Bree starts 6th grade, the first year of middle school at the same K–8 school she’s been going to since kindergarten. Liya begins 11th grade with a two-night class retreat.
Jan and Liya head to Leavenworth in Eastern Washington for an overnight backpacking trip in the Enchantments area. The area is a basin of pretty lakes in the steep peaks of the Stuart Range. Because the area’s so popular with hikers, the state needs to conduct an annual lottery for permits to camp there. This year Jan manages to get an overnight permit to camp in the Snow Lakes zone, a little below the core lakes basin that’s the area’s main attraction.
After having lunch in the cafe at Sleeping Lady Lodge, Jan and Liya start the significant 4000’ climb to Upper Snow Lake. It’s a nice day, not too hot. The two meet at least 100 trail runners who are hiking all the way through the Enchantments as an extremely challenging day hike.
After arriving at Upper Snow Lake, Jan rinses off at the edge of the lake, but Liya bravely plunges into the cold water. They have a satisfying dinner of rehydrated backpacker chili augmented with real cheese, onions, and Fritos.
The weather forecast calls for rain overnight, so Jan and Liya make sure the tent is pitched well and all the gear is stowed under shelter. Clouds gather in the early evening as they’re going to bed. Around 10 pm, they’re awakened by rain spattering on the tent. The rain gets stronger and stronger, and finally a real thunderstorm lets loose. The light and sound show lasts for hours, on and off all night long.
Jan and Liya backpacking trip to the Enchantments, day 2.
Thankfully, the next morning the weather’s fine. Jan and Liya head up a steep trail for a 1000’ climb to the core lakes basin. They pass by a mist-shrouded Lake Viviane and go as far as pretty Leprechaun Lake. It’s chilly there — there’s still some snow on the surrounding peaks — so they have to don warmer clothes while they stop to have a snack.
After heading back down to their campsite, they pack up and continue the long, steep descent to the trailhead. The total drop is 5000’, so both of them are pretty tired by the time they reach the car.
Jan and Angela spend a night at Willows Inn on Lummi Island. Lyn spends the night with Liya and Bree while we make the drive to Lummi. We happen to be visiting during “Dry-dock Season”, when the little regular car ferry is out of service for maintenance, so we have to leave our car behind and take the passenger-only ferry.
This is our second visit to Willows Inn. The inn is built around a restaurant described in the NY Times as “worth getting on a plane for”. The dinner does not disappoint, and includes a long list of yummy dishes.
We spend the night in the inn’s Taft House, just down the street from the main inn. Jan feels so completely full that he falls asleep instantly.
We have an equally nice breakfast the next morning. There are so many interesting little dishes that the meal approaches the sort of kaiseki meal one gets at Japanese ryokan inns.
We ride the passenger ferry back from Lummi Island to the mainland, then head home.
Jan heads to Fukuoka, Japan, for a work-related conference, a meeting, and some travel.
He leaves Seattle very early Sunday morning (1:30 am!) for a flight to Taipei and a connection to Fukuoka. This is Jan’s first time visiting the southern Japan island of Kyushu. Although it’s September, the weather is still sunny, humid, and hot. It feels more than a little like Taiwan, and is similarly casual compared to cities like Tokyo. (There are more adult men wearing shorts, for example.)
Jan has hours to spend before he can check in, so he visits the ACROS building, a commercial building with a step pyramid profile — each level of the pyramid is covered in a garden of trees. Lunch afterward is at a nondescript dim sum restaurant.
After checking in to the Hilton Fukuoka Sea Hawk and taking a little nap, Jan heads out again to Ōhori Park. The park’s castle ruins aren’t particularly interesting, but the park does have a large lake spanned by a long, thin strip of bridges and thin, pine-covered islands. It’s really beautiful.
Dinner is at yakitoriya (grilled stuff on sticks) restaurant called Benkei. Their official business hours start at 6:00 pm, so Jan killed more time at the park so he could arrive at 6:05 pm, just after the restaurant opened. The place is almost completely packed with customers, already deep into their eating and drinking. There’s exactly one seat left at the bar, which the stern-looking guy in charge lets Jan take.
A friendly man sitting next to Jan introduces himself as Tomoaki. Tomoaki and his buddy are happy to chat, and keep giving Jan food. They’re eventually joined by a third guy who owns a yakitori restaurant himself. It’s a national holiday today (Respect for the Aged day), so the third guy has closed his shop and come to check out the competition. The three eventually insist on picking up Jan’s tab.
Jan in Fukuoka, Day Two. Jan starts with breakfast at the closest cafe to the hotel: a branch of a chain called Komeda. He orders a dish called “egg paste” that, judging from the photo on the menu, is scrambled eggs — but it turns out to be cold egg salad.
He spends the day at a web standards conference. Some attendees from Salesforce invite him to join them for dinner. The local Salesforce rep asks everyone what kind of food they want to eat. Fukuoka is known for its particular style of ramen, so Jan suggests going for that. The group ends up at a place that has good reviews — but the ramen is terrible. Jan can’t tell whether this particular place is really bad, or whether he just doesn’t like Fukuoka-style ramen. After leaving, the group stops for drinks at a bar called Isagi, which thankfully serves better, decent snacks.
