Tokyo as well the usual touristy places. They come with fully planned routes, including suggestions for refreshments along the way, maps, and everything else you need to explore a new area. Many of them have specialized themes, like exploring gourmet neighborhoods or shitamachi (“low town” areas like Asakusa and Kanda) neighborhoods with an old-fashioned atmosphere. Other books focus on topics like nature, dog-friendly areas, history, temples and shrines.

If you can read Japanese or have a Japanese-literate walking partner then you're set. If not, head to your favorite foreign language bookstore and pick up a classic English-language book like Day Walks Near Tokyo, Little Adventures in Tokyo or Hiking in Japan, or the newer A Flower Lover's Guide to Tokyo. For online information, it's hard to beat Tokyo Tourism Info's 53 Ways to Explore Tokyo on Foot.

Go Where the Wild Things Are

If you've dismissed zoos in Japan after a depressing visit to Ueno Zoo, it's time to try again: there are actually quite a few good zoos in Japan, including a few right here in Kanto.

Tama Zoo Park in western Tokyo is a huge place featuring all the usual animals in relatively large enclosures that let you get up close; the popular Lion Bus lets you get even closer, as does the beautiful butterfly conservatory. Tobu Zoo Park is popular for its two white tigers and its penguin exhibit, which lets visitors see the birds on land and underwater. Zoorasia is considered one of the best zoos in Japan, with well-treated animals given plenty of space and natural looking habitats. Zoorasia is celebrating its 10th anniversary with free entrance on April 24th and a commemorative pin given to visitors between April 24th and 30th. Fuji Kachoen is a paradise for bird and flower lovers, with a fantastic array colorful blooms and a good number of owls and other wild birds, some of whom are put to work doing shows or playing with visitors.

Tokyo and its suburbs are also blessed with a number of very good aquariums, with Enoshima Aquarium, Tokyo Sea Life Park and Shinagawa Aquarium three of the best. If you prefer the more sedentary kind of wildlife, try one of Tokyo's botanical gardens. Yumenoshima is a large greenhouse with a unique heating system: it's built over a landfill and its tropical plants are kept warm with heat from the garbage incinerator next door. Jindai Shokubutsu Botanical Park also features a greenhouse, but the main attractions are outdoors. During Golden Week the large grounds will be home to azaleas and peonies in full bloom as well as a number of wildflowers.

Hunt and Gather

If zoos, aquariums and parks just aren't exciting enough for you (or if you find that the exhibits just make you hungry), it's time for a wildlife encounter of a different kind. The edible kind.

If you have a sweet tooth you'll be pleased to know that the Kanto area strawberry season lasts until May; some places to try are Nikura Noen in Tama, Tokyo (pick and take-home berries are 300 yen per 100 grams, the all-you-can-eat option ended in mid-April), Kawana Noen in Miura, Kanagawa (1500 yen all-you-can-eat in 30 minutes), Okiune Farm in Chichibu, Saitama (1500 yen all-you-can-eat in 30 minutes, take-home also available), and the ever-popular Mother Farm in Futtsu, Chiba (take-home 200 yen per 100 grams plus 200 yen admission).

Clam digging, called shio-higari in Japanese, is a popular spring activity in Japan, and believe it or not the shores of Tokyo Bay produce plenty of asari (short-neck clams). All you need to dig them up is a small rake to dig through the sand with, a bucket to hold your catch, some rubber boots if you don't want to go barefoot (the sand can be cold and muddy) and a good recipe for linguine con vongole. Shio-higari spots in Tokyo include Odaiba Kaihin Koen, Kasai Kaihin Koen, and Toritsu Jonanjima Kaihin Koen. Note that young clams (smaller than a 10 yen coin) must be released; some beaches may charge an entry fee or require clam diggers to pay for their catch.

For (slightly) more lively prey, fishermen don't have to go far, as Tokyo has a few catch-and-release koi (carp) fishing spots: Ichigaya Fish Center, which you've probably seen from Ichigaya Station on the Chuo line, costs 690 per hour for men and 590 for women and junior high school students (poles and bait included), and kids can try the goldfish tank for 400 yen per half hour. Suzukien is similar pond in Asagaya, costing 550 yen per hour including equipment. Seibuen Yuenchi's nijimasu (rainbow trout) pond is open until the end of Golden Week; 1500 yen entry plus 500 yen for pole rental and bait allows you to catch up to three trout (lure fishing also available for a higher fee) and they'll clean your fish for free.

