Tomorrow we are leaving for a couple of weeks on a summer trip. We’ll start with a flight to Singapore, spend some time at the newly improved Changi Airport, and then take a long flight to Amsterdam, followed by a short flight to Dublin, Ireland.

The trick is all that will happen over a period of 24 hours so we’ll be pretty whipped by the time we have our first Guinness.

The rest of the trip will be in a big circle through Iceland, Denmark, Germany and back to Amsterdam in the Netherlands before heading home on August 16th or so.

As usual I’ll be taking pictures and keeping a journal, so look to this space for an update once we get back and get settled!

Pictures from this trip can be found here.

During the middle of July every year I get a few days off as my company shuts down to help the city government conserve power during the brutal heat of Japanese summer. It is a perfect excuse to get away, as most other companies are still open and we can avoid the high prices of peak travel times.

This year we found some cheap tickets to Hawaii, so we arranged to stay with Susan and Dave at their place in Makawao. It had been seven years(!) since we had been to see them.

The flight was on AirAsia, direct from Kansai airport to Honolulu, and then it was a short flight to Maui and we met them at the airport. They both looked great, even though Susan was suffering from a cracked rib after a mishap while testing Sir Isaac Newton’s theory.

Our agenda for the trip was mainly just to relax, eat, drink and spend some quiet time. We went to the beach a few times, and even got to see a big sea turtle relaxing on the beach behind Mama’s Fish House.

Since Susan and Dave love good food just as much as we do, the eating was good. We went out to Pita Paradise, Poi by the Pound, and Maui Brewing Company (two different locations).

We also had some great food at home, with Susan putting on a big southern-style shrimp boil (so good), her Persian rice recipe (so delicious – nicely balanced salt, acid, heat and fat), and a nice batch of grilled fish with Susan and Dave’s friends the Talleys. One day Kuniko and I put together some suigyoza (dumplings in soup) for dinner and everything was washed down with plenty of good beer and wine. It was like a foodie paradise that week.

No visit to Maui would be complete without a trip to see the murals painted by local artists, not the least of which was the beautiful one painted by Alex and Joey. It was impressive how the painted murals really livened up an otherwise plain downtown area. We also had a chance to lay down on the roof and watch the stars, take a long morning hike with Dave around the countryside surrounding Makawao, and did some shopping at Costco and Target with Susan. She also turned us on to great noodles at Sam Sato’s – which turned out to be one of the culinary highlights of a very culinary-focused trip.

By the end of the week we were sorry to say goodbye. We’re hoping that it won’t be seven years before our next visit, and hopefully soon Susan and Dave will come visit us in Japan so we can repay the favor.

For most of the last week Kuniko has been off in Paris for her business trip. While she has been away, I’ve used my newly independent status to go exploring more deeply in some areas of Kobe and Osaka that I rarely visit.

On the weekend I went into Osaka to check out the restaurant supply shops in Douguyasuji, near Namba. On previous visits I poked through the surface level, but this time I really went digging through the kitchen tools there. I delved into the back rooms, the second floors, and the basements in search of a few key items. Ultimately the trip was successful, and I brought home a really nice crepe pan that I put right into use on Sunday. I also got a small hand-size roller to make dumplings more easily, a carbon steel ladle to use for making egg wrapper dumplings over the flame of the stove, and some containers to hold fermenting kimchi. Big success!

Also, I looked through various spice and gourmet shops around Umeda but I didn’t get everything I was looking for – none of the stores I searched had two (admittedly obscure) ingredients: dried Persian limes, and Le Puy green lentils. I can find them online but the shipping charge is almost as much as the items themselves, so I’ll have to wait.

Sunday was spent making crepes and egg dumplings, and the highlight was struggling to flip the crepes in the air and catch them on the pan again. Unfortunately some crepes didn’t have a safe landing and further practice is necessary.

Yesterday after work I went exploring in the tiny Korea town near my workplace. The Nagata area has a small Korean population, and several Korean restaurants and shops. It is nothing like the size of Korea Town in Osaka, but it is close by and fun to walk through. However, this time I was looking for Vietnamese restaurants.

Recently there have been more and more Vietnamese people coming to Japan to work under a limited work program. The Japanese government is not calling it immigration (sensitive topic) but most of the Vietnamese people are screened through organizations in Vietnam and then dispatched to work in Japan, most visibly in local convenience stores which are understaffed due to the falling birth rate here.

One of my students mentioned recently that he walked by a Vietnamese restaurant on the way to our company, and so I did a quick Google search and found four(!) nearby Vietnamese restaurants. A few years ago there were none, so Korea town seemed to be evolving. Yesterday I went to check out the situation on the ground.

The first stop was a small restaurant on the south edge of the Korea town area called Koha Quan, and it was open with three young men working the restaurant. There was a Vietnamese lady waiting for a take out order inside, but otherwise I was the only customer. I had bun thit nuong, cold rice noodles with grilled pork, fresh herbs and a chopped fried spring roll. It was damn good, and with a splash of hot sauce I was totally satisfied. I could eat more, but I still had three shops to go. The staff was friendly and spoke a little English, and when they rang up my bill all the employees came up front to watch the guy operate the register.

I was feeling pretty happy as I left the restaurant but unfortunately my luck turned because the next two restaurants were closed. There were no hours posted, but one Vietnamese lady who was sitting inside one of the restaurants told me that they are open based on reservation, and so probably the local Vietnamese people call up and arrange dinners now and then.

The final place turned out to be not a restaurant but a Vietnamese grocery store, with a big selection of goods from Vietnam and some from China and Malaysia. The lady working there was quite young and very talkative. We spoke in a mixture of English and Japanese and she was so friendly (maybe I was her only customer of the day) that I ended up buying a bunch of rice noodles, spicy dried beef and some spices to help her out. The place wasn’t jumping on Tuesday afternoon, but I wanted to help support an influx of unusual food products into the area.

