The city of Tbilisi is not so far from the border to Armenia. This was good news because we knew we’d have to be awake when the train crossed the border so as to pass the immigration inspection. The system was actually pretty easy. A stop or two before the border a crew of Georgian immigration officials get on the train and ride along checking and stamping passports. Then, at the the border they get off and are replaced by Armenian immigration officials who do much the same thing. Unless you come from certain countries.

Armenia and the USA have a pretty solid relationship and so I could stay in my cabin and the officers would come to me and stamp my passport. Other countries need to have a visa or buy one as they cross the border. At the border the guards escort people who need to buy a visa to a special building, where they wait in line, pay for the visa, and then can go back to the train.

Kuniko was thinking ahead and bought a visa online before our trip, so as to make things easy. Unfortunately not many Japanese people travel these rails, and they still wanted to inspect the visa (and Kuniko) outside the train car to fully understand the situation. That meant she had to get up around midnight and join the queue of “visa on arrival” passengers outside. I sat inside the cabin and wondered vaguely what would happen if she was somehow refused entry. Should I jump off the train? Charge the border calling her name?

Luckily the question was moot because she came back pretty quickly, and we could sit back and relax and try to get some sleep.

Sleeping on the train was fun. Sometimes we moved, sometimes the train stopped for a long time. Nobody came to take the extra beds but we didn’t sleep completely comfortably because we didn’t know if someone would show up or not. We had a tiny blanket and a good sized pillow, and we were pretty comfortable overall.

One of the water bottles that we had bought at the station sprung a leak at the very bottom, so we had to hold the bottle upside down to prevent water from spilling all over, and it turned out to be a little tricky to drink water from the bottle without getting wet. It was a little game to keep us occupied while we traveled through the night.

Unfortunately for me I had to run to the toilet now and then to take care of the churning in my stomach. The toilet wasn’t clean and beautiful, but it wasn’t a pit either. Luckily there weren’t many people running to the restroom throughout the night, and there was plenty of toilet paper. Still, not ideal for me – I had some kind of stomach bug.

We woke up early with the sun just starting to rise out the window. The view of the desert outside of Yerevan was absolutely beautiful. On the other side of the train to the southwest was a brilliant view of Mt. Ararat, shining with snow on the peak even during summer time. It was on the side of the train where the windows didn’t open, so I figured I’d wait and take a picture on the return trip – but this turned out to be a bad strategy, which I’ll explain later.

Something about waking up on a moving train to a new day really struck a chord with me. Maybe I have been reading a lot of Paul Theroux lately and that has influenced me, but I really enjoyed it. If I could just have a hot cup of coffee the moment would have been perfect.

So the train slowly rolled into Yerevan, and we could disembark there and get our bearings. I felt a little dirty and a little tired, but facing a new city in the morning is really the best. Coming into a new city late at night and searching for a hotel can be stressful, but here we had plenty of time to figure things out in the light of day.

We started by hitting up a taxi driver outside the station. In contrast to the taxi drivers back at Tbilisi airport, the drivers here seemed much more relaxed. We asked an older guy about a ride to the city center and he said “no English”, but a younger guy came up and was willing to work things out by gesture and phone. I liked his attitude; he knew he’d have more work on this fare but potentially more income.

We showed him the hotel on the map, but he didn’t quite get it exactly. Instead he saw that we had the phone number, so he called the hotel and spoke with them directly and got directions. Then he waved us to the taxi. Kuniko pressed him to find out how much it was to get there (since nobody was using meters) and he held up four fingers. I asked him about changing money, and he used gestures to indicate that first he’d take us to the money changer, then to the hotel. Perfect.

The money changer was quite close in fact, and the taxi driver parked across the street in a temporary parking spot, and then indicated that he’d come with me inside to help with the exchange. We started to cross the street but another taxi pulled up behind and started honking at our taxi to move. Our poor driver went back, and waved me to continue on to change money. Inside I changed the money, and the taxi driver came back just as I finished and made sure that I had exchanged to small enough bills to pay the driver correctly – good idea!

We went back out and got back into the relocated cab, and the driver took off down the road. It wasn’t far to the center of town, and when we got close the taxi driver again called the hotel and zeroed in on the correct address. Soon enough he brought us to the doorstep, and we got out and paid. I paid 4+1 as a tip, and the driver seemed satisfied. I liked his style and he certainly earned his extra money.

We went inside the hotel, and announced ourselves at the desk, at around 8 am in the morning. The initial plan was to park our suitcase here, go out and do sightseeing in the morning, and finally come back in the afternoon and do check-in at the normal time. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling very good, still sweating even though it really wasn’t that hot, and I thought going out might be a bad idea. The hotel staff were apologetic that the room was occupied and we couldn’t do an early check-in, but they said that we could use their bathrooms and showers to freshen up, and that they had a common room where we could spend time and relax while waiting for check-in. I jumped at the chance to use a clean toilet and to take a shower, and then we went into the common room to rest.

The room was pretty nice – a big clean room full of cushions, beanbags and pillows, with two PCs, a TV and DVD player, and most importantly an air conditioner. We laid back and rested here, and Kuniko was nice enough to go buy me some more water and a bottle of Coke – which my Hungarian doctor had recommended last year to recover my strength quickly.

We spent more than four hours here, and I sometimes drifted off to sleep, sometimes Kuniko napped in there too. I know the room wasn’t really intended for people to sleep in, but we made it into an emergency bedroom. Sometimes people would step inside, but few people stayed long, especially with the two sleeping corpses in there.

At some point we were half asleep and two little kids came into the room with their father. The father set them up on one of the PCs, and they started playing a loud game involving pop music and a lot of clicking. I was in a common room so I couldn’t really complain, but the dad must have been desperate to entertain his kids and miss the two exhausted people laying down in the corner. At some point I got my tired body up and went out to the front desk to see what was going on with our room.

Apparently the staff had taken pity on us, and they said that we could get into our room in 10-15 minutes. Hooray – almost two hours before the official check-in time. I told Kuniko the good news, and then we got organized and soon enough we were being led to the elevator by the hotel staff. He said that although we had reserved a standard room he was upgrading us to a full sized apartment, and that was good news, too. I was dead on my feet as we got out of the elevator, and after letting us into the room, the staff beat a hasty retreat and left us there. Privacy at last!

The apartment was really nice – a bedroom, a living room, a big refrigerator and kitchen, even a clothes washer. We didn’t really look around much before jumping into the inviting bed. I got under the covers still sweating and feeling the chills setting in, and I knew that I was in for a rough patch. After that I crashed out, and then it was only brief moments of consciousness for the next 24 hours. But at least we were in our own place behind locked doors with a clean toilet that worked.

Kuniko wasn’t in great shape either, but she was better off than me. At some point she went out to buy supplies: chicken soup, water, Powerade, and a dinner of dolma for her. I remember sometimes I woke up and she was watching k-pop videos, other times she was asleep. I lost track of time and just slept and slept, and sometime during the night my fever broke and I was just thirsty and sleepy.

The next morning I slept late, and Kuniko went out and did some preliminary sight-seeing without me, taking pictures and exploring Yerevan. I woke up and made some chicken soup, and the salty broth was like the nectar of the gods. After a few swallows of that, I was feeling much better. At some point we decided to go get some breakfast in the hotel dining area, and I started eating solid foods again. My appetite wasn’t completely back, but I could see I was on the road to recovery. Kuniko was also feeling better, so it was good news all around.