Go to Market

For a kinder, gentler sort of hunting, search out bargains at one of Tokyo's many flea markets and antique fairs. There are too many to mention here, but we've narrowed down some highlights.

On April 29th Prism Hall in Tokyo Dome City hosts two large events: a regular flea market with 300 vendors and a special market run by and aimed at children. On May 2nd Shinjuku Chuo Koen hosts 200 vendors and on May 3rd a smaller market will be held in the same park; also on May 3rd is a flea market in Meiji Koen. May 3rd, 4th and 5th will see large flea markets near Akihabara station and at Shinagawa Intercity. Most flea markets start at 9:00 or 10:00am and run until mid-afternoon.

For antiques, The Japantique Show runs from April 30th to May 4th at the Tokyo Prince Hotel and the Heiwajima Antique Fair is from May 3rd to May 5th in Heiwajima. For kotto-ichi (antique fairs) try the Kawagoe Antique Market at Narita-san Temple in Kawagoe, Saitama on April 28th; the Kasai Jinja Antique Market on May 2nd at Kasai Shrine near Kanamachi Station; and on May 3rd the Arai Yakushi Antique Fair at Arai Yakushi Temple near Arai Yakushi-mae Station and the Yasukuni Jinja Antique Market at Yasukuni Shrine. For the best finds you'll need to wake up early: Kotto-ichi usually start at sun-up and run until early afternoon.

Get out of Town

It's tempting to take a trip outside the city during the holidays, but keep in mind nearly everyone in Tokyo feels the same, causing massive crowds. Don't even think about driving: Golden Week's notorious traffic jams will be even worse this year, thanks to those discounted highway tolls. If you must leave town take the train and make sure you have reserved seats: even normally comfortable trains like the Shinkansen and Odakyu Romance Car lose their charm when you have to stand for the whole trip, squished up against your fellow holiday-makers like a Tokyo subway at rush hour.

Good day trips from Tokyo include Kamakura, Mount Takao, Chichibu and the Okutama area; for places like Nikko, Hakone, and Izu it's better to spend a night or two. Golden Week is also an ideal time to catch a ferry to the Izu Shoto, Tokyo's string of islands. They enjoy a warmer climate than the mainland so you can enjoy summer-like weather without the crowds that descend in July and August. Oshima is the nearest and most developed, featuring onsens, a zoo and a volcano that can be hiked in a few hours; Niijima has beautiful beaches (still a bit cold for swimming or surfing without a wetsuit), hot springs and free camping. Getting further afield, the wild dolphin watching season off Mikurajima is already underway, and if you know how to snorkel you can swim alongside them. Hachijojima offers surfing, scuba diving, hiking and ruins left by Edo era exiles and WWII soldiers.

Catch a flick

The term "Golden Week" was invented by Japanese movie theaters in an attempt to attract moviegoers on the national holidays that fall at the end of April and beginning of May. The name stuck, so well that today few people remember the origin of the holiday's name. But it's still as good a time as any to see a movie.

Once small, dingy and uncomfortable, most of Tokyo's movie theaters have improved in the past decade. Many feature large screens, much-improved sound quality, comfortable seating, and conveniences like pre-reserved seats. Certain theatres like Warner MyCal Cinemas and Toho Cinemas let you buy tickets and reserve seats online (credit card required) at no extra cost, and even those who buy tickets at the theatre get to choose their seats. If the 1800 yen cost of a movie ticket is keeping you away, remember that almost all theatres offer discount days, and some, including Movie Day on the first of each month and Ladies Day on Wednesdays, both with 1000 yen tickets, will fall during Golden Week.

If you'd rather stay home, consider joining Discas, Tsutaya's Netflix-like service that delivers rental DVDs to your home. A number of plans are available but the basic plan gets you 8 DVDs each month for 1974 yen. They come two at a time with all delivery and returns covered, and if 8 movies per month are not enough you can rent extra DVDs at prices comparable to your neighborhood rental shop. Discas is currently offering a one month free trial, so now is a great time to try it out. The catch? It's all in Japanese, so if you can't read you'll need some help.