With that, I had surveyed the scene, so I went back home and finished my dinner with a little homemade kimchi and a strawberry smoothie. The heat is building here and combined with the humidity of the rainy season things are getting uncomfortable.

Luckily Kuniko will be back tomorrow, and a few days later we’ll catch a flight to Hawaii and get some R&R. I can’t wait!

For the last few months there has been a constant comment we share on Mondays, usually while sitting down to a simple cabbage salad. The comment is some variation of, “Wow – we ate well last weekend!”

In my quest to challenge my kitchen skills and catch up with ingredients I should have been cooking with long ago, I’ve been trying new things in the kitchen. Kuniko is also cooking great foods when she gets the free time, and combined with the seasonal veggies available at the market, the fresh herbs in our garden and the warm sunny weather – our weekend kitchen has been a culinary wonderland lately.

Kuniko has access to some great breads, cheeses and other gourmet goodies every day near her workplace in the heart of Osaka. I’ve been playing with the produce available at the local supermarkets – and really diving deep to try new and strange (to me) ingredients.

The result has been very good eating. Then we settle into a simple menu for the week, and reset our appetites to build up for the upcoming weekend. This balance has worked nicely for us, and we’re both learning a lot about food and cooking.

Can’t wait to see what looks good at the market next weekend!

This year the string of national holidays called Golden Week in Japan was one day longer, giving us ten full days off. As usual we avoided making any travel plans, because Golden Week is a holiday for almost everyone in Japan, and so the airports, train stations and highways are crowded, and ticket prices double (or even triple).

Surprisingly, our little town of Okubo was pretty quiet during the holidays – apparently many people went elsewhere and so we kind of had the town to ourselves. The first half of the holiday was cloudy and rainy, so we spent most of our time inside catching up on several years’ episodes of Game of Thrones. We cooked and ate very well, and took care of housecleaning and other chores.

The second half of the holiday had much better weather which we took advantage of right away. We did loads and loads of laundry, washing the cold weather stuff like blankets and jackets, so our balcony was always full of clothes drying in the sun. We sat out back on the patio several days sipping prosecco or margaritas (for Cinco de Mayo), and we also walked around town exploring some new places.

We dropped into a mysterious karaoke/pub that looks like someone’s house down the block from us. Called “Koume” (little plum) it was like visiting your grandmother’s house. The living room was where we sat, and the lady cooked us “ham egg” and sliced up some tomato to go with our beers. I don’t think we’ll be back but we did satisfy our curiosity. In addition to the usual walks to the beach we made a long walk to Nishi Akashi on the backstreets to try a Korean restaurant and a Chinese restaurant that looked interesting. The Korean place was pretty good but a little overpriced for what we got. The Chinese place turned out to be great – full of weird people (staff included) but with some great nikuman and tantanmen (spicy noodles). I definitely think we’ll go back there in the future. On the walk back home we stopped at a small taiyaki restaurant for dessert, and also picked a roadside tofu shop to do some shopping as well. We were buying from locals and supporting the local economy, so that felt good.

On our last Friday of Golden Week we hosted Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira for some burgers and sausages out on the grill. We spent a nice evening with them talking about food, travel, and the future, and we made plans to go to another beer festival with them this month. They are such nice people!

Golden Week was a success, so now we are starting focus on losing the weight we likely gained during the holiday and getting back into a work routine. We won’t have any more holidays until July, and the rainy season is coming up. Time to get back in shape!

Last night Kuniko and I traveled to Sakai city in the south part of the greater metropolitan area of Osaka, to meet the wife of an old friend from India.

Ashika and her friend Geeta were wrapping up a week-long tour of Japan with a group, and had decided to stay an extra day to explore some of Japan at their own pace. We met them in Sakai near their hotel and took them to a nearby restaurant to eat traditional Japanese food and talk about their trip, their family, and their experiences in India as well as other places – they were both quite well-traveled.

I first met Ashika’s husband Vishnu 27 years ago when I moved to Fresno to prepare to attend courses for my bachelor’s degree in enology (winemaking). I had arrived before the start of the semester to settle in and get to know the area. Since it was between terms there weren’t many students around. The university had one dormitory open to house people that wanted to stay during the holiday break, and so I got a room there rather than spending too much on a hotel.  The dormitory housed a handful of students, including international students who didn’t plan on flying all the way back to their home countries.

Vishnu was living  just down the hall from my room, and it turned out that he was also part of the winemaking program so we already had a starting basis for our friendship. I soon discovered that there wasn’t a lot going on in Fresno, and thanks to Vishnu I was introduced to other members of the enology program and had a chance to see more than I would have otherwise.

Since he was ahead of me in the program he graduated ahead of me and went back to India, and since this was sometime in the early 90’s it was a little hard to keep in touch. But Vishnu managed it, calling me all the way from India to wish me a happy birthday, and he even sent me a picture of him and his new wife dressed in traditional Indian clothing at their wedding.

With the advent of Facebook communication was much easier, and it was through that medium that Kuniko and I organized a trip to India to visit Vishnu in 2011. Vishnu and his wife Ashika hosted us at their home in Bangalore for a few days and showed us around their rapidly growing city. We met their kids for the first time and really enjoyed our stay thanks to them.

So it was with great pleasure that we could sort of return the favor, at least a little, by having dinner with Ashika before she flew home. I was getting over a cold so I wasn’t at the top of my game but we still had good conversations and they were brave enough to try some foods that even we don’t normally eat very often. Ashika had brought a handmade bag filled with masala for our cooking, and we sent them back with a little box of goodies made in Akashi, where we live.

As I write this Ashika and Geeta are flying back home via Malaysia with their bags packed with souvenirs from the trip. We really enjoyed seeing Ashika again and we’re hoping that we can also get Vishnu to Japan sometime soon. We’re thinking how fun it would be to visit them again in India, or maybe meet them in another country nearby and travel together.