We’re not sure exactly what happened, but our best guess is that our extended exposure to the heat wave kind of lowered our natural resistance, combined with maybe some weird bacteria from some food or the ice from my lemonade in Tbilisi – everything worked against me and forced a 24 hour recovery on my body, like it or not. After this, we were more careful to stay out of the heat and to stick to air conditioning in the afternoons.

So it was time to do a little exploring of Yerevan together. And we wanted to start with the brandy.

We decided to get up early today and climb up the mountain to the fortress before the heat and the tourists could make the trip unbearable. It turned out to be a good idea.

We started by following the backstreets alongside the mountain ridge. Thankfully for the past couple of days we had covered a lot of this territory before, and it was easy to navigate, even without a map. Along the way we passed some stray dogs walking around, evidently raiding the trash cans and taking advantage of this time when few humans walked the streets. A couple of the dogs seemed to be following us, and that made Kuniko pretty nervous. Dogs aren’t really her thing, especially big ones. Wild ones running around, definitely not her thing.

We continued on toward the mountain, and the dogs casually followed us. There were three with us, and they looked at us in a friendly way, wagging their tails and assuming that we knew what we were doing and where we were going. We found some steps leading up the mountain and started climbing them. It was a steep pathway up, and I figured the dogs would lose interest once they had to do some serious climbing, but I was wrong. They seemed to be really enjoying it. A couple of times they would run ahead down the wrong street and I thought we’d seen the last of them, but they would quickly backtrack and catch up with us. I noticed that each dog had a digital tag in their ear, so somebody was keeping track of them.

That was how we proceeded all the way up to the giant statue of the Mother of Georgia. Gradually Kuniko got used to the big dogs with us, and I kind of enjoyed it. I knew that sooner or later we’d have to lose them somewhere, but for the hike it was nice to have the company. We passed several churches on the way up the hill, and the views from the fortress of the sun rising of Tbilisi were excellent. Near the top of the hill we turned a corner and three younger guys were walking the opposite direction as us on the hiking path, and they looked nervous when they saw our escort of three street dogs. I thought maybe the dogs would transfer to them, but no luck.

Once we finished at the top of the mountain we did a long descent down to the center of town. We were both feeling like it might be nice to have a cup of real coffee, so we decided to go into a little cafe with a big sign that said “I [heart] Tbilisi” out front. We timed it just right so the dogs were looking the other way when we walked in, and we got a table and hoped the dogs would move on while we were inside. As it turned out, they apparently got bored and disappeared.

After some coffee and a restroom break we headed back to the hotel for a short nap. The next stage was a big one – we walked from the hotel all the way to a restaurant I wanted to try for lunch. It turned out to be a much longer trip than I had planned because the streets were not exactly direct. We got caught in the heat as well, and almost didn’t find the restaurant. Luckily thanks to a distinctive paint job we opened the right door and found Shavi Lomi.

I had heard about this restaurant after reading an article in the New York Times about how the culinary scene in Tbilisi has started to mature. The Times offered up a few restaurants to illustrate their point, but the one that started the whole trend was Shavi Lomi. They reluctantly accepted us as customers, we sat inside in the shade, and ordered some cold beers. I was feeling pretty overheated and it was nice to rest for a while.

We ate a variety of dishes from their menu – all a little unusual, light and natural. All the foods were organic and interesting – it was probably the healthiest food we had eaten so far on the trip. As we slowly cooled off over time I felt a little stomachache, probably due to just walking in the heat. This was a harbinger of bad things to come.

But the rest of our time at Shavi Lomi was a pleasure, and the staff were very friendly after initially being a bit standoffish. We finished our meal, and took a long time over a light dessert before heading to our next destination. Not far away there was a restaurant that I wanted to try for dinner that night, and we figured to walk over there and make a reservation.

The walk wasn’t too far, maybe twenty minutes or so, but it was in the peak of the heat. When we walked in the sun you could feel the sun cooking your skin, and we kept drinking lots of water to stay hydrated. Still, it was oppressive. We learned later that we were in the middle of a heatwave in Europe so serious that they named it “Lucifer”.

We arrived at the restaurant, Barbarestan, and made a reservation for six pm. Since we had some time to kill we walked nearby to check out the metro station that we would use later to get back to the hotel, and then we went to a small cafe to escape the heat outdoors. We ordered lemonades and I was so hot that I went through the lemonade and started eating the ice remaining in the glass. This might have been a big mistake.

After staying in the cafe for a while we were looking for a change of scene. We decided to walk over to a nearby park and we sat outside under the shade of some big trees and watched customers come and go into a ping pong parlor across the way. I was pretty tired out by then and sweating profusely, so we kept drinking water and I laid down on the bench with my sweaty head in Kuniko’s lap to rest. I was getting a little worried about how I felt.

Finally it was time to head over to the restaurant for dinner. We were given a nice table downstairs in the humid basement, and despite the shade and the strong air conditioning I was sweating pretty hard – but I really wanted to enjoy this meal.

The restaurant itself was decorated in a unique style – frilly, mismatched and slightly abstract. The service staff were a little on the stuffy side, not so friendly, but I had heard that if Michelin ever decided to award some stars in this city, they would probably start with this place. Since I wasn’t feeling great we ordered just an appetizer and one main dish, but the waiter assured us that we should order two mains to have enough food. I wasn’t so sure but we followed his directions.

When the food arrived, it was really good. We started with an appetizer of satsivini of zucchini, and then we had pieces of roast rabbit wrapped in bacon, and grilled breast of duck. My appetite kind of left me because of how I was feeling, and I was still sweating like crazy and drinking lots of water. Unfortunately we had to leave some food behind on our plates, and I could feel the palpable sense of contempt from our server when he took away our plates. I felt pretty bad about it, too – nobody was more disappointed than me that I couldn’t eat more here. As the restaurant filled it other tables ordered piles and piles of food and I couldn’t imagine being hungry ever again. What a bummer!

We felt that retreat was the best option, so we settled up and moved out. I hope that someday in the future I can return to Barbarestan to get my revenge and eat a full meal’s worth.

From there we went back to the metro station, caught an extremely high speed escalator down into the depth of the station into what looked like the train stations we encountered in Moscow. The trains were very Russian as well, but it arrived promptly and took us a few stops to our hotel. We gathered our suitcase and then went out and caught a taxi to the train station for our overnight train to Armenia.

The taxi ride was worth mentioning – they all were. If there was any time that I was scared or worried about my safety it was while riding in a taxi in Georgia and Armenia. The drivers were extremely aggressive and didn’t hesitate to cut off others and plow into intersections without looking. Who needs a roller coaster thrill ride when taxis are everywhere.

He dropped us off at the very modern and unusual train station in central Tbilisi, and we dragged our suitcase inside and started to look around. The whole building apparently was built by Samsung, and it was filled with electronics and appliance stores that sold only Korean equipment. It seemed like a bold investment strategy on the part of the Korean companies, and I wondered where else they have tried this. Despite the modern station, the train system and the train platforms themselves were pretty archaic and out of date. We bought some waters at a nearby stand and then settled in to wait. We were at the station a couple hours early, but our train ended up being nine minutes late. I was happy to have the downtime to rest up and try to give my body a break.