Amuse Yourself

Although summer is considered amusement park season in Japan, Golden Week is a great time to visit one of Tokyo's many theme parks and amusement parks. All the same rides and attractions are open (with the exception of water parks) but you'll enjoy crowds much lighter than at peak summer season.

Toshimaen has a new roller coaster called Mini Cyclone, a kiddie version of their popular Cyclone coaster; kids will also enjoy the special Golden Week stage shows by favorite characters like Ultraman and Doraemon. Seibuen Yuenchi features mini golf, trout fishing (as mentioned above) and performances for the kids featuring popular characters like Hello Kitty, Anpanman and Yattaman. Fuji-Q Highland celebrates Golden Week with Asian Fuji-Q, a collection of yatai (food stalls) serving food from around Asia; Thomas the Tank Engine fans can meet Sir Topham Hat, who will pay a visit to the park's Thomas Land during the holidays. Sanrio PuroLand will host Sugar Bunnies Experience World, where kids can try their hands at cooking classes, accessory-making workshops, a dress-up photo studio and more. Or explore the darker side of Hello Kitty with Hello Kitty Black Wonder, an interactive role-playing attraction in which visitors must rescue a captive Hello Kitty and her friend Dear Daniel. Black Wonder opens April 25th for the first time in Japan after enjoying immense popularity in Hong Kong, and with the success of the associated fashion lines you can expect Sanrio Puroland's gift shops to be full of gothic-inspired Hello Kitty goods.

Yomiuri Land goes international with Sekai no Yatai Mura, a collection of food stalls offering 30 dishes from 20 different countries. Even better, each of the six weekend and holiday days that fall during Golden Week will feature one country or area, with people from the featured region getting free entry for themselves and up to four friends, (a passport, alien card or other type of proof is necessary). April 29th is England Day, May 2nd is Okinawa Day, May 3rd is America Day, May 4th is Mekong Delta Countries Day (Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar and Laos), May 5th is Brazil Day, and May 6th is Turkey Day. Those who aren't lucky enough to be from one of the featured countries still get to enjoy special entertainment and attractions from the regions, such as a bagpipe performance on England Day and belly dancing on Turkey Day.

Whatever you end up doing, we hope you have a wonderful Golden Week!

Chidorigafuchi

On Tuesday after work I met my friend Emi for a little hanami (cherry blossom viewing) in Chidorigafuchi. It was a little too early and the sakura were just starting to open, but that was actually part of my plan: Chidorigafuchi gets incredibly crowded when the blossoms are at their peak. In fact, this is one of the places that I warned not to go to in my recent Alternative Hanami article, but the fact is that Chidorigafuchi, along with most of the other famous hanami spots, is rather conveniently located and easy for a quick evening visit.

Chidorigafuchi is the general name given to a large area, but the place to see the sakura is Chidorigafuchi Ryokudo, a path that follows a section of the Imperial Palace moat. The place holds a Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom Festival) from late March to early April, the highlight of which is the lights (low energy LED lights, as the organizers are quick to point out) that illuminate the blossoms at night. It's one of those places where you can't actually sit down with a group of friends under the blossoms and drink sake all day: the sakura can only be seen from a path while you walk by. It is quite strictly controlled, with the path divided into two "lanes", and a security guard or volunteer will nicely ask you to keep moving if you block the path while taking pictures or will direct you to the correct late if you walk on the wrong side of the path.

There are plenty of benches along the way, but those who choose to use the benches for picnics will be asked to pack up. Although I did see a few people discretely enjoying a clandestine bento and some sake on the benches, including a few couples consisting of young women in a gorgeous kimono or pretty dress with older suited men (probably high class hostesses and their customers out on a date before they headed off to their clubs for the night). Other interesting people included several kind folks who asked us, while we were posing together, if we wanted them to take our picture despite the fact that we had a tripod and were doing just fine by ourselves. And then there were the old men who took pictures of us as we took pictures of the cherry blossoms or each other; I still can't decide if that was cute or creepy. And let's not forget the two ladies in front of us as we passed the Indian Embassy. There appeared to be some kind of event going on and among the crowd seen through the glass were, not surprisingly, plenty of Indian people. Which prompted one of the ladies to say "Indojin da!" (Indians!) and her friend to say "Waa, sugoi!" (Oh wow!). Which even if we weren't at the Indian Embassy I would have found hilarious, because Indians are not exactly rare in Tokyo (there's even a Little India here, one of the few ethnic areas in the city).

