A Fish Out of Water

Midtown

A few months back we had a nice day out that I never got around to sharing, so before I completely forget:

On a nice day in early October we went to Tokyo Midtown in search of the baby swing rumoured to be there. And we found it, sort of, in the park (Hinokocho Koen) to the northeast of Midtown. It's kind of half art instillation and half swing set, with a few regular swings and one toddler swing.

 

It's not really a baby swing though, and any kid big enough not to sit snugly in the weirdly designed seat is probably big enough to use a regular swing.

Just look how fun this swing is. Also, the whole swing set is really low and obviously parents have bumped their heads on the top bar, so on one side someone has slapped some ugly yellow and black warning tape. Not the side visible to most of the park though- wouldn't want to interfere with art. How the designers didn't anticipate bumped heads is beyond me, but it does seem to be a tradition in Japan for things to be designed by people who have never used them (thus my useless washing machine, obviously designed by a man who has never done laundry). End of rant, thank you.

We did have fun just hanging out on the lawn though. I don't know if it's on purpose, but most of the lawn is clover rather than grass, which is totally OK. The park is nice, and the other playground equipment looks OK, and there's a little Japanese style pond and garden and it's just a nice place to hang out.

We didn't find any four-leaved clovers though.

We had lunch at Union Square Tokyo, which I'd been wanting to check out since it opened a few years ago. They have a really nice patio, which faced the park and was spacious and had a few other families, which made us feel a bit relieved about bringing a baby to a nice place, but he was an angel.

I had pasta with oyster cream sauce, which was very nice, but Hideaki won for best order:

A nice burger, juicy and perfectly done, with good crispy fries. We also had some good wine, and the waitress fussed over Shuma, and combined with the nice weather and atmosphere it was a really really nice lunch. We've been back once and were kind of disappointed (especially since they close their patio at the beginning of November, regardless of the weather) but that lunch, and the whole day, was wonderful.

More birthday stuff

Between August 20th and October 4th we celebrate Hideaki's birthday, our anniversary, Shuma's birthday, and my birthday as well. We also lean towards "birthday months" rather than big bashes on the days themselves, so please forgive me for kind of spreading out and jumbling up these birthday posts.

So I got a big surprise the weekend after my birthday- a delivery of ten fresh oysters from Akkeshi, Hokkaido! I'd dropped hints last year that, with a brand-new baby taking over our lives, went unfulfilled. This year Hideaki came through, and although they weren't my beloved Akkeshi kaki-emon oysters (which were apparently mostly wiped out in the tsunami) they were from the same brackish lake and tasted quite similar.

Aren't they pretty? He even shucked most of them for me, and I was nice enough to give him one. He doesn't like his oysters raw, so we cooked two in the microwave as recommended in the information that came with the delivery. Amazingly they were really good that way, just liked steamed but much easier.

These oysters are so flavourful that they don't need anything added, but a squeeze of sudachi citrus was nice for variety's sake.

The birthday dinner that followed was a humble but tasty meal of yaki-udon (fried udon noodles) and wonton soup. Hideaki uses fish sauce and ponzu to flavour his noodles and I'm totally addicted to that combination of flavours.

Dessert was a store-bought berry cake, and you can tell it's for my birthday because he hates these sour kind of berries. It's actually quite hard to find a simple cake like this, but since I don't like a lot of whipped cream and goo this is really all I want.

No candles or "Happy Birthday" singng, but then if those were really important to me I would have married a woman.

Then Shuma got a late and wonderful birthday present from some former students of mine who took us out for lunch. It's a birthday cake from Noe (pronounced "Noah", a much-loved cake shop in nearby Shakujii Koen). The chocolate heart says "Shuma-kun,Issai no Otanjoubi Omedetou" (Baby Shuma, Congratulations on Your First Birthday).

He was fascinated by the candle. He's recently learned how to blow but wasn't up for it so I took care of the candle for him (my wish was that he'd outgrow his dairy allergy so he could eat his next birthday cake).

He did get to eat his fill of fruit though, and his mom and dad really enjoyed the rest. Actually Noe cakes are the only ones I'll happily eat, cream, goo, and all. Yum.

Birthday

We recently celebrated Hideaki's birthday, and Shuma gave him the best present he's able to give: a whole day of very good behaviour.

