A most amazing dinner

The other night our friend in Nagoya graciously offered to take us to dinner at Kamikura, a beautiful restaurant in a mansion in Yagoto.  The chef agreed to prepare a vegetarian course for the ladies and modified the menu slightly for me.  However, a quick look at the website suggested that this was a 'fine dining experience' and therefore a far cry from our typical restaurant.  I know this because the website had photos of a white tablecloth.  There was admittedly a bit of stress leading up to the experience, as Amy and I recognized we needed to instill a bit of etiquette in our daughters.  This point was driven home a week before the dinner when Lily brought her hand down on our dining room table and inadvertently hit a chopstick that went flying into the air and smacked into the wall, leaving a trail of soy sauce in its wake.  "Oooof farooofa," Tessa said, because her mouth was overstuffed with pasta and it's difficult to enunciate with that much penne crammed into your cheeks.  Similar nightmare scenarios played out in the days following.  It was beginning to look like we would not be invited to dinner at Downton Abbey despite the fact that Tessa has been randomly speaking with a British accent.

Despite our deep seated anxieties, we put ourselves together pretty well.

Tessa upon being reminded to eat with her mouth closed.

"Fine, I'm never opening my mouth again.  Starting now!"

Never was short lived.

The restaurant was stunning.  Too stunning.  As we approached the building, Tessa became overwhelmed by anxiety that either a) the restaurant was closed and I would be arrested upon attempting to breach the perimeter, b) the restaurant was open but I would still be arrested upon attempting to enter, or c) she would be associated with me in some way.

To Tessa's astonishment, I was welcomed inside.  We were given a quick tour of the restaurant, including the Western dining room.

Then, unfortunately, it was time to sit down and eat.  Time to see if all of our stern looks and hissing commands and sighs of disappointment had any effect on our daughters' frontal lobes.

The evening was amazing.  I'm not sure who ate dinner with us that night, but it was almost certainly not Lily and Tessa.  The two girls at the table were poised and funny, and not one chopstick hit the wall.

And the food ... I don't know how to describe the experience without using words like sensational and superlative and super good.  Perhaps the best way to describe it ... it would totally be worth it to book a plane ticket (from wherever you are) to Tokyo, take the Shinkansen to Nagoya and the subway to Yagoto and wait outside until they have an opening to have a meal at this restaurant.  

We had a nine course meal along with paired wine and sake.

For those of you counting, there aren't nine pictures here.  I can only say the food was good enough that I forgot I was going to blog about it.

An update on our pup

A quick update on the most popular member of our family according to all members of our family; our dog, Murphy.  We regularly receive updates from the kind man watching our house, Midhun, who has been essentially making a documentary of his care of him.  Murphy might refer to the documentary as The Best Days of My Life.

As some of you may know, our home is the equivalent of a canine comfort desert.  There is no bacon.  There is a permanent restriction on seconds and thirds and elevenses (Murph is likely closest to a Hobbit by nature if not appearance).  But most troubling, dogs are not allowed on the furniture.  Amy's point has always been that Murphy has more beds than anyone in the house (he has five scattered around the house) so he can just deal.  But still, a dog's bed is not a couch.  

Murph went through a brief period in which he combined performative art with protest.  In this piece, he seems to be commenting on the quality of his bed.

We have long suspected that, in retaliation, Murphy has been sneaking couch time when we are out running errands or even just out of the room.  Sometimes, we would walk out of our bedroom and hear a jingle and a jump on the ground.  Could be random dog noises.  Could be a dog jumping off a couch.

We soon found more compelling evidence, as the tan couch was covered with a level of black dog fur that would be unlikely to waft through the air.  Accepting a bit of defeat, Amy placed a pink towel on the couch to limit the amount of fur.  Soon, the pink towel had a layer of black dog fur.

The problem is that this has been circumstantial evidence at best.

But now we have proof (sent to us by Midhun). 

The story goes like this.  Midhun went downstairs for a few minutes, leaving Murph in the living room.  As Midhun was coming back upstairs, he heard a sound.  Could be a random dog noise.  Could be the sound of a nervous couch squatter.  

This picture captures Murph's "Innocent Dog Look" or "Pleading Cow Eyes."  

In the past, I've awakened in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and, on the way back to bed, I will often glance into the living room to see a dark shape nestled on the couch.

