You can find pictures from our trip here.

Since we both wrapped up our school terms at the end of March, I was looking for some kind of trip to really create a border between the past term and the next one.  At first we looked into the usual culinary meccas of Hong Kong and Taiwan, but for some reason the plane ticket prices were much higher than normal. Perhaps we weren’t the only ones feeling like we needed a change of scenery.

As it turned out, Okinawa was a reasonable alternative. As illogical as it sounds, Japanese domestic trips (by plane) on the weekends tend to be more expensive than international ones.  Since we were taking a few days off in the middle of the week it was cheaper than the international destinations, so we went with it.  Kuniko found us a hotel and a rental car, and we flew out of Kobe for a two hour shot into Naha.  

The flight was easy, although it felt a little strange to leave the passports at home.  Once we arrived in Naha we could immediately feel the warmer temperature, and I had to pack away my top two layers of clothing and go in just a T-shirt.

Transportation from the airport into the city was simple based on a monorail system.  One end of the line was the airport, and on the other end was Shuri Castle, the big cutural sightseeing draw in Naha.  The price was pretty reasonable for the monorail, and it only took about 20 minutes or so to get to the castle.  

We were in Okinawa for three days, and the weather was very clear and sunny during the first half of our stay, and cloudy with occasional sprinkles during the second half.  That reallly worked out for us because we did all the sightseeing we wanted to do during the first half of the visit anyway, 

Besides the castle in Naha, there were some dark alleys, hidden shops and lively markets to explore.  The backstreets led us to some great food, interesting pictures, and strange people.  We found our favorite restaurant of the trip somewhere back there, and everything was so jumbled and temporary feeling that I couldn’t find the name of the place written anywhere.  We’d walk through an abandoned warehouse converted into smaller shop spaces, and then it would open up into a small open bar with patrons downing awamori and laughing loudly on the road to drunken oblivion.  We tried to take the opportunity to join them.

As you could probably guess, we were really focused on activities gastronomical during this trip, so we tried to eat as many different kinds of local foods as we could.  There are a lot of delicious and unique foods in Okinawa, and until this trip I have been limited to sampling them in Okinawan restaurants around Kansai.  We ate almost exclusively Okinawan foods while we were there in a bid to try new things and also to avoid stuff that is easy enough for us to get around our neighborhood.  One unexpected difficulty was ordering – even Japanese people from other islands didn’t know the names of the dishes and what they contained, so we often had to ask our servers and cooks for information.  Everyone was happy to explain things to us, though.

The big draw in Okinawa is pork. There are pork dishes everywhere and the specific kind of pork, called “Agu”, is apparently special to the island.  The Agu pork is smaller and supposedly “sweeter” and I can at least attest to the great flavor.  We had many braised pork dishes, including Soki soba, Soki on its own, also salt pork, and Agu sausage.  We even had some spam –  I hope that it was pork.  The dish I really liked was fu-champu, which is the lighter-than-air fu stir fried into vegetables and served hot and flavorful.  We often eat goya-champu but this was a pleasant variation that was also on the healthier side.  We ate well during the trip, and I have the photos to prove it.

Despite all the delicious traditional foods we ate, we did notice a lot of steakhouses, which may have been an influence from America.  It seemed like every block had a steakhouse on it, and judging from the prices on the menus we saw outside I thought they were seriously overpriced.  

Our trip was not limited to the city of Naha.  On the second day we rented a car and drove north to the Churaumi Aquarium, located on the west edge of the north part of Okinawa island.  It was an easy 90-minute drive along the expressway.  The car rental for the day was only about 3500 yen, and Kuniko handled the little kei-car well enough, despite the tiny engine under the hood.

Churaumi Aquarium sits on a huge piece of oceanfront land, and it took a long time to walk from the parking area to the aquarium itself.  I have been spoiled for aquariums in my life, but I have to say that Churaumi is right up there with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in terms of quality and diversity. We really enjoyed the exhibit with the whale sharks, a scary looking shark take full of hungry inmates, and the smaller tanks with more colorful (and equally dangerous) occupants.  Outside we saw the sea turtles swimming in lazy circles in their tank, and we could walk down to the beach and enjoy the sand and surf for a while.  

I had heard that the water in Okinawa was clear, and it certainly was.  You could see a good distance down into the water and it would be ideal for scuba and snorkeling if you had the time and equipment.  The sand was also gorgeous – like pale beige sugar – and there was a minimum of kelp and other undesirables mucking up the beaches.  

After the aquarium we drove through Yagaji island to get to Kouri island.  We stopped at a cheesy tourist trap sightseeing tower, but quickly left and finished a drive around the island to see Heart Rock and some other coastal scenery. From there we made a slow journey back south, stopping for a view of the cliffs at Manza Cape, and then finally returning our rental car in Naha in the early afternoon. 

Our last day was spent eating, shopping, staying under the umbrella now and then, and really just trying to squeeze the last bit of enjoyment out of the trip. Our souvenir hunt turned into Mission Impossible at one point – we had seen something we wanted but finding it again among the sea of similar-looking souvenir shops was an ordeal. 

I think we really enjoyed the weekend, but I’m not sure if we’ll be frequent visitors to Okinawa in the future.  I would really like to come again and visit some of the more remote islands to the south, and maybe enjoy some water sports and privacy, but we’ll wait a while and see how that goes.  

All in all a great little weekend getaway, and I think we’ll be in great mental condition going into the new term.

At the end of last year we accepted an invitation to have lunch at the Tada family residence in Suzurandai.  We really enjoyed our time there, eating delicious handmade sushi, and playing with their kids.  The Tadas are really friendly, laid back people.  Naturally we invited them to our place, and they came over on Sunday last weekend to take us up on the offer.

We love to host people for lunch and dinner, and so almost a month before we started to think about a menu.  Something for kids, something American, something easy for us to do on Sunday morning.  We ended up serving several kinds of sausages grilled outside on our BBQ, Kuniko made two beautiful Cobb salads, four plates of appetizers (Spanish croquettes, pinxtos, frittata, roasted potatoes with rosemary, and then I made a big dish of very cheesy mac-and-cheese.  It seemed like everything was a hit with the adults and the kids, so we called it a success.

During our lunch conversation Mrs. Tada confessed that she doesn’t enjoy cooking very much, which was almost shocking for people like us who revere cooking as something close to a religion.  They do enjoy traveling overseas, and they told us that they’d be heading to Malaysia soon for a short holiday with their kids and their own parents.  

It was a really fun lunch.  The kids had lots of energy after eating, so we played Uno, Jenga, and even got some time in playing video games and fighting giant robot dinosaurs.

We were a little tired out after hosting the kids, but we still had enough energy to clean up and graze on leftovers afterwards.  Kuniko went the extra mile with cooking and clean up and really made the party go smoothly.  We are getting better and better at hosting – it is threatening to become one of our hobbies – and we’re already setting our minds to the next guests in April.

Friday night after work I went into Sannomiya to meet Kuniko and try a couple of restaurants that we have had our eye on.  

The first place with a pinxtos place, along the same street in Motomachi as Bo Tambourine, a pretty good American food restaurant.  The pinxtos place was very small, and operated by a couple – the Japanese husband cooked in the back room and spoke Spanish with his Spanish wife, who spoke perfect Japanese to their customers.  The system was a little unusual – you went to a buffet area, selected a tab of paper from a small basket in front of the pinxtos you wanted to eat, and then handed the paper to the staff – who plated the food and brought it over to you.  They had a small selection of about ten different pinxtos to choose from, and wine by the glass was limited to three reds and three whites.  Luckily both the food and the wine were excellent, and the service was top notch.  

I’m not sure that it was worth the money – I think of pinxtos as something you snack on while casually sipping wine and talking before you move on to somewhere else for dinner. However we enjoyed the experience, and we may try it again someday. 