When the arrival time was approaching we took our suitcase down some dark cement stairs onto a dark platform, and waited patiently. There were no indicators of car position so we just kind of stood in the middle of the platform and got ready to run whichever way our car would be. As it turned out, when the train came in our car was the last one, and we took off down the platform bumping our suitcase over broken cement and gravel laying around. This was not Tokyo station.

We found the last car, in the dark without any lights. Passengers were milling around outside, smoking and stretching their legs before the train left Tbilisi. One kind of big guy wearing a baggy white T-shirt was carrying a flashlight, and so we recognized him as the closest thing to an authority in this situation. He examined our tickets, asked each of us our nationality, checked Kuniko’s visa, and then let us on. We found our cabin, with four beds inside. We were assigned the bottom two according to our ticket, and it was unclear whether another two passengers would get on later and take the top two beds.

Maybe because of the uncertainty we were pretty excited. We put away our stuff, kicked off our shoes, and enjoyed the feeling as the train shuffled away from the station and started the nine hour journey to Yerevan, Armenia.

Thanks to a very comfortable bed we slept in longer than usual, and then enjoyed a slow morning. A long shower, clean clothes, and a hotel breakfast to start with. Our hotel included breakfast and it was waiting for us at one of three tables in the lobby. The entire “hotel” only had three rooms, and there was one other resident eating breakfast when we came in. We said hello and then worked on a pretty standard hotel breakfast of wieners, cheese, ham, boiled eggs, bread, jam, yogurt, coffee and juice. The other hotel guest wrapped up and checked out while we were still eating – the staff used a smartphone to translate her questions into English for him to understand – the power of technology!

We got organized and then set out to see a little more of Tbilisi. We walked down Kite Abkhazi Street through old town Tbilisi for starters. The cobblestone streets were lined with tourist shops, wine stores, cheese and candy shops, and money exchange places. I even saw a strip club along the way. The street was pretty touristy, even with the beautiful trees and churches as a background. We found our way to St. Sioni Cathedral, and since it was Sunday there were a lot of people inside and outside praying. Speakers were set up outside the cathedral so that people could hear the services.

From there we traveled a little to the northeast and found the Peace Bridge, a very modern pedestrian bridge over the Mtkvari River. The river flowed right through town, although there wasn’t a lot of space available to sit and relax while gazing at the river. It was quite scenic, and from the bridge we could see the big fortress on the hillside overlooking the city. That was our destination at some point, but we didn’t feel like hurrying up to it right away.

On the other side of the river sat Rike Park, which at this time of day was empty and a little lonely. There were some unusual objects there: a giant cement piano, a large outdoor chess set, and some interesting architecture as well. It seemed like the park was built long ago to attract families for tourism, but most things were closed or abandoned. Still operating was a ropeway that took passengers up the mountain to the fortress, but we were a little early to catch a ride.

We walked up some steps and then continued to the northeast, walking and enjoying the blue skies, until we reached the dramatic Holy Trinity Church, capped with a gold dome and serving as a counterpoint to the fortress on the opposite side of the river. As we approached there were beggars already positioned on either side of the back entrance that we used. The beggars didn’t speak English but they wailed in sorrow as we walked by with hands outstretched. One beggar woman was quite overweight, so apparently the begging is pretty good in this area.

The Holy Trinity Church was the biggest of many churches throughout Tbilisi. I didn’t expect religion to be such a big part of the landscape here, but just about everywhere you looked you could find a church nearby. From the hillside we could see pretty far to the next range of mountains, and the clear sky made it a great spot to enjoy a scenic view.

As we walked around we could feel the heat building. The weather forecast said temperatures would reach 39 C / 102 F that day, and we were starting to sweat walking around in all that heat. Remembering to hydrate was key, and we stopped to buy some cherry juice from a tiny supermarket as we walked back down the hill.

Near the touristy old town street we found a quiet little backstreet, Erekle II St., that was lined with quaint little cafes, restaurants and wine bars. It wasn’t quite as blatantly touristy as the other part of town and the atmosphere looked nice for a sit down and some lunch. This area turned out to be our go-to location because of the proximity to our hotel, a particular wine bar that was quite good, and of course the English menus which made ordering easier.

We stopped at one place, and sat under the shade at a table lined with tiles. The staff (kind of reluctantly) brought a menu to us and we ordered a couple of cold beers to start. Near us some cats basked in the sun waiting for some patrons to offer food. We ordered for ourselves (not the cats) and got a big plate of khinkali. These were much larger than the ones we had previously, and therefore more challenging to eat. Khinkali are supposed to be eaten by holding the nub (or nipple) at the top, flipping it over and holding it like an ice cream cone. From this position you should try to break into the dumpling, which has plenty of very hot delicious soup inside along with the meat and spices. After you slurp out the soup then you go to work on all the meat inside. All this is to be done without a fork, or at least that is what we read online, but I spotted a few people using a fork now and then. We did a pretty good job of learning through repetition, and by the time we left Tbilisi I think we were eating them like professionals.

We also tucked into a khachapuri that arrived in a slightly different style than we’ve had before. It was folded like a pide from Turkey, but it was filled with cheese and had butter and an egg yolk on top. Serious cholesterol here, but we’re on vacation so no worries.

After a leisurely lunch we walked up the street and tried a wine shop that offered tasting called Vinomania. We went in just to look at all the different varieties of wine for sale, but the staff offered to let us taste if we felt inclined. Believe it or not, we felt so inclined.

The staff was a younger guy who clearly loved wine. He knew all about each type, he explained the wines in English for us, and he just kept pouring. He was pouring for us, but he kept opening his favorite wines to let us try. It was getting out of hand how many wines he was opening, and I felt like we could probably spend the rest of the day there. One wine in particular he opened and it was a very unusual white wine. This one didn’t have any exposure to clay pots, but the grape aroma came across more as a lime flavor, without the sourness. This would be a worthy successor to Vinho Verde in my opinion, but the bottle was priced a little high for everyday drinking. Lots of great wines here, and it was nice to drink all we wanted on the house. I hope the guy didn’t get fired for opening up all those bottles for us.

Wine is not the only alcohol on the menu in Tbilisi. We were also able to taste a glass of the local booze, called cha-cha. It is a distilled alcohol similar to grappa, but with a more rough aftertaste. Similar to drinking some kind of fuel. I’m sure with just the small taste we had we shaved a few months off our lifespan. Not my thing, cha-cha, but we saw it everywhere.

Suitably liquored up, we wandered down the road in search of someplace to eat some lower calorie fare. We found that at a nice little restaurant called Azarphesha. It was decorated beautifully with carpets, wine bottles and the ceiling arrayed with a multitude of wine glasses. The restaurant was empty when we came through around 2 pm. They didn’t mind serving us a small meal and some wine, so we settled in to try some more food from Georgia. Here we had fried eggplant wrapped around melted cheese and bacon, and also a nice salad of tomatoes, cucumber, and spicy chili peppers with parsley, cilantro, and an oil and vinegar dressing. We enjoyed some local wine with our light snack, and then headed on back to our hotel to escape the rising heat and take a break.

A few hours later we were ready for more culinary adventure, and that led us to Racha, a locals kind of place that we had found recommended on the internet. It was also a bit hard to find – it seemed like most places in Tbilisi didn’t quite match up with their internet listings. We did it the old fashioned way, and found the place by poking around.

