Jan’s Japan trip, Day 4. There’s a bit of time before breakfast, so I walk down the road in front of the hotel to a small headland. A couple of small fishing boats are still just offshore wrapping up their long night of work.
On the other side of the headland there’s a cove with a beach. The rocks at the end of the cove have some holes you can walk through. From the beach there are steps up to a small shrine at the top of the headland and a small lighthouse.
After breakfast I check out and get back on my rental bike for the remaining 5 or so miles of the Shimanami Kaido route. It’s going to be a warm day again, and by the time I pedal back to the huge suspension bridge I’m hot. I take the odd bike elevator back up to the bridge deck, then resuming riding towards the end of the bike route on the island of Shikoku and the city of Imabari.
At the outskirts of town, the blue line marking the cycling route suddenly disappears — the road is being repaved, and they haven’t repainted the blue line yet. For the first time on the ride I have to check a map. It confirms I just have to keep following this road, but it feels odd to no longer have the security of the blue line to follow.
At Imabari Station I return my bike to the rental outlet. The older man who takes my bike likes my rear-view cycling mirror. He’s surprised to see what he calls a “back mirror” for a bike. I tell him they’re fairly common among cyclists in the States. But now that he mentions it, I haven’t seen any here.
I have an hour to spend before my train across the north coast of Shikoku to Takamatsu. I like the sound of a place called “Coffee Dojo” nearby and walk there. I usually like cafe lattés but by now it’s too hot for that, so an iced cafe au lait will do.
The train to Takamatsu passes smoothly; I use the time to take care of some things online. In Takamatsu I have just a bit of time to walk the short distance from the station to the ferry terminal to catch a ferry. Since I won’t have time to eat somewhere for lunch, maybe I can find a 7-Eleven? I needn’t have worried — on the short walk between the station and the ferry terminal there are four 7-Elevens. I pick up my favorite 7-Eleven meal: onigiri rice balls with tuna salad.
I take the ferry to Naoshima, a small island that now bills itself as one the “art islands”: islands that are replacing their declining fishing industry with high end art museums for tourists.
I catch the island’s one public bus. It’s heading to one of the art museums I want to visit, but I get off at the stop in front of my AirBnB for tonight so I can drop off my backpack. There’s a large art festival, the Setouchi Triennale, that starts this weekend, so the AirBnB was the only room I could find. It’s attached to a ramen shop, and the booking confirmation came with a notice warning me that there’s a karaoke bar nearby that makes noise until 11:00 pm.
Sadly, the ramen shop is closed for their midday break. Since the bus is gone, that means I’ll have to keep my backpack on during the hot walk from here to the museum. Before leaving I think to try the ramen shop door — and the door’s unlocked. I go in and talk to the old woman that’s cleaning up from lunch. She lets me drop off the backpack in a corner.
I walk across a bit of the island to the south shore. I see a number of foreign tourists on bikes or walking around. I eventually reach a concrete pier with a popular sculpture: a large orange pumpkin covered in black polka dots by artist Yayoi Kusama. I wait in the line of people waiting to take a picture of it.
I walk a bit further and reach the Benesse House Museum. Most of the art isn’t my cup of tea, but the building itself is interesting. I have time to spare before my timed entry at the next museum, so I visit the cafe. After leaving the museum, I walk along a road to a sculpture garden. I still have more time to spare, so lie on the grass and rest for a bit.
I eventually complete the walk to the Chichu Art Museum. The museum entrance has many signs saying “No photos”, but there are tourists snapping away regardless. Again the museum building is probably the highlight for me. The museum does have one large room with five of Claude Monet’s water lily paintings.
I walk all the way back to the ramen shop and check in. I was prepared for a meager room but it’s basically perfect: clean, plenty of space, a small table, an air conditioner, even a washer/dryer. I’ve packed very little on this trip and have just been doing laundry in hotel sinks, so it’s nice to have a machine to get the clothes cleaner.
This little neighborhood doesn’t have many eating options beyond the ramen shop, but there is a decent Italian restaurant called Regalo where I have dinner. In the evening after dinner I do hear some bass thumping, presumably from the nearby karaoke joint, but it’s not bad and eventually stops.