There I was, standing in front of the local import food store’s better-than-average selection of olive oils, feeling a little intimidated. Thanks to my education and work background I am perfectly comfortable in front of wine bottles lined up on shelves, but olive oils are a completely different thing. I am perusing the extra virgin olive oils, but even within that category you can select oils from Italy or Spain, and then you must sort through terms like “cold extracted”, “press filtered”, “fruttato” and “dolce”, words that are apparently used somewhat loosely throughout the semi-regulated olive oil industry. The prices also add to the feeling of risk – with some oils costing over $40 a liter. It is probably not a sign of rational thinking to blow that much money on a little bottle of olive oil, right?

If I allow my gaze to drop to the lower shelves, much cheaper options beckon. There, extra virgin olive oil is sold in larger plastic containers, and the prices here are at a much more palatable $6-7 per liter – about one fifth the price of the top shelf oils. There are even lower priced options as well, if you are prepared to abandon the olive and get your oil from another source.

The weird part of this story is that the only reason I am even looking at that top shelf of premium olive oils is because of what I’m wearing on my feet while I shop – a comfortable pair of black leather business shoes.

Rewind to fifteen years ago, when I moved to Japan from California with a big suitcase of clothes to get me through a year of teaching English overseas. As that year stretched into a longer and longer stay in a foreign country, it meant that I needed to do my clothes shopping locally. Shirts, slacks, jeans, underwear – all of it was easily available, even for my larger than (Japanese) average body. The challenge was finding shoes in my size. I wear a size 13 in the US (size 30 in Japan) and the fact was that shoes in Japan (even made by foreign companies) maxed out at about a size 9 (roughly a 27 in Japan size).

Obviously shoes are an essential item, and I needed a reliable source, pronto. Any time I visited another country, I’d buy a bunch of shoes in my size, and bring them back to Japan to wear in my daily life. I got into a cycle of bringing back a bunch of cheap shoes that would wear out pretty quickly (especially in the hot, wet Japanese summers) and then I’d need to buy more. I didn’t go overseas often and I wanted to maximize my opportunities with as many shoes as possible and that meant buying shoes at reasonable prices. It just made sense to look for a great price because I figured I’d always be a high volume shoe buyer. I expected the shoes I’d buy to break down soon because my whole life I’d been buying cheap shoes and the idea of a shoe lasting longer than a year was completely (a-hem) foreign to me.

But a few years ago I found a pair of business shoes in Japan that happened to be my size. My wife and I were shopping at an outlet center (outlet shopping has become a very successful import from America) and found some size 30 leather business shoes, stashed in a pile of other boxes in a dusty corner of a shop. Clearly they were not selling in Japan and had been sent off to the outlets to try to get rid of them. After trying them on I bought them and started wearing them to work the next day.

After the first week or so of loosening up the shoes were quite comfortable, and so I stopped thinking about them. For more than a year. And the year after that. It was only after several years that I noticed the soles of the shoes were wearing down, but every other part of the shoe was still in great shape. I took them in to a shoe shop and had them resoled for about $15 and they gave me another year of comfortable wear. They finally had to be retired after more than three years of almost daily use.  

Obviously this turned the way I thought about shoes on its head. I searched in vain for another pair of leather shoes at the outlets, but Japanese people’s feet hadn’t grown significantly since my last visit and there remained little demand for the size 30’s I wear. However I put in an order with my parents and had them send out three pairs of leather shoes from America, and by rotating these I’ve been able to move beyond shoe-related worries and to think about why I had continued to self-import all those suitcases of cheap shoes over the years. Maybe, in fact, cheaper is not always better.

One of the cool things about living in another country is that it is an opportunity to see some cultural points that are hard to notice when viewed from inside the bubble of life in your own country. Now I could see how saving money and getting a good deal were so hard-wired into my way of thinking in America. Of course that isn’t a bad thing and many times that kind of thinking will serve you well, especially over the long term. But by stumbling upon this forgotten pair of size 30 shoes I had also stumbled on a blind spot in my thinking – sometimes it is fine to spend more money to get good quality.

Naturally this revelation made me think more deeply about other things that I cared about. Was there some other area in my life that I’d been low-balling that could be improved with a slightly larger infusion of money? Of course, the first thing I thought about was food. We buy it almost every day, there are lots choices out there, and it is one of the things that gives us the most happiness every day.

I started small – by buying some quality fruit now and then (previously I considered all fruit in Japan to be overpriced and therefore a waste of money). Fruit in Japan is consistently very high quality, and almost unnaturally beautiful. Where does all the asymmetrical or bruised fruit go? Only rows and rows of bright, fresh, colorful (and expensive) fruit line the shelves. The question was whether the enjoyment I got out of the fruit was worth the extra thousand yen ($10) a week I was spending. After enjoying a bulging orange “decopon”, an enormous human head-sized pomelo, and mangoes, papayas and dragonfruit, the answer was yes – it was totally worth it.

Recently I read a book about a couple who bought a house in Spain and started growing their own olives, which led me to think more deeply about olive oil, which in turn led me to standing in front of the premium olive oil section that I described at the beginning of this story. I selected a small bottle of Italian olive oil labeled as “fruttato”, took it home, and poured a healthy dose of the golden liquid into a spoon and tasted it straight. And I realized I’ve been missing out on what olive oil could truly be. We always buy the big jug of cheap olive oil for cooking (and still do) but using a little premium olive oil to have with bread, to top a salad or use on popcorn instead of butter – it was a whole new way for us to enjoy food.

The lesson here was not to go spend more money on everything. The lesson for me was that I need to rethink some of the views that have been ingrained in me and see where I might make some small improvements. A little more money has made a huge difference for my feet and for our dinner table. I’ll try to keep my eyes open for other areas to improve.

