The Beach

We flew south from Bangkok to Krabi province (a quick hour on a packed Airbus) on Thailand's west coast. Krabi is vastly more sedate (I'm told) than Phuket, with pleasant beaches and massive limestone rock formations for climbers. This is what we saw on the way to our hotel.


The Sheraton Resort in Krabi was comfortable and well-designed, though a bit dull - a fine place to decompress from Tokyo life. There's a good breakfast brunch, a small "kids' club" with arts and crafts, hammocks, free internet, and a powdery beach on the Andaman Sea. The downside to the resort was the $100/night (!!) fee to borrow an extra twin bed; last year, the Westin in Bali didn't charge anything.



The best features were the resort's two huge swimming pools. They were wonderfully warm with varying depths; I swam laps and the children spent hours playing in them, often with an 8-year-old American girl whose family (from Michigan) lives in Shanghai.


There wasn't much to see near our hotel, just a few restaurants plus laundry, tchotchke and massage shops, so we twice went to Ao Nang, a touristy beach village with long rows of shops selling counterfeit stuff and handmade suits.


Fortunately, Ao Nang's beach is quite picturesque, with traditional "long-tail boats" anchored offshore and cliffs in the background. We took a stroll and the children hunted for quality shells.


Then we had supper (twice) at Ao Nang's beachfront restaurant row.


Our Lonely Planet guide suggested Sala Bua & Lo Spuntino, which has Thai and Italian menus, and it was fantastic. Every restaurant has an ice-filled "boat" at the entrance to show the daily seafood catch: massive prawns, shiny clams, mussels, fish, crabs and Andaman lobsters.


We ordered crab and prawn pasta one night, and seafood pizza the next...


...and Lucinda and I indulged in shockingly good, fresh "watermelon shakes."


We all enjoyed the sunset (behind Phuket island in the distance).

Soup of the gods

For our Saturday date last night, in honor of the recession, Blaine and I spurned fancy restaurants for a cheap ramen shop under Shinagawa train station. These places are common near big stations because you can grab a meal quickly and sit by yourself. (This photo shows Blaine's $10 salt ramen with pork - very steamy!)

Underneath the trains, there's a long hallway filled with ramen places.


We chose Saijo restaurant, where we've been before, because there's English on the menu. The restaurant is enclosed in plastic sheeting all year round.


You use a vending machine by the front door to choose dishes and pay in advance.


The menu, with English titles, hangs above the vending machine - but the vending machine only has prices and names in Japanese. So we stand there looking stupid while we match the kanji characters to get the right dish.

My 900-yen ($9) miso ramen on the menu...


... and its button on the vending machine.


The machine prints out small white tickets, which you hand to a waitress and she hands to the cooks.


5-10 minutes later, your supper arrives. We ordered 2 bowls of ramen, a $5 plate of fried gyoza (potstickers) and a $5 draft beer. It's customary to loudly slurp your noodles as you inhale them, but we're not very good at it.



The well-considered extras on the table include (left to right) soy sauce, toothpicks, white pepper or red pepper for extra-spicy flavor, chopsticks, and tissues - because the soup really can make your nose run.


Ramen, soup of the gods.

Back in Tokyo

Last Sunday aftenroon, on the bus from Narita to our neighborhood, I was so happy to see Tokyo again. Of course we enjoyed almost 6 weeks in the US, but it's very exciting to come back here for what is effectively our junior year abroad.

The next morning (Monday), I celebrated by taking the children to the Tsukiji Fish Market for the daily tuna auction. It's the ultimate touristy thing to on your first morning after a flight from the US, when you wake up around 4 a.m. But I hadn't seen it before, though Blaine has. Lucinda, Arno and I arrived at the market at 5:30 a.m. and weren't too far back in the long line waiting for the auction.


Visitors walk on a fairly narrow path through the middle of the auction warehouse, where massive frozen submarine-shaped tuna are laid out for examination. Wholesale buyers cut a piece out of the tail and look closely with flashlights. For what? I have no idea.

One side of the room:


Other side of the room, with even bigger fish:


Man with flashlight looking at tuna:


After our auction visit, we walked around the market a little - we'd been there before - and then considered the final step in our touristy plan: to have sushi for breakfast. I had no idea where to go, so Lucinda told me how to say "sushi breakfast" in Japanese and I stopped a well-dressed man in his 50s, but clearly not a laborer, who was wearing tall black rubber boots (a sign of someone in the know at Tsukiji).

"Sushi breakfast?," I said, in what must have been appalling Japanese. I expected him to vaguely point me in some direction, but he briefly looked us over, took pity on us, and beckoned for us to follow him. Then he set off at a clip with us trailing like ducklings, fending off trucks and mechanized carts as he walked for several minutes and several blocks. An astonishing generosity toward tourists.