We had picked up a map when we started and took the recommended route, which was probably meant for daytime flower viewing because after the path ended we walked through the nearby Kitanomaru Koen Park, which was dark and any cherry trees that might have been there were pretty much invisible, with the exception of a few at each end of the park.

Then we dodged joggers (there were hundreds of them!) as we walked along a busy road that followed the moat; it was lined with cherry trees but they weren't lit up so it was hard to see them. Would have been much nicer in the daytime, especially with most of those joggers safely at work.

Finally we found ourselves right back at the beginning of Chidorigafuchi Ryokudo, so we took a few more pictures before heading home. It was actually quite a bit more crowded than these pictures suggest, and we had to wait quite a while to get shots that weren't full of people. I'm not thrilled with my pictures and have a lot to learn about night shots, but this is good incentive to learn. And this was a lovely place to visit, with or without camera skills. I recommend a visit during the day, but if you really want to come at night budget quite a bit of time, because the crowds move slowly. We took about three hours to complete our route, and that was with crowds about half of what they'd be during peak cherry blossom time. Which looks like it will be this weekend (Saturday really, because rain is forecast for Sunday) and early next week in Tokyo. Happy cherry blossom viewing!

Chidorigafuchi Ryokudo
Free entry (rowboats can be rented until 7:30 for 800 yen per half hour)
Blossoms will lit up from 6:30 to 10:00 nightly until April 5th (may be extended this year due to the late blooming of the sakura)
Nearest stations: Hanzomon and Kudanshita (signs in Japanese mark the way to and from Hanzomon and Chidorigafuchi; if you can't read Japanese just follow the crowds)

JapanSoc it!

Nasu

This is the sad, sad, breakfast I ate two weeks ago: hash browns, Egg Mcmuffin, and an orange juice. "What's sad about this breakfast?" you might be asking. "Doesn't McDonalds offer one of the finest breakfasts in the world?" You'd be right of course, and nearly any other day of the year I'd be thrilled to have such a fine feast for my morning meal. But not on Christmas morning. 

Christmas is a normal workday in Japan, and although I'm lucky enough to have it off my husband doesn't, so rather than spend the day alone I did the same thing as I did last year: take off with my friend Emi to Nasu, a hot spring resort in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. The above breakfast was eaten across the street from the bus terminal in Shinjuku, and it did a good job in that it kept me full on the long bus ride up to Nasu. But it's nowhere near as good as the proper Christmas breakfasts I had growing up. 

Wait, that's a lie: I don't remember any any childhood Christmas breakfasts. I have no idea what we ate. Did we eat? I do know that breakfast fell between the opening of the Christmas stocking presents (the warm up) and the opening of the presents under the tree (the main event), and perhaps in my gift-induced frenzy I just didn't pay much attention to the food (other than the chocolate coins and clementine in my stocking). I do remember a deadly breakfast dish that my sister made when we were older, a baked affair involving cubed bread, eggs, bacon and mounds of cheese that contained the rough equivalent to a week's worth of calories, but this being Christmas morning was really just practice for the immense quantities of carbs and grease to come. Mimosas were on hand to wash it down. "Um, you're digressing" you might say. You'd be right. But now that we're on the subject, this breakfast does kind of resemble that casserole, in deconstructionist sort of way.

We arrived in Nasu just before noon and headed to our lodgings, Hotel Epinard (at which my friend gets some kind of fabulous discount for reasons I don't fully understand, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth). Once we were settled in we set about taking pictures of ourselves in front of the tree and in the giant gingerbread house, which smelled so good inside that it was hard to stop myself from just gnawing on the wall, the way my pet guinea pig Spike used to gnaw on the wooden corners of her cage. But I don't think I'd look as cute doing it as she did, and besides there were children waiting to play in the cookie house and I didn't want to make them cry. 