Our main event was a place that is popular in Kobe for their meat.  It is hard to make a niche for yourself in Kobe when you are competing with all the Kobe beef places at the high end and yakiniku places at the middle to lower end.  This place was called Gallo, and as soon as we walked in I loved the atmosphere.  It is a tiny place, decorated in solid dark wood not unlike a British pub.  We had a counter seat at a beautiful bar, and as soon as we got our coats sorted out they handed us the menu.  

I thought we’d have some time to think about the menu but the waitress started pushing us hard to order soon, because the meat would take a while and we had better get in our order now.  The way she handled it made it seem like we had done something wrong – isn’t it her job to make us comfortable?  We hurriedly reviewed the menu and picked two selections: 100 grams of aged sirloin, and a 100 grams of roasted beef shoulder.  The idea was to try a little of several things and share.  We also ordered a mixed appetizer plate to keep us busy during the long wait, and I ordered a bottle of red wine – a Spanish monster that turned out to be a good match with the beef.  The manager of the place handled the wine recommendation and pouring perfectly.

The big appetizer plate arrived and it was enormous.  We had ordered the smaller appetizer plate but there was enough food here to feed us and a few friends if we had brought them along.  There were big cuts of roast beef, pickled vegetables, terrines, salad, smoked duck, and some others I can’t recall.  It really hit the spot.  I was starting to think that we’d discovered our new favorite restaurant.

Our meat showed up soon after, and it looked great.  It wasn’t exactly grilled – sort of roasted and fried.  The outside of our meats looked great, the meat inside was rare to medium rare, but overall it didn’t impress.  Too oily for my taste, but maybe that was just the cuts that we had selected. Like Kuniko said, we could do better at home (and we have in the past).  Later I watched the cook frying up the meat in an iron skillet – there was a lot of oil and he ladled the hot oil over the top of the meat to sort of deep fry it.  

So the meat was acceptable but not really our style, and we ended on a note of slight disappointment.  So close, but not quite what we had hoped for.  We paid the bill and hit the road, with the taste of delicious Spanish wine helping to ease the blow as we walked back to the train station.

On our way back we made a final (and perhaps ill-advised) stop at a curious restaurant.  We saw it out of the corner of our eye as we walked near the train tracks.  It had a long, dimly lit hallway to a smoky room lit with fluorescent lights.  There were a few people eating at a stainless steel counter, and it had a really weird vibe.  We had to go check it out.

Drawn more for the atmosphere than the food we checked the menu as an afterthought in the hallway, and it was apparently a HORUMON restaurant.  A week ago I had the upscale version of offal, and this place was on the low end of the offal spectrum.  The vey low end.

We were led to a table by a large young woman with a scowl on her face.  The other customers didn’t look up from their meals and the older cooks and staff didn’t look up either.  The smoke we saw from outside came from the frying of meats and organs on big steel plates behind the counter.

The room was very long and narrow, and the back wasn’t well lit and was full of broken refrigeration equipment and tables and chairs pushed out of the way.  We sat at a table on dark green plastic cushioned seats, so low that my knees were higher than my waist.  

The waitress brought some tea for us and took our order, but the look she gave us was clear.  Kuniko said it best, “it looked like she wanted to tell us that we don’t belong here.”
It was true – we were still wearing suits from our work and eating our third meal of the night and happy and cheerful from a bottle and a half of wine, and a lot of the people there looked like they could barely afford the bowl of food in front of them.     

We soaked in the atmosphere, I ate a small bowl of handmade noodles in a broth that could have used a little more salt, and Kuniko had a bowl of rice with mixed vegetables and small strips of beef.  We split a cold beer with the meal, and then got  out of there fairly quickly.  

Another interesting night in Kobe – we’ve had a lot of those recently!

This past weekend was one of the three day variety, and I managed to pack in plenty of activities, most of them revolving around food.  

Friday night after work I attended a small party with three people that I know from work.  Two of them were my students, and one was not, but all of them were eager to go out after work and blow off some steam.  

The original reason to have the party was that the party organizer, one of my students, couldn’t believe that I had never really tried what they call “HORUMON” in Japanese.  What it is actually is beef offal, which is not my favorite.  He insisted that I join him for a dinner, and he was hoping to see me suffer through a meal full of disgusting raw organs. To be honest, I was fully expecting to as well.  But he made the mistake of taking me to a really nice restaurant that served HORUMON in a Korean style, which made things much better.

First, most of the offal came grilled on skewers, just like yakitori.  If you didn’t know that it was beef anus, you probably would eat it without hesitation and ask for seconds.  I knew it was beef anus, but I ate it anyway.  

Most of the food we had was pretty standard in the HORUMON world.  We ate several different stomachs of beef including the bumpy and slightly grotesque “sanmai”. The sanmai was served raw, along with beef heart and pancreas.  The saving grace here was the sauce – lots of spicy Korean sauce, sesame oil and salt.  

Our host and organizer, Mr. Morimoto, was a little disappointed that I seemed to be liking everything.  He started ordering more and more things, consulting with the other guests in Japanese (because he thinks I can’t understand it) and specifically looking for something that would gross me out.  The closest I came was beef liver, but since it was grilled I had no problem.  

After dinner Mr. Morimoto and I had some gyoza together and some more beers, and I went home a little later (and drunker) than I expected.  

Saturday night we had Bill and Yuko over for dinner.  Bill is a resident inspector who works at Kawasaki.  He acts as the eyes and ears of the customer during day to day activities while in production.  He has been doing this kind of job for a long time, and he has lots of good stories.  Bill and I have gone out to dinner a few times and been to a few standing bars.  It was the first time to have him over to our place.  We talked with his wife, Yuko, who doesn’t speak much English, and separately we talked with Bill, who doesn’t speak much Japanese.  It was interesting to hear about their life together from two different points of view.  They are both really nice people, and they seemed to like the burritos, salsa and guacamole that we served.  They live in the same town, ten minutes walk from our place in Okubo, so it was easy for them to stroll back without having to worry about a train.

Sunday we decided to stay in most of the day.  We did a little grocery shopping, but mostly lounged at home.  We booked some travel for this summer, which was a big relief.  It’ll be fun to work on the details later.  For dinner I grilled up some monster burgers.  Kuniko had found a source for some large size hamburger buns, and so we did a test run.  They turned out nicely – but I was plenty full after that monster burger.  I guess my stomach isn’t as big as it used to be.

Finally, on Monday we took a little walk in the morning, and then celebrated White Day a little late.  White Day is actually on March 14th, but since we were both busy on that day I instead decided to celebrate it on a day that we could both enjoy it.  We had a small chocolate cake from Demel and a Blanc de Blancs champagne from Gremillet.  I was trying to replicate the same feeling we had when we ate chocolate cake and drank champagne back when we visited Demel in Vienna last summer.  

We also watched “An Officer and a Gentleman” starring a very young Richard Gere, and I could really feel the culture differences over the years. Maybe it is combined with living outside America for so long, but the movie was full of “WTF?” moments for both of us.  Still, it was free to watch so no worries.

Finally, Kuniko got in the kitchen for some therapeutic cooking on Monday and made a big pot of vegetable soup for our dinners this week, and also made a Cobb salad as a test run for next week.  We had the salad for dinner and it seemed pretty good.  We’ll serve it to the Tada family next week when they come over for lunch.

All in all another great weekend.  I like the three day weekends a lot – I wish we had more of them during the year!   

The weekend is drawing near and I still haven’t blogged about our last weekend.  There were some events worth sharing, mainly about what we ate.  

Since our weekday menus are generally pre-determined (vegetable and soy based nabe with kimchi on the side) we tend to let loose gastronomically on the weekends.  