Jan’s Japan trip, Day 5. I pack up my little backpack and walk north to the nearby little town center in search of breakfast. I eat in cozy little Cafe Ippo, and afterwards stop at cozy little Hifumiyo Coffee. The young woman barista is chatting with an older woman customer, and after a while the three of us chat for a bit.
I have some time before another timed-entry museum reservation, so explore the small town. I follow stairs up to a small shrine that offers a view over the water to the east of the island. There’s no one around, so I find a bench and read for a bit. After a while I follow different stairs down to the street level and eventually reach stairs down a beach. I read there for a bit too.
At 10:00 I make the short walk to the Naoshima New Museum of Art and climb the steep stairs to the museum. It doesn’t take long to walk through the small set of exhibits. The museum’s cafe offers a beautiful view over the surrounding forest to the water.
The last stop I visit on Naoshima is called Art House Project: Minamidera. I’ve read nothing about it beforehand, so I’m just expecting another museum, but the building is essentially a single art piece. Outside the entrance, the staff sorts visitors by entry times into groups of 14.
The staff describe a number of rules for entry, and instruct everyone to turn off their phones. They go around and tap on everyone’s phone to confirm it’s physically off. Then they say we’ll be entering a dark room. We should touch the wall as we enter and then keep a hand on the wall as we wind down a passage in complete darkness and complete silence. Huh.
Our group shuffles down the passage in the dark, occasionally bumping into each other. After more shuffling and bumping, we take seats on a bench, staring into a room of unknown size. The room is so dark that I can’t see my hand in front of my face. There’s no narration. Nothing happens.
After some time — three to five minutes? — it seems like the wall opposite our bench is very slowly getting very slightly brighter. It’s still too dark to really see anything. After some more time, a voice finally instructs us to “Walk toward the light.” We get up and shuffle in the almost-blackness toward the slightly not-black wall. We bump into a railing that keeps us from reaching the wall. Eventually the voice instructs us that it’s time to leave. We turn and shuffle out of the room, out the passage, and into daylight. This is easily one of the weirdest art installations I’ve ever experienced.
I catch a bus back to the ferry terminal. I’ve got just enough time to eat lunch somewhere, and find a small restaurant serving a good yellowtail fish curry. The ferry takes me back to the Honshu mainland, and from there I take a series of trains to reach Osaka in the later part of the afternoon.
I won’t be spending much time in Osaka, but squeeze in a visit to its Municipal Housing Museum. This includes a large indoor space with a reproduction of an Osaka city street in the 1830s with a number of shops and homes you can walk into. It’s well done and fun to explore.
I take a subway to the Nanba district and check into my hotel. From my room I can see a crazy building that seems to have a sort of ferris wheel built into it. When I leave the hotel in the evening to go to dinner, I walk in the general direction of that building.
I come to the Dotonbori canal area, which is absolutely packed with people out for the evening. There are party groups full of tourists going up and down the canal, and the buildings on either side of the canal are lit up with enormous neon signs. The whole area has a fun vibe, and there’s a nice (if crowded) promenade to walk along.
Eventually I come to the crazy ferris wheel building, which proves to be an outlet of the Don Quijote [sic] discount store chain. I don’t have time to ride the ferris wheel but it looks fun.
My dinner reservation tonight is at a high-end restaurant focusing on what’s normally prosaic: yakitori grilled chicken. The place only seats nine patrons facing the chef. I’m seated next to the only other foreigner, a young man from the States. It’s nice to have someone to chat with, although he’s a bit of a crypto tech bro. The food is excellent.
Jan’s Japan trip, Day 6. I head to Shin-Osaka Station for a shinkansen train, arriving with enough time to pop out for a nice coffee at Ima Coffeehouse (“I’m a coffeehouse”?). The shinkansen takes me up to the city of Toyohashi, where I get off the train to spend some time with the Shinoharas.
