Jan heads to Tokyo for some business meetings next week, taking the weekend beforehand to play tourist and meet up with friends.
He arrives on Friday afternoon and makes his way to the Candeo Hotel in Roppongi. It’s a few steps from Roppongi Crossing, a busy intersection in the area. Walking across the intersection after a dinner of Chinese-style dumplings, Jan’s surprised to see the Almond Cafe. The cafe was a very popular landmark back in pre-cellphone days — not to eat at, but to meet in front of before heading to nearby bars or nightclubs. The cafe was hard to miss, because it had an enormous pink and white awning. There’s still a vestige of the awning, although the place looks more stylish now.
Jan starts off the day with breakfast at Blue Bottle Coffee. Most of the cafes in Japan don’t open until mid-morning, but Blue Bottle opens at 8:00 am. The coffee’s good, and they a small selection of really tasty pastries. It’s a sunny morning, so Jan makes a long walk from Roppongi through Akasaka and past government buildings and the Imperial Palace.
Jan’s first destination for the day is Tokyo Station, home to Tokyo Character Street: an underground shopping mall with lots of shops selling cute manga and anime character goods. Liya and Bree want gifts from the Rilakkuma Store, whose line of cute Sumikko Gurashi characters they first encountered last year. The Rilakkuma Store has a really long line of people waiting for the store to open, but it’s very organized. There’s a person standing at the end of the line holding up a big sign that says, “This is the end of the line”. The line’s so long, Jan waits in a Doutor coffee shop for a bit. When he comes back, the store is open, but the line is even longer. Jan has to walk a bit to find the “This is the end of the line” sign guy.
Jan eventually makes it through the line — and discovers the store has none of the Sumikko Gurashi goods the girls want. Those goods are popular enough that they have a store to themselves all the way at the other end of the shopping mall. Jan walks there. There’s no line.
Gifts finally in hand, Jan walks through the beautiful Tokyo International Forum atrium and out into the Ginza district. Lunch is a tempura set at Tsunahachi, followed by stops at the Muji flagship store in Yurakucho and the new Good Design Store Tokyo in the Kitte shopping complex. Then it’s back to the hotel for a nap.
Dinner is at the Peak Lounge in Shinjuku Park Tower.
The temple has racks of wooden plaques inscribed with prayers from visitors. Nearly every plaque is from a student, with essentially the same prayer: “Please let me pass my exams.”
The perfect warm spring weather in Tokyo continues. Jan makes a short trip to Yushima Tenjin temple, home to some 300 plum trees. This week the temple holds its annual plum blossom festival to celebrate the trees at peak flower.
Jan takes the train down to Yokohama to see old friends Kei and Mayuko and their two boys, Koutaro and Ryosuke. We meet in Yokohama’s Chinatown for lunch at a restaurant. During the meal, a dancer performs a Bian Lian (Chinese face changing) act. They’re wearing an elaborate costume and a striking face mask. Occasionally they twitch, and suddenly the mask is different. It’s fun and somewhat baffling to watch. The boys are delighted.
After lunch we walk to the harbor. We make a tour through an old Japanese ship there, the Hikawa Maru, that used to ferry freight and passengers between Yokohama and Seattle. We finish up the afternoon with a harbor cruise.
On the way back to Tokyo, Jan stops in Daikanyama, the neighborhood where he and Angela lived in 1999–2000. The area’s known for shops, and Jan stops at an outdoor mall called “Log Road Daikanyama”, the Okura indigo clothing, and an absolutely massive new bookstore called Tsutaya T-Site. The term bookstore hardly applies — it’s more of a campus. A huge block of the neighborhood has been leveled and turned into a set of small bookstore buildings surrounded by landscaping. It’s pretty neat.
For dinner, Jan meets up with two other people in town for the upcoming work meetings: Justin from San Francisco and Trey from Sydney, Australia. Jan takes them out to a yakitori restaurant called Joumon Roppongi, and the grilled food is perfect.
Jan has the first of two days of web browser technology discussions at Google Japan’s office in Roppongi. It’s a day of sitting in a big conference room like one you could find anywhere else, but at least dinner afterwards is at a decent Japanese restaurant.
Another day of meetings at Google Japan. Afterwards, Jan meets up with Shinohara-san, a friend he made some ten years ago while working at Cozi. The two walk to a pork shabu shabu restaurant, where they meet three of Shinohara’s colleagues: Ueno-san and Tsuchiya-san (both of whom came to Seattle at one point and had dinner with us at our house), plus Mari Takahashi, a person who’s new to Jan. Shinohara has to leave halfway through the meal, but the rest of the group stays late and basically closes down the restaurant.
Jan’s last day in Tokyo for this trip. After checking out and having a final breakfast at Blue Bottle Coffee, Jan heads to Waseda University, where he’d studied many years ago. Building #6 no longer hosts the International Division school anymore — that’s long since been moved to another campus — but it’s still fun to walk around the campus a bit.
