It seems once you start the baby process, there is a gravity which seems to draw all attention and activities to babies. Which in this case was a celebration of our friend Takeshi’s brand new baby boy Zen. We started at the baby cafe to be followed with some prerequisite equipment shopping.
It was a quick arrangement to see my friend in Kobe — little did I know that in the top of the heatwave in July his students were in classes and exams so he could not get away for a brief lunch meeting somewhere in Osaka or Kyoto. So he invited me to come down and stay overnight. It was a fun journey navigating from the main railway station in Osaka to the smaller local line to his university using what little Japanese I could muster. And I did make it on time. After spending time with some of Prof. Sato’s students, we went to a nice sake restaurant for a traditional Japanese meal, and some interesting sake — it had been simmer with roasted eel. In fact, it was quite tasty.
So it was enticing option — take a trip to Taipei from Kanazawa for 3 nights/days. But this was the longest time leaving Kai with others (we had done a test run for 30 hours to Paris). Thankfully we had lots of support. Mom was there and Meg flew in for the weekend. Plus 2 aunties and an uncle were walking distance away. We pulled the trigger and we were off. What a fantastic adventure — a second honeymoon, and maybe even a bit more sweet taste of freedom. Of course we missed Kai a lot, but we got to catch up with each other again too.
While we decided to do a city excursion to Taipei instead of a beach trip to Okinawa, it didn’t mean there would be no coastal activities at all. After all, Kanazawa is on the West Coast of Japan. So after a 30 minute drive, we found ourselves at a quaint seaside spot with some restaurants and shops and then an overpass across the highway to the beach. Kai had the most fun of all I think, but I was a close second.
It is a wonderful feeling being at the start of a long vacation when reality is beyond the horizon, and the question is what are we going to do over the next 24 hours. Mainly it is focused on eating and drinking.
We had a great lunch at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art yesterday, with fresh cold pumpkin soup and a huge selection of meats and salads.
In the evening, Chika and I left Kai with his grandmother to put him to bed, and we went to explore on of the local isakayas (basically, a place for drinks and small plates). It was excellent — both the food (sushi, snow crab tempura) and the drinks (beer and sake flight for me and plum wine flight for Chika).
The sun was out, so we decided to head to a big park complex a short drive away. It was hot, but cool breeze time to time and refreshing drinks sustained us. But Kai wasn’t bothered one bit (maybe some of his legacy Atlantic City summer genes still in the DNA), and played non-stop for a few hours with his new cousins.
Wow. As if the first home cooked meal on the day of arrival was not enough, the family pulled out all the stops for the grand clan gathering — sashimi, sukiyaki, and shabu-shabu. It was great to see Kai playing with his cousins — an event sure to be repeated. And while it was a bit old-school, it was relaxing to sit at one end of the table with all the fathers to have drink and food and try to translate English jokes to Japanese (in general, miserable failures but fun trying anyway).
Nothing like a 7 hour time change to help your son sleep until 9am. But it was a great start to the holiday with most of us already on the new schedule. Even though the family offered to take Kai, we decided that going to the aquarium was something for the family. And a great day it was. We saw, played, ate carmel popcorn, flavored ice, crab claws and snow crab legs. Finally around 4pm Kai finally went into his nap (allowing him to stay up late for party with Chika’s family.)
At the current pace, I believe Kai to be Olympic contender circa 2028.