Dad in a Foreign Land

It’s been a great 10 days here. We originally planned to just stay around Hanoi, but we ended up flying to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) after a quick trip to Cat Ba island in Halong Bay. From Ho Chi Minh City we visited a nearby beach resort town at the Boy’s request after which we rode down to Can Tho, the capital of the Mekong Delta area. In all we spent around 18 hours on boats!

Tonight we’ll fly back to Hanoi and then to Narita. (Both flights are Vietnam Airlines.) I intend to write about our trip after we get back to Tokyo and I have a chance to organize my thoughts.

(Photo from Oiso beach in Kanagawa. My son is on the right.)

We’re going to Vietnam tomorrow! We’ll fly to Hanoi tomorrow morning and stay until July 6th. This was all decided very rapidly late last week, and we’re really excited to see how the boy reacts to everything. This will be the first time he’s traveled anywhere besides Japan and the American Midwest.

We need to be really careful about his egg allergy, as we don’t know any Vietnamese, but a good friend of mine who does gave me a few phrases I’ve printed out that should help with this.

I’ll need to keep up with a minimal amount of work while I’m there, so I’m bringing a 12.1″ laptop with me that weighs just under 3 lbs. Despite this, we’ve managed to fit all of our stuff into two largish backpacks. Hopefully the boy will agree to walk when we’re in transit do I don’t have to carry my sizable backpack and a squirming 16 kilo boy. We’ll see.

Why the sudden trip? We used to travel a lot more when we were younger, my wife even more than me. (India is the favorite destination for both of us, but we’re waiting for the boy to get a bit older for that.) Our son will start Japanese kindergarten (yochien) in April, so we’ve got until then to travel freely without worrying about taking him out of school. If this trip to Vietnam goes well we’re thinking of four weeks in Nepal this October/November.

I have had chronic sinusitis for almost three years now. It’s not a big cause of suffering, just an annoyance I’d rather not have. (When I wake up in the morning and blow my nose, I always have some amount of yellow mucus, signifying an inflammation. I don’t get headaches, facial pain or swelling, or any other more severe symptoms.) When I first noticed my condition I tried a couple of hospitals, both of which put me on antibiotics. After a couple of months (!) on these, it was reduced but not completely gone. This is most likely because of the narrowness of my nasal passages at the top of my nose, which couldn’t be fixed by the septoplasty I had in 2003 for my deviated septum. It also doesn’t help that I have severe allergies to dust, dust mites, mold, pollen, feathers, and animal fur. (Though the daily house cleaning that I’ve been doing over the last couple years has kept my dust allergy from causing me any misery. I wish I would have learned to clean better years ago!)

So after having been basically told off by two major hospitals, I’ve mostly given in to living with chronic sinusitis and staying healthy and allergen free to make it as minor as possible. This basically works, and I’m not miserable though the condition remains.

But my wife recently found the Kuniya Clinic in Otsuka, one station from Ikebukuro in central Tokyo. It’s a clinic run by a medical doctor that has also studied traditional Chinese medicine and can prescribe full on Chinese herbs that are covered by the national health insurance. These aren’t pills or packaged powders like those you can buy in most pharmacies (at high prices) throughout Japan. He puts together a full prescription of herbs that you boil for 40 to 50 minutes with 600cc of water and drink in two doses daily. It’s the most potent type of Chinese herb, the nasty stuff my mother had me drinking when I was a kid for my asthma. (Yes, my mom was taking me to a acupuncturist from five years old for my asthma, and though I hated it, it seemed to work. I never carry an inhaler and rarely feel any asthmatic symptoms.)

I don’t think there are many clinics in Japan that are able to prescribe actual Chinese herbs and be covered by national health insurance, so the Kuniya Clinic is a real find. Anyone who has bought Chinese herbs over the counter in Japan will know that they are EXPENSIVE. But I just paid 1000 yen ($10) for a two week supply of herbs to treat my condition.

The doctor said that he has cured many patients of chronic sinusitis, but not all that have come to him. I’ll report the results later. (I have wanted to try acupuncture and TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) for my condition for a while now, but going to see an acupuncturist is not covered by health insurance in Japan and costs about $70 a visit! Ouch!)