Once again the restaurant was located in the basement of the building. It was full of old guys drinking cha-cha together and kissing each other’s cheeks. The worn out menus luckily had English, and the ordering system was a little different. First I got up from my table and went to a matronly lady who was apparently the owner. She took my order, asked me about drinks, and then waved me away. Later a waitress delivered our cold beers, and then after that she brought our food out individually. Finally we paid the matron and cut the waitress out of the process. I almost screwed everything up when I didn’t have any small bills – I think they sent one of the cooks to go make change.

The food at Racha was good – homestyle and delicious. We had a plate of fried mushrooms (long ones, with flavor sort of like shimeji mushrooms), a small bowl of beans (pretty close to Mexican pintos, with slightly different herbs) and some grilled chicken (off a skewer and covered in onions). We ordered a small amount knowing that we could always come back, and I think it was the right move. This was a real blue-collar sort of place, and it would be fun to explore the menu even more.

With the sun setting the temperature was starting to drop, so we walked around town taking pictures and exercising our legs in an attempt to balance the calorie count. In the end we found ourselves back on Erekle St, this time at g. Vino, a stylish wine bar, sitting outside and enjoying the cool evening. We ate a big plate of melon salad with a small plate of local cheeses, and sipped beer and wine while watching people walk by. Up the street a terrible band played, and everything kind of came together to cap off a nice evening.

Out of curiosity we walked again across the Peace Bridge, since there were a lot of people headed that way. As we crossed the bridge a small boat sailed underneath with a DJ and a whole nightclub on board – people were dancing on the boat as it glided by. On the other side of the bridge people had gathered to watch a fountain that was putting on a show with LED lights and water jets flying around to music. This was the same park that seemed quiet and abandoned this morning, now it was like the whole town was there. We walked around enjoying the carnival-like atmosphere, and as we headed back across the bridge there were even some fireworks over the fortress on the hill. It must have been some sort of holiday – our timing was good, I guess.

From there we wandered back to our hotel to head to bed. It turned out to be a pretty busy day but we kept it at a nice pace and managed to stay out of most of the summer heat.

Getting from the airport to central Tbilisi was kind of a microcosm of our experience in the city.

After changing some money into local currency (Georgian lari) we walked outside to find hundreds of shady-looking men standing around hoping to give us a ride into town. We had already decided to find the bus and use it, because we figured it would be easier to prevent being ripped off by the taxi drivers. And the taxi drivers looked pretty suspicious. They spoke to us under their breath while looking around (for competitors? Police?). We found the bus parked nearby and the person who we thought was the driver confirmed it was the right bus. We got on board, and the payment system was a little electronic box that accepted coins in exchange for a ticket. I realized we were in trouble because we had only received paper money from the exchange place. The bus driver (who really turned out to be the bus “manager”) gestured to go change our money inside the airport, but suddenly a nice man stepped up and paid for our ticket, and walked away before we could properly thank him.

We held the ticket but nobody checked or took it, and I think it was just for one person, not for both of us, but who knows? We went along with it, and soon enough the bus was underway.

This happened a lot in Georgia – we were initially confused or worried about something, but some nice person would come along and help us out, and then later we’d wonder why the situation had to be confusing in the first place. This is what we were bracing ourselves for before the trip, so we were ready and open-minded about how things worked out. And luckily, they always worked out.

The bus left the airport and strangely drove on the shoulder of the main road, picking up people along the way. Our big suitcase got in the way now and then but nobody seemed to mind much. We enjoyed the view as we went. The countryside between the airport and the city was rural but occasionally there would be bigger buildings – we even saw a Carrefour shopping mall. As we got closer to the city center the buildings and architecture became more European than Soviet and I was happy to see the streets lined with trees and plenty of sidewalks and parks. It looked like a nice city to enjoy on foot.

The bus dropped us off at Freedom Square, a dramatic automobile roundabout around a tall pillar with a gold angelic statue perched on top. It was getting hot, so we were looking forward to checking into our hotel and cleaning up – I was going on 24 hours without a shower and experiencing the combined summers of East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe all in one day wasn’t helping my personal aroma. We had the address to the hotel, but it was remarkably hard to find. I asked at several other hotels, but they seemed reluctant to tell me the information we needed. We walked back and forth along the street for about 30 minutes before we finally gave up and called our hotel. The lady said she’d be right out to meet us, and then she was there. She was a slightly older blonde woman with a nice smile and she led us down a parking garage ramp and past a poster of a sexy woman advertising something and then past a building guard and into what seemed like a regular apartment building. After an elevator ride to the fourth floor, we were led into a little foyer that served as a hotel lobby. We had arrived.

We have had this situation happen before (since we live in the age of AirBnB) and what seems like an actual hotel on Booking.com turns out to be a converted home or apartment. I don’t mind staying in these kinds of places, and they are usually pretty nice, but I at least like to know beforehand what we are getting into.

The lady checked us in, led us behind her desk into a quite large hotel room that was very clean and well-designed, and I was happy to see that they had the air conditioner running already. Later on when we settled into the room over the next few days we discovered that the bed was one of the most comfortable we’ve ever slept in, and the location was perfect for exploring the town. But our first impression was not positive because of the confusion about the kind of place it was.

After cleaning up it was time to go out and look for something to eat. The thing we wanted to eat most was khinkali, a giant dumpling made fist-sized and filled with a combination of herbs, beef and pork. This was “the dish” to try in Tbilisi, and since we are crazy about dim sum and gyoza back home we were eager to get started. Our first destination was a restaurant called Pasanauri that was famed for their khinkali. It wasn’t a long walk from our hotel, and it gave us a chance to stretch our legs a little and look around the city.

We enjoyed the walk, avoiding the sunny parts by strolling under trees, and taking in the scenery. I had expected more of an old Soviet kind of feeling from the city, but instead we were getting an old European feeling, combined with a sort of brusque manner from the locals. People walked without smiling, they seemed serious about their business and they didn’t seem to be too happy on the whole. There were a few beggars on the street but they weren’t very aggressive about it. Still, these were just our first impressions and our feelings about the city evolved over our time there.

Once we arrived at the location that my map indicated we could not find the restaurant. We walked around and around, but the place was either renamed, moved, or we had bad information. We gave up after a while and chose a place at random nearby that advertised khinkali and khachapuri (a cheesy flatbread) prominently outside. We went inside, took a seat, and the owner come out and gave us big menus to look at. We ordered khinkali, and he shook his head and said he was out. We ordered khachapuri and he said the same thing. “I only have felafel,” he said, and tried to get us to order that. What’s the point of the big menu if you only have one thing? It felt wrong to come all this way and then have felafel for our first meal in Georgia, so we decided to leave and try somewhere else.

So we walked to a different neighborhood, ordered some very cold beer and some khinkali, sat outside in the shade, and finally ate some local food. The khinkali were good, not as big as I remembered, but the cold beer made everything all right.

For a more formal dinner we walked just down the block to a place called Vino Underground. It was literally underground, in the humid basement of the building serving as a wine cellar and restaurant at the same time. We liked the somewhat dark atmosphere, and we ordered two wine tastings (four wines each) and also some food to go along with it. There were two young women running the place, and the food they served was very natural and surprisingly salty – I didn’t expect everything to be as salty as it was. The served us some bruschetta, some local cheeses, and eggplant wrapped vegetables that were quite nice.