Last Friday morning before I work, I put a piece of chicken breast and a piece of pork lean shoulder into a marinade of shio koji, garlic and ginger.  What’s shio koji, you ask.  It is my new favorite marinade ingredient.  I learned about shio koji from an article on koji in Cook’s Science available here. It told all about how someone took koji (already popular for the fermentation of sake and miso) and adapted it for use in the layman’ kitchen.  As someone who is always interested in fermentation science and how it might benefit my stomach, I was interested to try.  Apparently shio koji is a little difficult to find in regular supermarkets in the USA, but I was pleased to find many varieties easily available at our local corner grocery store.  The secret of shio koji was out a long time ago in Japan.  

On the website they described a recipe for using shio koji to make fried chicken, but I didn’t really want to deep fry anything.  Instead I settled for a 10 hour marinade, and then pan fried the meats in a stainless steel skillet, and then finished them in the oven.  Just for fun, I did a side by side comparison with another version – this time only a 30 minute marinade and using grain mustard instead of garlic ginger.  

One thing you have to be careful about is that the shio koji has a little bit of sugar in it, so when cooking on the skillet the sugar will brown and eventually blacken, so I did a two step cooking method using the oven.  I was surprised how quick the shio koji marinade made the searing, and the surface of the meats browned really quickly – even the 30 minute marinade cooked right up.  

The end result was a side by side comparison with a bottle of red wine and a green salad.  We had fun comparing the two marinades, and I think we agreed that the longer marinade was better.  The shio koji imparts a kind of mysterious fruitiness to the aroma of the meats – another layer of flavor that went well with our wine and green salad.  

So I’ll be eager to drag out the BBQ soon when the weather warms up and try more marinade variations based on shio koji.  The experiments will continue!

Saturday night we ate gyoza and a kind of bok choi stir fry, alongside shio koji pickled carrots and cucumbers, so we were on a serious garlic kick.  Luckily we both had Sunday off to let the odor get through our systems.

Sunday morning I woke up with a soreness in my right ankle.  I hadn’t done anything that would have caused it, except for maybe too much exercise on the exercise bike lately, so I made an effort to keep the weight off of it and I hobbled around the house resting it.  

We had originally planned to take a train in to Kobe to mail off a package and then do some shopping for bread and meat, and so we changed the plan to drive to Kobe instead.  I was able to rest my ankle most of the time, with only a little hobbling between stores.  

This time we went to a bakery in Ashiya that makes some great rolls that we often can enjoy during our dinners at Anonyme.  The bakery is called Biobrot, and the baker studied in Germany so there is a big influence of dark breads, nuts and rye in the mix.  We went kind of nuts buying all sorts of different kinds of breads, and the service was excellent.  The staff recommended several kinds to try since we were focused on dark breads, and the shop was filling up quickly.  We bought a ton of stuff and took it home.  While we were in the neighborhood we also stopped at the butcher down the road.     The service there is a little snooty but the meat selection is top notch.  We had been there before and liked what we had.  This time we got a selection of meats, three kinds of salads, and some smoked roasted beef to make the most luxurious lunch sandwiches I’ve ever taken to work.

Despite my bum ankle the day was a success, and I spent the rest of the day with Kuniko at home, sipping Prosecco, and resting up.  

My ankle still isn’t fully recovered, so I’m abstaining from the exercise bike until things get better.  Until then, lots of stretches, rubs, and walking gingerly.  It ain’t easy getting old!

We’re pretty sure that our livers and stomachs wouldn’t survive a rock and roll lifestyle.

Our limit was reached after only four days.

Last night we wrapped up Kuniko’s four day birthday celebration extravaganza.  It was fun – don’t get me wrong – but we had just a simple salad for dinner last night and it was so good.  Sometimes simple is best.

Friday night I met Kuniko after work and we hit a small bistro near her workplace that served some pretty good food (foie gras, cumin carrots, mint couscous) and reasonably priced wine by the glass.  We stayed for just a quick drink and then walked a ways to go to our dinner place, a French restaurant that Kuniko had found online.  I don’t remember the name now, but it was a nice enough place.  With a nice bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape we enjoyed a big salad of cilantro and mozzarella cheese, laced with peanut oil, a bit of lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese.  After the salad we had oysters in a basil garlic sauce, and then we finished with two smoked and roasted lamb chops that were perfectly cooked.  Yum!

Saturday in the daytime we took care of our car inspection (every two years it is required by Japanese law) and then we headed out to Kobe to meet Yoshi, Mamiko and Akita.  Together we celebrated both Kuniko’s birthday and also Akira’s acceptance to his top choice of high schools.  Akira’s request was to hit a bunch of different restaurants to try different foods, so we guided them to some of our favorites: lobster rolls at Luke’s, burgers and ribs at Bo Tambourine, four kinds of shorompo at our favorite grouchy Taiwanese place, champagne and cheese at Reims, and what turned out to be almost a full dinner at a new place called Istanbul Cafe, which was selected more for the decor than the menu.  What a night – I was completely full by the end of it and was dying for exercise afterwards.  We walked under the train overpass towards Kobe station, passing lots of shuttered shops and the occasional open bar and nightclub.  I was just happy to get another 3000 steps in.  Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira were fun to party with, and I’m afraid that we’ve set Akira on a gourmet road that he’ll have to follow the rest of his life.  He’ll never be able to go back to boring food again.

For Kuniko’s birthday on Sunday we went over to visit her folks, who seemed to be doing better and better.  We came back and opened up some Spanish cheeses and a bottle of champagne that I got for Kuniko’s birthday present, and we relaxed in the afternoon.  The aforementioned salad came afterwards, and we ended the weekend without overstuffed stomachs.  

The next birthday celebration will probably be more relaxed and less calorie-intensive, but we had a really good time.  Now, back to work!

We kicked off our four-day birthday celebration extravaganza for Kuniko last night.  

It all started with Kuniko’s (as well as my) first ever K-pop concert.  After work we met in Sannomiya for a quick sashimi dinner, and then caught a train to Port Island to see the teen singing group “Seventeen” performing at World Memorial Hall.  The place was sold out (capacity of 8,000) and I think I was the only male paying customer.

Just joking – we did walk past a guy once or twice on the way to our seats.  But I think the other 7,998 people were young women, mainly high school and college aged.  I didn’t mind – I’m used to being a minority here in Japan anyway – and it turned out to be a spectacle that I will remember for a long time.  I’ll never forgot the long, long lines of around a hundred women waiting to use the bathroom, and the men’s bathrooms sitting there open and empty.  

Almost every one of those 8,000 people held a modified flashlight, so that they could wave them in time with the music.  We neglected to buy one for ourselves, so we ended up enjoying the concert as individuals rather than as a group.  The lights had a cool effect when the overhead lights were cut for the show.  Kind of like stars across the sky – each star clutched by a breathless love-struck teenage girl.

The show itself was very well done.  We sat above and to the left of the main stage, so most of the time we were close to the action.  The performers were not shy about lip syncing – most of the chorus and lead vocals were piped in through the audio system, but the boys danced like crazy.  I could see why the lip sync was necessary because I’m sure they could barely breathe after dancing for two hours like maniacs.  

The stage was also set up so that it could rise and float over the audience, bringing the talent to the people in the back of the stadium and sharing the love.  It was the first time I had seen something like that, although I haven’t been to many arena concerts lately and I’m sure they have been doing something like it since Motley Crue in the 1980s.  It was cool to see, and luckily nobody fell off the giant moving platform floating through the starry sky.

After a big concert I expect that the speakers will cause a little bit of hearing loss, but it turned out that the speakers were the least of my worries – I was surrounded by nearly 8,000 screaming teenage girls and that was what caused the real damage.  It felt like Ed Sullivan and the Beatles out there.  

Kuniko and I both really enjoyed the show (probably for different reasons) and we left right after the last song before the encore, ensuring that we could catch a train off Port Island without any hassle.  Success!

