Year of the Tiger

Lucinda, Arno and I went to Yokohama's Chinatown last weekend to see the Chinese New Year festivities. Lots of fun. To kick off the post, here's video of a dragon dance in the parade.



Snapshots: The gate to Chinatown


Roasted chestnuts for sale. Lucinda loves them, and Arno tried them (very rare development) and liked them!


An old traditional house on the main street.


A dog, sitting in a stroller and wearing a dress with a denim skirt. (You have to look closely, but it's definitely a skirt.)


Lucinda, wearing a dress purchased by her grandparents in Beijing, and Arno, in a Chinese devil mask; in Japanese, it's called an "oni."


Lunch for sale: heaps of pork (I think).


Lucinda's lunch: a steamed meat bun from a street stall for 200 yen ($2).


Chinese children led the parade with dragon puppets.


The emperor, who spoke very good English when he wished the children "Happy New Year."


Another creature came over to greet us.


On to the rest of the Year of the Tiger!

Blaine's latest...

...is an incredibly sad story about a Korean man who took his wife and two daughters to North Korea and then abandoned them there. He lives in Seoul now, and as far as he knows, his wife and daughters are in a prison camp.

Headline: "A family and a conscience, destroyed by North Korea's cruelty"

And here's Blaine's video, also terribly sad:

Pre-spring

I saw these lovely plum blossoms in Aoyama cemetery about 10 days ago. Magenta blossoms, very fragrant.

Renovated playground

Most Tokyo playgrounds have woefully old equipment, but we went last weekend to a newly renovated playground - known as the "100 yen park" - after a family bike ride around Meiji Jingu Outer Gardens. The previous 100-yen incarnation had near-rusty jungle gyms over dirt. It now has clean, safe climbing equip and a long roll-y slide...


...a new swingset and tires to climb on...


...and a corral's worth of bouncy "Rody" horses.


There were even fancy wicker chairs for parents!


A hot-dog stand...


And astroturf around the trees. Not sure if it's meant to protect the trees from the kids or the kids from the trees.

Snowy morning

We had a treat this morning: actual feathery snow falling as we walked to school. Very rare in our Tokyo experience.

Funny buildings

I went for a walk recently in Kappabashi, the Tokyo neighborhood where you find kitchen and restaurant supplies. On this visit, I noticed some very odd decorations on buildings.

Like a giant beetle.


And a stack of coffee cups.

Blaine's latest...

... is an analysis of the Toyota situation, on p. A1.

Night out

Blaine and Lucinda went to the Father-Daughter dinner dance at the Tokyo American Club last night.

Polished

Curious machine: an automated shoe polisher in the subway station at Marunouchi, the banking district. 100 yen ($1) for 2 shoes, black or brown.

Minky

I saw a small dog wearing a mink coat today outside a grocery store. It looked like real mink. It's pretty chilly here - but mink for a dog?

Sadly, I didn't have my camera.

Armory

I haven't been carrying my camera as often lately, but I was glad I did on a recent pass through the Marunouchi business district.

I came up from the subway to the ground floor of the Marunouchi Building to find an amazing exhibit of Samurai armor reproductions, including some designs from the 1500s.


Most helmets had very cool shapes and designs, presumably to identify samurai from a great distance.





And one (in this photo, near right, click pic for closeup) was extraordinarily Darth Vader-esque. I would not be surprised if George Lucas was a samurai-culture aficionado.

Bananas

Food in Japan is notoriously expensive. Milk = $10/gallon. Butter = $15/pound. Strawberries = $6 (if you're lucky). One apple = $1-2. Green beans at one store cost $5 for 1/3 pound. And one banana, on average, costs $0.50 cents.

So I was astonished to find the most amazing bargain at Daimaru Peacock, a fairly expensive grocery store in Azabu Juban.


18 Chiquita bananas - for only 198 yen! That's $2! We ate 15 in 3 days, and I made banana bread with the remaining 3.

Nishimachi's birthday

Lucinda's school, Nishimachi International School, is celebrating its 60th anniversary. It was founded by an American-educated Japanese woman, Tane Matsukata, in 1949, to build understanding between people by, in part, having all students study English and Japanese.

I went to a cocktail party tonight (on Founder's Day, which is Tane Matsukata's birthday) and snapped some archival photos on display.

From the 1950s.


From the 1960s, dancing around the maypole in front of the Matsukata family home, which was built in the early 1900s and survived the war. Now it's the recently earthquake-proofed admin building.


From the 1970s, Miss Matsukata and students.


Lucinda's kindergarten class in 2007-8. Lucinda is in the second row behind Rhen, the boy in the blue shirt. Compare this photo to the 1950s one; the school has fulfilled the goal of selecting students from many nations.

Chiang Mai

The best stretch of our trip was 3 days in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, an hourlong flight north of Bangkok. (Interior flights in Thailand are only about $100/person, fantastically cheap.)

Chiang Mai is Thailand's cultural capital, influenced by northern "hill tribes" -- in the photo above, Lucinda is wearing a traditional hill-tribe hat -- as well as Burma (to the west), China (north) and Laos (east). Wikipedia tells me there are nearly 200,000 city residents, with 1 million in the metro area. But it didn't feel crowded and had much less grime than Bangkok.

Our hotel, Yaang Come Village, booked on Expedia for about $200/nite, was lovely. Its entrance-building is next to a massive rubber tree (you can see Arno's tiny shape next to it in the second foto).



Our room had murals painted on the walls. (Click foto for a closer look.)


The sweetest hotel accoutrement was this tennis-y bug zapper. You press a button, swing away - and fry mosquitoes! Revenge for years of bug bites. (Our hotel attendant warned the kids not to play with it.)


Our first afternoon, we walked to Chiang Mai's "old city" to see the excellent Sunday Market. It wasn't crowded at dusk but was packed by 8pm.


I thought Bangkok's famous night market was quite dull: heaps of counterfeit Gucci, Polo, Chanel, Dior, Vuitton, etc. We quickly realized that Chiang Mai's market was going to be more genuine - not just for tourists - when we saw the table of cooked bugs for sale, including...


...fried grasshoppers and...


...grubs with a leafy seasoning. I once wrote a story for The Boston Globe about a "bug chef" in Washington State, but this was the real thing.


Other curiosities: Monks buying books.


A girl dressed for a stage performance.


We bought street food for supper and Blaine made the best choice. From this woman, who was cooking in clay pots on a side street...


...Blaine bought spicy curry-noodles for about 25 cents. The most delicious dish of the whole vacation.


Here was my favorite dish, which Lucinda and I bought at Chiang Mai's regular night market. Mango sticky rice for 50 baht, or about $1.50.