Visitors!

We have our first non-family visitors, our friends Blaise, Adrienne, Anselm and Eliot from Seattle. I'm frankly envious of their freedom here: the freedom to travel and experience Japan as a vacation and not as a place to live and work and go to school.

But there is a side benefit. They are nudging us out of our routine. Blaine went with them today to take the kids to Mt. Takao, a short mountain that's about an hour's train ride from central Tokyo. (I was working at my magazine.) There's a cable car that takes you up to the top and some steps that Arno whined about but then conquered. They played hide and seek and had ice cream and met me at Shinjuku station with chocolate smears on their shirts. They were happy.

Another benefit of Adrienne's visit, for me, is that we're having some interesting chats about parenting. It's vastly helpful to see other parents in action, if only to show options for what we do.

I'm realizing that summer is a challenge for Lucinda, especially, because she misses the structure of regular school days, and it's a challenge for me because I like my school-hour freedom to do what I want, to read, to swim, to look around Tokyo. End result: she makes lots of demands, I end up saying "no" a lot, and we get annoyed with her more often. With parenting, you always have to find a new solution to a new problem.

Dinner with Kate

Our NYC friend Kate Betts was in town recently to attend the opening of the new Armani store in Tokyo's Ginza neighborhood. Kate is the editor of Time's Style & Design issues, and she's married to Chip Brown, a terrific writer and one of Blaine's best friends.

Kate came over to see Lucinda and Arno, who leaped on the furniture and squabbled while we waited for Blaine, who was returning from a week in Seoul. We finally escaped to our restaurant, Esaki, near the Omotesando neighborhood.

Blaine's WaPo colleague, Ako, says the chef, Shintaro Ezaki (named in this New York Times review) is famous for using seasonal ingredients in tea ceremony-sized dishes that focus almost entirely on that ingredient.

The food is extraordinarily restrained and subtle - a meal for a Japanese purist. The Michelin guide's first Tokyo guide, which came out a few weeks ago, gave Esaki two stars for "excellent cooking, worth a detour." Here's the restaurant website.

This was our eight-course (!) experience. First, white wedges of squid, which I think were steamed, with yellow potato and an undetermined sauce.



Second, very crabby crab soup. I think the dark green dots were seaweed puree.



Third, sashimi.



Fourth, barracuda with broccoli rabe and pesto sauce.



Fifth, tofu pudding that was extraordinarily bland, but turned delicious when I stirred in a few drop of (sesame?) oil and a sprinkling of pistachio nuts.

Sixth, we each had a whole fish, which the waitress called "big hands thorny head". Cooked in fish broth with soy. "The cheeks are the best part!," she said.

This is what the fish looked like before... and after.





Seventh, rice with kampachi and rudderfish.

Finally, three desserts. This was the best one: white wine jelly with rice pudding and slices of grapefruit.



Custard cream with azuki bean paste and toasted pine nuts.



And chestnut dough filled with red-bean paste.



Let me know if you want a reservation...

Sheila and Blake in Tokyo

Our first visitors: My mother, Sheila, and my stepfather, Blake. They have been here for 2 weeks and are leaving tomorrow. I took this photo on the roof the National Children's Castle. More about our adventures with them to come...