One reason I’ve been keen to visit the Shinoharas again is that the husband, Toshikazu, has been ill since last year. He’s recovering now but still has a long road ahead. I’m relieved to see that he looks good and has enough energy that he and his wife Ayako can give me a tour of the shiny new Toyohashi city library before we have lunch. When I comment on his energy level, he says that he’s been exercising recently to work up to my visit. We have a nice lunch together at a French restaurant, then they walk me back to the station.
From there I get back on a shinkansen going up towards Tokyo, changing in Yokohama for a train to Hachioji on the western side of Tokyo. I check into the Keio Plaza Hotel there, and in the evening meet up with another couple, the Arais. I first met them three years ago when they were hiking across the Pacific Northwest. They take me out to a southeast Asian restaurant called Sio J, and we’re joined by their friend Tatsuya.
Jan’s Japan trip, Day 7. Today’s plan is to join the Arais on a morning hike on Mt. Takao on the very western edge of Tokyo. Takao is about the closest hiking area to central Tokyo — but the city is so large that, even on an express train, Takao is an hour away. I’ve spent the night in the adjacent area of Hachioji just so that we can get an early start today.
The Arais meet me at Takao Station, not far from where they live: Miho shows up on her bike; Atsushi jogs up a short while later. Tatsuya, the same friend from last night, also arrives. He’ll head back home to Tochigi Prefecture after the four of us have breakfast. We end up a cute bakery across from the station. The four of us wedge into a table for two, with two of us sitting on a windowsill. The bakery makes a fantastic cinnamon roll.
After breakfast, Tatsuya says goodbye, then the Arais and I board a bus for a nearby trailhead. The main route to the summit of Mt. Takao is heavily trafficked to the point of being paved, so we’re going to ascend by a lesser-used, roundabout trail. The bus wends its way up a twisting, narrow road that’s just barely wide enough in places for the bus to squeeze through. At one point there’s a small firetruck coming the other way. The bus pulls as far over as it can, and the firetruck does the same, scraping through a tree on the other side. The firetruck slowly inches past the bus with an inch or two between them.
We get off the bus and walk up a country road through a forest to the trailhead. It begins to drizzle. This area is so quiet that it’s hard to believe we’re still in the Tokyo city limits. We have a fairly easy climb up a smaller peak called Kobotoke, descend a bit, then make a final climb up to the summit of Mt. Takao. When we reach the summit, it’s packed with crowds of people who have come up the other side. The summit also holds a number of shops and restaurants.
We descend by the main route, stopping at a large shrine. We also stop at a stall selling a variant of bean-filled taiyaki cakes, only these are shaped like long-nosed “tenge” demon heads instead of the more traditional fish shape. Next to the stall is the top of a funicular, which we take down much of rest of the way. The funicular is apparently Japan’s steepest railway — at the steepest point has a 31° incline. This is very, very steep.
From the base we walk back to Takao Station, and get in line at a popular teishoku (set course lunch) restaurant. The wait takes the better part of an hour so by the time we’re seated, we’re famished.
It rains on and off for the rest of the afternoon. The Arais take me to a few other places, including Jindaiji Mountain Works, the small outdoor goods factory where Atsushi works. He and a few coworkers sew the company’s tarps, hammocks, packs, and clothing there. Even though it’s a weekend, one of his coworkers is working.
From there we explore a small mall that has a nice cafe, an outdoor goods retailer, and a store selling gear for trail runners. Atsushi has recently gotten into trail running, and he and Miho are friendly with the proprietors. Finally the Arais walk me back to the station where we say goodbye.
I take an express train towards Shibuya, where I check into a hotel in the relatively new Shibuya Stream shopping mall at the station. Shibuya Station is now surrounded by multiple shopping malls, all joined together in a complex, three-dimensional maze of bridges and passages. It’s fun to get lost in the maze while trying to get from one point to another without ever setting foot on the street level sidewalk.
I find a restaurant listing for an appealing place called Tenki in the nearby Sakuragaoka neighborhood. The restaurant is booked up but they find me a seat, and the food is as good as I’d been hoping.
Jan’s Japan trip, Day 8. For breakfast I walk to nearby White Glass Coffee, a nice place Bree and I found last year.