During my last trip to Hanamaki I went with my father-in-law to a welcome home party for a local toji, or sake master. Itagaki-san (板垣　博司） is a farmer in Iwate during the warm months and spends his winters in Gifu prefecture as the toji of Hourai, an internationally acclaimed (award-winning) sake. This party is something that happens every year at the end of April, and this was the third time I’d attended. Six different types of nihonshu were passed around, all daiginjo this year. (Daiginjo is a highly refined type where at least 50% of the rice has been milled away before being used.) The etiquette at the sake party (nomikai) is such that every time someone greets you they bring a pitcher of sake to pour you a glass. Of course you can’t mix two different types, so you have to quickly finish what you were drinking to receive more. Repeat this about 30 times as you are greeted by various people and you’ve got a room full of very drunk men. To my credit I managed to maintain my ability to taste properly and despite the room’s refusal to hold still I was able to correctly identify what I was drinking the whole night.

This fueled my budding interest in sake and during the two weeks I spent up north my father-in-law and I drank what could arguably be called “too much” sake. (We sort of had an enabling effect on each other - when we get together we both drink far more than we otherwise would.)

Back in Tokyo, at my wife’s suggestion, I’ve started a sake journal of sorts. I guess it’s standard practice for sake lovers to take the sake label off a bottle after finishing it, and to paste it into one’s sake journal. I’ve just started doing this, and it is a great deal of fun.

I’ve got three bottles of nihonshu in the fridge at the moment. (Yes, my wife gives me hell about hogging too much space in there.)

1. Marushin Masamune (Ginjo Karakuchi - Akabane, Tokyo)
Not terribly impressive. I bought it because it’s local. The kura is bicycling distance from where I live. For being called “karakuchi” it tastes somewhat sweet to me, almost tart. Aftertaste lingers a bit. Not bad, not great. (After buying it I heard that there is no toji, or sake master, that makes it. The process is mostly computerized…)

2. Nenohimatsu (Junmai Ginjo - Aichi)
I like this better than the above. It’s classified umakuchi. Goes down smoothly without much initial heat. Aromatic. I like it, but not enthusiastically.

3. Hourai - Kuramoto no Kakushizake (Gifu) - pictured above
This is the only one that is a 1.8l isshobin. (The two above are 720ml bottles.) I am really loving this limited edition Hourai. It has a full body on the initial taste, but it vanishes quickly from your palate, leaving no aftertaste. It’s dry, but not so clear like Niigata sakes (Hakkaizan, Koshi no Kanbai, etc.). Having this around the house is what makes me feel like an alcoholic. I can’t seem to pass a night without having at least one glass. It goes well with fried fish, but is splendid on its own. The more I drink, the more I love it. They made 3000 bottles (all 1.8l) of this Kuramoto no Kakushizake, and I may try to buy one more before they all sell out.

Here is a link if you’re interested:

http://www.sake-hourai.co.jp/sake_toku02.html

You can buy all of these on Rakuten, which is where I get my nihonshu when I’m in Tokyo.

We’re heading back to Tokyo in a couple days and I’m going to miss the river and the mountains. Of course we live right next to the Arakawa River in Tokyo, but it’s not quite the same. My parents have been playing with the boy so much that I’ve had more time to relax and read than any time since I became a father. It’s been a nice vacation.

We also attended the yearly festival of the phallus-god Konsei-sama. We’re still very much wanting a second child, so we’ll see if the phallus-god’s power can help. (For more photos and a description of this Konsei Matsuri, see here and here.)

We’ve been eating mountain vegetables (sansai) at just about every meal. Above you can see the boy and his (maternal) grandfather picking warabi in the back yard.

Here is the warabi that we picked with a bit of mizu behind it. After boiling it we made two separate dishes, one Korean-style with sesame oil (imagine the namuru that comes on bi-bin-pa) and the other plain for serving with a soy sauce and spicy mustard (karashi) mix.

This is tara-no-me, which we ate as tempura. (My wife’s mom knows a way to make tempura without egg, so the boy could enjoy it as well.)

The leafy parts are just as good as the juicy bottom, which tastes almost like an artichoke, or so my parents said.

This week has been perfect for a number of types of mountain vegetables, which we basically had to pick and eat immediately. My wife’s family doesn’t have a vegetable garden, but the haul of fresh greens is easily equal to my parent’s garden in the States, and with no weeding!

My parents are visiting Japan and we’re all up at the house in Hanamaki. The refrigerator is so stuffed that there was no room for this 1.8 liter （一升瓶）bottle of sake that I bought today. My father-in-law suggested that I put it in the little stream that runs behind the house to cool. I thought he was joking at first, but why not keep it there? It’s cold mountain water coming from a spring a few hundred meters up, and there’s no risk of anyone taking it. So there it waits for us until dinner time. (If you’re curious, it’s a junmai ginjo called Jikuu (慈空　from 桜顔).)

