Kamiooka: Another Parfait Day

Whew! A week has zipped by since the date of this post but I'm going to pretend it's still Saturday, October 15, and chronicle some of the highlights of the past several days before I board the Shinkansen for Kanazawa with Fearless and Matsuzaki-san the day after tomorrow.

Yesterday -- the "pretend" yesterday -- Artistic was introduced to the wonders of Takano Fruit Parlor in Kamiooka. She opted for the chocolate parfait, the only non-fruit option, which was not what I expected of the only serious vegetarian in my current social circle. Life is full of surprises.

The rest of us health nuts tried the three seasonal fruit versions:

Chestnut for Fearless and Hiroko

Grape (three varieties) for Hisayo and Yuuko

Pear garnished with white chocolate for the author

Our 10:00 am desserts were followed by a lovely and delicious luncheon at the house that belonged to Hiroko's deceased parents. A mansion by Japanese standards and with a kitchen sink enormous by even American standards, the house is still furnished and contains fascinating family mementos along with numerous awards and gifts presented to Admiral Otsuka during his illustrious career.

For me, the best part of the day was meeting Hiroko's youngest son who drove several of us from Kamiooka station to the house and then kindly zipped back to Kamiooka station to retrieve the hostess gift I'd left under my chair at Takano Fruit Parlor.

Once I figure out how to say "I'm such an idiot" in Japanese, I think I'll have it printed on a half dozen t-shirts.

Halloween and Kabuki Make a Great Combination

The strikingly modern Kanagawa Geijutu Gekijo Hall was the venue for "Special Autumn Kabuki, SHIN 2011". While Fearless and Matsuzaki-san availed themselves of the facilities semi-hidden beneath the main staircase, I perched on a cushioned bench in the vast lobby and pretended to watch a program on the big-screen television while taking mental snapshots of my surroundings to share with my theater relatives and friends.  (College Boy is taking an acting class this term so my pantheon of theater relatives has expanded by fifty percent.)

Ticket-holders ride a series of escalators up to the theater's main entrance on the fifth floor. The space beneath the escalators houses a busy radio station overlooking the lobby.

A restaurant with windows stretching to the top of the second floor sits on the opposite side of the lobby beneath what I am pretty sure is a second, smaller theater.

We hustled up to the fifth floor and plastered contrite expressions on our mugs as our host informed an usher that two of our three admission tickets were affixed to a refrigerator in Yokosuka.  We were instructed to stand aside; the officials would verify that our seats were empty a few minutes before the program began and then rush us through a labyrinth of elevators, escalators, staircases, and corridors to the second mezzanine.

While we cooled our heels in a corner, I admired the usherettes in their snappy blue suits with yellow and orange scarves tied in perky bows around their necks.  This would be an easy costume to pull off for the Shonan Halloween party next week, the absolute final ultimate last time I will ever, ever, ever attend a costume party (not counting the cowboy wedding this December, of course).

We had another five minutes to kill once the costume issue was settled.  Matsuzaki-san stood over one of the circular air-conditioning ducts dotting the floor and struck a Marilyn Monroe pose that cracked us up.  Fearless, who had already suffered a click of my tongue when she reached over a balcony to stroke a copper-colored wall, proved to be as immune as my children to my chastisements when a "Do Not Enter" sign caught her eye.

She did not leap over that barrier, much to my relief, but she did remove the circular disk from the stand to show us the sign is a magnet. What a good idea!

After we were finally permitted to enter the theater and take our seats, I pulled out my camera and managed to snap one photograph before the nearest usherette dashed to our aisle and let me know with a flick of an index finger that photography is not permitted inside the theater. My apologies to my theater relatives and friends. I should have aimed my camera at the stage when lining up that first shot.

Before the usherette had a chance to scamper back to our aisle and exercise the universal signal for Shut Your Mouth, Matsuzaki-san explained that Shin Kabuki is a fairly new concept involving a collaboration between taiko drummers, shamisen strummers, and kabuki actors. After a series of individual performances, the eight main performers fielded questions from the audience in a talk show format and then the lights dimmed again for the grand finale, wherein the Brothers Nakamura danced while accompanied by the twangy strings and pounding drums.

