"This is the best Halloween ever!"

So said Arno, as we enjoyed our third Halloween in Tokyo. Arno was a vampire with glow-in-the-dark teeth, and Lucinda was "Trixie" the witch.


Some other pix:

Night at the ryokan

Traveling in Japan is shockingly expensive: about $500/night when you include shinkansen (bullet train) tickets, a decent but not stellar hotel, meals and extras.

Fortunately, I won a top raffle prize at Nishimachi's recent Food Fair for a family one-night stay at Nasu Onsen Sanraku, a luxury ryokan (traditional Japanese inn). We knew this would be a full-on Japanese experience: a room with tatami mats, an elaborate kaiseki (multi-course meal) served en suite by a maid in a kimono, a bath in an onsen (natural hot-springs bath), and sleeping on futons on the floor. The real cost for the four of us -- in Japan, you pay for each guest, not for the room itself - would have been $1,000 for that one night. So we were feeling pretty lucky!

From the start, the service at Sanraku was exemplary. When we explained that we'd left our suitcases at the Nasu-shiobara train station to go hiking, the staff offered to pick the bags up for us, a round trip of about an hour. Here's the ryokan's entrance:


Here's our pristine room. You eat and sleep in the main room, with an alcove by the window for reading.


Our window framed the autumn leaves, an essential part of the decor.


On the table when we arrived: a warm towel, a warm sesame-paste sweet, and frothy, freshly whisked matcha (green tea).


When you walk into the hotel lobby, you take off your own shoes and put on slippers. Then in your room, you leave your slippers in the entryway (called a genkan) and tread on the tatami in bare feet or in white tabi socks. You also change into a yukata, a cotton kimono.


We went to the hotel's onsen, which was amazing. You shower and shampoo before you get into steaming water for a soak. Sanraku has an indoor pool and an outdoor pond with rocks to sit on. Men and women are separated because everyone is naked. It's delightful and incredibly relaxing. After the bath, Lu and Arno hung out in the electronic massage chairs.


After the bath, we returned to our room for supper. It was delicious and somewhat overwhelming. The maid brought in about a dozen plates, some of which had 4 or 5 different foods.

The intro (top) photograph in this post shows the first offerings served with a pear-wine aperitif. The menu also included:







Did I mention that the food was overwhelming? Arno didn't know what to make of the "kid's" meal, which included some delicious grilled steak and wasabi-free sushi. He drank orange soda and ate rice and omochi (pounded rice balls) filled with azuki bean paste. But Lucinda was amazing and tried almost everything.

Here's Blaine, drinking a beer and lounging in his yukata at the very, very low table - which is not so comfortable for tall people like us.


After supper, the kids watched Japanese TV in the ground-level chairs...


... and then we walked around the hotel, checked out the gift shop, and returned to our room to collapse on the futons by 10pm. Sadly, I took no photos of the futons, but a worker moved the table to a corner and put four futons in a row against a wall of the main room. A very comfortable family sleepover.

The next morning, the maid returned with a massive and complex kaiseki breakfast of a dozen dishes, including fish shabu shabu, grilled fish, seaweed and pickles. This view shows my breakfast.


At this moment, all I wanted was a fresh croissant, a pot of jam, and a big cup of cafe au lait - or maybe some bran cereal, walnuts and sliced banana. I realized, as the maid walked in with maybe the 10th dish, that a little ryokan goes a long way. An amazing cultural experience, but one night was enough.

As the hotel van pulled away, en route for the train station, the staff bowed to say goodbye and thank you.

Day at the volcano

Last weekend, we went away for three days to Tochigi Prefecture, a mountainous region about 200 km north of Tokyo that has natural hot springs created by quiet-but-alive volcanoes. We made two stops, Friday in Nasu and Saturday in Nikko. I'll cover the visit in three posts: The volcano, the ryokan, and Nikko's temples - with lots of photos.

I planned extensively to make train and hotel connections work smoothly. This great website, Jorudan, gives you all the train options and prices, incredibly valuable in a country where trains leave precisely on schedule.

Shinkansen arrives.


Shinkansen apple juice!


An hour and 100 km later, we were in the country.


The shinkansen took us to Nasu-shiobara, from which the main road leads into the Nasu highlands. It reminded me of upstate New York: country houses, grape vines, high-end shopping and autumn leaves. We caught a bus to our first sightseeing stop, Mount Chausu (Chausu-dake), a steaming volcano that last erupted in 1963.

A 5-minute tram ride...


... takes you up to a small building where you can buy ramen and corn dogs for lunch and read amusing signs.


You can hike to the summit but we followed the near-empty trail that circumnavigates the peak. It was foggy, then clearing. It looked like the volcano had spit up massive rocks everywhere, leaving a lunar-with-plants landscape. The kids loved climbing on the rocks.