For the actual birthday there was an ice cream cake, which looks awful here because we forgot to take a picture before eating it.

But it was delicious and was addressed in way Hideaki has never been cake-addressed before. I was afraid he'd think it was cheesy but he loved it. Shuma was his usual fussy self- the good behaviour was on another day (we like to stretch our birthdays out).

A few days later we had lunch at Girandole at Park Hyatt, which is kind of a fancy place so we were prepared to bolt at the first sign of fussiness, but it never happened. I wish we were always so lucky.

I started with salmon rillette and mixed greens with passion fruit sauce. It was really lively and fresh but would have been better with a few more of those crispy bread things to scoop up the salmon with.

My main course was pan fried kurodai (black sea bream) with Herbs with chive sauce, which was perfectly cooked and very tasty.

Hideaki had sirloin with Lyonnaise potatoes and Bourguignon sauce, also nicely cooked and delicious.

Dessert was next door at Peak Lounge, where Shuma started to get a bit wiggly but still well under control.

This was the same place we had high tea at last year near the end of my pregnancy, and Hideaki was tickled that we now had before and after pictures.

I had a blueberry tart and iced latte, Hideaki had a mochaccino and tiramisu, and Shuma had a few of our berries.

We stopped by the neighboring Shinjuku Chuo Park to reward Shuma with a little playtime. My sister-in-law tells me their grandmother used to live nearby and that they used to come here all the time as children. When I told Hideaki that he used to play here he was like "We were homeless?" That's exactly the kind of image this park has, but it turns out to have a really nice playground, complete with a splash pool.

We weren't dressed for the pool, but we did find one thing of interest:

That's right, a baby swing! Finally!

It's actually more of a toddler swing and he is way too small for it and probably was in danger of flying out of it, plus we had to wait our turn and then finish quickly because a whole bunch of other people wanted to use it. Maybe they should think about putting in a few more?

But we can't complain, finally finding a baby swing was a great end to a great day.

First Date, Family Date

Last month Hideaki and I went on our first date, just the two of us, in seven months. That's a long time to wait by North American standards and totally normal, if not early, by Japanese standards. It wasn't how I planned it- if I had my way we'd have been having a weekly date night since Shuma was born. But it turns out that Shuma is rather unbabysittable, as he doesn't know how to use a bottle and can only be fed by me.

But when Shuma was born our city gave us vouchers for free babysitting, and we finally realized we'd be crazy not to use them. So we dropped Shuma off at the government-approved babysitter around the corner and went out for lunch (for some reason the babysitters are only allowed to work until 5:00). We were tempted to just head back and spend our allotted two hours at home (nudge nudge, wink wink) but figured since we'd gotten all dressed up we might as well go out.

We originally wanted to eat at a newish Italian place nearby but couldn't get a reservation, so we went to Sakai, another Italian place a bit farther away. It's been around forever but is the kind of slightly intimidating old neighborhood restaurant that seems to stay in business due to the loyalty of its regulars, and we'd avoided it. Turns out it's a great family-run business, with an old-school Japanese-Italian menu, and although the interior is old and faded, the service a bit gruff, and the presentation a little sloppy, the cooking is great. That's my lunch above: spinach linguine with seafood in tomato sauce, and it was delicious. While we were there it seemed like everyone who came in was indeed a regular, and we wouldn't mine becoming regulars ourselves.

Predictably we spent most of the lunch talking about Shuma. We weren't exactly worried but were intensely curious about what he was doing and figured he was probably bawling his eyes out and driving the babysitter crazy. But when we picked him up after two hours she came to the door with our son, who was yawning and looking perfectly content. And then when he turned around and saw us he turned right back around and started crying! Ouch, that hurt.

He tried to cling to her as she handed him back. "So he's been crying the whole time?" we asked, but she said this was the first time he'd cried and that he'd been great. "We played for a while, then he got sleepy and I put him down for a nap. He's only crying because he just woke up." This is the same baby who has been completely unable to nap by himself (as in he has to be in my lap, on Hideaki's shoulder or in a carrier) since he outgrew his swing chair at three and a half months. I would think she was lying if not for the fact that Shuma had also napped the month before when we were in Osaka and my mother-in-law looked after him while I went to the doctor (his only other experience being babysat).