To celebrate and recap the concert we decided to go visit a new brewpub that opened up in Sannomiya (actually Ninomiya) called “In Tha House Brewing”.  We liked the pictures on the website and they made their own beer, so it was a natural destination for us.  The location was interesting – it was down an old shopping street that was mainly shuttered now, and they must have gotten a great deal on rent because there was nothing else nearby.

Inside the interior reminded me a little bit of the brewpubs around San Diego – lots of wood, stainless steel and spot lighting.  We ordered four of the six beers on tap, and shared them between us for evaluation.  

The good news was that they had a couple of really well made beers – a White IPA that I really liked, and a pale ale that was quite tasty as well.  One beer, called Funk Ale, was just that – it tasted one dimensional and unfinished.  It is a new place, so I could excuse a bad beer now and then, but it was a little disappointing that they thought they could sell it to customers.  

The real bad news was the prices, the food, and the furniture.  The furniture we sat on was cheap plastic and it felt like it.  I don’t mind sitting on cheap plastic seats when I am eating street food in Thailand, but when I am paying premium prices for homemade craft beer in upscale Kobe?  The beers were priced on the high side – we chose a 300 mL size (they called it “medium”) and we paid around 600 yen a glass.  A pint glass was around 1000 yen, so that is a lot to spend for a beer place with no reputation at the moment.  

Finally the food was really disappointing. We only ordered two dishes so I can’t judge the whole menu, but we had fish and chips that ended up being two small pieces of overfried fish and a couple of potato wedges that were underwhelming, and we also ordered a Caesar salad that was just a few pieces of iceberg lettuce, a dollop of bottled Caesar salad dressing, and some shaved Parmesan cheese on top.  Some black pepper? An egg? A little bacon?  One tiny anchovy? Sorry, nowhere in sight.  

So we were pretty disappointed overall and I doubt we’ll go back.  Maybe we set our standards too high, but that’s the way it goes when you try new places.  Sometimes you win and sometimes you eat iceberg.

Next on our four-day birthday celebration extravaganza is dinner in Osaka after work tonight.  Kuniko selected a restaurant for dinner and so after work I’ll meet her in Osaka and we’ll try to find a new favorite restaurant.  Let the celebration continue!

On Sunday Kuniko and I shared a day off together.  There was brisk, cold weather and the threat of afternoon snow, but looking out the window in the morning we could see nothing but sunshine and blue sky.

We decided to take a long walk from Okubo to Akashi.  We used to do this almost weekly when the weather was warmer, and it was nice to get out there and do it again.  The beach was peaceful, and we walked at a slightly faster than normal pace to try to burn calories from our high calorie dinner (chicken and morel mushrooms in a cream sherry sauce) from Saturday night.

Two hours of walking in beautiful weather gives us plenty of time to catch up and talk about the past, present and future. I hope we get back into this routine from this spring.

In Akashi we went to check out the newly constructed station-front building and shopping.  It mainly consists of a big bookstore, the city library (moved from the park, I presume) and lots of medical offices.  The area around Akashi station has improved quite a bit.

A winter or two ago we once did this same walk, and then we warmed up in a tiny izakaya drinking sake and eating grilled fish surrounded by old guys.  We did a similar thing this time, finding a restaurant that was open in the new building, and we ordered chunks of yellowtail simmered in a soy sauce broth, some oden, and we split a mini bottle of hot sake.  

There were a lot of other restaurants around in the new building, so we also stopped at a Taiwanese restaurant.  They served us some spicy noodles (with almost no soup, which we prefer), a rice dish with vegetables, beef and rice noodles that had been braised in a spicy rich sauce that hit the spot.  We also had some shorompo, but unfortunately they weren’t so great. 

While we ate Taiwanese food Kuniko noticed that the name of the new sushi restaurant across from us had a familiar name.  The master of the sushi restaurant came out and hung up his noren, and we recognized him.  It was the same underground sushi restaurant that we used to visit so long ago with Mr. Komori.  It had been ages since we had visited the restaurant, partly because he had to close temporarily for the construction of the building we were currently eating in.  The construction took more than a year.  

The sushi master recognized us as we waved through the window and smiled, and so we decided to drop in.  We didn’t have any stomach space for sushi, but we wanted to say hello.

Inside the new sushi restaurant was laid out exactly like the previous one, just much cleaner and newer.  The sushi master looked the same as always, his wife was also the same as ever, and they smiled and greeted us like lost children.  He said that business was going well in the new location, they had been open since December, and he was happy with the place.  We promised that we’d come back for dinner sometime soon.

Then he said something shocking, that completely caught us off guard.  He said that he hadn’t seen us in a long time, since before Mr. Komori died.  

What?

Turns out, Mr. Komori had died almost two years ago.  The sushi master thought that it was some kind of cancer, maybe in the stomach.  He was surprised that we didn’t know, and we were so shocked it took a while to process the information.  The last time I had talked to Mr. Komori we had made the usual promises to get together again soon for drinks and sushi, but I couldn’t believe that it was more than two years ago.  I couldn’t believe that he had died. 

Mr. Komori played the ocarina at our wedding, hosted my family for a New Year party where we made soba noodles and gyoza, he took me around Hyogo showing me his hometown festival, introduced me to restaurants all over Akashi, and was always so kind and full of humor.  

It was kind of a double shock – I was shocked that he had suddenly died and also shocked that I had let time slip by unnoticed and missed out on a chance to spend time with him. 

Kuniko and I took the train back to Okubo, and we hugged each other over and over.  I was thinking about how soon you can lose touch with someone once you get caught up in the grind of working every day.  Unfortunately I won’t get a chance to reconnect with Mr. Komori, but I’ll do my best to stay in touch with the friends I have.  Time is limited and getting more precious for us each day.  Sunday we got a brutal reminder of that, and we’ll try to take it to heart.

I go downstairs after work to wait in the lobby of the office building.  I am surrounded by models of rail cars built by this company over the past 120 years. Alone at the reception desk there is a young woman who is technically my coworker.  She sits at the reception desk all day and treats customers with the appropriate amount of grace and style.  She was hired for her perfect manners, her quiet charisma, and her good looks.  While I wait for the other wine tasters I ask her about her job.  She is not allowed to read or do any kind of study between customer visits.   It is not good for customers to see the receptionist putting away documents when they arrive.  She is to seem like she was waiting for the customer the whole time. I know from previous conversations she has a degree from a prestigious university.  She laughs at the situation she is in.  

Ms. Yamada and the company president appear and are ready to go.  Outside a car is waiting.  The driver stands a little straighter when he sees the president appear.  The president directs me to the seat behind the driver, usually considered the seat for the highest ranking passenger.  The president tells me in English that he prefers the extra legroom sitting where he is.  He is trying to make me more comfortable.  

The car is not a taxi, more like a very short term rental limousine.  There is no meter.  The times, payments and destinations have all been arranged in advance by Ms. Yamada, who sits up front with the driver and fine tunes our arrival to coincide with Kuniko’s arrival at the wine tasting.  Between me and the president is a control panel. It is kind of a desk and control panel combination, actually.  There are buttons controlling almost every function normally on the dashboard of a car.  This is a desk for doing business and I realize the car is a custom business model, made to shuttle important people around.  The president merits this kind of transportation now.  

We arrive a few minutes earlier than the estimated time, and Kuniko is patiently waiting for us.  We go inside an office building, surrounded by brand shops.  On the ninth floor we enter what seems to be a regular office.  The company builds parts and equipment for ships, planes, and trains.  They also import wine because their company president likes wine.  One board member explains that wine is 1% of their business.  Today it is the focus, and there are a lot of people attending the wine tasting.

We hang up our coats and stash our briefcases.  Ms. Yamada is treating us like guests and rushes to get coat hangers for us.  Inside the conference room they have set up a wine tasting, with French, German and California wines that they sell in Japan.  The wine is in the center of the room, and they are surrounded by people in suits drinking and talking.  It is a full room and it is sometimes hard to get to the wine.  Around the outside of the room there are foods to eat.  Pâté, cheese, quiches, pork rolls, bread.  