After eating I take a bus to Roppongi Hills to check out the small Mori Garden and its little pond, and then walk over to the National Art Center. At the moment the main exhibition features Bvlgari jewelry, something I would have never made a trip for but is nevertheless interesting to see. My favorite piece is a small jeweled bracelet shaped like a coiled snake. The snake has a secret: its little head pops open to reveal a watch. I eat lunch in the art center’s popular Salon de Thé Rond, a cafe that sits atop a giant tapered column.
The rest of the afternoon is dedicated to some shopping expeditions for gifts and to fulfill some requests: Tokyo Character Street, Shibuya Loft, and Tsutaya Books.
In the early evening I go to Kichijoji to meet up with my friend Mari and her friend Erika. I met Erika a couple of years ago when Mari, her husband Sosuke, Erika, and another friend Itsuko joined me on my hike across Japan. We have a nice dinner over yakitori.
On the way back to Shibuya I get off in Shinjuku for one last shopping stop at Kinokuniya Bookstore. My friend Bruce has asked me to pick up a copy of a gaming magazine called Famitsu that’s released a special edition dedicated to the recent release of the game “Ghost of Yotei” made by the gaming studio Bruce and some other friends founded years ago. The game’s release is of sufficient interest that the first two bookstores I visited were out of the magazine, but the main branch of Kinokuniya comes through with a copy.
Jan’s Japan trip, Day 9. I’m heading back to Seattle this afternoon, but before I go I’m getting together with a web designer named Genki that I’d met online. He works in Saitama Prefecture to the northwest, so I’d proposed we meet up in the Ikebukuro district that’s closer to him.
Genki and I meet up at the entrance to the Lumine building, where he’s booked a small private table at a place called Chano-ma on the building’s restaurant level. As I’d expected from our online conversations, our interests and work philosophies have a substantial degree of overlap, so we have plenty to talk about during a long, two-hour lunch. We say goodbye with a plan to follow up our meeting with an online discussion.
I make my way to Haneda Airport and fly back to Seattle to arrive in the morning. Angela, meanwhile, begins her own trip back from her weeklong pastor’s conference in Alabama, and gets back to Seattle in the evening.
Moxie pauses briefly during afternoon zoomies.
Bree’s advisory group helps out at Connecticut Foodshare, an organization in Wallingford that supplies area food banks and mobile food pantries.
Since this coming Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving, UBC will have the day off, so Liya comes home for a long weekend.
We go for a nice walk in the Kubota Gardens.
It’s a beautiful fall day, so Jan and Liya enjoy a walk around Seward Park.
We head to the East Coast to attend Parents Weekend at Choate. We have a slightly bumpy flight into Logan Airport in Boston then rent a car for the drive to Wallingford. We stop for dinner at the same restaurant we stopped at last year, the Cedar Street Grill in Sturbridge on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border.
We arrive at Choate just after 9:30 pm. This is technically curfew, but the McCook dorm advisor on duty seems to think it’s fine for us to say hello to Bree. We also say hi to Xyla, Bree’s good friend who lives across the hall. Bree’s single room is actually smaller than her single last year, but she’s done a nice job organizing and decorating it. She’s a dorm prefect this year, helping out students with questions or issues and generally keeping eyes on her part of the dorm.
After saying good night, we drive a short way to the Hilton Garden hotel near the highway. This is one of the completely generic Hilton hotels that follows a template that’s exactly the same as other hotels elsewhere. The bland nature of the hotel isn’t helped by the fact that we can check into our room without ever talking to another human.
East Coast, Day 2. We’re up very early (especially by West Coast time) so that we can join Bree for breakfast at Choate’s Hill House dining hall. The dining hall was closed last year but has reopened with a shiny new serving area.
Today we follow Bree through a variation of her class schedule Classes: Essay Writing, Physics, Theater Design, and Spanish. This year the school adopted a policy of having students deposit their phones in boxes as they come into the classroom, so there are fewer distractions. The school’s also asking students to refrain from using devices in the main areas of the dining hall.