While I'm tempted to think these ladies are just having me on, it probably means that veteran baby experts know secret napping techniques, and that I am doing it all wrong. So although it was really nice to spend some time alone with my husband, it was also a bit of a blow to my ego.

Please, will someone share those secret napping techniques?

We eat out as a family a few times a month, and surprisingly the places we go to are not terribly different from before- the places we can afford tend to be family-friendly already. One Sunday we had lunch at Butcher's Table, a local burger shop. We started with some excellent onion rings that could have been a meal by themselves, and were made all the better with delicious home-made ketchup.

Next we had burgers. That's my avocado cheeseburger above, with fries that weren't quite as good as the onion rings but thanks to the ketchup were totally acceptable. The burgers were good but Hideaki found them a bit overpriced (I don't eat hamburgers often enough to know what their going rate is, but for what it's worth my burger and fries were 1050 yen). We sat on their tiny patio which was kind of nice but kind of not as it was right up against a narrow and fairly busy sidewalk and everone who passed by checked out either our food or Shuma.

Last week Hideaki had a day off right when Shuma's new passport was ready to be picked up in Ikebukuro. This is his Japanese passport (he won't be able to apply for a Canadian one until we get his proof of citizenship papers in a few months) and applying for it a few weeks before that was my easiest and most pleasant experience with Japanese officialdom ever. If only immigration and city hall were that nice to deal with. So anyway for the next five years Shuma will be using a passport with a picture of him at three months old, looking extremely grumpy. Yes, the pictures are nearly five months old: I meant to get the passport before Christmas last year but things got a little busy. Same goes for his Canadian citizenship, which I applied for recently after filling out the forms way back in December. He's changed since then, and going over the paperwork last week I had to cross out "Grey" in the box about eye colour and fill in "Brown". It actually brought a few tears to my eye, thinking about how much he's already grown.

After we got the passport we had lunch at Joe's Shanghai, way up on the 59th floor of Ikebukuro's Sunshine City. We got a little room to ourselves in the corner, with what would have been an amazing view if not for the clouds. A few minutes after I took this picture the cloud cover was complete and all we saw was white. Oh well.

Shuma charmed the pants off of our waiter, who kept coming to visit and make funny faces, and on our way out held him for so long that we wondered if he'd ever give us our baby back. That's not a complaint, by the way- we love it when strangers fuss over Shuma, because Shuma loves it.

Joe's Shanghai is known for its shourampo (xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings), and we had them filled with pork and with crab. Very very good, especially the crab, which was rich with tomalley.

On our way home we realized we should have taken a picture of the waiter with Shuma, because they both looked so happy, and also should have asked him to take a picture of us. We only have a few pictures of us all together, and there we were all dressed up. And those pesky clouds made a wonderful natural light source. I guess we'll just have to go back.

Mother's Day

On Mother's Day Hideaki's family had a lunch in honour of Ah-chan, his maternal grandmother. In attendance were his mother, who flew in from Osaka just for the event, his aunt, his sister Atsuko and her husband, daughter Marya and baby Yuuki.

We met at a restaurant called Tsukiji no Uemura in Mizonokuchi, Kanagawa (near Ah-chan's nursing home) and had a feast. It was tasty, and Shuma had rice in non-okayu (rice porridge) form for the first time and ended up eating nearly half my bowl. But we didn't much pay attention to the food, as this both Ah-chan and my aunt's first time to meet Shuma and Yuuki.

The kids were happy to see each other, and Marya proudly showed off her missing teeth (the picture sadly didn't turn out). I can't believe she's losing her baby teeth already, it seems like she was just born (yes, I realize I'll soon be saying this kind of thing about Shuma, and yes, it totally blows my mind). The babies spent most of the time engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

And Ah-chan was very happy to meet the babies. They loved her right back, and were generally charming and remarkably well-behaved. Ah-chan is 94 (I think) and it was pretty incredible to have four generations together, with nearly a century between the eldest and youngest. I hope all four generations can meet up for many more years.

Birthday cake, curry and tea

Hideaki turned 41 last week, kicking off a month and a half of celebrations: his birthday, our anniversary, the baby's due date, and my birthday. From now on late summer and early autumn will be a busy time, but I do NOT want to be one of those families that celebrates everything all together. That's just lame.