Ix-nay on that usherette costume idea.  I'm going to be a taiko drummer for Halloween this year. Those athletic drummers never fail to capture the rhythm of my heart.

I Could Get Used to Eating Like This

Le Normandie is a traditional French restaurant on the fifth floor of the new section of the Hotel New Grand. We bowed regally to the waiters as the maitre d' ushered us across the room to a window table offering an awesome panoramic view of Yokohama's harbor.

Matsuzaki-san encouraged us to try the Japanese curry.  While we waited for our food, she shared photographs taken when she lunched in the same restaurant in the early 1950s.

Matsuzaki and her great-grandfather

I envy her possession of this photograph. Why don't I have one of me with my great-grandfather?

With her mother on a terrace that no longer exists.

Japanese curry is served with an assortment of condiments: pickled cucumbers and radishes, chutney, fried onions, coconut, pearl onions, etc. I placed little spoonfuls along the side of my plate but Fearless heaped her relishes on top of her curry. Fearless is not an ironic nickname.

All six options on the dessert cart looked scrumptious. Matsuzaki-san suggested we each order a different dessert to share with each other. We made Fearless choose the three desserts. This sort of decision is sheer agony for Matsuzaki and me.

When the waiter heard of our plan, he offered to divide the desserts for us. That turned out to be a great idea since the size of the portions he placed in front of us were larger than we expected.

The raspberry and cream sauce was an unanticipated bonus.

The week after next, Matsuzaki-san, Fearless, and I are going to Kanazawa for two nights to see the famous landscape garden, Ninja temple, and old samurai quarter. Something tells me we'll be eating well on that trip!

Kabuki Tickets: Don't Leave Home Without Them

Matsuzaki-san handed me two tickets for today's kabuki program last week. She didn't want to be responsible for remembering to tuck the tickets in her purse on the big day. I should have promptly passed the buck and tickets to Fearless, the only member of my current circle of playmates who is not afflicted with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, but I attached them to my refrigerator with a cute magnet instead.

I remembered the tickets. Unfortunately, we were already in Yokohama at the time and Matsuzaki-san was squeezing her car into the narrowest elevator in a land of narrow elevators while Fearless and I held our combined breath.

We did eventually manage to gain entrance to the theater but you're going to have to wait a day or so to join me there.  First we're going to visit the Hotel New Grand since Matsuzaki-san went to so much trouble to park her car so she could treat us to lunch before the show.

By sheer happenstance, we ran into Matsuzaki's uncle in the hotel lobby, the first time they've crossed paths in a number of years. She's sixty-four so I'd peg him as an octagenarian. I find that age group quite adorable but I managed to resist the urge to hug him.

After Fearless and I took advantage of the photo op, Matsuzaki-san introduced us to Mr. Seto, a hotel employee of twenty years' standing who doesn't look a day over thirty.  Mr. Seto had quite a treat in store for the gaijin ladies.

He led us down a long corridor, past a fancy Gump's gift shop decked out for the holidays, into the original hotel which was erected in the late 1920s. The grand staircase had an "Art Deco meets the Arts and Crafts Movement" look to my admittedly less than discerning eye. We followed Mr. Seto up the stairs and into a small elevator that groaned as it lifted us to the third floor where (drum roll, please) we walked down a plushly carpeted hallway to a corner room.

Mr. Seto has the key to MacArthur's Suite!

Fearless and Peevish admire General MacArthur's desk

Photographs of General MacArthur decorate the suite nowadays

Back on the first floor, Mr. Seto let us peek into the room where Matsuzaki's wedding took place. This was as thrilling as seeing MacArthur's Suite, at least for me.

As we left Mr. Seto to check out the gift shop and return to the new part of the hotel to have lunch, he mentioned in passing that the "Imperial Couple" had visited the hotel for dinner last evening.

Fearless studies the hotel's history gallery

I believe Babe Ruth once visited the New Grand Hotel

And that's a young Emperor Hirohito, if I'm not mistaken

Maybe now you understand why it's going to take me a couple of days to get to the kabuki performance.