The seasons are starting to change and we’re starting to think about cherry blossoms and new students. April brings with it some very different weather, more time outdoors, and unfortunately for some people, hay fever. Luckily Kuniko and I seem to have avoided it so far, and hopefully we can keep that streak going.

This weekend we’ll have two days off together, for the first time in a long time. I’m not sure exactly what we’ll be doing, but if the weather complies we’ll probably do some gardening outdoors. Last year I kind of let things run their course outside and this year I want to get things in shape. A few weeks ago I cleaned out the old crap laying around outside our house and pulled out a couple of uninteresting and unproductive plants that weren’t really doing anything for us. I also cut back the monster bush of rosemary that was getting ready to knock on our door and move in.

We’ll be planting herbs (cilantro, thyme, dill, oregano, mint) and hopefully some of those will be able to stick around for a few years. The cilantro is a one season only project, but we certainly eat enough of it that it would pay off to grow it ourselves. This will be a learning experience and I don’t expect that everything will make it, but if even half of the herbs survive I’ll be happy. Hopefully we can turn our black thumbs green this year.

Something new – a guest post from my mom! Recently she mentioned that I hadn’t blogged in a while so I offered her a chance to write a guest blog, and she did a great job! Here is her post:

In June of 2003, Ray and I went to Los Angeles airport and saw Bryan off on what we thought would be a three year job/adventure teaching and living in Japan.  He left belongings in storage and in our attic.  Little did we know that he would find the love of his life and decide to make his home permanently there in Japan.

When he was first in Japan, we had limited ways to communicate with him. Not knowing what he was doing, how he was feeling, was he sick or well, happy or homesick was a real challenge for a mom to deal with.  We finally found a long distance phone plan that wasn’t too expensive.  The first month our phone bill was over $200 when the plan didn’t kick in right away.  After some time, we were able to figure out the time differences and managed to talk once a week if he was home when we called.  I don’t remember what his phone situation was at the time, but we didn’t want to run up a big long distance bill on his phone, so we tried to call.

The other way we got news from Bryan was his decision to keep up a blog every day.  This was something new for us, but since day one of his blogging, I have been so grateful to him for writing almost every day, for his writing skills, and for his desire to have a written record of his time in Japan.  The blog has kept us informed, kept me from worrying so much about what was or was not happening to him, and did provide so much insight into his life there.  The blog was where we also first heard about Kuniko.  In 2005, Kuniko became our daughter-in-law and we first visited Japan.  

Over the years, we have become resigned to the fact that they will always make their home in Japan.  We have been lucky enough to be able to visit them, meet a lot of their friends and family, and to make new friends ourselves.  Knowing how much they love each other, we are grateful that he has such a loving wife to share his life. They have a wonderful circle of people to give them love and support.

Now, after he has spent almost 16 years in Japan, I have to say that I am so grateful for the amount of changes made in the technology and communications industry.  Instead of waiting for one day a week to talk to Bryan and Kuniko, if I think of something I want to tell them or a question for them, maybe a book or movie recommendation, news about a friend, I just text on my cell phone (trying to always be aware of the time difference) and I get an answer right away.  The immediacy of that answer is so reassuring.  It has made a world of difference when there have been earthquakes and other disasters to be able tohear right away that they are alright. Blogging, texting and messaging, talking on the cell phones, facetime, skyping, even sending pictures back and forth…all have made the world a smaller place for me.  For this technology I am very very grateful.

For one reason or another, we have eaten a lot of oysters this season. We often went to Akashi and bought oysters from the fish market there, as a reward for walking all the way to Akashi. The oysters this year were especially delicious, and recently over dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant we told Mamiko and Yoshi all about our oyster addiction. They turned out to be pretty big oyster lovers themselves (who isn’t?), and they wanted to get in on the oyster mania – we figured we could squeeze one more oyster party in before the end of the season. We arranged a date to drive out to the coast west of Himeji and buy a bunch of oysters to bring home and cook up at their house.

Yoshi and Mamiko came by car on Saturday morning and picked us up. The weather was beautiful and unseasonably warm, and we packed a few bottles of cold prosecco along with some craft cheese we had shipped in from Okinawa into the back of their car to enjoy later at their house. Then it was a matter of making the hour or so drive to get the oysters. We were delayed by a bit of traffic we finally got to the Tatsuno area, and then drove south over the hill to a beautiful coastline. Previously we had been out to Ako which is a little farther west, and it had a similar feel. We drove past several small isolated fishing villages that seemed to be based on the oyster industry – it made me wonder what everyone does during the off season. I think it might be fun to spend an evening in one of these villages, grilling oysters with the ocean in the background and maybe visiting a few local pubs. I don’t know about the hotel situation, but one of these days I’d like to come back and spend some more time in a place like this.

Yoshi drove us a bit farther along the coast to a shop that they had visited before. We parked the car and went inside to look around. There was a funny moment when Kuniko noticed that Mamiko and I were wearing the exact same colors – an unintentional wardrobe match.

The oyster place was a combination of store, restaurant, and a to-go food stand that had an old lady busy frying oysters for people to eat right away. Around back was a wharf area that looked like it is much busier in the morning. We walked a little around the wharf area and then went back to do our shopping. Inside we ended up buying five kilograms of oysters, ten big scallops, and a small bag of medium-sized clams. The oysters were surprisingly cheap at 900 yen per kilogram, and the size of the oysters was pretty big – bigger than ones that we had earlier in the year.

Once we had loaded our shellfish into the car we drove on down the coast, to another tourist shop selling local vegetables, seafood and snacks. Because it was around lunchtime there were a lot of customers and it was some sort of miracle that we could find a parking spot across the street. Inside we lined up to buy some tofu, some manju, and a few other snacks that we could have as side dishes for our lunch.

