Tokyo for the holidays part 2
Tues., Dec. 25
We managed to get out of the apartment at a decent hour this morning so we could go have Christmas breakfast with the crew. Matt and Jeremy were making French toast, which was excellent.
Everyone had the holiday spirit!
We enjoyed breakfast, and then had our gift exchange.
Toki made out like a bandit. He got a lot of books, which he much enjoyed having read to him.
We ate leftovers for lunch, then went to do some shopping.
Christmas isn’t a major holiday for the Japanese, and a lot of stores are open. We excursed three stops farther out on our local train line to Sengawa, which has a concentration of shops, including several food markets, right by the train station. Matt was looking for good mozzarella for the pizza he was making for dinner, using his sourdough starter for the dough. The market was quite upscale with lots of Western foods and lots of Japanese foods, including wonderful fish and beautiful vegetables, many a mystery to us.
The pizza was really excellent, and we finally got to benefit from the pizza stone we gave Matt last Christmas.
It was a wonderful Christmas, and best of all was all being together. I’m so glad we could all do this.
Both Nazeli and I were overcome with fatigue at the end of the meal, even though (on my part), little was done, and only 3.5 miles were walked. We trudged home through the cold night. I went to bed ( barely 8:30!) and slept like a stone.
Wed., Dec. 26
Rina got us tickets to Kidzania, a uniquely Japanese kids’ entertainment where the kids have various jobs, wear the appropriate uniforms, and generally enjoy working like adults. I had been looking forward to viewing this, but felt maybe I was pushing too hard on top of my non-ending cold, so we stayed in.
However, thanks to the miracle of technology, we kept up on the action through photostream, with everyone sending us pictures of Sevan wearing an airplane pilot uniform,
and an ice-cream shop employee’s uniform, and a hamburger-assembler’s uniform.
Nazeli got to be a pediatric nurse,
washing and caring for a realistic infant, and then a beauty shop employee,
and then did her stint at the ice cream shop. All this happens inside a huge warehouse fitted with a movie-set version of a downtown with small shops, an airport, post office, bank (all staffed by kids operating under supervision from a staff of adults), etc., under a domed ceiling painted and lighted to look like the sky.
The kids loved it! However, it was an hour on the train to get there, and the train was delayed 2 hours by an “accident”, which is how it is described when someone jumps in front of the train in Japan.
While they were gone, we quested for our own lunch at the grocery store we passed on our way to and from Matt and Rina’s. We got chips that Jerr hungered for, and a bag of what turned out to be very sugary cereal, and some kind of fried cutlet we didn’t recognize (a boneless, butterflied, battered chicken thigh) and skewers of what appeared to be chicken and beef. One was chicken, and the “beef” turned out to be chunks of chicken liver. I loved it. Jerr was hungry, so he ate it.
The young workers and their escorts were back by 5 pm, and we assembled at Matt and Rina’s house for one of Rina’s amazing, done in 15 minutes dinners. Her delicious hot pot was warm, savory, and nourishing. We were given a spicy condiment (yuzukoshou) to apply in very small amounts if we wanted to kick it up, and my sinuses were up for that. The kids more or less went to sleep in theirs, and the adults hung around with Toki, as smiley and chuckly as ever, until the old folks had to toddle off to their abode.
Thurs., Dec. 27
Narineh and I both wanted to shop for souvenirs, so we went to Kichijoji, an area northwest of Tokyo and our location, out of the city crush but still quite populous, with lots of department stores but also old-style narrow alleys full of shops and tiny restaurants. Most restaurants are too small for our group of 8 and a baby, but Rina had made a reservation at the bunny café, which had room for all of us. Sevan and Nazeli got a chance to go into the glassed-off bunny enclosure, where the bunny wrangler let them pick out a bunny to cuddle with.
They fed him carrots and pellets, and had a great time. After enforced handwashing, they joined us for lunch. The menu was a mashup of Italian and Japanese dishes; the carbonara, my choice, was outstanding, but I heard other things weren’t so good. The kids had clam chowder.
We walked to the large park, where swan boats were being pedaled around,
and through the narrow alleys, past many shops full of cat totchkes (evidently a Japanese thing). Sevan’s post-lunch hunger was appeased with a stop at a stall selling what looked like battered, skewered turkey legs, but was actually chunks of meat skewered with onions, battered, and deep fried.
It was fun browsing the tiny shops as well as a department store, which had a lot of very Japanese housewares. Rina uses the baby room in these stores to nurse because nursing in public is extremely taboo in Japan.