We rented a car and drove to Udon Shounin Okamoto, an udon noodle restaurant, for lunch. I ordered yasai tempura udon: udon in hot broth and vegetable tempura. The udon was perfect with a slippery, chewy texture and the broth was light and subtle, more like something you'd find in Kyoto than Tochigi. The tempura was tasty and properly crisp, if a bit on the greasy side. 

And then on to dessert at Shozo Cafe, an excellent place loved as much for its interior as its scones. The cafe is full of vintage, mismatched and otherwise quirky pieces that make it feel both fashionable and homey at the same time. But it's the scones you want to see.

I'm not sure how these stack up against authentic English scones, but they sure beat the pants off of anything I've tried back home (yes, I'm referring to those giant dried out triangular monstrosities that dare to go by the name "scone" in Canada) and nearly everything I've had in Japan, and they come still warm along with very generous amounts of raspberry jam and clotted cream. And, because it's Christmas, some cute Christmas berries and holly. It's all so pretty, isn't ? I bet you're wondering how one of these scones would look smeared with the jam and cream.

Sexy, that's how. See how the jam and clotted cream are all mixed up, and the warm, soft interior of the scone is causing the cream to melt? You like that? Yeah, you like that, don't you. 

You're probably wondering "What's up with the the gratuitous, and not even very good, pictures of yourself?" I have no excuse for the previous pictures but there's a good reason for the one above: it's a Before picture. The background, I mean. (The foreground doesn't really get any better, unfortunately.) Stay tuned for the After picture.

For dinner we went to restaurant called A Cow Herd, an odd name for a restaurant but also a pretty accurate one. They specialize in kuroge wagyu (the top class of beef in Japan, a class that includes famous brands like Kobe-gyu and Matsuzaka-gyu), in particular tochigi-gyu, the local variety. I chose a steak course that started with the appetizer above: endive with crab, squid sashimi dressed with yuzu, and thin strips of seared beef wrapped around mizuna greens. It was followed by a forgettable soup, and rice, and then the main event: 

A sizzling steak. A dainty 150 grams (all I could afford) or so of sirloin from locally raised tochigi. 

The dim lighting made it hard to get a good picture, but this was one beautiful piece of meat. Cooked perfectly rare, tender enough that I barely needed my knife, and so rich and juicy that I hardly used the accompanying dips (okinawan sea salt, horseradish and soy sauce, wasabi and soy sauce, and a rich garlicky soy sauce). It was so good it made me wonder why people bother with turkey. I think I'll make wagyu steak my official Christmas dinner from now on. 

This was my dessert: ice cream wrapped in a crepe in a puddle of custard sauce. You want to see what's inside, don't you?

Vanilla ice cream and blackberries, that's what. All a bit gooey for my tastes, but it was good.

Back at the hotel we went for the onsen (hot spring), which had several different baths, including a wooden tub containing a yuzu-yu (a yuzu bath: the water bobbing with dozens of delicately scented yuzu citruses) and two rotemburo (outdoor baths, with a view of a rocky waterfall and small Japanese garden). I only stayed for a short time, since I was tired and had a big day coming up that I needed to rest for, but Emi stayed soaking until well past midnight. She had really been hoping for a White Christmas and thought that Nasu, where it snows more often than Tokyo, was a good place to find it, and because we'd had no snow all day she stubbornly sat all night in the rotemburo hoping for a snowfall.

And just before midnight snow started to fall. She got her White Christmas! I slept through it, completely unaware until the next morning when I stepped out onto the balcony for some fresh air. The feeling of snow on my bare toes is not a feeling I'm fond of though, so I didn't stay out for long. 

Later on, after Emi woke up, we went back out in more appropriate attire. And these are the After pictures. Same balcony, same view, but how different! I only wish the mountains were visible, because they would have been beautiful. 

And then I had to leave my big fancy hotel room and head to a different place in Nasu: Nasu Village, which would shortly be taken over by an English ski camp. I was there early to help set things up, and when the campers arrived on their bus from Tokyo I got to watch their delighted faces as they jumped off the bus and into the snow.

The camp lasted four days and it snowed non-stop until the next morning. The campsite itself was beautiful, but we weren't there much.