From there it was back home on the highway, and luckily there wasn’t any traffic for the return trip. We talked together on the ride home, and Kuniko and I were in a pretty good mood with oysters and prosecco on the menu. We giggled and laughed at each other’s jokes on the ride home, and it made the time fly by.

Back in Tarumi we unloaded our goods and fired up the hot plate, and then got the party started. As usual Mamiko had prepared lots of delicious side dishes – chopped onions, lemon juice, ponzu sauce, soy milk, and a smoked salmon salad that was refreshing. We also broke out some of the Okinawan cheese and introduced it to them for the first time. Once the food and wine was flowing, we really started to relax and enjoy the afternoon.

It was interesting to see the way they cooked the oysters – we often put our oysters directly on the grill and let them pop open, but they put their oysters on the hot plate, and steam them with a cover to get them to open up. Some of the oysters were a little shy, but once we got them open they were really big! As usual the oysters were best without any special toppings – straight off the grill on the half-shell. They were probably the best oysters we’ve had this season, and I was glad we could enjoy them with good friends.

After a while Akira came home from his school club activities, and joined us in this sort of hedonistic ritual of oyster eating. He was just as interested in the cheese, and I think it was a hit with him. We hadn’t seen Akira for a long time, and he was looking more and more like a young adult. He was a little more talkative this time, and so it was fun talking with him a bit.

In the early evening we started to slow down – having eaten enough shellfish to feed an army – and so in the end we had Mamiko call us a taxi and we went back to the station to get a train home to Okubo. It was a really nice lunch/dinner and during the evening we decided to get together at our house in the near future. Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira are a lot of fun to hang out with and we’re looking forward to eating and drinking together again soon.

In the middle of our Christmas holiday in Florida, we hopped on a Southwest flight to Havana for a few days on our own. Cuba is one of those countries that I had been interested in visiting but was low on my priority list because it seemed to be geographically and politically out of reach. A few years ago relations between Cuba and Washington DC seemed to warm up under the Obama administration, but chilled right back down again once Trump became president. Since we were going to be in Florida anyway, we looked into how we could go there, and found a minor loophole that could be used to pull off a trip. By going on the trip and declaring that we were “Supporting the Cuban People”, developing an itinerary and keeping our receipts as proof of our support activities, we could theoretically get back into the USA after our trip. Kuniko and I discussed the risks, booked a flight and a hotel, and we were all set.

Southwest flies direct from Tampa airport to Havana several times a week, and it was pretty simple to line up and check-in. Just before check-in there is a counter where you can pick up your Cuban visa (ours cost $50 a person which we paid for online before the trip). Then we checked a solitary suitcase (which I don’t recommend for short trips – as you’ll see later).

Flights to Cuba left from the domestic terminal so it was just like any other destination, and we had a little breakfast before taking off. It was just an hour in the air – up and down – and most of the other passengers seemed to be speaking Spanish. I spotted a few white folks probably exploiting the same loophole we were, but Kuniko was the only Japanese person on board. It was a little exciting to be on a plane bound for a new country – we were both pretty excited.

It was a bright sunny morning when we arrived and we watched out the airplane windows to see what we could see, but unfortunately the plane had approached the outskirts on Havana from the south so we didn’t fly over the city. The Havana airport was tiny – one of the smallest airports we’ve ever visited, and once the plane doors opened we just walked down the steps and across to the arrival doors. No guards, no guides, just follow the person in front of you. I saw only two or three other planes there, and very few ground vehicles.

Once inside we lined up for immigration. At check-in back in the USA they had given us several forms to fill out, and Kuniko and I had filled them in carefully with lots of information. We wanted to be sure not to screw anything up but in the end, the Cuban authorities didn’t really seem to care that much. They spoke English at immigration, and let us in to the country without much interest. Then we lined up to go through a security checkpoint after immigration (which was new to me), and after that we were free to pick up our suitcase from the carousel and leave.

This was the first incident where we felt like we were in a developing country. There were two carousels for the whole airport, Carousel A and Carousel B. Around the carousels were crowds of people – way more than had arrived on our plane. Lots of baggage was piled around the carousels haphazardly, and it looked like a scene from a war movie. There were no signs but I recognized a few people from our plane at Carousel A so we waited there. Big packages wrapped in plastic were being thrown out a hatch onto the carousel, and after waiting for about 15 minutes there were still no suitcases (ours or anyone else’s). It turns out that bringing things to Cuba is a big deal (and probably profitable for some people) and so our little suitcase was the least of anyone’s worries. Huge bundles kept coming and coming, and Carousel B was just as packed as A. It was a total mess, and we could have saved a lot of time by not bringing a suitcase at all. After even more time waiting we got smart and Kuniko went to watch the other carousel – it seemed like baggage from our flight was going to both carousels. Finally Kuniko retrieved our bag, we gave our customs forms to two ladies who could have cared less (it seemed to be optional) and then we went to find our driver.

I had arranged a driver with our hotel to avoid any stress with negotiation and being ripped off, and he was waiting for us right outside the airport. We changed some money to Cuban pesos, and then got in our driver’s classic car for a ride to the hotel. The car was in pretty good shape, it had an after-market air conditioner installed inside (which was nice as it was a pretty hot morning in Havana) and we sat in the back grinning and enjoying the seatbelt-free ride.  Roads in Havana turned out to be pretty disorganized, and so the drive was full of interesting things to see. At first we mainly passed farms, then factories, and then finally into the bigger neighborhoods of the city. The driver pulled into the narrow streets of Old Havana and pulled up in front of our hotel address, which was just a door leading into a building. The hotel name wasn’t written anywhere but there was a sign for a hairdresser that was also in the building and that ended up being the visual cue for me the rest of our stay.