Dream?  Reality?  Doesn't matter.

"Good for you," I whisper.

Heartfelt goodbye text

One of my astute readers wanted to see the heartfelt goodbye text I wrote as I prepared for the storm of the century.  I thought I would share the template I used.  Feel free to use this if you are ever facing a crisis and need to get some texts out in a hurry.

Dear <insert name here>

I am trapped in a Tokyo subway due to <insert disaster here>.  I don’t know if I will make it out but I wanted to tell you how much your <insert relationship type> meant to me over the last <insert time period>.  I think fondly of <insert shared experience> and have always valued your <insert adjective> <insert personality characteristic>.

<insert salutation>

Luke

Back to Tokyo

The thing about Tokyo is that there's not just one thing about Tokyo.  If you Google 'best 10 things to do in Tokyo,' you'll find warring posts from influencers with too much time on their hands writing snide comments to each other.  Some of the lists are helpful.  Some of them are just trolls trolling trolls.  

By contrast, if my daughters wrote the best 10 things to do in Tokyo, their lists would be eerily similar.

1. Lay in bed and watch tv
2. Lay in bed and watch tv
3. Lay in bed and watch tv
4. Lay in bed and watch tv
5. Lay in bed and watch tv
6. Humor dad by going to a shrine and complain until he brings us back
7. Lay in bed and watch tv
8. Lay in bed and watch tv
9. Pretend to sleep and watch tv under the covers
10. Eat breakfast

The infamous Douglass luck manifested early in this trip.  In watching the local weather announcements, we saw with horror that Japan was about to be struck by a 'storm of the century' that would cripple the infrastucture.  Given that we are from the Northeast (we are basically Starks), we took this warning seriously.  We thought about cancelling the trip.  We googled prepper sites for 'how to survive for a week when you are trapped in a Tokyo subway.'  I wrote a few people heartfelt goodbye texts.

Here is a picture of the storm of the century that shut down Tokyo.

In the bottom right there's a snowflake that melted instantly upon hitting the pavement.  Still, you know it was serious because a) it was a Friday in Tokyo and b) there were no people, no cars, and no dogs in trousers (it's a thing - blog post pending).  It felt a lot like The Living Dead: Tokyo Time.  Luckily, I'd also Googled 'how to survive in a Tokyo subway during a Zombie apocalypse' (though there was nothing on there I didn't already know).

While in Tokyo, Amy had a meeting with a colleague who has clearly never seen pictures of the US northeast in the winter and regarded this storm as the worst thing to hit Tokyo since Pokemon.  This colleague appeared gravely concerned about how she was going to get home.  Amy saw a stockpile of gatorade and saltines in her office right beside what looked like a home made spear.  Looks like somebody else subscribes to the zombietokyo reddit.

Enjoying Tokyo?

We had a late lunch at a conveyer belt sushi restaurant.  

I had a lot of sushi, as my stack of plates will attest.  Lily looked nauseous and had an edamame.  

It was only later that I learned her nausea was at least partly related to a Tik Tok prank in which teenage anarchists take a plate from the conveyor belt, lick the item, and put it back.  

Yet another of social media's contribution to society. 

Here I'm caught mid dad joke.

Tessa caught thinking it was funny.

By that night, Tokyo looked a lot like Gotham.

My brother, who has been frustrated by the complete lack of Godzilla in my posts, provided this rendering.

If anyone would like him to Godzilla your wedding photographs, I'm sure he would oblige for a modest fee.  

That night, the girls watched television while Amy and I went down to the hotel bar and listened to some jazz.

I had The Vesper.  

Watashi wa Bond.  James Bond.

I'm pretty sure the bartender got the joke.  But maybe not the one I intended.

To our daughters' horror, the next day we mandated leaving the comfort of the hotel and television and ventured out into one of the shopping districts.  Both daughters viewed this as a profound betrayal that was sadly typical of our failed "carpe diem" parenting philosophy (which they have since rebranded as "carpe puppis").  

After brekkie, we took the subway to Nakamise Dori and wandered in and out of shops (though with Amy's sense of direction it's possible that we wandered in and out of the same shop a few times).  Lily discovered that she does, in fact, like shopping and proceeded to have a manic episode in a purse store.  She left with a lot of purses and no money.

I also forced the family to see the Senso-ji temple.