It's hard to justify spending money on a present when there's so much to buy for the baby, so I decided my gift would be to make him a cheesecake. This was actually supposed to be a great big sacrifice, because I hate cheesecake and would be putting all the effort into something that only he could enjoy. I was in for a few surprises though, the first being that cheesecake isn't that hard to make.

Or maybe it's hard to make well- you can see that it's a little messy and I've gone outside the edges a bit with the filling. But for a first attempt by a cheesecake hater, it's not bad. This is an unbaked cheesecake (who wants to bake when it's 35 degrees?) made with mascarpone, cream cheese and cream, based on this recipe (substituting lemon zest for orange zest and omitting the orange slices). Yup, it's a kid's recipe, but perfect for a beginner like me.

I topped it with with nectarine slices macerated in a bit of sugar and lemon juice for a few minutes, and if you can ignore the mess on the crust it almost looks pretty. And it tasted amazing. That was the other surprise- I don't hate cheesecake! In fact, I quite like it. I probably still don't like the baked kind, or the unbaked kind if it was made with gelatin and lots of sugar, but this was delicious and I think I'll have to buy a cheesecake ring so I can make this again properly.

All Hideaki wanted for his birthday dinner was curry rice, and I was happy to oblige as I don't think I've made curry all year (I went off curry in my first trimester and even after my food aversions ended I didn't feel like cooking it). I made what we call keema curry, which is  based on Japanese style keema curry, which is very loosely based on actual keema curry. Our version uses ground pork, garam masala, and lots of onions and tomatoes and I love it because it cooks fast and doesn't need any of that nasty store bought Japanese curry roux. I'm sure it is nothing at all like real keema, but the name has stuck and that's that.

On the weekend I took the birthday boy out for high tea at the Peak Lounge in the Park Hyatt. I love their high tea and we figured this was our last chance to enjoy it for a very long time. He started off with an iced cappuccino, which I'm sure is hardly traditional but hit the spot on a very hot day (I had one later and it was the best iced cappuccino I've had).

The waitstaff were very nice, cautioning me not to fall down those stairs seen above when we entered (Japanese people are very concerned about pregnant ladies on stairs), bringing me a pillow for my back, and not seeming at all disturbed that I had way more caffeine than a pregnant woman should.

The weather was not quite clear enough for excellent views, but a blue sky and the buildings of west Shinjuku weren't bad to look at.

I started with a pot of Assam, and although I know nothing about tea I can tell this was good because that sugar cube in the picture went unused (I normally can't drink hot tea without loads of sugar).

The food began with the classic three-tiered serving of sandwiches, scones and cakes.

The sandwiches were shrimp and tomato, ham and cabbage and I forget the last; all were tasty.

The scones were mango and plain, both delicious and the proper British style that I love (I can no longer eat the giant, dry North American coffee shop kind). The mango ones were nice but I'd just as soon have both plain.

Served with the traditional red currant jam and clotted cream.

The cakes were very well made but were more of a treat for Hide. I may like cheesecake but I'm still not a big cake person.

After the above treats were gone we were periodically brought trays of sweet and savoury snacks to choose from, and we were soon stuffed. I forgot to take pictures of these supplementary treats, but I did make another discovery: I like panna cotta. I don't know if it's a pregnancy thing or not, but it seems I'm losing my hate for gooey, rich creamy things. I'm also not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

So that's one celebration down, three more to go. Just think, the next birthday we celebrate will be an actual birth!

The Peak Lounge
03-5323-3461
Park Hyatt Hotel 41st Floor, 3-7-1-2 Nishi Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Open weekdays 11am to 10:30pm, weekends and holidays 10am to 10:30pm

Suitengu

On the to-do list of most pregnant women in Japan is a visit to a shrine, to pray for a safe and easy delivery and pick up an iwata-obi (a stomach wrap to protect the baby). This is best done on certain dates and at certain shrines, and although I got the day wrong I did get the place right.