The wines were the main event, and they were as delicious as they were unique. The whites they served were called “amber” wines, with the amber color coming from the clay pots they are fermented and stored in. The flavors of the grapes themselves were completely different from anything I had ever tried, and the flinty taste of the clay pots added a nice undertone to the flavor. The reds that we tried were all quite different in style, and one that I had really knocked my socks off. It was bold, well-rounded and fruit forward, like a Zinfandel but without a big oaky structure to support the fruit. Most of the wines were unpronounceable to us, and the bottles that they showed us were not exported, so these were truly tastes for that moment only. It was an educational tasting.

After our dinner and wine we were feeling pretty happy and since the sun was setting it was cool enough to walk around a bit more. We headed across town to check out a smaller Carrefour supermarket to get some souvenir ideas for later and to stock our hotel fridge. We had a little ice cream on the walk back to our hotel, and then finally we ran out of gas and decided to retire. I was certainly looking forward to sleeping in a horizontal position for the first time in a long time. It was a great start to our time in Tbilisi.

Recently Turkish Airlines stopped direct flights from Osaka Airport on Friday nights, which used to be a great way to work a regular day, get on a plane, sleep, and wake up in Europe on Saturday morning ready to sightsee. Fortunately, we found that Emirates Airlines has a similar flight, departing for Dubai on Friday night at 11:25 pm. Lucky for us!

I worked a regular workday on Friday, watching the weather and the train system to make sure that nothing would interfere with our plan to go to the airport. After work I went straight home, changed clothes, turned off all the automated systems in our home, wrapped our toilet in Saran Wrap, and then dragged our suitcase off to the station. It was very hot and humid, and my clothes were pretty sweaty by the time I got onto the air conditioned train to Kobe. I met up with Kuniko at the station, and she had already bought bus tickets to the airport and had also gotten a couple of cold beers for the hour long ride to the airport. A cold beer on a sweaty Friday night just before a long vacation is a very delicious beer indeed.

Once we arrived at the airport we were surprised to find that check-in was available, and luckily they checked our bag all the way to Tbilisi, which would make our life easier in Dubai, and free us up for more convenient sightseeing during our layover. After checking in we went to find some dinner at one of the restaurants in Kansai airport, but at 9 pm shops were already starting to close. It was a little surprising to go into each restaurant and be told that there was no food available even though we were in a busy airport, but I guess Japan goes to sleep early. We managed to get some sushi as a last order in a restaurant, and then finally walked out to the gate to sit around and wait for the flight.

It was our first time on Emirates Airlines, and I was pleasantly surprised. The design and lighting of the plane was suitably exotic, and they played Arabian pop music when we were boarding to make things even more interesting. The crew was truly international – they boasted that they had crew from eight different countries and they spoke sixteen different languages between them. Very impressive. The food was quite good as well, even though we were eating “dinner” at around 2 am Japan time. I got a lot of sleep on the flight, and the darkened cabin even had tiny LED “stars” in the ceiling to create a nice sleeping atmosphere. We arrived in Dubai after about nine hours, at around 5 am local time.

Dubai’s airport was huge. It is hard to describe the scale of the airport, and later we found that we were only in one of the three terminals. They used buses to move people around between areas, and when we were walking we were walking a lot. I enjoyed the glitz and polish of the airport – it felt a little like a Las Vegas casino with all the flashy gold and jewels everywhere. Still tasteful, but right on the border of gaudy.

Since we had about five hours to kill we figured we’d head out to do some sightseeing. Immigration and customs were cursory and soon we found ourselves looking for transportation to Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world. The metro system was closed until 8 am because it was Saturday, so we used a taxi. The driver knew exactly what we had in mind and drove us through the dark city for about twenty minutes until we arrived at the park surrounding the tower.

As soon as we stepped out of the air conditioned taxi we realized it was hot! My camera lens fogged right up, and the humidity was oppressive. I couldn’t believe that this was the temperature even this early in the morning. We just came from a muggy summer in Japan, so we were not overwhelmed. Still, I could feel that we were in the desert of the Middle East and not in Asia anymore.

The tower itself was as impressive as it should have been, and we took endless pictures of it, around it, and in front of it. There weren’t many people around so it was easy to cross streets and look around as much as we liked. The area around the tower was under serious construction, and later we found that most of Dubai is under the same conditions. They continue to build huge buildings and develop their infrastructure, hoping to vitalize their city before their oil runs out in 2029.

After exploring the neighborhood around the tower we walked underneath the pedestrian walkway (that was closed due to the early hour) until we reached the metro station. We waited there for about half an hour until the first train arrived, and then we headed off to Old Dubai.

On the train we could start to see some of the social stratification in the United Arab Emirates. There seemed to be a worker class, mainly in construction, and they looked Indian or Sri Lankan. The women tended to stay separate from unknown men and some train compartments were separated into women only areas, even within the same train car. Kuniko got a lot of attention (not sure if it was because she is Asian or because she is a woman), but I don’t think we felt like it was unsafe at any time. Mainly it was interesting for us to see a completely new culture. The trains themselves were very modern, made in Japan (by my company’s competitors) and operated without any staff from a central location.

Once we arrived at Old Dubai, we felt much more comfortable. This area of town was lined with shops, restaurants, and apartments. The social class was a little lower than downtown, and it looked like a comfortable and more fun place to spend time. We walked through on our way to a sightseeing spot in Kuniko’s guidebook, but it turned out to be a bit of a bust. Too touristy, not very authentic, and anyway mostly closed due to the early hour. We enjoyed just walking through the neighborhood. I think we’d be happy to spend more time there eating and looking around.

We took the train back to the airport, and mistakenly arrived at Terminal 3, when in fact our flight was leaving from Terminal 2. The staff explained that there was no free way to get from Terminal 3 to Terminal 2, and our only option was a taxi. We went back out to the taxi line and were assigned a luxury black taxi, and we could hear the disappointment in the driver’s voice when we said we were only going to Terminal 2. Still, it took a long time to get there, and again we could feel just how big the Dubai airport was. The taxi ride turned out to be expensive and used up the last of our dirham that we had prepared for the short visit. Inside Terminal 2 we had a little more time to kill so we went for some coffees at a Costa Coffee cafe. We ordered a Shawarma wrap to go along with it and we were pleasantly surprised how good it was. Kind of a middle eastern burrito, we hoped to have more on our return to the United Arab Emirates at the end of our trip.

The flight from Dubai to Tbilisi is only three and a half hours, flying straight over the Iranian desert and Tehran. We flew on a low-cost carrier called “Fly Dubai”, and since it was an LCC we had very low expectations. We ate and drank before boarding, and just napped and slept during the flight. We’ve had some experience with LCCs before, but apparently nobody else on the plane did.

I had never seen so many people ordering food and drink, complaining about this and that, and generally causing all kinds of problems for the rather stressed-looking staff. I imagine the job turnover at this company is pretty high. But soon enough we were descending on Tbilisi, and people could see the light at the end of the tunnel and stopped complaining so much.

We got off the plane, walked through a slightly dark airport, and then went through customs easily. We were relieved to see that our suitcase had made the trip along with us. We walked right through customs and were ready to get started with our vacation in Tbilisi, Georgia.

For our summer trip this year we kicked up the difficulty a couple notches. This time we were heading out to a part of the world that is not exactly on the beaten path, but certainly not a backwoods. A few years ago when staying in Moscow we had the opportunity to eat in a Georgian restaurant, and we were very happy with what we ate and drank. The wines were excellent, not all sweet like I had imagined, and the food was delicious: full of nuts, berries, eggplants and cheeses that came together nicely into a light but delicious meal that went perfectly with the wine.