From Waseda, it’s a short walk to the Wakamatsucho neighborhood, the location of the office for the folks Jan ate with last night. Although it’s 10:00 am, the Japanese work day is just beginning, so only a few people have arrived. Jan spends the morning talking with Ueno-san and enjoying a good technical discussion.
After that meeting, Jan makes a very short walk to a store nearby called Bingo-ya, which been around for years selling traditional Japanese craft gifts. Then it’s a yummy curry lunch at Cafe Vogue Ruby, and finally time to head to their airport.
Our family friends the Yamamuras live close to Narita Airport, and they graciously come to the airport to talk over coffee with Jan before he flies out. It’s good to see them and hear how their family and grandchildren are doing. Eventually, they say their goodbyes and Jan boards his flight back to Seattle.
To motivate the girls to help keep the house cleaned, Angela proposes a cleaning contest: one point for each object a player puts away (not counting things of their own that they’re supposed to put away). The girls dive into this contest, putting away anything left out on the kitchen island, coffee table, etc.
It’s decided that putting clean dishes away in cabinets should count too, which turns into a gold mine of potential cleaning contest points. One morning, Jan goes to wake Bree up for school — and then discovers that she’s already downstairs, having gotten up extra early so she could put away the previous night’s dishes. For a while, Bree is in the lead.
In the end, Anya and Liya are almost even, and Anya just barely wins by a nose. Angela decides to award prizes to all three girls. Following some negotiation, it’s decided that the prizes will be new books, to be purchased on a forthcoming trip to a bookstore.
Jan plays tour guide for two visitors from Japan: Mari, a colleague of a friend, and her husband Sousuke. It’s his first trip to the United States, and her first trip to Seattle. Per Jan’s suggestion, they spend Sunday touring downtown sights on their own. Jan then takes them on a day trip to Bainbridge Island.
The ferry ride alone is pretty fun. Their first stop on the island is Fort Ward Park for a short walk along the shore. Next is the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. There’s a sobering exhibit on the WWII internment of Japanese citizens who had lived on Bainbridge. Mari and Sousuke hadn’t heard about the internment camps, so it’s interesting (if depressing) to learn about.
After the museum, we have lunch at Cafe Nola, then walk through downtown Winslow. Mari and Sousuke pick out some souvenirs. Finally, we drive up the island a bit to a business complex that hosts some craft beverage manufacturers. Mari and Sousuke are particularly interested in visiting Bainbridge Organic Distillers, which recently achieved some fame for producing an award-winning whiskey. Sadly, the distillery no longer has that whiskey in stock. We make do with a short tour of the distillery, followed by a tasting of their vodka, gin, and regular whiskey. Jan’s no fan of strong alcohol, but it’s a fun visit nevertheless. Much better is a stop next door at the roasting factory for Storyville Coffee.
Jan plays tour guide again. He’s arranged a business meeting for his friend Toshikazu, visiting from Japan for the day, to meet with an old friend from Jan’s Microsoft days. Jan’s invited along, as are Toshikazu’s colleague Mari and her husband Sousuke.
The meeting is in a relatively new part of Microsoft’s campus that was built after Jan left the company, but after the meeting Jan takes Mari and Sousuke over to the oldest part of campus for a quick tour. This area includes some small, original buildings, including Buildings 3 and 5 where Jan had worked. This entire section of the campus is going to be razed to the ground later this year and replaced with giant buildings. It seems a shame. Jan stops to take a photo of peaceful “Lake Bill”, which had always been a nice place to eat lunch, read, or have a work discussion outside.
Angela stumbles a bit during grace before dinner: “… And we’re grateful that we can have grandma for dinner. Um… Not, um… like we’re going to eat her or something…”
Anya’s recently been making lots of flan, and is getting quite good at it. Tonight she switched gears and made a chocolate mousse.
Bree seems… taller.
Impromptu lunch party. On Thursdays, Anya often brings home a group of school friends at lunchtime. Our house is close enough to the high school that they can walk to our house, have lunch, play some Mario Kart, then walk back to school for their next class. Today’s crew includes Kaila, Rena, and Sophia.
Now that Liya’s freshman class has made it to the Spring term, they’re allowed to go off campus for lunch too. So while Anya and her friends are still grabbing snacks in the kitchen, Liya comes in with her friends Casey, Emma, Julia, and Leah. We recently went shopping at Uwajimaya, so the impromptu party binges on Japanese snacks.
A vet suggested that we occasionally give our indoor cats some time outside in a “catio”: a patio tent or cage for cats. We order one, and when it arrives we set it up in the backyard. Moxie seems largely fascinated by the outdoor sights, smells, sounds, and the feel of the ground. Mojo, for his part, spends a good deal of time running from one side of the tent to the other and crashing into the walls. Moxie watches this for a bit, then starts running around and crashing into the walls too. Eventually they both settle down again. We hope they can grow to like this activity, as it would give us a chance to open up our dining room doors again for summer meals.