The geology was pretty cool: huge ash-gray boulders, plus seams of rust-colored (iron?) or yellowish (sulfur?) rocks.



We walked for about 75 minutes - certainly not all the way around - because we had to catch a bus down the mountain to get to the ryokan. This warning sign was posted near the tram doorway.



Next... a night at the ryokan

Origami of the week

A new rabbit, which Lucinda folded to celebrate Otsukimi, the full-moon festival, a few weeks ago.

Reading out loud

How delightful: On this cloudy Sunday afternoon, Blaine and Lucinda are sitting in the living room and reading "Romeo and Juliet" aloud. Lucinda is a fan of "Shakespeare in Love," and chose this play out of Blaine's everything-Shakespeare volume. Meanwhile, Arno is planning his next "junk art" masterpiece.

Trip to the mountains

We're going away for the weekend into mountains about 100 km from Tokyo. We'll do some hiking, see heaps of autumn leaves and stay in traditional Japanese inns.

I won a raffle prize at the recent Nishimachi Food Fair for all of us to stay overnight at Nasu Onsen Sanraku (the luxury Sanraku inn). Looks amazing.

Then we're going to Nikko, a well-known leaf-watching haven, with various temples and shrines, a tramway, and Lake Chuzenji. Our hotel, Nikko Toshogu Koyoen, in Shimo-imaichi looks lovely, too.

So we'll be wearing yukata (cotton kimono), soaking in the onsen (natural hot-springs bath), eating kaiseki (multi-course supper) served in our room, and sleeping on futons.

Back Sunday, with lots of photos.

Blaine's latest: North Koreans make weapons out of forks and spoons!

I'm slow to post this, but Blaine wrote an awesome story, "N. Korea Swiftly Expanding Its Special Forces" (published 10/9) about a massive increase in North Korea's Special Forces. In the event of a South Korean or US attack on the DPRK, these commandos would come over the border to wreak havoc in Seoul, potentially killing many thousands of people.

Fun facts to know and trade:

- North Korea now has an estimated 180,000 special forces commandos! The US, by contrast, has about 51,000 special forces worldwide (Army Rangers, Navy Seals, etc.)

- Among other routes, these deadly folks could fly over the border in low-flying World War II-era biplanes.

- Like villains in a 007 episode, North Korean special forces are skilled in "throwing knives, firing poisonous darts and running up steep hills wearing backpacks filled with 60 pounds of rocks and sand."

- They are also "drilled in street warfare, chemical attacks, night fighting, martial arts, car theft..."

- And finally, in what may be my all-time favorite fact from one of Blaine's stories: These DPRK commandos can "use spoons and forks as weapons." You don't read about that every day!

Fun with math

Math was something of a chore for Lucinda in 1st grade and she really resented my efforts (last summer) to make her practice basic addition and subtraction on worksheets every few days.

But we're having a better time with math this fall because her school purchased access to an Australian website/company called Mathletics (link here: www.mathletics.com.au). It lets children practice equations at their grade level and compete against the computer or children in countries all over the world to answer questions in 60 seconds.

Lucinda usually avoids overtly competitive situations (i.e. swim team, Student Council elections, aggressive soccer team), yet she loves, loves Mathletics. When Mathletics scans the globe to match her with other kids who are looking for a contest, she gleefully announces the players' names and countries ("Audrey from Australia! Mohammed from Qatar! John from the United States!) and doesn't mind whether she wins or loses.

Mathletics also lets teachers arrange homework for children to complete on their own time, and it's available to anyone with an Internet connex who buys the annual $100 subscription.

Wonders never cease

I'm always amazed to learn something new about Japanese efficiency, and especially how technology is put to work to improve basic boring bureaucratic operations.

Today, for example, I went to Japan Post to mail a registered letter to the US. The post-office lady asked me to wait and, a minute later, handed me a computer printout with actual scanned images of the address and return address I'd written on my letter. She didn't have to write anything or copy anything herself.

At city bus stops, each bus's GPS tells waiting commuters when their bus is 1, 2 or 3 stops away - and sometimes how many minutes it will take to reach the next major destination based on the traffic ahead. (In 2001, when I was covering then-candidate Mike Bloomberg's first campaign for NYC mayor, Bloomberg said he wanted to install GPS on every city bus - and I thought it was a ridiculous and impossible idea.)

And at grocery stores, clerks feed paper money and coins into the cash register's computer to ensure exact change is returned.

I'm sure there are hundreds of other examples that I haven't yet seen.

Vietnam in Afghanistan?