Since that time, we had been hoping to visit Georgia ourselves, and to tag onto the trip a visit to Armenia, to try out Armenian brandy and learn more about that country.

So we spent a lot of time planning, and we set our expectations low, considering the infrastructure and standard of living would probably be less than what we are used to when traveling through Western Europe.

As it turned out it was a challenging trip, but also one of the more rewarding trips that we have taken. We saw a lot of new things, I became a little more comfortable around people wearing burqas, and we saw some parts of the world that were quite different from anything we’d seen before.

So let’s get down to it. Day by day, starting with our departure from Japan on August 4th, 2017.

A couple weeks ago we made a trip to San Diego, to help my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. We had a great time with them, enjoying the cool weather, the beach atmosphere, and the guest appearances by various friends and relatives.

As usual we spent a lot of time eating during the trip, and we really focused on two things that are hard to find in Japan: Mexican food and BBQ. Luckily it was easy to find both around San Diego, and we'll have great memories (and photos) to flashback to all the good eating we did.

Now we're back in Japan, and wrapping up the work week before we head off to our next trip. On Friday night we'll head out to the Kansai airport to catch an overnight flight to Dubai, and after a brief stay in the hot desert of the United Arab Emirates we'll move on to the Republic of Georgia. Hopefully Putin won't be annexing while we're there.

Our summer trip last year was great, so it'll be tough to top it this year. The area we'll be visiting is a little off the beaten path, especially for Japanese people (no guidebooks for these countries in Japanese). It will be interesting to see if we have as much fun away from the more mainstream holiday locations this time.

I'll post some pics and a recap of the trip once we get back!

Summer is officially here, with plenty of hot, humid days and nights full of air conditioning and occasional sweat storms.  Summer is the biggest challenge for me living in Japan, and our usual strategy for dealing with it is to simply leave for a little while.

My company has two holidays in the summer months.  The first is next week, the so-called “power saving holiday”.  This is a holiday given to the employees of various factories around the Kansai area.  The factories voluntarily shut down on a rotational basis to help reduce power consumption during the hot summers.  Our factory shuts down from Monday to Wednesday, and it is an easy choice to take two more holidays on my own and get nine consecutive days off.

As luck would have it, my power saving holiday is very close to my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, so we’ll be headed to San Diego to help them celebrate the big event.  It should be a low key celebration, with just some time with family and no big day trips or huge parties.  The media have not been notified. 

It’ll be nice to be back in San Diego, and Kuniko and I have made a short list of things we’d like to do beyond spending time with the family.  We are hoping to go to Las Quatros Milpas for some authentic Mexican food, and if possible a trip to Hodad’s would hit the spot.  That’s about it – most of the time will be spent chilling with the family.

Once we get back from the trip we have just two weeks before we are off on another one, so we’ve been doing some planning and preparation for the next trip, too.  Hopefully it’ll be cooler in the Caucuses than it has been in East Asia so far this year.

Anyway, next stop is San Diego for some family time.  I’ll post pics and and a recap when we get back!

Last weekend we did a quick trip to Busan to eat, drink, and break up our routine.  We accomplished all of the above, and learned a little about another part of Korea in the process.

We took just an hour flight over the Sea of Japan on Jin Air, a low-cost carrier out of Korea that we had never tried before.  They were pretty casual – the flight attendants wore golf shirts and tight jeans – but the price was right and we were completely satisfied.  

Once we arrived at Busan airport, it was an easy transfer to the train and subway systems, and there was no need for a car.  It is nice traveling in Asia and not having to worry about fighting traffic.  

One thing we noticed right away is that there wasn’t very much English around.  In Seoul there is a lot of English – signs, menus,  train schedules, everything.  Although it wasn’t completely absent, there was a sharp drop in the number of English words that we saw.  Everything was in Hangul, and since I have only been studying it for a couple of weeks it took a long time to read everything.  Even after reading it, I didn’t know very much Korean vocabulary, so it wasn’t that helpful.  Luckily the little  it of Korean that we did know was enough when combined with English keywords.  At one place we even were able to use Japanese to order, which was a first for our travels.

Our primary goal of the trip was to eat lots of delicious food, and we got right down to it.  Kuniko had spent a long time researching the most interesting foods and restaurants to try, and she had programmed everything into her smartphone so she guided us around the city effortlessly from one gourmet stop to the next.  

We had lots of great food and it would take too long to describe all of it, but some of our favorite dishes were the “mandu”, the Korean version of gyoza.  We had three different versions, all delicious.  One version was made up of tiny bite-sized dumplings that were boiled and splashed with sesame oil, and another were giant sized dumplings, about half the size of my fist, with perfectly balanced flavor.  The last version were more traditionally sized, but they were filled with glass noodles instead of meat, and some vegetables and spices to liven them up. All of them were great, and I think I liked the mandu the best of the trip.  

We also had a lot of noodles this trip.  The clear glass noodles seemed to be the most popular, although we saw other kinds as well.  We had our noodles mainly cold to fit the warm weather outside.  I was a little surprised that the noodles weren’t as spicy or garlicky as I had expected – but we were always able to add our own spices to liven them up even more.  One shopkeeper grew frustrated watching Kuniko stirring the noodles and took the bowl back from her, took it aside, and stirred it “correctly” for us.  She tasted a noodle from our bowl to make sure it was good, and then gave it back to us.  

Our last meal of Saturday night was outside at a food stand that was set up along a busy street.  The street was lined with food stands like these, with comfortable seats around the outside and a stainless steel bar to lean on while you ate.  The weather was perfect for outdoor dining, and watching people walk by while enjoying a bottle of Soju.   

There were two cooks at our food stand, but one of them spoke Japanese and we were able to order various foods.  We had fried egg, egg with sausage, pork and kimchi stir-fry, and a little plate of fruit “on the house”. We also ordered some octopus at the end of the meal, and we were surprised when the entire octopus arrived steamed at our table.  The staff gave me a pair of scissors and a plastic glove, and told me to get to work cutting it up.   I did my best, and left the head behind, knowing that was where all the yucky stuff lay in wait.  With the octopus came two different dipping sauces, and we really liked one made simply with sesame oil, garlic, and lots of salt.  

After a while the staff noticed that I hadn’t cut up the head so she walked over and started cutting it.  Just as she did she must have hit a pocket of octopus brains under pressure, and it sprayed a significant amount of goo onto her own blouse.  I was glad I hadn’t done it myself!

We over-ordered a little bit, but I think we just didn’t understand how much food was in each dish.  The portion size was quite large, and there was no warning from the staff that maybe we wouldn’t be able to finish everything.  Of course, we had been eating all day before arriving so maybe that had something to do with it.  We finally had to give up. The staff gave us a little grief for leaving a few pieces of octopus behind (especially since one staff was wearing a lot of our octopus innards on her shirt), but we settled up and left.  They overcharged us quite a bit (perhaps to cover the blouse cleaning bill?) but we were happy with the experience and dragged ourselves to our hotel to sleep off the big day.

A very impressive feature of Busan is its beaches.  We visited two, one larger and more famous, another smaller and more picturesque.  Both had clean white sand, plenty of space for everyone, and clear, clean water.  It was something I didn’t expect, and therefore was a pleasant surprise.  We walked around the beaches taking pictures and enjoying the fresh air for a long time.  One beach had a compressed air hose system set up to blow off the sand from your feet instead of using a water shower.  Very nice idea!