The driver knocked on the hotel door and then waved to us and left, and we entered to find a nice boutique style entrance, with three women who introduced themselves very politely in English. We had arrived early in the morning and the room wasn’t quite ready, but they took us up some stairs to a landing inside the building that was open air and designed for meals and entertaining. We sat and the ladies prepared a welcome drink – two Cuba Libres for the foreign guests. It seemed like a nice enough hotel, clean and friendly with no communication problems. We left our suitcase at the hotel desk and then went outside to explore Old Havana.

I didn’t have any sort of expectations coming to Havana, and so we walked around with an open mind and just took it all in. The first thing that made an impact was the beautiful classical architecture. We’ve been to a lot of cities and Havana’s old buildings were beautiful, old and dying slowly. It was haphazard how some buildings looked well-maintained and others seemed to be falling apart. Some of Old Havana’s narrow streets were broken, and there was construction here and there but in no organized fashion. This area was dominated by tourism and the locals taking advantage of it, but it didn’t feel touristy, exactly. Not so many shops aimed at tourists, some restaurants and coffee shops were open, and at nearly every corner was some form of live music. Cubans know that their music is one of the drawing points for tourism and they are taking full advantage of it. I think I heard “Chan Chan” – the famous song from Buena Vista Social Club – being played six or seven times during our visit. They were also pretty quick with the collection hat – if you stopped and listened for more than five or ten seconds someone was tapping your shoulder and asking you to support the Cuban people – exactly the reason that we had declared to the US government.

The Cuban people we met were all friendly, and even the ones selling something weren’t too pushy or aggressive. They seemed genuinely happy and willing to talk with visitors. It felt safe, and the streets were filled with tourists from frequent cruise ship visits, Canadians, Europeans and even a few Asian groups. We understood that we were in a touristy area and it wasn’t representative of the entire country, but we were still pleasantly surprised.

Around Old Havana there are four major squares, built near cathedrals, and by visiting each of these squares you start to get an overall feel for the area. We visited several before getting hungry and looking for a lunch place. By chance we were able to get a table for two at one of the restaurants recommended online called Paladera Dona Eutimina. After sitting down we watched the staff start turning everyone else away, so our timing was perfect.

We started with frozen mojitos, and had a nice lunch of ropa vieja made with lamb, roasted pork, and plenty of rice and beans on the side. The ropa vieja was a revelation – I didn’t expect such a dramatically tasty dish at the first lunch place we visited. The food on this trip was uniformly good and although the menus tended to be similar and based around the same set of dishes, the local chefs seemed to be open to creativity and some flourishes of flavor. Ropa vieja is usually made of beef, and later we tried the beef version, but the lamb version on that first day really turned us on.

For the next few days we took things slow, walking around town, eating great food and drinking a lot of rum drinks (Ron Collins, mojitos, Cuba Libres, daiquiris – I was loving all variations). Some areas had more restaurants and the less popular restaurants hired guys to try to steer you to their place promising free WiFi and food made by their own mother. We soon learned that the best thing to do was to rub your stomach and say that you “just ate” and they would respond with “maybe later” and let you go.

Our hotel turned out to be a nice enough room. The one feature that got our attention was that there was a toilet in the shower. Or maybe there was a shower in the toilet room. Either way, we had to take off my clothes to use the toilet as the shower room was wet (especially after our morning showers) and it made for some interesting situations. The breakfast at the hotel was nice too – a grilled ham and cheese sandwich made by one of the ladies, plenty of cafe con leche and fresh fruits, along with a choice of juices (beetroot, pineapple or papaya). The juices were a little unusual and it was fun to try them but I don’t think I’ll be a beetroot juice fan for life.

One night while I was fast asleep Kuniko said that she could clearly hear the sound of loud lovemaking from another room in the hotel. I guess the walls were not that thin, but the staff recognized the problem quickly and solved it by walking through the hotel singing a song loudly. The amorous couple got the message and quieted down, and as usual I slept through all the late night hotel excitement.

On our second day in Havana we arranged through the hotel for a taxi ride to Fusterlandia, which is an artist compound 30 minutes’ drive west of Old Havana along the coastline. Our taxi driver was a cheerful friendly sort who put up with my rusty Spanish and was flexible about our plans. The drive to get to the compound was memorable because it was our first time really outside of Old Havana and we could see some other parts of the city. There were some slightly more modern buildings, but most were old, and some seemed to be either under construction or under de-construction – we weren’t sure which. We drove along the oceanfront on a major road that had two lanes going each direction, with a wide promenade for pedestrians and trees in the center. Along the roadside we spotted embassies of countries that have formal relationships with Cuba and these buildings were slightly better maintained and had heavier security.

We knew we had arrived at Fusterlandia because the buildings in the neighborhood had been almost entirely covered with colorful broken tiles. The tiles formed artwork that evoked the work of Gaudi in Spain, and apparently his work was what had inspired Mr. Fuster, the founder of the area. His own tilework at his house had spread to the surrounding houses, then the whole neighborhood, and now there was a steady stream of tourists coming out to see it. My brother had recommended this visit, and we were really glad that we followed his advice to see it.

Although a whole neighborhood is decorated, it didn’t take too long to see everything we wanted to see. The tiles are the main attraction but other artists had set up shop, and we briefly looked through their work. We bought a souvenir tile for Mark and Susan from the Fuster house, and then wrapped up our visit. It was a unique destination and a good change of pace for us.

We asked our driver (who looked just like our buddy Mark from Switzerland) to drop us off at the Capitolio – the Capitol building of Havana. It was under renovation at the time but was still striking and beautiful – a dead ringer for the US Capitol building.

The rest of our stay was about knocking out small things we wanted to do. We sipped rum at the Havana Club rum museum (their premium bottle of “Maestro” was really good), we shopped through artist markets looking for souvenirs for the family, and we tried to eat as many different kinds of foods as possible. Just sitting and watching the traffic pass by was interesting – there was quite a blend of modern cars, classic cars, little football helmet cars that served as tuk-tuk taxis, and even horse drawn wagons.