Jan in Fukuoka, Day Three. After a final morning meeting at the hotel, Jan heads out for three days of hiking and camping. The destination for the first day is Nokonoshima Island, a small island in the middle of Hakata Bay, which the city of Fukuoka sits on.
Jan walks to the ferry terminal, then makes the short ride across to the island. He eats lunch at a cute cafe on the waterfront called Kamome (“Seagull”), then boards a bus for the island’s main tourist attraction: Nokonoshima Island Park. The park boasts some pretty views of the ocean as well as flower gardens.
From the park, it’s a 20-minute walk around the north end of the island to Nokonoshima Camping Village. The laid-back “campground” is mostly a collection of extremely basic beachside bungalos, but they also have a lawn with palm trees for camping. A sole employee at the reception desk checks Jan in. It’s a weekday, so there are hardly any people there — one young couple, two Irish backpackers in Japan for the Rugby World Cup, and two groups of young men. Jan’s the only person with a tent. After setting up, he goes for a swim in the ocean. It’s quite warm.
Because the weather is so mild, he’s brought a bare minimum of camping gear: a tiny tarp, and a lightweight sheet instead of a sleeping bag. It’s windy all night, but the wind is fairly warm; it probably doesn’t drop much below 70 degrees overnight. More troublesome are the two groups of young men, who drink, yell, and chant/sing songs all night long. Jan’s glad he’s brought earplugs.
Jan in Fukuoka, Day Four. Since the campground sits on the side of Nokonoshima Island that faces the city of Fukuoka, Jan can look out across the water and see the hotel he was just staying in. The campground certainly has its charms — but the hotel had better showers. The campground’s showers have a coin-operated water heater, but while the shower machine is happy to take Jan’s 100 yen coins, it doesn’t actually heat the water in return.
The campground offers a shuttle bus that takes Jan back to the ferry dock just in time to catch the next ferry back to the mainland. Jan stops for coffee in the Tenjin shopping mall, then sets out for the next leg of the outdoor adventure — this time, headed for the small mountain range that circles the city.
The trip out of the city starts with a city bus that Jan takes to a stop called Uchino on the edge of Fukuoka. From there, there’s supposed to be a connecting bus to a hamlet called Shiiba at the base of the mountains — but that connecting bus only runs during commuting hours, and there isn’t another bus for hours.
So Jan ends up starting his hike early, with a 4 mile walk past rice farms. The fields are full of white cranes and gray herons. Eventually, the road follows a river up into a forest at the base of the mountains, and Jan comes to the trailhead. It’s kind of hard to tell exactly where the trail starts. Jan finally finds the trail past a huge “No entrance” guardrail (meant for cars?).
The trail is steep and gnarly, going over rocks and tree roots, but it’s reasonably well-signed. After a couple hours, the trail reaches Shiiba Pass, then follows a road to the top of Mt. Sefuri, some 3000’ tall and the tallest peak in the range. There’s an old shrine at the peak, alongside an army installation with a huge radar dome. There are hazy views towards Fukuoka to the north and Saga City to the south.
The rest of the afternoon’s hike is a walk west along the forested ridge, then down to Yoshinoyama Campground, which sits by a river and some rice fields. Although Jan had called ahead to reserve a site, when Jan arrives at the campground, it’s completely deserted. There are no campers, the campground’s little rental log cabins are all deserted, and there’s no one at the reception building.
Jan’s not sure what to do, but evening’s coming on, and it’ll be dark in another hour or two, so he decides to set up his tarp and hope for the best. There’s a strong wind blowing, and up here in the mountains the wind is not nearly so warm as it was down on the ocean. It’s probably going to be a chilly night, and Jan didn’t really come prepared for that.
At that point, a small van drives up to the reception building, and a tiny old woman pops out. She’s the woman Jan had spoken with on the phone. Jan’s relieved to see her, and is glad he had called ahead or she wouldn’t have come at all.
The woman has a small armful of vegetables from her garden that she tries to give to Jan. He thanks her, then points out he couldn’t possibly eat so much, so she settles on giving him half the armful. There are eggplants, okra, and garlic, plus chesnuts from the campground’s chestnut grove. Jan says he doesn’t have a way to cook them on his tiny stove. She produces a basket of wood charcoal, and says he can grill the vegetables with a small hibachi grill left behind by some campers.
As they talk, Jan notices that the temperature is continuing to drop. He asks about the small log cabins. “Oh, those are really expensive!” she says. “Er, how expensive?” asks Jan. “60 dollars”, she says. Although Jan’s plan had been to camp, he jumps at the chance to be able to sleep out of the wind. The woman opens up one of the cabins. It’s just a small room with a polished wooden floor — no beds or other furniture, but Jan had been planning to sleep on the ground anyway. The woman says she’ll head back home, but will return later to check up on Jan.