In Theater Design, the drama teacher has come up with a plan to help the upcoming musical get all its props finished: have parents help with prop construction. Our family takes responsibility for constructing a crude cardboard boat. We’re glad that the director has specifically asked that the boat look like something a child would make, because that’s what it looks like.
The Spanish class discusses a book they’ve been reading. We’re impressed by the high degree of active participation from nearly all the class members. Bree says that’s not normal; the students are just trying harder to look good in front of their parents.
Since we’re on campus, we meet with Bree’s college counselor — the same man we met with back when he was Evan’s college counselor. We’re just as unimpressed with him this time.
The weather’s been beautiful all day, and the campus is showing off in the fall colors. We go for a walk on one of the trails at the edge of campus, exploring a trail that leads to a small waterfall. We make some noise on our way in — this area is known as one where amorous student couples sometimes slip off to.
In the evening, a get-together has been orchestrated for the families of Bree, Xyla, and a third friend, Adrian. The announced plan is to go to a local hot pot restaurant, but the actual plan is a teppanyaki place that bares hardly any connection to the Japanese cuisine that inspired it.
East Coast, Day 3. Bree has a free period this morning so we can have a slightly later and longer breakfast. We go into town to have breakfast at The Bee’s Knees, a cute cafe with wonderful food.
We tag along with Bree to Drawing in the Paul Mellon Arts Center. As we walk to the class, we pass through a second floor gallery where Jan once had a drawing class. This is, in fact, probably one the only classrooms on campus that still looks the same now as it did back then. (The old math building was replaced with a student activity center, the science building was renovated into the humanities building, etc.)
We have lunch at the dining hall, then go the final class of the weekend, Fundamentals of Modern Math. The teacher covers challenging topics and goes through them extremely quickly.
After that, the students are free for the next three days. This year we’re heading to Newport, RI. We collect Bree’s luggage and start driving east.
Along the way we make a stop in Old Lyme, the town where Jan’s dad died back in 1992. Bree’s interested in seeing the cemetery where her grandfather is buried, so we make a small detour to the Duck River Cemetery just outside the tiny center of town.
Jan hasn’t been to the cemetery in many years, so he’s happy he’s able to locate the grave again. Over the years some lichen has grown on the face of the stone, so we clean that off. It’s still a nice spot beneath a large tree.
We then head up to Providence for a couple of stops. First stop is the anti-Trump “No Kings” rally at the state capitol. We’d wanted to attend the No Kings event in Seattle, but when we realized we’d be out of town that day, we found another event to attend here on the East Coast. We’re only going to catch the last hour of the event.
As we’re walking towards the capitol building, we’re passing protestors walking away in the opposite direction. Maybe the protest is over? Nope; as the capitol comes into view, we see large crowd gathered around the building’s steps. A man at the microphone is playing guitar and singing a protest song — badly. “Ah,” says Bree, “maybe that’s why people are leaving.”
Happily, the bad singer is followed by a local activist, who does a passable job speaking, followed by a Rhode Island senator and a black pastor who both do a much better job.
It’s encouraging to attend the protest. Following an example set in Portland, a number of protestors are wearing inflatable animal costumes. Jan likes the energy of one protestor in a shark costume and after the event concludes asks the shark for a picture.
The next stop is the Brown University campus, where we pick up family friend Evrim. She’s doing well in her junior year at Brown after her break with us in Seattle. She says that studying at Brown now feels like a completely different experience — she’s less anxious and has been able to spot and take advantage of more opportunities. Evrim gives us a short tour around the Brown campus and a bit of the Rhode Island School of Design as well.
Evrim’s class schedule is such that she’ll be able to join us for the next few days in Newport. The four of us make the fairly short drive from Providence down to Newport. It’s a nice afternoon for a drive, and the view crossing Narragansett Bay is pretty.
We find our rental apartment down a narrow side street off the main drag, Thames Street. We have enough time to put our things down and then walk down the harbor to dinner at The Mooring, a seafood restaurant.
East Coast, Day 4. Breakfast in Newport at the nearby Beaucoup Cafe is fine but the place is packed; we’re lucky to find a table.
