A Fish Out of Water

Cherry blossoms

I couldn't let spring arrive without a few cherry blossom pictures, and here they are. Really just a few this year, at least of the flowers still on the trees.

Thanks to plenty of wind and rain, and a great big storm, the blossoms didn't spend much time on the trees, and now wherever you go you get to walk on carpets of pale pink petals.

The sight of the petals falling to the ground, like a gentle snowfall, is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Shuma thinks so too, and when he sees a petal falling he points to it and says "bubble". Close enough.

Another sight, less well-celebrated than falling petals, can only be seen when riding the bus during a rainfall at the end of the cherry blossom season. The rain knocks the petals from the trees and then sticks them to the windows of the bus, treating passengers to a close-up botany lesson. Or at least giving them something to look at other than adds for local dentists and pachinko parlours.

Kinchakuda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch out squeamish people, a spider shot follows:

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

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

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

More pictures can be seen here.

 

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

Fall Colours

Fall is in full swing and the local leaves are looking pretty. These are some of the sights I see on my regular walking route (plus one gratuitous baby shot- just couldn't help myself).

Snow

Last night, just as I was thinking winter would sneak by undetected this year, Hideaki came home from work with rosy cheeks and a head adorned with snowflakes. I'd had no idea it had been snowing, having napped the evening away (a wonderful new habit of mine) after getting soaked in the rain earlier. But somewhere during my slumbers the raindrops had turned to snowflakes, great big fluffy snowflakes, and although we huddled under a blanket on our balcony and enjoyed the view for a while, we were both too tired to actually go out and enjoy it. All that napping can really tire a girl out, after all (I have no idea what his excuse was).

So I had to hope the snow would stick around, and sure enough when I opened the curtains this morning there was a blanket of rapidly melting but still pretty snow on the ground. So I put on my snow boots and headed out to enjoy our first real snowfall in two years.

Like all snowy days in Tokyo there were very few people about, even at the local park which is normally bustling with activity at this time of day. A few intrepid seniors out for their morning walk, a handful of park security guards and volunteers clearing paths, a grand total of three moms with their kids, and four people walking their dogs.

The toy poodle and chihuahua were not having any fun at all, mincing around on the cold wet path as if they were cats. A couple of real dogs were making the most of the snow, including the one above, whose owner looked like she was having almost as much as her dog. It was also nice to see one man who, like me, was purposely walking on the fresh virgin snow instead of the cleared path, although when he saw me looking he sheepishly returned to the path. Lord knows why.

But the place was otherwise deserted, and I felt like I had the whole park to myself. So I did what I always do when it snows: take pictures of flowers. Above is a frosty ume (Japanese apricot) blossom, and below are a couple of icy clusters of mansaku (witch hazel) flowers.

I wanted to stay out longer, but the rumblings in my tummy told me it was time to head home for breakfast. Now that that's out of the way, I think I'll go have a nap. Yawn.

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.

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.

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 bad 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.

Shinjuku Gyoen

You didn't think I was finished with cherry blossoms yet, did you?

These pictures were taken at Shinjuku Gyoen, the best park in the city. It's a place I'm becoming more familiar with recently, thanks to a new class I'm teaching. As an extension of English Adventure's seasonal camps, the new Nature Club brings kids together twice a month to study nature in the outdoors, and Shinjuku Gyoen is where we do it. It may seem an odd place to study nature with its manicured lawns and well-maintained Japanese and European style gardens, but the park is blessed with some surprisingly wild areas. It's not quite the same as the amazing forest and seaside venues of English Adventure's regular camps, but given its convenient location there's no better venue for the Nature Club.

These pictures don't have much to do with the club, since we mostly stay away from the formal garden areas (but many of the pictures from my previous wildflower post were taken in the wilder areas of Shinjuku Gyoen where we study). But I'm at the park often now to scout for the lessons or to have a picnic afterward, so I get to see the photogenic areas as well.

These were taken over a few days in mid-April, a time when most of the cherry trees in the city had dropped their petals. Shinjuku Gyoen has such a wide variety of sakura that there were dozens of them still in bloom though, and there was a good number of people out enjoying some hanami (flower viewing).

 

After my first class my husband joined me for a picnic. I had been far too nervous and busy that morning to prepare a proper lunch so left it all up to him, and the grub above is what he came up with: several types of onigiri, a tray of greasy sausages, fried chicken, french fries and potato croquettes, a package of crunchy curry-flavoured snack things, and string cheese. Green tea to drink and a can of beer (discretely wrapped in a bag, as the park is alcohol-free) and for dessert, a package of Koala no March (koala-shaped cookies filled with chocolate). All classic convenience store food, and definitely not what I would have picked, but that's what happens when men do the shopping.

Among the many types of cherry trees in the park are a few of these rare green ones, which have a different kind of beauty from the usual pink varieties. There were plenty of other pretty and interesting plants, like the hime tsubaki camelia below, and it's going to take me many, many visits until I'm familiar with them all.

English Adventure is having a family picnic this Sunday (April 26th), so if you're curious about the Nature Club or other events this is a great chance to find out more; check here for more information. It's free and everyone is invited, and I'll be there. Hopefully with a lunch that was made by me rather than picked up at the combini.

See more pictures in my Shinjuku Gyoen album.