We were at Hunter Mountain, which would also have been beautiful if it weren't for all those skiers. I'm told that this wasn't particularly crowded for a Japanese ski resort, but I'm glad I wasn't skiing this time (I was worried about my back, which is mostly better but I want it to stay that way). Because if I was skiing I would would have knocked down all those people like they were bowling pins.

On the last day, when the snow had finally stopped, we had a snowman contest. My favorite was the one above, which had sunglasses and a bald head (as opposed to the full head of hair found on regular snowmen?) in tribute to a bald-headed, sunglass wearing camp counselor. 

This is the snowman my team made, with no help from me. It comes with a bonus Rudolph on the side, but they were careful to point out that the snowman was not Santa. That would have been copying, as another team had already done a Santa and Rudoph pair.

And when camp was over I returned to Tokyo, where it was warm and sunny and snowless and the next day I was in Osaka celebrating the New Year. Christmas hardly even happened, and the year was over too soon.

Mitake Hike

On the last day of November a friend and I went to Mitake-san (Mount Mitake) in the Okutama area of western Tokyo for a day of hiking. It was my second visit to the mountain, but as I haven't been in over a decade this time pretty much felt like my first.

Mitake is just 929 metres high, but is popular with hikers and has been an important sacred mountain since it was founded in 90 BC. Many pilgrims and regular tourists choose to spend the night--there are a number of minshuku (inns) as well as a hostel and shrine lodgings--but as Mitake can be reached from central Tokyo in under two hours, most people make it a day trip. The mountain is most easily reached by bus and cable car from Mitake Station; alternatively it can be reached on foot from Mitake, Sawai, Kawai and Kori Stations, which will give you pretty views of the Tama-gawa river before you get to the mountain. Once on top of the mountain there are a number of hiking courses, including paths that connect to other spots in Okutama like Hinode-yama and Otake-san.

We chose the easy way to get there, taking the bus and cable car, but had a full day of hiking after that: once we'd visited the shrine we walked through the "Rock Garden" (a valley full of moss-covered rocks with a path that follows a pretty stream) then headed to Hinode-yama (another small peak). And finally we had a wonderful soak at Tsuru-tsuru Onsen, a popular hot spring at the foot of Hinode-yama, before taking a bus to Musashi Itsukaichi Station on the JR Itsukaichi Line.

All told we walked about 10 km: just enough to be challenging, but as there was more downhill walking than uphill it really wasn't very hard. And we had beautiful weather--cold and sunny with beautiful blue skies--and saw some very pretty autumn colours, with the momiji (Japanese maples) just at their peak. It was a great hike, and there isn't much more to say: I'll let the pictures tell the story (more pictures from the hike can be seen in my Mitake album on Flickr).

To get to Mitake, take the JR Ome Line (transfer from the Chuo Line at Tachikawa and the Seibu Shinjuku Line at Haijima) to Mitake Station. To the left of the station is a Visitors Centre (pop in to grab a map--the English one isn't great so get the regular Japanese one as well) and across the street is the bus stop. The hike can start here, or take the bus (270 yen, marked Takimoto or Cable Car Shita) partway up the mountain. After getting off the bus a short walk up the road leads to a paved path up the mountain on the left or the cable car on the left. The cable car (570 yen) takes you to Mitake Village, which has another Visitors Centre as well as souvenir shops, restaurants, and inns, and from there it's about 20 minutes to the shrine. Paths to the Rock Garden and Hinode-yama are fairly well-marked, but often in Japanese only. Once you're on the way to Hinode-yama look for signs to Tsuru-tsuru Onsen (also called Bijin no Yu) and follow those to Hinode-yama; the signs will continue to guide you down the mountain. Once you've descended you'll hit a main road: turn left and it's a few minutes to the onsen (800 yen, not including a towel: bring your own or buy a small one for 200 yen). From there you can take the onsen's own bus (390 yen, a touristy thing designed to look like an old-fashioned steam engine) to Musashi Itsukaichi Station on the JR Itsukaichi Line, which will bring you to Haijima where you can transfer to the Chuo or Seibu Shinjuku Lines.
Further information in English here and Japanese here.

JapanSoc it!