The proper date would have been the first inu no hi (dog day) of my fifth month of pregnancy, which is not quite as easy to determine as it would seem. First of all, pregnancy is counted differently here, and Japanese women are said to be pregnant for ten months. This is not quite as wacky as it sounds as the months are lunar months lasting exactly four weeks long, and ten lunar months is exactly forty weeks. Which is indeed how long a pregnancy lasts, no matter which way you count. But it can get a bit confusing as I am keeping track of my pregnancy both the Canadian way and the Japanese way and I always get them mixed up and have trouble answering people who ask me how far along I am (luckily health professionals here count pregnancies in weeks, just like they do everywhere else).

The other thing is that nobody around me knows when exactly these dog days are. My husband, who can always be relied on to know absolutely nothing about traditional Japanese culture, certainly doesn't know. Nor do his parents, who are not at all traditional (a blessing really), or my friends or students, who all know what inu no hi is but have no idea when it falls. The problem is that inu no hi doesn't fall on a fixed date but every twelve days, based on the old Chinese calendar, and the days are seldom mentioned on calendars. After a bit of web sleuthing it turns out that my date would have been April 6th, which had long passed by the time I figured it out.

A final problem is that the place to go for inu no hi in Tokyo is Suitengu, a shrine in Ningyocho, just down the street from where Hideaki works, and he doesn't relish the idea of hanging around his office neighborhood on the weekend. But last week we finally got around to it.

I'd never been to Suitengu before, and if Hideaki hadn't been there I might have missed it. It's actually a very small shrine and is completely dwarfed by buildings crowded around it.

The visit was also a bit anticlimactic as all we did was the typical shrine stuff: ritualized washing followed by tossing a few coins, ringing the bell and praying. There are special ceremonies you can apply for, which involve paying a shinto priest in a comical hat lots of money to shake a paper-festooned wand at you, and you can also buy special amulets and charms to protect the baby and ensure a safe birth. We passed on that though, because, well, it's all very silly.

We could also have bought the traditional iwata-obi, but with a Japanese summer upon us I have no wish to have my stomach wrapped in layers and layers of constricting fabric. Actually, few women wear the traditional wrap-style iwata-obi these days, but most still do wear some kind of wrap or belt, believing that it will protect the baby from getting cold as well as from bumps and falls. These modern wraps are not so different from the pregnancy belts that some western women wear, but unlike in the west the reasons for wearing them are more for protection to the baby than for back support. I do have a belt that my mother-in-law bought for me and will wear it if my back starts to hurt, but I believe that a woman's natural defenses of skin, fat, uterus and amniotic fluid do a fine job of protecting the baby. So no iwata-obi for me.

Dog days are associated with pregnancy because dogs are thought to enjoy an especially easy labour (the lucky bitches). So the shrine features a little statue of a mother dog and her puppy surrounded by the twelve Chinese zodiac signs. Apparently you are supposed to find your sign and rub it, then rub the head of the dog and her pup to bring good luck to mother and child. We weren't sure if we were supposed to be rubbing our own zodiac signs or the baby's, so just in case we did all three (rooster for Hideaki, ox for me and tiger for the babe). It was the first time we'd thought about what our baby's zodiac will be, and Hideaki took it as a very auspicious sign that our spawn will be born in the year of the tiger, because like all good Osakans Hideaki is a devoted fan of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team.

Suitengu is also visited after a baby is born, and since this wasn't a dog day we saw far more families with newborns than pregnant ladies, and there were plenty of shops set up both inside and outside the shrine selling candy, toys and baby clothing. I'm sure there are a whole host of special baby praying days that I'll find out about months after the fact, and hope our kid doesn't grow up feeling deprived.

After we left Suitengu we walked around the neighborhood, and it was neat to see where Hideaki works. Ningyocho is an old area and has lots of little traditional shops, like stores selling nothing but hand crafted folding fans or scissors or sweets. Lots and lots of Japanese style sweets. Unfortunately the shops are all the kind of tiny place that once you step inside you feel obliged to buy something and since everything is hand-made it all costs a fortune, so we mostly just looked in from the outside.

The one place we did go into was a small restaurant called Tree's which specializes in something called soup curry, a variation of Japanese curry rice. Unlike regular Japanese curry, which is thickened to a glue-like consistency, soup curry is left liquidy and soup-like, and is thus much lighter. Hideaki has been eating at Tree's since he started at this job in January and raves about it enough that, although it didn't sound particularly appealing, I had to try it.