At one point we stumbled on a “mercado” – the closest thing to a supermarket that we could find during our stay. Here they mainly served the locals, and the selection of foods available was pretty sparse. I could really feel the difference here between living in a developed country and living in one that is more isolated. It seemed like there weren’t many local products – candies and chocolates came from various South American countries, and the market dealt in a different currency for the locals (CUPs) which was much weaker than the CUCs that we were carrying. Through all of this the locals we met continued to be friendly and helpful, and their attitude about visitors really left a positive impression on us.

On our last day in Havana we had time to get lunch, and ended up back at the great restaurant that we started our trip with – Dona Eutimina. We got the last available table (once again), and this time sat outside and watched people coming up and getting turned down. The surrounding restaurant’s had touts who happily led customers to the booked up Dona Eutimina, and then waited patiently until they were given the bad news before leading them to their own restaurants. It was a busy afternoon and it took a long time to get our food, but a few rum drinks helped out a lot. The food the second time around was also great, and this time we had some fried dishes along with a spicy chickpea dish that was really good.

We had just a little Cuban cash left in our wallet and thought it might be fun to pay a guy to drive us around in a classic car for a little while. Our flight was coming up in the early evening and we didn’t really want to spend a whole hour on a tour, which is the usual rental arrangement for the classic car drivers. We found a car that we liked, and a guy nearby helped explain the requirements to us, even though it wasn’t his car. “My car is the pink convertible over there” he kept repeating, every time we asked him about some more details of the rental. We weren’t interested in the pink convertible, but he was nice enough to keep talking with us. In the end it seemed that nobody wanted to be bothered by driving us around for a short ride, so we left on good terms with the drivers and killed time walking around on our own.

Back at the hotel we walked up to the door to get our suitcase, check out and leave but strangely the door was locked. We rang the bell and then the door opened, and the three hotel staff ladies looked at us guiltily – I guess we had caught them all taking a chatting break. We checked out and arranged a taxi ride to the airport, and after just a few minutes the taxi driver showed up and led us outside.

Wow – he was driving a classic car! The car was very similar to the car we had been trying to negotiate a ride in, and so it was like fate was on our side that day. The driver was very cheerful and didn’t mind us taking pictures of his ride before we left. We got in and the driver started backing down the one-way street to get out of the neighborhood. While backing up he suddenly did a double take and saw a street vendor just outside the car window selling sunglasses, so he apologized to us as he bought a new pair of shades from his driver’s seat.  

It was a short ride to the airport and we had our driver take one last picture before we left. He was a really cool guy about it. From there it was pretty easy to check in to our flight and go through immigration and security. Our flight ended up being delayed about a half hour or so, but in the end it showed up and we could be back on our way to the USA.

The flight was quite short but we did get a look out the window and saw Key West as we flew west of it – it was a very bright area in an otherwise black night flight. Soon we landed at Tampa airport, and then deplaned and went to go through immigration and re-enter the United States.

We approached the immigration area and I was a little nervous. Everything I had read on the internet said that nobody really cared why we had gone to Cuba, and nobody had ever been interviewed in detail about their visit. We had prepared our itinerary and had a small clump of receipts that would show our activities in Havana, so I felt as prepared as we could be. We managed to get into the same immigration line and approached the officer together, just in case.  The officer was pretty laid back, and asked us what the purpose of our visit was to Cuba. “Support for the Cuban people”, I stated clearly, and he responded with, “What does that mean, really?” I wasn’t expecting a philosophical discussion at this point so I was struggling for what to say. I think what came out was something like, “Well we want to help, uh, Cubans, uh, human helping, uh…” Kuniko looked at me and was probably wondering if I was truly a native English speaker or not.

The immigration guy took it in stride and marked a little note on his sheet. “Now that we’ve got that formality out of the way, why did you really go to Cuba?” He said it with a tilt of the head and a chummy smile like we were old friends. Luckily I sensed the trap and told him that yes, we did in fact go to support the Cuban people. He kind of gave up and finished processing our passports, and we chatted about traveling in general. He apparently travels quite a bit and so we had something in common. It was with slightly shaking hands that we proceeded to pick up our suitcase and come back to America safely.

With the somewhat exciting re-entry into America the trip turned out to a memorable experience. Once again we found that when we actually visited a country that we had previously thought of as “risky” it was quite different from what we had expected. The trip served as an enjoyable view into a completely different culture, and in the end that is all that we are really hoping for when we travel.

It has been a couple of months since my last blog post. Generally things have been moving along smoothly, but as usual the number of events tends to pick up at the end of the year.

On Monday night we had a chance to meet up with Jason Brenner and his wife Sandra in Osaka. It has been years (20? 30?) since I’ve seen Jason, and thanks to Facebook we were able to reconnect and meet up on the other side of the world in Japan. Jason and his wife were traveling a bit through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka and we caught them on their last night in town before flying back to California.

It was a little surreal to sit across from them and catch up on all the old stories and memories from growing up together in Glen Ellen and Sonoma. Then we caught each other up on what we’ve been doing since high school graduation, and there were some interesting similarities. Like me, Jason had studied winemaking (me at Fresno, him at UC Davis), like him I had worked for a stint in Silicon Valley in the tech business, and it turned out that we both shared an intense love for the Japanese 7-11 convenience store egg salad sandwiches. Unreal!

We talked over a dinner of okonomiyaki, beef skewers and grilled edamame, and then we headed to Grand Front to have some drinks at a bar. We had a great time with them, and I certainly hope they’ll be back in the future, maybe next time with their entire family.

Talking to old friends seemed to initiate for me a sort of mental time machine, and the past few days I’ve been remembering various stages of my life and realizing how I’ve been so lucky with each one. It also makes me wonder what I’ll think of my current life stage once I get older. Will I think about it as a sort of settling down? The calm before the storm? I’ll just have to wait and see.