A New Tradition for the Japanese Book Club

The Japanese Book Club settled into a routine years before I met them: a two-hour book discussion followed by salads at the Officers' Club. But the Officers' Club and the other clubs on our base were all shut down for several weeks following the March 11 earthquake/tsunami so I took them to Chili's instead.

We haven't been back to the Officers' Club since they tasted their first fajita and molten chocolate cake.

Today we talked about Emma Donoghue's latest book, Room, and decided to read 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson for December. I hope they like it more than I did.

Tomorrow Matsuzaki-san is taking Fearless and me to a kabuki performance in Yokohama. I think I'd better do a little research before I call it a night or I won't understand a thing that's happening on that stage tomorrow afternoon.

Here Today and Gone Tomorrow

I can't remember the last time the Ancient Mariner and I have spent a three-day holiday weekend together. We had big plans for Memorial Day but a typhoon decided to head our way so his and all the other ships were sent out to sea lest they suffer damage banging against the piers. When the Fourth of July rolled around he was back at sea on a scheduled summer deployment which brought him back to port just in time for Labor Day.  Alas, College Boy and I spent that holiday on an airplane bound for Seattle via Minneapolis.

So although I think Columbus Day is long overdue to be erased from the Federal holiday calendar, this year I was happy to celebrate it and I'm not complaining that he spent one of this three days off his regular job volunteering in the hospital emergency department, wiping the cobwebs off those doctor skills.

We had to set our alarm clock for 4:00 am when we got home from the retirement dinner for the Japanese admirals Saturday night because we had promised to walk in the Relay for Life in nearby Zushi at 5:00 am.  It was dark out when we started walking; the luminarias ringing the track looked so pretty.  When dawn arrived shortly after 5:30 some familiar faces started poking out of the tents set up in the infield and Knitwit Jamie joined us for a lap.  Her husband, a math teacher at the middle school here who is also in the Navy Reserves, left three weeks ago for a nine-month stint in the Middle East as an Individual Augmentee (IA).

Strolling with the Ancient Mariner first thing in the morning was so darn pleasant that I decided we should make this a habit.  This morning we solved most of the world's problems while marching around the base for 38 minutes.  The rest of the world's problems will have to wait until the Ancient Mariner gets back from Singapore.  This conference could not come at a better time.  I'm not sure my legs would survive three straight days of exercise. 

Intestinal Fortitude in Minatomirai

The Yokohama Mafia

The Japanese Navy (Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force) has four medical admirals. During most of our time in Japan, Admiral Otsuka and Admiral Hatada have held the top two doctor-admiral positions.  Last night we went to a fancy floating restaurant in Yokohama, Pier 21, to celebrate their recent retirements.


What began as collegial relationships have blossomed into true friendships over the course of four years.  We have twice enjoyed Kabuki in Tokyo with Otsuka-sama, experiences we will never forget and which we hope to repay with some Broadway shows when they visit the United States.  Hatada-san and his youngest son were the honored guests at one of my very first dinner parties where I served second helpings of creme brulee for dessert to help them forget whatever unfortunate entree was on the menu that night.

The two formative decades I spent engaging in snappy suppertime repartee with four brothers comes in handy when I'm sharing a five-course meal with five doctors and a dentist.  Any conversational topic is fair game when doctors are eating, much like back on Burr Street when Mom was out of the room, and I couldn't imagine finding a better panel of experts to answer a question that's been pressing the back of my brain since the book club went to Nagano in late August.

"Is it true," I wondered, "that Japanese intestines are approximately one meter longer than Caucasian intestines?"  There was a long pause while six of the nine participants translated the question into Japanese, formulated a response, and translated that response into English.  Yanagida-san, the newest Japanese admiral present, was the quickest.  "Yes!"

Otsuka-sama, in his best sensei fashion, compared the evolution of my intestine with his.  The people on these islands were originally grass or grain eaters and their digestive tracts evolved to accommodate their diet.  I, however, am descended from a long line of meat eaters.

So now you know.  Kanpai!