Quick traveling tip for families - if you take pictures facing the sun, the squinting will make it look like you are all smiling.

The one place I'm never going to ask for directions.

Given our complex culinary needs, an Italian restaurant represents the best possible outcome for an early lunch.

In our last hours, we really wanted to find Harmonica Alley, which was described online as a lively warren of restaurants and bars lit by traditional Japanese red lanterns.  Google helpfully directed us to a dark alley that smelled like a sewer and had no restaurants or bars.  At one point, Amy cleared her throat and suggested that I head down the alley and see if the shape on the ground was a person and, if so, if that person was alive.

We retraced our steps and walked down street after street of an open air mall looking for an alley with red lanterns or a vegetarian restaurant that Happy Cow (Sad Soybean) told us was nearby.  To make matters worse, the vegetarian restaurant was sketchy and closed, the few places that were open appeared to be shutting down, and our internet provider suddenly decided that we had all abused the Fair Use Policy and was throttling us.  So by this point, we were lost, starving, and angry at Google but taking it out on each other.  This is what family therapists refer to as The Low Point and is, coincidentally, the least amount of fun for the odd person out in the gender game.  For those of you keeping score at home, that's me.  This is particularly true if you are the one who suggested traveling to Harmonica Alley.  If you've ever traveled with Amy when she's hungry you know it's like sitting on a fire-ant hill after bathing in honey.  A matter of seconds and you wish for death.  So in an effort to save our sanity and family, we randomly walked into a basement Indian restaurant.

Best decision ever (except for Lily - as her facial expression suggests, no decisions that day could even be called marginal).

Smile for the blog!

Exhausted and sated, we walked back to the train station and stumbled into the damn alley.

On the way home from a park

One of the most amazing aspects of Japan is finding something beautiful hidden in the mundane.  As we were walking home from a walk, we found this Buddhist temple tucked into a random neighborhood.  

This is a shot of the street leading up to the temple - you can see it at the far end. 

I'm not sure how the construction affects meditation. Maybe the monks try to time drum beats to the sound of the bulldozer hitting the ground.  Or maybe the occasional epithet from a construction worker rhymes with a mantra.

Hair katto

One of the moments I've been dreading arrived.  The inevitable haircut.  Prior to leaving, I was informed by all members of my family that I could not return to my undergrad, heavy metal days, when I looked a lot like a young Kevin Cronin.  Mostly because I would now look like an old Kevin Cronin trying to look like a young one.  So I knew at some point I would need to stumble my way through an interaction with a Japanese barber.

Part of my problem was the paradox of choice, as there appear to be two hair salons for every restaurant in Nagoya.  I honestly don't see how there is enough hair in the country to justify the number of salons.  One of the salons is on the way to our subway stop, and so every morning I would peer inside as I walked by in the hopes that one of the stylists might be free and, seeing my disheveled appearance, invite me inside for a quick cut.  After thinking about it a bit, I realized the stylists were probably bit freaked out to see a hairy American staring at them longingly every day, so I only stared every other day.

The other part of the problem is that most of these places require a reservation.  We do not have a Japanese phone number, so that meant going in and trying to schedule a reservation in person or getting an online reservation.  As perfect as the latter seemed, the online reservation system was a national online system.  Good luck finding the barber shop down the street.

After a few weeks of staring into barber shops and enduring Kevin Cronin jokes over dinner, I discovered a nearby 'walk-in and wait' barber shop with a wholesome name.  'Familys.'  The building had several pictures of gaijin plastered on the windows, all of them looking extremely happy with their selection of hair style.  I was sold.

Before taking the plunge, I did a bit of online research on 'how to get a haircut in Japan.'  The advice was great.  Find a picture of the haircut you want and display this prominently while saying 'shi o kono e no you ni mi se te kudasai' (make me look like this picture).  So, I found a good picture online and, the next Wednesday, I went in.  I was immediately ushered into a chair, and my barber rattled off a few Japanese phrases while holding a razor.  I panicked.  I forgot my phrase.  I resorted to the much easier 'hair katto' and brought up a picture of Chris Hemsworth while pointing to my head.  I can only describe the barber's expression as deeply skeptical.  To clarify my request, I pointed to my head again and said "Hai.  Thor.  Hair katto."  So, he shrugged and did his best to make me look like Thor.