Jan manages to get the wood charcoal lit, and sets the vegetables to cook on the grill. The woman returns to see how things are going, and Jan thanks the woman for the vegetables, especially the eggplant — grilled eggplant can taste great, especially with miso. The woman drives off, then comes back a short while later with a bit of miso. The combination is, indeed, really tasty.
The woman suggests roasting the chesnuts in the coals, although she doesn’t have any advice on how long to let them roast. Jan puts in seven chestnuts: three of them burn to nothing, and one of them explodes in a loud POP, but the remaining three are pretty good.
Jan is so, so glad he was able to get a log cabin for the night and stay out of the wind. It ends up being a rather cold night, so even inside he ends up having to put on nearly all the clothes he’s brought to stay warm.
Jan in Fukuoka, Day Five. Jan’s eating his breakfast as the sun comes up, when suddenly music begins playing across the rice fields. It’s Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, playing on a public address system to let all the farmers know that it’s now 7:00 am.
It’s a long, long walk down out of the mountains. Unlike yesterday’s hike, this morning’s walk isn’t on trails, but on country roads. Jan walks past rice fields for hours. There are streams and aqueducts everywhere.
At one point, the route Jan’s been following through a forest turns, and there’s a barrier across the road with a sign: “Road Closed to All Traffic”. Jan has no idea how long a detour on foot might take, so he walks around the barrier. A short while later, he comes to a road construction site — thankfully quiet, and not a particularly big project in any event. After another 15 minutes, he’s relieved to pass through the other end of the road closure. A few moments later, a small van passes going towards the closure, and he’s glad he’s now in the clear; explaining why he was walking along a closed road would have been awkward.
The road passes through a few small towns. Clouds gather, and it begins to drizzle, then finally rain in earnest. As the road gets closer to Saga City, it gets busier and busier. When the road passes through towns, there’s ample room to walk on the side of the road, but in between towns, there’s no shoulder, and it’s somewhat harrowing to have cars and trucks zooming past. Jan finally comes down a final stretch of road that parallels a large river, and out onto the outskirts of Kanzaki, a town on the plain between the mountains and the ocean.
Jan finishes his walk at Yoshinogari Historical Park, a park that’s been built up on an important archeological site from Japan’s Yayoi period. The site was extensively excavated in the 1980s and 90s, revealing the remains of a settlement that was sustained from 400 BC–300 AD. When the excavations were complete, a national park was created, and aspects of the settlement were recreated. It’s interesting to walk around the houses, walls, watchtowers, and tombs.
From the park, it’s a long walk in the rain to the nearest train station, and a shinkansen ride back to the outskirts of Fukuoka. Jan spends the night at Daimaru Besso, a Japanese ryokan inn with hot springs. The ryokan is an extensive, rambling structure of several buildings around a large central garden. Jan’s room is in the oldest building, the Taisho building, and is the farthest room in the inn from the entrance — it takes 5 minutes to walk through the maze of corridors to reach it. The room has a nice view of the garden. Dinner is a kaiseki course meal, and contains the usual mix of pretty, delicious food and pretty food that Jan finds hard to swallow. After two days of walking, including a lot of walking in the rain, a bath in the inn’s hot springs feels fantastic.
Jan in Fukuoka, Day Six. Jan takes the train back to Fukuoka, and spends the morning shopping in the Tenjin shopping district. Bree is particularly keen for Jan to bring back stuffed animals from the Sumikko Gurashi line of characters, and happily Fukuoka has a small store dedicated to those characters. Lunch is at a French pastry shop in the Parco department store
In the middle of the afternoon, Jan makes his way to the Kushida Shrine. The shrine’s known as the center of the city’s Hakata Gion Yamakasa festival, in which towering (25+ feet tall?) “portable” shrine floats are carried around the city. Kushida Shrine keeps one of those floats on display.
Jan’s final meal in Fukuoka is a well-reviewed gyoza restaurant called Ni No Ni. It officially opens at 5:00 pm, but given the experience Jan had earlier in the week at the yakitori restaurant, this time Jan gets to the restaurant before they open. There is, of course, already a crowd of people waiting for the restaurant to open. A restaurant worker takes Jan’s name. A few minutes after the restaurant opens, Jan gets seated at the last open seat the counter. The gyoza are indeed delicious, but the pork stir-fried with garlic shoots is amazing.
At the Fukuoka Airport, Jan meets up with a number of other conference attendees bound for Seattle on the same flight through Taipei. There’s a typhoon coming, so some flights leaving Japan are cancelled, but the flight to Taipei takes off on schedule. From there, it’s just a long flight back to Seattle.
Liya runs in her girl varsity team’s second cross-country race of the year. She sticks with a group of three other teammates, and they all cross together in 6–9th place. Liya narrowly beats a previous personal record by a second. Her school edges out a rival, Northwest, to take first place overall.
Angela’s cousin Ike and his wife Penny pass through Seattle on their way to Alaska. We take them out for seafood at Chinook’s, along with Angela’s cousin Ty and his wife Susana.