This has been a great week for mountain vegetables, or sansai. We’ve been picking them from the moist soil near the mountain behind the house. I’ll try to write more about them individually, but here’s a photo of last night’s mountain vegetable tempura.

This last Monday I took my son to the hospital to get the results from his latest allergy test. We had him tested for egg white, egg yolk, ovomucoid (egg white), and buckwheat. I was somewhat hopeful because his past allergies to soy, wheat, and dairy have all gone away. (Buckwheat may seem an obscure thing to test for, but buckwheat noodles (soba) are rather common in Japan.)

Buckwheat came out clear, but all of his egg-related allergies had significantly increased. His allergy to egg white in particular was off the charts. Once it goes over 100 they just stop measuring it, so we don’t even know exactly how high it is. The doctor told us he’d never encountered an egg allergy score this high before. Great.

We’ve been living egg-free for a couple of years now and it’s basically second nature to us at this point. We don’t eat out all that much, but many restaurants and cafes in Tokyo have allergen markers on menus and displays so you can generally see if there’s egg, dairy, wheat, or soy without even asking. Still, it’s a little unnerving to think about what might happen if he did somehow consume egg. The Boy is really cooperative about it, and whenever a friend offers him any kind of food he’ll bring it to us to ask if there’s egg in it before he tries to eat it.

There’s still a good chance that he’ll grow out of it by the time he enters elementary school. Only time will tell.

So last Monday we walked back to Akabane from Jujo and decided to stop at a little yakitori stand (pictured above) outside a liquor store on a Ichiban-Gai. I ran in and grabbed a couple cans of beer for Wife and I, and we made Boy settle for the barley tea that we had brought with us. (He was so happy to get the "meat on a stick" that he didn’t complain - we usually let him drink juice when we have beer.)

It was getting dark by then as we walked down our favorite alley in Akabane (above) and surprisingly, as we passed an intriguing little restuarant/bar, our son pleaded for us to go in. He didn’t need to beg. There were flowers outside showing that it was the opening day for the izakaya, and the central bar surrounded an open cooking hearth (irori). I couldn’t remember having ever eaten at a place with this kind of open hearth, and we went right in.

We were shown to a private room in the upper loft, complete with it’s own hearth for cooking our food. Boy was amazingly happy with the place and ended up falling asleep in my lap after eating fried onigiri and Mackeral (saba). Wife and I ended up drinking a bit too much sake and were maybe a little too chatty with the owner (he was there) and our kind servers.A year ago we wouldn’t have even tried something like this with Boy. But now that only his allergy to eggs remains, our dining options are nearly limitless.

If anyone is interested in going, I’d be happy to give directions. Fantastic atmosphere and great food!

Smoothie season is here again! It’s t-shirt weather today and looks to keep getting warmer. Wife just found a nearby shop that sells frozen strawberries and blueberries remarkably cheaply (for Japan) and breakfast this morning was the usual hodgepodge that I’ve been making since my years living in Phoenix Coop. It’s not really worth putting in recipe form, but here’s what went into today’s smoothie:

Frozen strawberries (as many as you like)
Frozen blueberries (fewer than the strawberries)
Two bananas
Soy milk (just keep adding until it’s as thin as you like)
A touch of honey (to please the boy)

After drinking a cup of this the boy was full and claimed to want nothing else. But half an hour later he was hungry again and ready for some brown rice, our normal breakfast.

On a whim, we went up to the Little Edo neighborhood of Kawagoe today. The Koedo, or Little Edo neighborhood was a very pleasant surprise. I didn’t actually have very high expectations for it but aside from the awful traffic down the main street it was gorgeous. Several buildings remain from the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa eras. (Kawagoe was spared both the Edo fire and fire bombing of Tokyo, and is thus apparently quite valuable for historians of Japanese history.)

The best area for us was the Kashiya Yokocho, or sweets shop alley. My son was happily cooperative to walk around the entire area with us largely because I promised him that our final destination was an entire alley of candy stores. I did not lie. We indulged in local purple sweet potato ice cream and tried the local microbrew, Coedo Beer. Our son got a star-shaped lollipop to compensate for our beer.

I actually found Kawagoe to be more enjoyable than Kamakura, which though beautiful is overcrowded and somehow less charming to me. We didn’t get to see the 500 arhat statues, but we’re planning to head back again in a few weeks.