We also spent time walking through the street markets of Busan. There are some big “official” markets, filled with every sort of local meat, vegetable, tofu, fish cake, and spice that you could imagine.  Near our hotel was one that I thought was quite large, at least six square city blocks, but later we found another that made up almost an entire town, with shops focusing on clothes, seafood, and toys for kids.  Outside of these big markets were small stands set up just about anywhere on the street, and operated by entrepreneurs who were looking to make a quick buck.  The idea of selling stuff on the street was big in Busan, and it seemed like everyone was doing it.  

On the second day we walked through a huge fish market, and enjoyed seeing all the different sorts of fish on display.  Despite being an enormous market we could kind of understand that there was a limited selection of fish – and different shops were selling the same kinds of things.  I didn’t understand how you could have ten shops in a row selling the same dried fish for the same prices, but here they were.  Mysterious!

Our last meal in Busan was at a grilled meat restaurant. It took a while to find one since we were in the neighborhood of the fish market and most people came there to eat fish, not beef.  Eventually we found one, and had a really nice brunch of rib meat grilled with garlic and then wrapped in lettuce with spicy vegetables and ssamjan. The staff at the restaurant stayed at our table most of the time and cooked and distributed our food.  She was an older lady who knew that we didn’t understand her but didn’t seem to mind.  An old guy suddenly came into the restaurant with an empty cup and tried to get us to give him beer, but our helpful lady chased him away. With crab soup, and bowl of cold noodles in sweet and spicy sauce, and two big cold beers, we were in heaven.

We headed off to the airport afterwards, but due to some kind of technical misunderstanding with our reservation we had an extra couple of hours at the airport to kill.  Of course, we continued to eat and drink.  We had a cream puff stuffed with ice cream and sprinkled with green tea powder, a shaved ice dessert with mango, apple and cheesecake on top of ice and ice cream with condensed milk over the top, and we even sat outside on a patio on the rooftop and drank cold beer to kill some time.  The airport was great for hanging out and doing nothing, and soon enough it was time to catch our flight.

The whole trip was great, and just what we needed to refresh ourselves a little bit the rest of June and most of July.  I don’t know if we’ll be back soon, but Busan was just what we needed at just the right time.

This time of year is usually pretty quiet for us.  We are working through a long stretch without any long holidays, and I sometimes feel a little burned out with my schedule of classes and endless stream of students.  There are ten weeks without any special holidays between early May and mid-July, and they can sometimes feel like a slog.

To avoid the sloggy feeling, we scheduled various events on the weekends to keep things fresh.  We hit a couple of beer festivals with Yoshi and Mamiko.  We have gone out for dinner at some restaurants and held cooking parties at home trying to make the dinner of our dreams.  

This coming weekend is the midpoint of the slog, so we’ve scheduled a weekend trip to Busan, South Korea.  We originally had hoped to head to Taiwan during this weekend, but we came across some dirt cheap tickets to Busan and we had to jump.  It’ll be our first time to the city, and our goals are strictly gastronomical. 

I don’t think there is a lot of culinary variety between Busan and Seoul, but we’ll keep our eyes open and we’ll be trying everything we can.  I’ll try to remember to take a picture of it before we scarf it down!

Once we get back we’ll be on the other side of the hump and then we’ve got plenty more upcoming travel.  We will be heading to California in July, then in August to Georgia, Armenia, and Dubai.  Finally we booked our winter trip and we’ll spend 10 days in Egypt in December and January. 

Lots of good things to look forward to lately.  Can’t wait to document all this when we get back! 

Friday night I got home and had almost two hours to cook up something good for dinner.  Here’s how it shook out:

I started with two pork steaks.  The steaks were a little on the pricey side for the size, but they come from Okinawa pigs, and they were very pleasantly marbled with fat and very tender.  I rubbed them with a salty BBQ rub that I got as a present from my parents way back when, and then let them sit while I worked on the veggies. 

I chopped up five onions, and got them started on carmelizing.  A little later I dropped in some cut shiitake mushrooms and let everything cook together slowly over the next hour or so.  On another burner I threw some purple and green asparagus stalks into a sizzling hot stainless steel pan, seared them for a few minutes, and then braised them in chicken stock and butter to finish them off.

I gave the pork steaks a similar treatment, this time with the cast iron skillet, and once they were nicely browned on the outside I put them in the oven to cook the rest of the way through.

The last step was to grate some Gruyeres cheese over the carmelized onions and mushrooms and then I served everything with a bottle of Spanish monastrell that we have been wanting to try.  Kuniko got home, and we dug right in.  I was pretty pleased with the dinner.

Saturday I took it easy in the daytime, doing laundry and chores around the house, and Kuniko made it home from work a little earlier than she expected so we could even squeeze in an afternoon nap.  

In the evening we went over to Bill and Yuko’s place, just on the other side of town.  It was our first time to visit, and we liked their apartment.  They had done a lot of remodeling so it didn’t look anything like other apartments I have seen in Japan.  We talked and caught up on things, and had a nice Cajun-style pasta sauce with fettuccini noodles a fresh Asian salad with those crispy little noodles that I remember from my childhood (the Chung-King brand?).  They really did a great job with their hospitality and we had a nice evening with them.

Sunday we walked out to sit on the beach for a while, did some shopping on the way home, and I finally finished the game that we’ve both been obsessing over lately, a puzzle game called “The Witness”.  It starts out as a simple line puzzle, and then gradually expands more and more into a mysterious island filled with secrets.  With hundreds and hundreds of puzzles it was keeping us busy for a long time, and I still think that I probably only finished 75% of the game, but it was immensely more satisfying than shooting zombies or other mindless nonsense.  I usually prefer mindless games to blow off stress and relax, but The Witness was relaxing in its own way.  Highly recommended. 

It has been a little while since I’ve written anything on the blog, so I better get back to it.  The weather here in Japan has shifted to a very comfortable sunny pattern, and that means we’ve been active outside and trying to get in as much fun as we can before the rainy season and the heat comes.

Most days we follow a pattern where we eat healthy vegetarian soups and salads on the weekdays, and then eat other things we’re craving on the weekends.  On Sundays Kuniko has been making up these great soups – tomatoes, beans, lots of celery, maitake mushrooms, framed around a browned onion base.  With a big pot of soup in the fridge we can eat all week on about 2000 yen.

The weekends are for trying new things.  Last Friday night after work I tried to pan sear some salmon filets, and served them on a bed of green mung beans, mushrooms and onions.  It turned out nicer than I expected.  I usually avoid cooking fish inside the house because I’m worried about the smell and the cleanup, but this method worked out fine.  

Also this past weekend we spent some time exploring Osaka.  I had to go pick up some new glasses in Kobe, and since Kuniko was working that day I just continued into Osaka and killed a couple of hours drinking Fat Tire on draft at Craft Beer Bud.  Once we got together we went off to try burgers at Critterburger near Shinsaibashi.

We don’t spend a lot of time in Osaka because of the crowds, but I’m trying to get out there more often to explore.  Critterburger was located in a slightly upscale, younger neighborhood.  We sat outside and enjoyed the great weather.  My burger was great – a spinach and bacon burger, and together with a glass of cheap red wine it hit the spot.  