We are nearing the end of November, and that means that the weather is cooling down, the electric blankets come out, the year end parties get started, the Christmas tree should go up, packing for our trip to America in a few weeks, last minute Christmas shopping, and of course, we need to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary.

This year we’re celebrating on Thursday the 22nd of November because the next day is a national holiday and we can go out after work and enjoy some good food and wine and not worry too much about the repercussions. We’ll try a new place this year, and we continue our quest for.the “best restaurant in Kobe”.

With all the excitement next month it may be tough to write updates, but I’ll try to be better about that so someday I’ll be able to look back at these posts and not have to wonder what the hell I did in big two month gaps…

Recently I wrote down a list of all the places I’ve lived. It worked out to about 15 different homes – sometimes with family, sometimes on my own, but the number was larger than I had expected. Once I moved to Japan, the rate of increase slowed down considerably, and for the most part our life has been pretty settled for the past ten years or so.

I think that all that change in my background created a streak of flexibility in my character, and that paid off especially when I taught English here in Japan through an agency. I would show up at some factory, be directed to some stale smelling meeting room, and then be expected to teach a small group of exhausted staff a couple of evenings a month.

But having worked at Kawasaki for the past six or seven years I’ve been lucky to be set up in my own classroom. On the fourth floor of a reasonably modern office building, I could enjoy the comforts of air conditioning during the summers, plenty of mobile office furniture to push around into whatever arrangement fit the day’s teaching situation, and as a side benefit get a great deal of privacy as the classroom also served as my office.

So recently I was informed that due to some departmental shifts at our company I’d need to relocate, and it was an odd sort of feeling inside that seemed to say, “Well, that hasn’t happened in a long time…”

Yesterday I watched a small crew of very strong men come in and move everything down one floor to another classroom/office, and I’ve spent most of today unpacking and settling in.

I like the new space. The room is roughly the same size as my old classroom, however the separate room that I used to have dedicated to group lessons will now be scheduled and shared with other staff on this floor, so it is not entirely under my control. One very nice point was that during the move I could choose the furniture and equipment that I wanted to take, and simply point at old junky furniture that I had been stuck with years ago and have that delivered to someone else who will be stuck with it.

My new floor is completely different in that there is a huge office that takes up the center of the building, serving as a separation between me and all the usual amenities like the toilet, office kitchen, a clean water source, and the rest. On my previous floor I only had to walk down a hallway with all the workers behind closed doors to get whatever I needed, but now my stroll to the john can be observed by more than a hundred people. It is an odd feeling now – but I’m sure it will feel less odd in the future.

From next week I’ll start with new students, new classes, and in a new space. I’m looking forward to the change, and that it will also serve to shake up my lesson plans and teaching ideas as well.

Last week we had a pretty strong typhoon come through our area in the middle of the night. We knew it was coming, and my company was nice enough to let everyone go home early before the trains shut down so we could prepare the house.

It was a sleepless night as the winds banged away at our windows and sometimes you could feel the entire house shake from the gusts. In the end the typhoon passed, and we could get a couple hours of sleep before going to work. There was some minor damage around the neighborhood, but we counted ourselves lucky.

Yesterday, another typhoon came through. This is number 21 for the season, and it was forecast to pass through our area in the middle of the day. Once again, both my company and Kuniko’s company gave us time off to avoid a stressful and possibly dangerous commute. We both had the whole day off.

The night before I did some shopping to make sure we had enough food and alcohol to get us through – and as it turned out the typhoon wasn’t quite as strong as the previous one. There were occasional gusts of wind and some diagonal rain, but to be honest it was a bit anti-climatic.

But as we learned from the earthquakes in Japan, just because it wasn’t a big one for you doesn’t mean it wasn’t bigger somewhere else.

We were shocked to see some of the news afterwards, with images of a runaway tanker that slammed into the road and rail links to Kansai International Airport. The airport was also flooded and experienced some loss of power, stranding some poor people there while flights were grounded. It seems like it will be out of action at least a couple of days. The typhoon caused problems in other parts of western Japan, and we were really lucky to have missed the brunt of it.

I’m back at work this morning, and the train system is starting to recover. I think it will be a stressful commute for a lot of people today, and things won’t be back to normal for a little while yet.

We dodged a bullet this time, but September is usually typhoon season in Japan, and there are sure to be more coming later this month.

A few years back we took our first trip to Eastern Europe, and it was one of my favorite trips. We started in Croatia, traveled on to Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, and ended the journey in the Czech Republic after two weeks of fairly ambitious travel.  I remember when planning out that trip that I would have loved to stretch out the end point and finish in Warsaw, Poland, because I have always wanted to visit there. Unfortunately there just wasn’t enough time.

That near miss, with Kuniko’s interest in visiting the Baltic States, and the availability of a direct flight to Helsinki, Finland, combined to end up being the trip we took this summer. It started in Helsinki, and then we traveled by ferry across the gulf of Finland to Tallinn in Estonia, from there by bus to Riga, Latvia, by plane to Vilnius, Lithuania, by plane again to Minsk, Belarus, and then another hop in a plane to Warsaw, Poland. Minsk ended up in there because of a unique visa situation, so we found ourselves visiting six countries in two weeks. But unlike previous trips, the amount of sightseeing was less – these are for the most part small cities in small countries, not really on the main tourist track. This could be a good thing or bad thing depending what your expectations are for the trip, but we were looking to relax more this time and I think we met that goal nicely.

It was a great trip, and I’ll describe what we did in the following blog posts as a kind of memory aid for me – I often like to look back at the trips and using a combination of photos and this journal, things come back remarkably clearly. Enjoy the journal!

Pictures from our trip:

Helsinki, Finland

Tallinn, Estonia

Riga, Latvia

Vilnius, Lithuania

Minsk, Belarus

Warsaw, Poland