I have attended more wine tastings than I can count and so I am comfortable in the environment.  We taste some good wines and I decide I will buy a few later.  Kuniko and Ms. Yamada discuss the wines they like, and the president navigates the crowd and looks for wine recommendations from us. 

The room is full of people but the mix of attendees is odd.  I realize that there are lots of older men in suits, some younger men in suits, and quite a few younger women in suits.  No older women, and the younger women appear to be aides for the older male guests.  The older men want to be seen at the event with a beautiful woman so they bring women from their office.  The women get free wine and maybe dinner after so they don’t mind.  It is a classic win/win situation.  I’m happy that I have my own beautiful woman with me at the tasting.  Kuniko navigates the wine tasting like a pro.

The president talks with various people.  I stand next to him during some of the encounters and it is oddly fascinating to watch.  A man about my age approaches with a younger woman trailing behind. He greets the president with an unmistakeable hungry look in his eye.  The president produces his business card and the man instructs his assistant to produce his card to give to the president.  They make some remarks and the small talk is over.  The younger man’s eyes pass over me as a curiosity but move back to the president quickly.  His job here is to make an early connection and hopefully build that into a business relationship much further down the line. There will be no business talk here.  They leave, and the president hands the business card he received to Ms. Yamada who organizes it in her bag for him. The president goes through this ritual many times.  He attracts attention because of the power he holds as a major company president. When he talks to me in class he laughs at the attention he gets and I know he is perfectly grounded. I imagine how many business cards must be piled up on Ms. Yamada’s desk.

As the only white guy in the room I am not ignored.  Every time I scan the crowd people look away quickly.  A board member of the host company comes to say hello in flawless English.  He asks me about my company but I can tell he is not really interested in the answer.  He wants to practice his English and he talks about his job and his career.  These are familiar topics for him and I don’t mind letting him explain.  I talk all day at work so it is nice to listen.  He is called away to make a big business decision.  

A childhood friend of the president works as a corporate officer at this company.  He invited us because my company is a customer of his company, but also because of the childhood connection.  He comes to say hello and he remembers me from the last time I attended.  We talk and I can see the kindness in his expression.  He is a good person and he is happy that other people can come and enjoy wine and relax.  He has no business motives for talking to us and I am surprised how easy it is to see the difference, compared to the hungry men with beautiful assistants.  He tells me that I am invited to come to the wine tasting any time, with or without the president.  

We finish our tasting and start to head for the door.  Various company executives have maneuvered into a line so they can personally say farewell to the president as he leaves.  We trail in his wake but are associated with him so get the same treatment. The president has kind words for each person and they bow and see us to the lobby. Ms. Yamada makes sure everyone gets their coats.  We ride the elevator and head outside, slightly buzzed from the wine and ready for dinner.  

Ms. Yamada hails a taxi and we ride to a restaurant on a street in Sannomiya I have never walked down.  We enter a restaurant that I have never been to.  It is labeled an oden restaurant, but we learn soon that the title is not adequate.  Our table is waiting and we start with a beer.  It is refreshing after all the wine. 

The menu is recited by the owner.  She is a little older wearing fashionable glasses and looks like she would not take shit from anyone.  The interior is traditional and the staff friendly and not so uptight. Across from our table are six old guys recapping a business deal. At the counter are some older men eating with women thirty years younger.  Hundreds of bottles of sake line the wall behind the oak counter.

We order sashimi to start.  The choices are unusual and described with aplomb.  We choose items to share.  Grilled eel wrapped in toasted nori.  Steamed shirako custard with ponzu.  Sashimi of grouper and yellowtail. There are no prices mentioned.  Customers here don’t ask about prices.

Sake is recommended.  We pour in the Japanese style but Ms. Yamada is too fast and notices whose tiny glass is empty before the glass’s owner notices.  We try three kinds of sake and conversation warms up the more we drink.  The president looks tired and happy and relaxed.  Kuniko and I are usually in bed by this time.  We are happy to be in this new situation. I hope we look happy. 

 We get around to ordering oden. The staff reaches under the table to produce a wooden tablet that was hidden.  She folds it open with a reverence that is hard to believe and we see a handwritten menu of oden items that you can order individually.  We smile at the staff who produced the menu so seriously and imitate the motions.  Not mocking, just impressed as hell.  She giggles when she sees us and looks a little embarrassed.   

We order lots of different kinds of oden.  Soft boiled eggs floating in a bacon-y kind of soup.  Gobo root in tempura.  Shrimp balls. Rice cake tied up in a fried tofu bag.  Top notch oden, and far different from what we normally eat. We finish with a bowl of ramen, cooked in a rich clear broth with no pork fat in sight.  

Ms. Yamada takes out one of the president’s business cards and leaves the table.  I see her give it to the owner.  This is an acceptable form of payment.  We thank them for taking us here and I wonder who will pay in the end.  The company?  The president? Who knows.  Kuniko has anticipated this situation and gives the president and Ms. Yamada each a small gift of chocolate that she bought from a high-end store.  They accept the present and say we didn’t have to go to the trouble. We say it was no trouble at all.  It is a ritual that is performed without thinking.

We leave and the owner and the head cook see us off.  They know who the president is now and they want to show that he was an important visitor.  The head cook looks bored and it is the only crack I see in their perfectly orchestrated dinner presentation.  

The president heads to the nearby bus stop because it is quicker than arranging other transportation, and we say goodnight.  He told me before that he now does dinner parties like this 3-4 times a week.   I wonder when it stops becoming fun and starts becoming obligation.  I hope his liver will hold out until retirement. 

We walk with Ms. Yamada to the train station and part ways there.  Ms. Yamada did a lot of work to make things happen smoothly.  She was there to enjoy but she also was working.  She might not even be aware of it. We thank her and promise to repay the favor sometime.  Everyone says that at this stage of the evening, but we actually mean it.  My wife and I board the train home.  I am happy that I don’t do this all the time. It is Wednesday night. 

Last week I was feeling like I was caught in a rut.  For almost two weeks I had followed the exact same pattern, both at home and at work, and it was starting to feel a little boring.  Kuniko came up with an idea to shake things up.

Saturday we went into Kobe in the morning, and started hitting restaurants and bars that Kuniko had been wanting to visit.  Surprisingly, there were quite a few.

Before eating we stopped at the 24 hour post office in Kobe to send off a package to the United States.  Once we were free of the burden on the package, it was time to start snacking!

We started early with a bar that opens at 9 am, and we sipped white wine with an apple and Camembert cheese salad, and then we had a potato and bleu cheese gratin as a follow up.  The restaurant was tiny – just six seats at two counters, but the environment was nice.  Slightly upscale (for a bar that opens at 9 in the morning) and very relaxing.

Next we walked over to Daimaru department store to do some shopping. We both had gifts that we needed to buy for acquaintances – one for Kuniko’s ex-student who recently got married, and one for my barber who is changing jobs soon.  I was able to find something at Daimaru, but nothing caught Kuniko’s eye.  

Since we were in the neighborhood we stopped in at the farmer’s market in Sannomiya.  By the time we got there there were few vegetables remaining.  We bought a tiny piece of cheesecake to split while we sat on a park bench, and watched people strolling through the stands of the farmer’s market.  It was surprisingly popular considering the seasonal cold weather.

Our next stop was a walk up to the Kitano area of Sannomiya to try a sandwich shop (called “San”) which had a full menu of different kinds of sandwiches to choose from.  I picked a buffalo chicken sandwich that was nice, and Kuniko had a mushroom, vegetable and cheese sandwich that was pretty good, too.  We each had a glass of white wine, and sat outside on the patio next to a mounted bear’s head.  There was an outdoor heater to keep us warm, and it turned out to be a nice stop.  The restaurant was pretty hard to find, though, so I think most of their business will need to be based on word of mouth.