I had the tomato bacon curry, and it came in a bowl with a separate plate of rice (unlike regular curry rice in which the curry is served together with the rice). It was indeed soupy, much like a Thai style curry, but the flavour was closer to a Japanese curry. It is meant to be spooned over the rice little by little (or you can just dump the whole bowl of curry onto your rice like Hideaki did above) with pickled rakyo (shallot) and fukujinzuke (mixed sweet pickles) added as desired. It was very tasty and without being thickened by a roux it was quite light and I didn't feel nearly as full and greasy as I do after eating regular curry rice, which was nice.

Of course my midwives have warned me against eating spicy food as hot flavours are harmful to the baby (I wonder what they think women eat in Thailand or India?), so this was an illicit meal. May they never discover this blog!

Suitengu Shrine
2-4-1 Nihonbashi-kakigaracho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
03-3666-7195
Open daily 8:00 am to 7:00 pm

Tree's
3-6-8 Nihonbashi-ningyocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
03-3639-2525
Open Monday to Friday for lunch 11:00 am to 2:30 pm and dinner 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm; Saturday for lunch 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

No lauds for Lauderdale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas

I thought Christmas 2009 was going to be different. I went out of my way to decorate the house and feel Christmasy, unlike in 2008 when the only decoration was a tiny poinsettia that a student gave me a few days before the big day. Back then I had decided that all the fuss of decorating and cooking holiday treats wasn't worth it and wanted to see what a no-effort Christmas was like. Not surprisingly Xmas '08 made me a little sad, and I realized two things: one, that you do have to put in some effort to get that special Christmas feeling. And two, that even as a fully grown-up person, without kids, and an atheist to boot, I actually still wanted that special Christmas feeling.

So this time around I put up decorations and we even fashioned a kind of tree out of some branches (two trees actually: one on our balcony made of sticks from the park, and one inside made of a fancier branch from the florist's). I played Christmas music 'till my ears hurt, got my Christmas cards done early, and made Hideaki put up Christmas lights in our bedroom window and on our balcony.

And still Christmas never really came.

The first bad sign was after I'd done my Christmas cards, I was literally on my way out the door to mail them when I did a quick email check on my phone and got an email from my mother telling my Uncle Bill had died. Bill was to turn 100 on January 13th, and although I already had a birthday card picked out I thought I'd send him a Christmas card too, writing giant letters (an empty gesture as he was too blind to read) and hoping he'd remember who I was.

Uncle Bill had an interesting life, especially during the war. He flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force and spent time in Finland, involved in a mission so top secret that he still wouldn't discuss the details six decades later. After the war he married and lived in the Parkdale area of Toronto, where he'd grown up.

He was actually my great uncle by marriage, the husband of my father's grandmother. We weren't particularly close and I'd only met him a handful of times, but he'd kind of become part of our family in recent years. We'd been out of contact with him and his wife for decades, only getting back into touch several years ago. Aunt Mabel died ages ago, they never had kids, and our family was his closest kin, so when they regained contact my dad took responsibility for him, visiting him often at his home in Toronto and eventually moving him to a home nearby in Brampton. He was a bit senile but fairly lively for his age, with a newly developed forbidden love for chocolate and sweets (he wasn't allowed to eat them for health reasons, but dad figured at his age he deserved the pleasure and would smuggle in occasional treats for him), making jokes about how he likes to keep after-dinner mints around "for the ladies" and even once goosing a female attendant. On my last visit he had done what he always does to younger visitors: held up both fists and asked me, of my dad, "Is he giving you any trouble?". Apparently when my brother or other males visited the fists would be twirled around in an old-fashioned boxer's move, a treat I never got to see.

So although we weren't close I was really sad to hear about his passing. The timing was also sad, since he just missed his 100th birthday, but as my mom pointed out he already believed he was 102 or 103, so in his own mind he'd already passed that milestone.