We got back around 5 (only two train changes!) and tried to decide what to do about dinner. Rina had cooked so much for us, we wanted to take them out. But the kids were quite tired and Nazeli didn’t want to go out. She and Narineh stayed behind and Sevan went with the rest of us to a soba restaurant near the train station. Matt can’t eat soba (allergic to buckwheat), but he had excellent tempura, as did we all—except for Rina. Toki was not interested in us eating if he wasn’t, and Rina couldn’t feed him there despite there being only one other couple in the restaurant, so after ordering a great meal for the rest of us, she went home with him and didn’t come back. We ate her food shamelessly. Everything was delicious. She had ordered an appetizer of fugu, and there was concern about eating it—puffer fish can kill you in an hour if it’s not properly prepared. We ate it anyway, and survived. The soba, which they make from buckwheat ground in their special stone grinder, was really good. Jeremy got some shimi-saba, cured mackerel that was incredibly buttery and delicious.
Since the restaurant was partway to our apartment, we waved goodbye to the others and made our way home after a mere 5.5 miles of walking (more for Jerr, as he went out with Jeremy for coffee, and then to the park with the kids).
Friday, Dec. 28
To celebrate Toki’s okuiozome, or first 100 days, Rina invited a chef to bring dinner to the house. The dinner includes some traditional dishes to mark the baby’s first “taste” of food. The baby doesn’t actually eat the food, but it is offered in a certain order. Dishes include rice with adzuki beans, to ensure the baby is never hungry; clam soup, so the baby will be sure to find a true mate, like the two sides of a clam shell; medetai, a celebrational fish, to signify long life; and a stone, for strong teeth and digestion.
Toki was coughing and sneezing a bit when we got there around 10 am. We planned to walk to a park near Hachimanyama in the afternoon, but it was very cold for Californians (low 40s but with a cold, strong wind), and I had forgotten to wear my sweater under my coat, so we veered off when we got near our apartment and I went for the sweater. Both of us were a bit low; walking and talking, but not in the best of health. I worried that we gave these germs to Toki, but Matt and Rina said they had the sniffles for a few days before we got there.
Jerr and I went back to the their house, and I was scullery maid while Rina did her cooking. She had set the table most beautifully, with Toki’s little meal set he got at his shrine visit prominently displayed. Then she prepared the other traditional dishes—lotus root, which because of its holes, is thought to provide clarity of vision for the future; yam (carrot in this case); and burdock root. She trimmed the lotus root to look like a flower, as well as chunks of carrots carved into flower shapes. It was very beautiful.
The kids came back from the park cold and hungry, of course, and played quietly while we finished the meal setup. The chef arrived and began rattling pans in the kitchen. Everything was already prepped and pre-cooked, waiting for the finishing touches.
Toki was dressed in baby formalwear, including a bow tie.
Jerr, as the oldest person there, fed Toki the ceremonial bites in three rounds—first rice, then fish, then rice, then clam, then rice, then stone—to ensure his future happiness.
Toki, well fed and thinking about maybe a nap, was agreeable, but not wowed. But then, he is mostly agreeable. After the ceremony, we all got to dig in. First we had a delicious salad of organic greens with a yummy dressing, and then an antipasti plate of pate with cornichons, some kind of shredded pork spread that was fabulous, salami, and Spanish ham, with bread.
After we demolished that, we were served the ceremonial fish, scattered with olives and slivered onions.
With this came a side of creamy rice and red beans, so delicious. And lastly, a chicken confit with a port wine sauce, also really good. I was stuffed to the gills afterwards, my plan to eat smaller meals gone with the wind. We toasted, laughed, and enjoyed the meal and being together. It was a highlight of the trip for me.
Our walk home (about 1.2 miles according to my phone, so 2.4 round trip) was cold, and I was hampered by my body’s need to try and digest all that wonderful food. All I could think about was having some herb tea with honey when we got back.
It was very cold in the apartment (the Scot turns off the heat every day) and we came in and turned the heaters on, and I plugged in the electric kettle. Suddenly we, and evidently our neighbors, judging from the noises we heard through the walls and ceiling, were in darkness.
We had tripped the breaker, and the flashlight I brought evidently had given up the ghost. Jerr got his phone out as a flashlight, and just then we heard knocking. Chuck was there to save the day, even though he had been in bed. He pointed out the breaker, which Jerr was tall enough to reach, and we were back in business, careful to only use one heater and the kettle at the same time. This is the first time we have met Chuck (we met Midori when she checked us in), and he was en deshabille, wearing very short shorts such that I thought at first he was semi-nude. He has very good legs for a man of a certain age.
We had our tea, curled up under our comforters with all the heat off, and coughing and hacking, went to sleep.
Part 3