In that area are two import food places – a halal middle eastern shop and a more traditional world import shop.   I poked around both shops and saw some good stuff, but I didn’t want to buy a bunch of heavy stuff and have to lug it around Kobe the rest of the day.  I’ll be back!

Next stop for the gourmet train was a butcher shop in north Motomachi, which will not only sell you local meats, but they’ll also cook them for you in the back room so you can enjoy them at a couple of small tables in the shop.  We selected half a cut of sirloin steak, a pork chop, and six thick slices of roast beef, and they grilled them in the back and served them on a wood block with a bed of wild greens, along with various mustards and sauces to apply if necessary.  We had some red wine while we waited for the food, and another glass of red wine after it arrived, so we were feeling pretty good about things.  The meats were excellent, and the grilled them nicely to bring out the flavor.  We don’t eat meat that often these days, so it was a nice treat.  Overall we liked the food and the atmosphere of the place, but we felt it was a little overpriced for what we got.  Good for an experience, but I don’t think we’ll be back soon.

Next stop was to find that elusive present for Kuniko’s ex-student.  We went to Loft in Sannomiya, which always ends up being the shop we go to when we can’t find anything elsewhere.  They certainly have a big selection, and maybe that was part of the reason why it took us so long to decide.  We spent almost 45 minutes walking around looking for something, but finally Kuniko discovered just the right item.  We got it wrapped, and then headed off to Sannomiya station to meet her ex-student who got married, her friends (one of whom is a Sri Lankan now working in Osaka),  and even a couple of Kuniko’s ex-coworkers from Kobe. We spent just a little time with them talking and exchanging contact info, and then we headed out to our next dining establishment.   

By now it was almost 5 pm, and we had been eating, shopping and walking for most of the day.  I had been craving dim sum (as usual) and Mamiko had recommended a place in Motomachi that had good reviews.  We arrived just as they opened, and settled into a table to order.  There were a lot of choices, and we choose some of our favorites (beef shumai, shrimp wraps, wonton soup and noodles) along with two new dishes to us (grilled manju with stuffed with pork, and pork rolled in yuba with a mild Chinese sauce).  The yuba rolls were really good, and I also liked the shumai thanks to their liberal use of coriander in the meat.  The other items were so-so, but not extraordinary. Maybe our standards are a little too high.  At this restaurant we changed from wine to beer, buying Asahi bottles and pouring them for each other into little glasses.

Craving gyoza, we stopped in the secret alley below the west side of Sannomiya station, and went to one of our favorite gyoza places.  This place has great atmosphere, with lots of tables tight together and everyone talking loudly, drinking heavily.  The gyoza itself is good but not great.  Here it is about cheap and fun and a little wild.  For Sannomiya, it is the closest feeling to eating street food you can have while still eating inside.

The final stop was literally just across the alley (two steps from door to door) at a little Korean restaurant that caught our eye.  It didn’t start out well as it seemed like the staff were ignoring us on purpose for some reason, but after Kuniko hailed them they were polite enough.  We ate chapuche, a homemade kimchi, and we drank makkori (advertised as draft, but also sold in a bottle – strange).  The makkori was pretty good and the food was tasty, too.  The restaurant had a weird coffee-shop like atmosphere, and it was pretty quiet in there compared to the lively gyoza place we had just come from.  

With our stomachs (finally) full, we walked on back to the train station and headed home.  We got back around 9 pm and bumped into a couple of the American inspectors who work at Kawasaki.  Thanks to all the booze we drank it was hard for me to make conversation – I think I made an Ernest Hemingway reference (?) that confused everyone including myself – but it was a good surprise to see them at our own little Okubo station.

So I have my wife to thank for organizing a hell of an eating adventure, just when I needed it most.  It’ll take some time to burn those calories off – time to work harder on that bike!

We are rapidly approaching the eighth year living in our little house in Okubo. The place is holding up pretty well, mainly because we don’t have any kids to run around tearing things up and leaving little marks of love everywhere. Still, as we get closer to ten years, we expect that little things will start to crop up that need to be dealt with.

Houses in Japan have evolved more rapidly during the past thirty years or so. Fifty years ago houses were a luxury item, and they weren’t exactly built to last. Even today, it is far more common to knock down an old house built 30-40 years ago and start over when buying property. Probably the houses built these days will last longer. They have more strength and safety features, but in the end they are wood structures that are built for only one generation of living. This is due to culture as much as anything – old things are not as desirable here in disposable Japan. Since old houses have always been seen as falling apart it has created a market for new houses, and there is little motivation to build now houses to last since few people want a used house. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

House prices tend to drift downwards at a steady pace over time, so there is no market for fixing up houses and flipping them. The prices that don’t change or go up are the land prices, the piece of dirt sitting under your house may actually go up in value, although usually not enough to make any kind of substantial profit.

Our neighborhood was born about ten years ago, but between our neighborhood and the main road there are neighborhoods built a generation or two before. The closer we get to the main road, the older the houses (and their occupants) are. The oldest houses now are starting to empty out, and we’ve seen two get knocked down in the past year as the people who used to live there have either passed away or have moved to live with their children to be taken care of.  

It is a little sad to walk by these empty lots and think about all the hope and joy that was there when the house was built.

I had made a chance acquaintance with an older gentleman living in one of these houses. He was excited to hear that I was from America, and he brought out some ancient black and white photos of him on a ship sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The picture showed a man staring solemnly at the camera, but the older version showing the photo had a wide smile on his face as he recalled his trip to America. Now he and his wife are gone, and there’s just an empty patch of dirt for me to remember them by.

Life is a cycle, and soon enough I imagine those empty spaces might be bought by new families hoping for a good life in our little town of Okubo. In the meantime, it is just a little sad to walk through the withering outer edge of our neighborhood.

This being our third time to Thailand, and having spent each visit at New Year’s in Bangkok, we had a good idea of what we wanted to get out of this visit. 

Our first priority was to relax, eat lots of street food, and hit some of our favorite restaurants. Sightseeing – not so much. We didn’t want to really do much in the way of shopping either.  

So rather than cover our day to day activities in Bangkok, I’ll try to wrap it all up in one bite-sized package here.
We were definitely interested in seeing what the situation would be like in Bangkok since the King of Thailand had passed away in 2016. I had heard that the activity in bars, nightclubs, and sex districts would be curtailed during a year of mourning. From what we saw, things were getting back to normal, but still a little cautious. At one point we walked through the neighborhood of our old hotel, which is surrounded by lots of massage shops (both erotic and regular) and also near Soi Cowboy. Most shops were open, but they didn’t have lineups of girls outside trying to pull people in. Semi-open for business, I guess. 
Everywhere we looked there were memorial posters and signs for the late King, and even a few pictures of the next King. He will probably start to appear more and more prominently leading up to his coronation, but in the posters that we saw of him he looked more than a little nervous to be wearing the royal clothes.

Kuniko had found a new hotel down Soi 12, near the end of the avenue. Turns out it was almost next to Cabbages and Condoms, which is one of our favorite restaurants in Bangkok. That made it convenient to stop by anytime. We were also close to Asok station, which is a hub of shopping, street food and activities.  
The hotel itself was a little odd. The room and location were great, but there were lots of little issues that came up during our three night stay. Our WiFi connection was weird, so they had to send staff up to install a temporary access point while we were staying. Sometimes the lights would respond to the switches, other times they didn’t. And New Year’s Eve when we came back home late from partying apparently all the locks failed to respond to the guest’s key cards. Weird. But the price was right, the pool was quite nice, and we enjoyed our stay overall.

Usually when we stay in Bangkok we eat mainly at restaurants, and this was the first time that we really concentrated on street food instead. Thanks to the internet it was easy enough to track down good locations were street food vendors gathered. We tried all kinds of dishes, mainly noodles, salads, and rice dishes, and drank our weight in cold Thai beer. At first we ordered the regular sized bottles of beer, but by the end of the trip we were going straight for the big bottles.  