When we reached the outside market section, with small restaurants and produce shops, where he greeted several shopkeepers, grinned and pointed his thumb at us, saying something I guessed was the equivalent of "I'm taking them to find sushi for breakfast!" The first place on his list was closed, so he kept walking until he stuck his head into English-friendly restaurant #3, established that a "sushi breakfast" was available - and waved us into the door. I thanked him, and he strode off. Here's the place:


I ordered, yes, a sushi breakfast of 8 pieces and miso soup for Lucinda, who told the waiter in Japanese that she didn't want wasabi, plus sea urchin and ama-ebi sweet shrimp for me. (Arno ate some milk-caramel biscuits I'd bought earlier.) Lucinda then consumed her first serious raw-sushi meal, when the fish wasn't masked in, say, a California roll. She proudly ate scallop and fatty tuna and yellowtail and amberjack, plus crab and shrimp - and said she liked it.

Arno photographed the meal:


And his own breakfast:


And his shoes:

Sushi for supper

For our Saturday-night date this weekend, Blaine and I went to Sushizen, a sushi restaurant on the 46th floor of the Caretta Shiodome building.

Sushizen is a Tokyo branch (as they say in Japan) of a much-praised restaurant in the city of Sapporo in Hokkaido. It's in Shiodome, a onetime rail freightyard near Ginza and Tokyo Bay that was redeveloped in the past decade as a "city within a city" that now has 13 skyscrapers.

I had lunch at Sushizen a few months ago with my friends Maryam Mohit and Erik Blachford, and I thought Blaine would enjoy it, too. Seriously delicious sushi - even better if you can sit at the counter and watch the chefs. The basic dinner is salad, 10 pieces of sushi, miso soup, and sorbet for 5250 yen (about $50) per person. A more elaborate 12-sushi plate is about $75/person. And there's a $100/person meal, too.

Here's our 10-plate, for two:


Top row, from left: kanpachi (amberjack), maguro (tuna), kohada (gizzard shad, with lovely silvery skin), bakagai (orange clam). Middle row: ama-ebi (sweet raw shrimp), uni (sea urchin roe), kegani (Hokkaido hairy crab), tai (sea bream). Bottom row: awabi (sea snail, I think), unagi (freshwater eel).

Miso soup was served in this silver lacquerware bowl.



And green tea and delightful green-apple sorbet for dessert.

Happy anniversary

Today is Blaine's and my 7th anniversary, and I bought a box of fancy cookies at a fancy chocolate store here so we could celebrate after dinner. (Blaine and I went to our favorite French restaurant last Saturday.) The store is "Le Chocolat de H" in Roppongi Hills. Arno, who was home sick today, wanted me to buy chocolates, but they cost 8,000 yen ($80) for a tiny box of 8 or 10 candies!

So here is our 1,500 yen box of cookies. Very fancy and, as is typical for a Japanese gift, it's elaborately and expensively wrapped (which is something of a contradiction in a country that's obsessed with reducing the amount of trash it produces).

Small glossy shopping bag:




A round silver box, wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon.


Individually-wrapped treats: chocolate meringue, a walnut brownie, a chocolate madeleine, a chocolate-nut cookie, and maybe something the children grabbed that I didn't even see.


They were super-yummy. Maybe next time I'll spring for some chocolates, too.

Pastry chef

I am editing for Kateigaho magazine this week, and right now I'm working on a story about Tokyo's amazing French pastries. (Which is giving me lots of ideas for sightseeing daytrips.)

Along the way, I checked a website of a top pastry shop in France; its design is very cute, especially when you roam the home page with your cursor.

Check it out: http://fresson-chocolatier-patissier.com/

The Superhero's 4th birthday

Arno turned 4 last Saturday, Nov 15, and we all hung out together as a family. He did seem ever-so-slightly more mature, though I could be fooling myself. We did pretty much what he wanted all day:

First, we had pancakes and Arno played with the "Ultraman" toys that Lucinda bought him.


Later, they tried out the JD Razor scooters that they've been demanding. Blaine tried Arno's scooter - it was a little small!




He chose his (and Lucinda's) favorite Italian restaurant, La Boheme, where he enjoyed calamari and an enormous plate of his favorite food, noodles. Ultraman came along.



Finally, we went to Cold Stone Creamery for a mash of ice cream - and a hug from his sister.



Last Sunday, we had a Superhero birthday party at our house with 7 of Arno's friends. Blaine shot a video of the party, which I hope will make an appearance in the next few days.

Fishing

On Sunday, we took the kids to a funny restaurant, called Zauo, on the first floor of the Washington Hotel in Nishi-Shinjuku near Shinjuku Station.



At Zauo, customers catch their lunch or supper with a fishing pole and tiny shrimp on a hook. Here's Blaine teeing up our lunch with the children! (Note the little bridge over the fishing tanks.)




With our two saury fish, one half was turned into sashimi...


one half was fried into fillets...


and a whole fish was grilled with salt.



Only in Japan: commercial fishing in a restaurant.