The news didn't ruin Christmas though, and I was mostly just glad I'd had the chance to visit recently and that he had lived such a long life. But still Christmas didn't come. Oh sure, we tried to do some Christmasy things, starting with a visit to an event at the Tokyo International Forum (a good place to visit even when there's no event, as the building is amazing and the surrounding neighborhoods always have nice Christmas decorations). Called the "Strasbourg Christmas Market in Tokyo", it was an attempt to recreate the famed Alsatian Marche de Noel. It sounded great, with booths and artisans directly imported from the original market, Alsatian delicacies on sale, free concerts and give-aways of Alsatian wine. Alsace is one of my favourite wine regions but I haven't had a chance to try the food, so I was really looking forward to that (OK, it was the free wine that really got my attention).

I met Hideaki there after he had a job interview in the area, and we were both underwhelmed. We were too early for the concerts, no free wine was to be had, the stuff for sale in the booths was way overpriced, the tarte flambes were sold out, and the very tempting charcuterie cart above was closed without explanation (it re-opened just as we were leaving, when we were already full).

So I took a picture of the Christmas tree, imported (along with its decorations) from Alsace. As I did so passersby looked around in confusion, wondering what I could possibly be taking a picture of, as the tree was extremely tame by Japanese standards- it didn't even light up! Then we bought some overpriced grub at the one food stall that was open, eating it while we froze at the outdoor tables provided (no heaters or blankets offered).

Clockwise from top left: a nice bread with bacon and onion; some kind of potato dish with cheese, mulled apple juice, wine (variety unknown); choucroute; and quiche. The choucroute was delicious and I may have to rethink my hatred of sauerkraut (or maybe the Alsatians are just the only ones who do it right). The other stuff was good but not very hot when served and quite cold by the time we ate it.

Now that I think about it, I don't think it was the food or booths or other stuff that failed to impress me, it was the crowd: the very few people there looked miserable, which is completely normal for Tokyo but just doesn't work for a Christmas market.

December 23rd is the Emperor's birthday and thus a national holiday, so when Christmas (which of course is not a holiday here) falls on a weekday lots of folks choose the Emp's birthday to celebrate. We did so by meeting Hideaki's sister Atsuko and her family at the Tokyo Hilton for brunch. We go there every once in a while for special occasions because they put on a nice spread, but hadn't been a few years. In the time that we'd been away the place had renovated, raised both the level of their food and their prices, and been declared the best hotel buffet in Japan (a title way better than it sounds, as tonnes of hotels here do buffets and most are very good). I'd read that the buffet now included raw oysters and even had Hide call and ask, and he was told something odd: that they do have oysters but they're not actually raw, having been treated to render them safe. We'd never heard of this so were curious to see what they meant.

Sure enough, there was a mound of oysters on the halfshell over ice, and they looked like normal raw oysters. I picked a few up on my first trip to the buffet, failing to notice the sauces, and ate them plain. That's how I ate the Akkeshi oysters in Hokkaido and at that time I couldn't imagine adding any kind of flavour to an oyster. But it turns out that not all oysters are equal to Akkeshis, because these had almost zero flavour! Was it the variety of oyster or the mysterious treatment they'd undergone that did it? No idea. They had the same texture as regular raw oysters, a bit of a briny odour, but close to nothing on the palate. I later went back for some sauce, and once they were dressed up they suddenly tasted like oysters again. I think I must have had nearly twenty, which I later regretted- oysters go down so easily but are deceptively filling.

The rest of the food was good, and although the others were most impressed with the desserts, I thought the salad bar and appetizer bar was the best and also offered the biggest bang for the buck. I was already stuffed by the time I got to the hot food, above, and couldn't finish my plate.

Afterward we checked out some of Shinjuku's Christmas decorations, which Marya especially was impressed by. Believe it or not, this was the first proper light display I'd seen this Christmas- I really don't get out like I used to. We then started an Ultraman stamp rally (a stamp rally being a unique Japanese custom of bringing a special flyer around town to various locations to get a stamp from each one, usually with a reward when you've got all the stamps), Marya being an Ultraman fan, but had to cancel halfway through when I suddenly came down with a cold. Just like that- I was feeling fine one minute and the next felt like hell. So straight to home and to bed it was.