We found our favorite food stand of this trip near Thong Lo station, around Soi 38. At first we arrived a bit early, and we were the only customers around. We had bowls of noodle soup – one spicy with plain. Both had liberal chunks of grilled pork, won tons (fried and soft), and veggies. Mine had crab meat on top, too. The noodles and broth were just perfect, and I think we’ll never forget that place. We also ordered some chicken rice from an adjacent stall, and that was just as tasty as the Singaporean version we had earlier this year.

After eating there we walked down the street a ways and then circled back to head to our hotel. At the end of the street was a stand selling sweets. They had many open containers of sweet sauces and desserts, and I have never seen as many flies in one place as I saw there. The flies attacked the food like lions on a wildebeest, and we were glad we had already eaten down the street, otherwise we’d have lost our appetite.  

 
We liked the food stand that we tried so much that we ended up going there again on our last night in Bangkok. We panicked at first when it wasn’t there, but it turns out that on Mondays he moves indoors because they do street cleaning on Mondays. It was just as delicious the second time.

 
Another of our favorite restaurants served us a seafood salad that almost burned my tastebuds off. It was delicious, hot and painful, and I think we had to order another round of cold beers just to wash down the fire. I guess I had forgotten how hot Thai food can get. 
It was so much fun to explore so many different places to eat, and we generally tried five or so places a day. We ate only 1-2 small dishes at each place, and if it seemed really good we’d stick around for more. It was a good strategy for us.

For New Year’s Eve we went across the street to the Westin hotel to sit out on their seventh-floor terrace and watch people coming and going through the Sukhumvit district. Despite there being a memorial observation, there were still a few fireworks and ceremonies around us. In the Westin hotel they had some singer rocking the night away right up to the countdown, and there were a few people getting up and hitting the dance floor. We didn’t quite time our sparkling wine correctly, but still it was nice to spend the New Year countdown on the town.  
 

After we went to bed, at around 3 am or so I heard some commotion from outside our hotel room door. I got up and looked out the peephole, and the hotel guest from the room across from our had partied a bit too hard and collapsed outside his door in the hallway. He probably couldn’t get his door open because of the keycard problems, and he was a little noisy talking to himself in a horizontal position. A few minutes later I could hear the hotel staff or police urging him up and into his room. In any case, he was gone when we left the next morning. 

Besides eating and drinking and swimming we did manage to get a massage, shop for some souvenirs for our neighbors and coworkers, and do a lot of walking in flip flops. Bangkok had changed a bit since we had last visited six years ago, but all our favorite places were still around. We had fun getting back in touch with the town, eating everything in sight and spending days next to the pool. It was the perfect way to wrap up a great holiday trip.

We rose pretty early the next day eager to walk some distance and see some sights. Our goal was 5 kilometers away, a golden temple called That Luan. We could have hired a tuktuk or taxi to take us there, but we wanted to burn calories and be hungry. So we hiked it!

Along the way we stopped for a more detailed look at the Lao Arch, and took a picture for a very strict Thai couple that wanted the picture framed “just so”. Past the Arch we walked past a food stand grilling a side of pork and homemade sausages, and we just couldn’t resist. We bought a bag full of meat, said no thanks to the rice, and then sat on a curb outside a BMW dealership and had a meat breakfast. The grilled meat really hit the spot – and we ate like a couple of starved barbarians. Who would believe we had like five meals the previous day?

We reached That Luan, but entered via an unconventional route. We walked across a huge parking area that I can only compare in size and scale to something that would be next to Disneyland. There were no lines for parking spots, just a vast paved area. Military gathering area? Backup runway for airplanes? Whatever it was, we walked across it and finally found our goal.

The gold temple is certainly gold, and it strikes you as something out of a low budget movie about the Pharaohs of Egypt. It was very unique, and once you get up close you can appreciate it a lot more – there were unusual details like gates with the image of Buddha bent into the metal wires. We walked around the perimeter taking pictures of the gold temple against the blue, cloudless sky.

There were other buildings in the area, but some of them seemed like they were closed for religious reasons that day. Some Buddhist monks in orange robes worked to set up a stage for some upcoming event, and there were even some guys trying to take our picture and sell it to us – which I imagine is a tough sell in the age of modern smartphones.

From there we walked back towards the center of town, with the aim to check out the bus station. I know the bus station isn’t a typical sightseeing area, but Kuniko had heard that around the bus station was a great place to buy sandwiches, and I wanted to try the Laos version of a bahn mi sandwich. It was a long walk to the bus station, and I was occasionally distracted by stands selling fried bananas or a guy roasting an entire pig on a spit. Finally we made it to the bus station, and it was a pretty wild place.

It made sense that the bus station would be a central hub of activity. There is no train system in Laos, and naturally the most affordable transportation would be the bus. Buses were pulling in and people were rushing onto and off the buses helter skelter. We walked down a curious side street near the station with food stands that sold food aimed directly at the locals, not us. Flies buzzed even more down this alley, and the floor was wet with what I think was water but could have been something else. There was a smell of blood, too – like a butcher was nearby.

Around the corner we found a row of sandwich vendors. They stood behind piles of baguettes and made up the sandwiches for people to take on long distance bus rides. We choose a vendor at random, and luckily the guy spoke enough English that it was easy to make the purchase. He sliced open the big baguette, and then used some kind of liver paste like you would butter or mayonnaise. Next was meat (some kind of bologna), lots of pickled vegetables, chili peppers, a generous helping of cilantro, lettuce, chili sauce, and fish sauce. Kuniko and I split one sandwich, and we just about inhaled it. We didn’t think we’d be able to eat something that big, but I am happy to report that it was no problem whatsoever. Delicious!

The hustle and activity around the bus station was the first time in a long time that I really felt like things were out of my control. Like we were surrounded by a storm and could do nothing to affect it. I never felt like it was unsafe, just that things were happening way faster than my mind could track them. It was a little breathtaking, a little scary, and a little exhilarating. Just what we need to really feel like you’re in a completely different environment and break out of your comfort zone.

On the way back to the hotel for a break we hit a tiny little restaurant just to buy beers. However, it would have been a shame to not try their noodle soup, and that was nice, too. I liked sitting there because we sat on the street, but still in the shade of some trees that they had planted just for that purpose. We rested our feet, washed down the soup with BeerLao and enjoyed the perfect weather.

Back at the hotel we took a nap on that hard bed of ours, because that was a luxury we rarely get during our normal lives. We lounged and napped for a while, and then went back out to to eat more. We had sticky rice and fried chicken meatballs with beer on an expat-popular street downtown, and then we moved on to the foodie paradise on Ban Anou to get some food for takeout. The noodle place that we had wanted to try wasn’t open that night, but we found a wide assortment of different foods to bring back to our hotel. We got an egg omelet, homemade grilled sausages with lemongrass, a coconut curry with bamboo shoots, and more. The takeout food was nice because the flies couldn’t follow us to our hotel room, and the room had a full kitchen so it was easy to reheat and organize everything.

It was our last night in Laos, as we were headed back to Bangkok for New Years and more street food. We really had a great time in Laos, and I’d recommend it to adventurous people interested in trying a real “Southeast Asia” experience on the cheap.

We got up pretty early, partially because of the hard bed, and decided to go take a look around. Right away the streets of Vientiane reminded me a lot of Hanoi. Uneven, sometimes broken, and lots of holes to be careful of. We walked along the main road, into the morning sun, and took in the sights. Lots of shops were still closed, some seemed permanently closed, and there were plenty of cars on the road going into the center of town. We walked past a beautiful old temple painted with bright colors and elaborate tile work. We missed a major fountain landmark, because it was surrounded by food stands being built for the New Year celebration coming up.