One of our good friends in New York, Gordon Goldstein, has been getting a lot of ink lately because his book Lessons in Disaster, about the Vietnam War and JFK's and LBJ's National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, is said to be on President Obama's nightstand. (The book just came out in paperback... order at Amazon!)

Frank Rich featured the book in a recent NYT column entitled "Obama at the Precipice.". And the Wall St. Journal cites Lessons in Disaster in its story today, Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages.

What a wonderful achievement for Gordon and his wife Anne Gilbert (who went to Columbia University's J-school with me). Gordie worked on the book for more than a decade and it was published last year. He and Bundy collaborated until Bundy died, in 1996, and the Bundy family withdrew its consent for the material. So Gordie had to make the tough decision to go on alone with the project, and according to a review in the NYT by Richard Holbrooke last fall, it was clearly worthwhile.

Congratulations, Gordie!

Incidentally, I interviewed Gordie for a piece I wrote for Salon.com in 2003, "Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President," when the Iraq War was going south.

Bye-bye, Super Typhoon

It was quite rainy overnight, but Super Typhoon Melor has gone north ahead of schedule.

Right now, at 11 a.m. Thursday morning, a strong, gusty wind is pushing massive, puffy clouds very rapidly across a bright blue sky. The only remnants are some leaves on the ground; there's no flooding because the city's roads are gently curved to send rain to curbside drains leading to Tokyo's gigantic sewer system.

Lucinda's school is closed (because it was still raining at 5 a.m. when they made the decision) so she's at a playdate. Arno's school is open, which makes us all very happy.

Super Typhoon!

There's apparently a Category 5 storm, Super Typhoon Melor, arriving tomorrow in Tokyo. Always something new and different here.

Here are some NASA radar images of what NASA calls "monster Super Typhoon Melor." Not the most calming headline!

Japanese spareribs

I'm determined to find some new recipes to add to our staples, and this one tonight was a keeper: Japanese-style braised spareribs.

Very simple ingredients, including ribs, sake, soy sauce, honey, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, rice vinegar, oil, water and a heavy pot to brown and braise them in. Marinate for an hour, cook for an hour. I didn't broil or grill them after braising, as suggested, but Blaine, Lucinda and I thought they were delicious as is.

Fishkill

Our last three fish expired yesterday! My original purchase, Tut - the old man of the bunch, bought six weeks ago - was found at the bottom of our glass fish-cube this morning. Arno gave me a sad look and a sympathetic pat and said, "I'm sorry, Mom."

Feeling guilty - and very aware that our fish seem to die on a predictable 2-week cycle - I cleaned the cube this afternoon. Soaped and rinsed everything thoroughly, installed a new filter, replaced about 2/3rd of the water, and returned the remaining fish, Wanda and Cheetoey, owned by Blaine and Arno, respectively, to the cube.

A clean bowl usually peps them up, but an hour later, Wanda and Cheetoey were lying together dead on the gravel at the bottom, next to the plastic turtle. I can only assume the new water was too cold for our delicate, tropical friends?

This time, no one cried. When I suggested filling the void with some plain ol' goldfish of the non-tropical variety, Lucinda, who begged me in August for some fish, said: "You can't hold them, you can't pet them. I want a hamster!"

A year older, a year stronger

We made our third annual visit to the obstacle course at Heiwa no Mori park last weekend. Here's the report from our first trip (in 2007); we made a second trip (in 2008) with our Seattle friends Blaise and Adrienne and their children, Anselm and Eliot.

As always, the children were fascinated by these log and rope obstacles. But I loved seeing Lucinda's and Arno's very tangible mental and physical developments since last summer.

When Lucinda was 5, she found some obstacles too scary to contemplate. At 6, she took more risks with her balance, especially on water obstacles. This year, she was completely engaged, very strong, and unafraid to lead the way on the highest rope-web climbs.


Two years ago, Arno was too young to enjoy Heiwa no Mori. Last year, he did the easier obstacles but skipped anything that looked risky. This year, he was inspired by Lucinda's example to try almost all of them, sometimes with Blaine's help to talk him over the high bars and climb down the other side. I think Arno even surprised himself.


We'll definitely go back next spring or summer.

Here, by the way, is a story in the Japan Times that lists several of these courses for children to connect with their "inner Tarzan." I'd like to try the one in Chiba.

Thanks for reading this blog!

My blog is seeing more readers lately, and some of you are sending me comments and ideas. Thanks for reading! It's fun to have an audience.

Teenager already?

Only in Japan: Lucinda sang karoake today after school with her 7-year-old friend Sylvan.

Sylvan's babysitter took them to a karaoke place in Roppongi, which is seedy after dark but perfectly safe at 4pm. They drank pineapple juice in a small karoke room and Lucinda sang to her heart's content.

I hope Lucinda remembers it for a long time.