The Japanese haircut is well beyond what you can get in Lewiston.  First, it is not just a haircut.  It's an experience.  After the haircut, the barber said 'shave?' and I thought, why not?!  So he lathered up my throat, chin, cheeks, neck and forehead.  He then helpfully clarified whether I would like my eyelids shorn (I declined).  After all facial hair had been eradicated, he inquired whether I would like a shampoo and a massage.  Why yes, I thought.  Yes I would.  So, after five minutes of scalp scrubbing, gel applying, and shoulder pummeling, I left the salon looking a lot more like Chris than Kevin.  And what more, really, could I ask.

Did someone say Thor reboot?

Kyoto Part II

The next morning, we took a family trip to the shrine.  And by 'family trip' I mean the same thing that most parents mean; namely, we wrenched our children out of bed a full five hours earlier than they would have preferred, forced them to fake their way through personal hygiene, and mandated they consume something other than refined sugar and flour covered by liquid refined sugar.   

We took a taxi to the shrine.  On the way there, the driver was quiet, he drove safely, and he dropped us off right in front of the shrine.  After we arrived, he pealed out of there as if suddenly realizing he violated a national ordinance related to Douglasses at holy places.  It's possible that the word got out about Lily's destructive tendencies at Awomb, because I did see some pretty nervous monks standing in front of breakable objects on our way in.

The Fushimi Inari Shrine gates.

The shrine has thousands of orange gates leading to the top of the mountain.  Many of the gates have beautiful inscriptions written on the sides that I assumed were haiku or philosophical mantras sadly inaccessible to us.  This assumption was proven wrong halfway up the hike, when we saw 'oral health' written in English.  This led me to conclude that most of the inscriptions are part public service announcement, part advertisement.  Bob's Car Wash.  Wash Your Hands.

The shrine is dedicated to Inari, the Shinto god of rice and unhappy children.  So I sort of assumed our kids would feel right at home and maybe, ironically, less unhappy.  But this was naive.

If you find the prospect of hiking up 2000 steps exhausting or the thought of three hours of non-stop complaining even more exhausting, imagine hiking those steps accompanied by a three hour concert of two thirteen-year-olds bemoaning their fate and talking wistfully about how good the kids have it in shrine-free Lewiston.

At a crossroads mid hike.  I'm not proud that I was sorely tempted to let my family get a few feet down the right lane and then run down the left.  Awkwardly, Amy had the same idea, so we all ended up going down the left.

Parents reading this blog will immediately recognize that the expression on our faces is not smiling, per se, but a form of rigor mortis that comes from gritting your teeth for too long due to a constant barrage of complaints.

Upon reading this section, Lily exclaimed "DAD!

I didn't complain.  And that's amazing because that whole day was like waterboarding."

How could I disagree?  The hike did have unremitting interrogation.  Why are we on this hike anyway?  How much longer is this going to take?  Daddy, I can hear Tessa breathe.  Can you make her stop?

So in retrospect, it was a lot like a group waterboarding, otherwise known as the Last Family Vacation.  Every family has one.  Ours is just going to last another 10 weeks. 

And the hike was not without risk ...

The idea of a roving band of bloodthirsty monkeys made the hike even less appealing to Tessa.  She spent the remainder of our time convinced that she would be abducted, and her movements became even more furtive and jumpy than usual.  At one point, we heard an odd shushing, sweeping sound (which later proved to be a groundskeeper sweeping the steps) and she squeezed my hand painfully and whispered "was that a monkey?"  

By contrast, I suspect Lily would have welcomed the prospect of being held hostage by monkeys.  Hey.  Better than a forced march on a Sunday morning.

The shrine was lousy with statues of foxes, or messengers of Inari.  Amy was primarily interested in the "bibs."  We've spent a lot more time than I thought possible speculating on what the bibs might mean, who put them there, and how often they are washed.  I have a lot of pictures of bibs.

Those questions represented the sum total of Amy's interest in the foxes.  She was on a quest to find a few statues of kama inu, or lion dogs.  These have proven surprisingly difficult to find.  Every time we entered a shop, Amy bustled to the back of the store and rummaged through the inevitable fox-centric statuary and finally, overwhelmed by frustration, she turned to the proprietor and shouted 'kama inu?  Inu!  Ka-ma I-nu?'