After the burger we put on some serious mileage walking around to various places in Osaka.  We walked to Ura-Namba to visit the strange building with no name packed with restaurants and we had a small plate of appetizers and a glass of sparkling wine. From there we walked all the way back to Umeda via Orange Street and Fukushima.  Orange Street was a stylish modern street with many cafes and fashion shops, and the Fukushima area has apparently been evolving into a more hip dining area over the past few years.  We liked Fukushima, and we found an alley full of restaurants with outdoor seating, almost like you’d find in Europe.  Unfortunately by the time we happened to walk by the places were packed with people, and so we marked the area as a place to go back to someday.

We ended up at nearly 30,000 steps for one day of walking, so Sunday was more relaxed at home with Kuniko on a baking blitz, and me trying to solve the puzzles of “The Witness”, a unique video game that we’ve been hooked on recently.

So all is well in our neck of the woods – just staying healthy, happy, and hungry.

This weekend we have plans to rewatch an old favorite of ours, the movie “Chef”.  It is a fun movie if you haven’t seen it, and we enjoy it mainly because it causes us to become ravenously hungry.  

This time in preparation I’m defrosting a pork shoulder to roast and make into Cuban sandwiches, trying to follow the recipe from the movie as best as I can.  There may be some grilled cheese sandwiches involved, too, depending on how out of hand the drinking gets.

In addition, we’re planning on a Saturday morning trip into Kobe to try an early opening sandwich place (open at 7 am, serving beer, too!). I’m not shy about having beer for breakfast, and it will give us something to do while we wait for the farmer’s market to open at 9 am.  

I also made a purchase of rennet and some citric acid, so I may try to up my cheese game and move to the next stage with some more varieties of cheese.  It has been fun to experiment with cheeesemaking at home, and I’ve been using the Okinawan cheeses that we recently bought as inspiration.  

Like most every weekend, we’ll be concentrating our enjoyment around food.  Since I was a kid food has been one of the cornerstones of conversation in our family, and it hasn’t stopped since moving to Japan.    This year I have been pursuing my passion a little more deeply when it comes to food, and we’ll see where that leads down the road.  

The meal began with a dream of mushrooms. I had some old dehydrated morel mushrooms in the pantry, and I wanted to use them up. But morel mushrooms, as delicious as they are, do not a meal make. My idea was to buy lots of different varieties and have sort of a mushroom tasting, either as individual varieties or all together.

It was off to the store, and over two days I accumulated quite a selection. First there were two bags of white, slightly dirty button mushrooms saved from the discount tray on a late night return after drinking too much. There was also a small pack of fresh shiitakes, a tight clump of brown shimeji mushrooms, and finally a flat cluster of maitake mushrooms from the local grocery store.

Kuniko was a key player in providing the more obscure ones. She brought home a package of mature hiratake mushrooms, with silver-grey topped caps the color of old nickels. And she also produced what turned out to be the highlight: a small basket of kakinokitake that smelled of fruity perfume right out of the package and colored bright orange like the persimmon it is named for.

I rehydrated the morels, dusted them in flour, and fried them in salty butter in our heavy iron skillet. The texture of the fried morels was unique to me, firm but not quite crunchy, with a rich mushroom taste that was carried even further when accented with butter. They served as our appetizer while I assembled the rest of the ‘shrooms.

The skillet was put back into use, first by sautéing several smashed cloves of garlic in a puddle of olive oil, then accommodating the rest of the mushrooms, six kinds in all, as I dropped orphaned parts of each cluster into the heat making a haphazard mix. Eventually all the mushrooms made it into the skillet, forming a kind of uncooked mushroom mountain that was initially frightening to behold.

With time the mushrooms began to release water and absorb oil, and the aromas of earth, garlic and a surprising fruity note from kakinokitake mixed and filled the kitchen. With so many varieties in the same pan it was hard to know when the best time was to finish the sauté, but the good thing about mushrooms is that with so much water trapped inside their cellular structure, there is a lot of room for error.

In the end the dish was delicious. The flavors and textures of individual varieties of mushroom could be experienced by picking them out with a fork, and the sauce that coated every member of our mushroom army served to unite them all into a satisfactory whole. The real revelation was the orange kakinokitake that contributed an unexpected fruitiness that survived the forced assimilation of so many disparate flavors in the fry pan. We’ve had this kind of mushroom before in our nabe during winter months, but I was impressed that it worked so well in the sauté.

So we sipped our Spanish Garnacha from Alto Moncayo, enjoyed our fungal feast, and that set the tone for our weekend.

I love cheese.  

Growing up in Sonoma Valley I have had a lot of opportunities to eat cheese.  My family would drive 15 minutes into Sonoma, go to Vella’s Cheese off the plaza, and I would beg for some small sample while my parents did the purchasing.  On the plaza and in Shone’s grocery store Sonoma Cheese Factory kept us in Colby, Pepper Jack, Habanero Cheese, Garlic Cheese, and plenty of others over the years.

My tastes run beyond California cheese, as well.  I sat with my father and uncle in the village of Cheddar, England, and had a firm ripe block of cheese straight from the source – and learned what real Cheddar tastes like.   My wife and I ate an unhealthy amount of smooth Gruyeres cheese in the little Swiss town of the same name, and toured the cheese factory nearby to see the process.  And I think I’ll never forget digging into the center of a life-changing Azeitao cheese with our port wine while sitting on the banks of the Douro River in Porto, Portugal. 

I’ve had a lot of cheeses in my life, but I have never actually made cheese.   Yesterday I finally did.

The desire to make cheese could come from a lot of different places. I suppose it could be for financial reasons.  Here in Japan cheese (called “Natural Cheese” in Japanese) is very expensive and still a luxury item.  For other people, maybe they want to make cheese to express their creativity and perhaps someday I’ll get there.  But for me, I wanted to make cheese to see the science in action.

For the past few years I have been really into reading about food science, especially from the pages of “On Food and Cooking” by Harold McGee.  One of the first chapters is on cheese, and he goes into (literally) microscopic detail on the how’s and why’s – fascinating stuff.  Eventually I figured that if people a thousand years ago could make cheese, why shouldn’t I give it a go?

Sunday morning I found myself up early, so I started making a simple ricotta.  The day before I had bought two liters of whole milk at the store, and it served its purpose just fine.  I added some acid (in the form of vinegar) heated it while stirring constantly, and after about ten minutes it clotted up and I could see the “curds and whey” for myself.

I separated the curds, dumped the whey, and started squeezing the moisture out of the curds.  It was my first time, and I think I may have squeezed out a little too much – the next time I’ll be a little more gentle because I prefer a moister ricotta.  

In the interest of science and comparison I also tried a recipe found online that described a five-minute ricotta in the microwave.  It worked out pretty well too, although I think the first batch I made would scale more easily to accommodate bigger batches.  

After completion and the cleanup I felt a bit of satisfaction – the kind that comes from creation.  We ate cheese for dinner, spread on good French bread with some herbs and salami.  The cheese was a pile of crumbles, a little dry, with a salty milky creaminess that balanced nicely with the flaky French bread. We branded the experiment a qualified success, with lots of improvement ideas for the next time. 

So what’s next?  My curiousity is piqued, so I’ll do more research into other types of cheese and how to make them, and think about whether I want to try aging cheese.  I have a decent place to age them – upstairs in our wine cellar – but I would have to give up some space dedicated to wine, and that would be a great sacrifice for an oenophile like myself.

So, great fun, and I’m looking forward to the next time to make more.  If I could just find someone with a goat or an ewe here in Japan…