After walking past the presidential palace (no pictures allowed), we realized that we needed to get some local money. Lao kip is hard to get outside of Laos, so we tried our luck at an ATM. Kuniko was wary of trusting the ATMs in Laos, because she had heard that sometimes they’ll eat your card and leave you stuck without it. We tried an ATM connected to a bank that was open and had customers going in and out of it on the premise that if our card was eaten we could at least go bug the staff about it. Luckily the card went though fine and we had 600,000 kip to spend. Woo-hoo!

Our first stop for sightseeing was Wat Si Saket, a temple that was surrounded by a courtyard housing thousands of Buddhas. The Buddhas were big, small, silver, white, damaged, intact, you name it. It was a very visually striking stop, and it turned out to be my favorite place to visit during our stay.

As we walked through the city we passed what turned out to be a graveyard. Little shrines to memorialize people were built around a grassy area, with a temple nearby. Some shrines were simple, others covered with flashy silver, all with a tiny picture of the occupant (?) – very interesting. It reminded me of our visit to Moscow and the graveyard we visited there with some ostentatious gravestones.

We walked to the center of town to see the Lao version of the Arc D’Triomphe – a beautifully Asian version of the French landmark. It was kind of the anchor of the town, and the first day we just took a few pictures from a distance. Vientiane is a small capital, and we wanted to save some sightseeing for the other days.

One interesting point about Vientiane was that they had crosswalk signals on most intersections, but they only seemed to be working about half the time. Sometimes there were signals but no buttons, sometimes buttons but no signals. Sometimes nothing at all. We soon learned you should just walk out there and keep your head on a swivel. Just like in Vietnam, at first it seems like suicide and by the end of your first day it is second nature.

With all this walking we were getting a little hot and thirsty, so we stopped at a small cafe for a beer and a snack. Our eating strategy throughout the rest of the trip was to stop at many different places, and try just one or two things at each place. We never ordered big at any one place, hoping that instead we could try a greater variety of things and have less chance of eating too much at a bad restaurant.

Our first cafe was a cool little place. It was a shop that was open to the front, and they cooked in an open-air style. We sat on plastic chairs at a plastic table, and were able to order from a menu that thoughtfully included English. The ladies cooked the food for us, and cats wandered in and around eating scraps that the staff had left them. The food smelled great – they grilled some pork and then put it inside some French bread with cheese and lettuce. The sandwich itself wasn’t exactly like a bahn mi from Vietnam – it was sort of like a breakfast version. Not so exciting, but luckily the food improved from there. The cold beer was why we there – and it went down nicely. BeerLao, the major (and maybe only) beer available was typical of Southeast Asian beers – light and easy to drink.

Back at the hotel we swam a bit at our pool, but it was just a few degrees too cold. The weather was warm but not hot, and I guess that the pool would be much more popular in the summer. After swimming for a while we retired the swim trunks in Laos.

At lunch we hit our first really good food stand. It was a tiny restaurant with a family living and working there, and grandma and grandpa sat in the back babysitting the infants while the rest of the family prepared our food. We had a great bowl of pork noodles, with a broth rich in roasted garlic, lots of rice noodles, big chunks of tender pork, cilantro and hot peppers, too. We also ordered some fried rice that we laced with blazing hot peppers and fish sauce – my god it was spicy. We were both sweating pretty heavily after the meal, and luckily we could wash everything down with cold beer.

While we ate in open air restaurants we could watch things happening on the streets. People were cooking outside, cars drove past and stray dogs walked by now and then looking hopefully at the food. There were many scooters on the road, just like in Vietnam, and people often pulled over to buy some food to go. This was not a rich country, but everyone we met was friendly – and nobody pushed us to buy anything or begged for money. It felt safe there, and the longer I was there the safer I felt.

Kuniko really impressed me, too. Sometimes we went to places that were definitely on the dirty side. Japan is a very clean country and we are used to very sanitized conditions, but Kuniko will go wherever it takes to get a good meal. She doesn’t mind flies buzzing while we eat or stray dogs lying under table while we ate outside. She is just as adventuresome as I am when it comes to good food. I’m lucky to have someone like me who will stop at nothing to find a delicious experience.

In the evening we went down to the Mekong River and watched the sun setting on the other side, and then explored a night market that is set up every night. Most of the market was selling goods, which we weren’t really interested in, but some places sold food. We bought a bowl of noodles served at room temperature, with cubes of strange meat (almost black, but with a mild taste) and a liberal dose of cilantro, peanuts, chili peppers and chili sauce. But it wasn’t until we walked north to the food stands lining the streets near Ban Anou that we really got an eyeful of culture.

This street had food stands lined up along one side, and they were selling all kinds of interesting things. Mainly grilled meats and river fish (folded in half and grilled whole), but there were also curries, homemade sausages, eggs on skewers (in the shell – how did they do that?), a stand with ten different kinds of noodle stir fries, and plenty of flies buzzing around. Each stand used fans to keep the flies away, and some stands had little electric motors that rotated big strips of paper – kind of an automated fly dispersal device. The smell of cooking smoke, the lights and all the great food – it was like foodie heaven.

We were overwhelmed by all the choices that night and decided to visit again the next day. We did buy some spring rolls to take back to the hotel later and eat. On the way back to the hotel we decided to have one more little dinner stop, and we finally ate Lao “larb” – a sort of native dish involving pork, sticky rice, and salad greens and herbs. It was quite good – better than I expected – and we ate it with beer as we sat on a shaky table on the sidewalk in the warm evening. Below us two dogs were sleeping, and we knew better to shoo them away. They didn’t seem to mind – they seemed to appreciate the smell of the food but didn’t really make any efforts to get any.

So it was an eventful day in Vientiane, and we certainly ate our fill. Everything was affordable – we ate and drank all we wanted and still only spent around $5-7 a meal (for both of us).

We got up right on time early in the morning and piled into Steve’s car for the ride into the airport. Julia’s boyfriend was coming in by plane after we left, so the timing worked out to be quite good. We made great time into Sydney airport, and we said some quick goodbyes as they dropped us off at international departures.

So now we were back on our own. It was easy to catch our flight out, and although it got quite bumpy near the end of the trip, overall it was an easy ride. I spent most of the time reading, and enjoyed two of Patrick Rothfuss’s novels. What a pleasure to read!

We killed three hours or so in Bangkok airport again. We have a lot of experience killing time (and beers) at this airport, so we knew exactly what to eat and where to eat it. It was just a 40 minute flight from Bangkok to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos.

On the flight we filled in a surprising amount of paperwork. During the past week we had been waiting for a confirmation from our hotel for the pickup at the airport, but we never heard back from them. We weren’t sure just how we’d get from the airport to the hotel, and the name of the hotel sounded a bit more like an apartment than a hotel, so we weren’t even sure there would be anyone there to check us in (similar to what happened to us in Zadar, Croatia). The suspense was building, flying into a new country, into the unknown.

In Laos, Japanese citizens are not required to have a visa, and so Kuniko went right through immigration. As an American citizen I had to buy a visa at the airport, using US dollars. I had everything prepared and ready, and the process was quite smooth. We got our suitcase, went outside the gate into the tiny airport, and luckily there was a hotel driver waiting for us with Kuniko’s name on a card. He drove us the short distance into town and we were relieved to find that we were staying in a real hotel with a real check-in counter and staff that even spoke English. Hooray!

Our hotel room was on the top floor of the six floor building, but we didn’t really have any energy to go out and explore the first night. We were arriving at almost ten pm, so we decided to go ahead and get some rest. The room was quite nice and certainly spacious, but it had some odd points. One thing was the shower was more like a closet. The shower door was an actual wooden door that you might found on the outside of a house – and I’m sure the water splashing will warp the door soon. The other thing that was notable was maybe the hardest bed I have ever slept on. I guess it is good for your lower back, but it was really, really hard. It took some getting used to.

We went to bed that night looking forward to getting to know the city a little better starting the next day.