We only have one scheduled activity today: a tour at The Breakers, one of the huge Newport mansions overlooking the Atlantic. It’s interesting to explore the mansion. We all enjoy the Upper Loggia with its view of the ocean, as well as functional areas like the kitchen.
The Breakers sits on the Cliff Walk trail, so we head north on that trail along the ocean. We stop at Forth Steps to walk down to the waterside rocks. By the time we come back up, we’re hungry enough for lunch that we abandon the oceanside trail for the more direct road that heads back to our car.
It’s a gorgeous weekend and it seems all the restaurants are packed. We get sandwiches from Marco’s Cafe and bring them back to the rental apartment to eat.
In the afternoon we make separate excursions around town. Bree and Jan find a nice tea and spice merchant and buy some tea for ourselves and for a friend. We end the day with an Italian meal at nearby Viesté.
East Coast, Day 5. In the morning Evrim and Bree do some homework; Bree also works on college applications. (The deadline for early applications is in just two weeks.)
In the afternoon Angela and Jan walk along the waterfront to a statue of Rochambeau (Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur) marking a spot where he landed with French troops to help turn the tide in the Revolutionary War. We also explore the town’s sailing museum and have fun playing with the interactive sailing exhibits.
Dinner is at the Dining Room at the Vanderbilt, which sits in a gorgeous building and has fairly good food but terribly slow service. Evrim is very happy trying lobster with a lobster bisque sauce.
In the evening, Jan helps Bree select photos for the costuming portfolio she’ll submit with her college applications.
East Coast, Day 6. We have breakfast at the Nitro Cafe and then pack up. We drive back up to Providence and, since we have some time, visit Blackstone Park along the Seekonk River.
Bree will be returning to Wallingford by train, so we park at a shopping mall near the train station. We make a quick stop at a Lego store to pick up a “Happy Plants” Lego set of two cute smiling planters with plants.
It’s lunchtime, but the mall doesn’t have any really appealing restaurant options; we settle for vaguely Asian food at a P.F.Chang’s. Then it’s time for Angela and Jan to head back to Boston for their flight home, while Evrim accompanies Bree to the station.
Bree’s senior class has pictures taken.
A late birthday package finally makes its way to Evan in Taipei.
A while back we’d sent him a small box from the local postal service store. It’s hard for Evan to receive deliveries at his apartment, so he’d given us the address of a nearby 7-Eleven that can accept packages. Unfortunately the address of the 7-Eleven required a Chinese character that couldn’t be entered by the person taking the package, so we crossed our fingers.
The package made its way to Taiwan quickly enough, but then got stuck in customs. They needed Evan to fill out paperwork saying that he wanted the package delivered. Then the courier service tried to deliver the package — but said there was no such address. We contacted the Taiwan customer service department to give the full address, but it didn’t seem to take, so we had to do that multiple times.
Today, four days after Evan’s 24th birthday, the package is finally delivered to the 7-Eleven and Evan can go pick it up. In the box: bottles of various hot sauces. Evan likes to take a bottle of hot sauce with him when he goes out and about. He says that sometimes he’ll pick the sauce based on where he’s going to eat that day; other times the sauce he’s carrying will influence where he eats or what he orders.
He calls to say that the timing is good — he was just beginning to run out of all the hot sauce he’d brought with him in August. Additionally, the box includes the bright orange beret of his that looks like a pumpkin; it will be just the thing for an upcoming pumpkin-themed Halloween party.
In recent years, we’ve had fewer and fewer kids come by trick-or-treating on Halloween. The neighborhood shops give out candy in the afternoon, and it’s much faster to get candy from them than to walk from house to house; for many families, that’s enough. And if the weather’s not great — which is often the case in late October — few people want to go out with their kids again.
A few days ago we were in the corner supermarket to pick up a bag of candy. It seemed so small, so we bought a second bag.
In the late afternoon it begins to pour rain, and the rain continues all evening. We end up receiving a grand total of three trick-or-treaters, leaving us with two nearly full bags of candy.