Christmas Eve I downed enough cold meds to get through the night and met my friend Emi for dinner. We usually go to Nasu to celebrate but I couldn't afford it this year, so dinner it was. We were a bit curious to see what it would be like to have a nice dinner together on this night, since Christmas Eve is considered THE date night in Japan. Women without dates on Xmas Eve are supposed to stay home in shame, and the lucky ones who do snag a date can expect an expensive present, a fancy dinner, and a few hours at a love hotel (if the guy has was smart enough to book a room months in advance, that is- Christmas Eve is the busiest night of the year for love hotels).

Like most stereotypes, this turns out to be not quite true: nobody looked as us funny and we saw lots of other women who were obviously not on dates, in groups, pairs, and even alone. The male-female couples in our restaurant, however, stayed true to the stereotype and each girl was handed a present by her man (a cashmere scarf for one and jewelry for the others, the lucky bitches).

Anyway, we ate at Cafe Table, an interior goods shop in Omotesando (selling pop-art type stuff they call "Sweet French Style") with a French restaurant decorated with their wares. It was a very cute looking place and the food was way better than my initial expectations were, although a bit gimmicky. The Christmas wreath salad had lovely bits of pate and scallop mousse, and the "cappuccino style" soup below was made with soy milk and mushrooms, with a very rich flavour and no evidence of icky soy milk.

Next was seafood (a large shrimp, squid and raw scallops) atop pesto risotto with a red pepper sauce, just lovely.

The roast beef with "Maria Maricia" sauce was less impressive, as the sauce turned out to be chocolate-based. Not like a complex and very slightly chocolaty mole sauce, but really really chocolaty. 

The dessert was a mini white yule log and ice cream with balsamico reduction. There was way too much of the sauce and the ice cream was rendered far too sour and savoury- I found myself wondering if the chef had mixed up the sauces for the meat and dessert courses.

Still, it was a very nice meal, and they gave us each a free coffee mug as we left. It's still under my Christmas tree (I mean branch), waiting for our real Christmas to come).

After dinner we checked out the Christmas lights along Omotesando. These lights were once a famous sight in Tokyo, but this is the first time they've been up in over a decade: local merchants disliked the crowds that the lights brought (at the time such displays were rare here) and worried about damage to the trees, so put an end to the displays. In the years since, the shopkeepers have looked on in envy as other neighborhoods in Tokyo started putting up lights, with displays becoming more and more elaborate and the crowds getting bigger and bigger, and I guess they realized that massive crowds are better than none at all, and the lights are back up.

The display was pretty, but it was hard to get a good view as the pedestrian bridge was closed, the street was lined with parked cars whose occupants were taking pictures, and the curbs were strewn with trash bags (must've been garbage day on Christmas).

Meanwhile, back at home, Christmas didn't develop much past the decorations. With Hideaki's job situation as it was, we weren't doing presents for each other, and of the three parcels my mother had sent only one had shown up. There were no traditional Christmas Eve presents, and the next morning we opened stockings (his was full of lame stuff from the local convenience store that I'd hastily bought on my way home the night before, mine with treats from all over that Hideaki had actually been collecting for some time- he's getting really good at Christmas!) had then one present each from my parents (the only two that made it from home). No mimosas in the morning or champagne at dinner, no turkey or even chicken- knowing that I had to recover from my cold before my upcoming ski camp job, I took it easy and let Hideaki do dinner. He did tiny but beautiful wagyu steaks, and although I could barely taste them I could definitely appreciate the melt in the mouth texture (you'd have to be near death not to appreciate that).

So, despite a lot of good eating, it was kind of a sad non-Christmas after all. It's highly embarrassing to realize that at 36 years of age I still rely on my mother to make Christmas happen, and also rather disappointing to know that I really do need all the presents, traditional cooking and other bells and whistles. How The Grinch Stole Christmas was wrong. It didn't come without packages, boxes and bags!

Wait, I'm exaggerating. I had some nice times with friends and family, the present from my mom was lovely, and we did get one very special present on Christmas: a phone call for Hide, from the company he interviewed for the previous week. He got the job!

He starts this Tuesday, and hopefully the boxes from home will arrive around the same time he gets his first paycheck, and we'll have a proper Christmas after all. A month or so late, but I'll chalk that up to the time difference.

Hope you had a merry Christmas, if Christmas is your thing! And if you're interested, a few more holiday pictures can be seen here.

Hokkaido

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The same coal company created this lake:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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