Back to Basics

Well, my own personal basics, anyway.

I've been meaning to get around to posting photos of our Japan trip, which seems years ago now, and I just haven't got round to it. So please bear with me while I make my first attempt.

Hmm. Not too bad. That was pretty easy, actually.

I'm taking these photos out of the chronological order of our actual trip, but the first place that come to mind when I thought about our summer trip to Japan was Takayama. A popular, though out-of-the way, tourist destination in Japan is a small mountain town called Takayama (where I snapped the above photo). The streets there are a bit like a working museum, and the town looks much like it would have a few centuries ago—think a Japanese Colonial Williamsburg. Though you can certainly find modern products to buy in the shops, there a quite a few that still sell foods and other goods that are made using the same processes that would have been in use during the time period. Unlike a museum, however, many of the shops are still owned and operated by the same families who have lived and worked there for generations.

See this? It's a cedar ball suspended above the entrance to a sake brewery. A family-style one, that is. We were told that everywhere we saw a cedar ball like this, we were looking at a sake brewery. It's basically the same thing as hanging the tradesman's shingle out front. The ball is actually made of cedar, which grows everywhere and is used everywhere as well.

The breweries look pretty much like any other type of shop on the street, and if you walk inside, you will be greeted by a family member or employee. At a small bar inside, patrons can participate in a Japanese style wine tasting (sake in lieu of wine), and I was disappointed on our trip not to have had more time there with my husband. It would have been so much fun to just belly up to the bar and hang out tasting sake for a while. But our children, unlike horses, couldn't just be hitched up to the post outside, quietly to graze on oats while we took our time in the sake saloon, so we had to move on . . .

This photo was taken from the train window on the way to Takayama, and since my poor little camera is very basic and not at all brand new, this was about the clearest shot I could get of what I guessed (correctly) were small green tea plantations. For more thorough info, you might check out http://www.obubutea.com/ . I'm not recommending this site for any particular reason other than for the photos of what a tea plantation looks like, though it does appear to be an incredibly dense site that I will be looking at more closely myself. Most of us, I'm guessing, only see the dried tea, and many only see it through the gauzy paper sachets that come in boxes of twenty, so I thought you might find it interesting.

Just enough time for one more, I think . . .

It's hard to resist including a photo of a certain familiar face surrounded by the image of "sarubobo". The sarubobo (meaning literally "monkey baby") has a long history. Of course, the origin is most likely very simple: scraps of fabric were used by mothers and grandmothers to make dolls for children. Along the way, however, greater symbolism became attached to the dolls. There are many, many charms for luck in Japan, and this is one of them. This blog has some really great photos: http://hidatakayama.blogspot.com/2010/04/sarubobo-luck-made-of-plush.html

Well, that's all the time we have for today, boys and girls. Perhaps tomorrow I'll put up photos of a wood furniture factory we visited while in Takayama. No, really, it was pretty interesting, and I won't write a book, I promise. For now, if you're interested in more information than I have included here, this is a fantastic site: http://www.hida.jp/english/index.htm

A New Day

Gosh, I seem to have fallen off the face of the planet! Best to give a quick update, I guess.

I'm

• too busy.
• finally finished reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time. Look for the movie out next year by the look of things. By the way, the protagonist in the novel is named Dagny, which means "new day."
• not looking forward to being cold this winter. Maybe I will be able to embrace my inner polar bear, but I'm not so sure about that. Maybe just a bunch of good books.

• looking forward to seeing the play my eldest has spent so much of her last two months helping to put on.
• looking for a place to sell and/or refine my old silver. I love the stuff, but it's such a pain to take care of.
• trying to decide if it is more cost effective to sell or donate clothes I just don't wear. Probably the latter.
• thinking that my life's mission really and truly, once and for all, is to make sure that the first 18+ years of each of my children's lives are well-spent and that I would be a fool to think public school can come close to accomplishing that.

• another year more advanced as a human being as of last month. Don't laugh, you know what I mean.
• drowning in the minutiae of life.
• imagining what life, full-time, in the Caribbean might be like.
• remembering that once I upon a time, not so long ago, I used to be into the whole writing thing.
• remembering that there are a great many things besides writing that I actually also enjoy doing. Hence the big gap in my writing . . . "Oh, bother," as my old friend Pooh is wont to say.

There. that feels better already. Now to go upload a few photos somewhere so someone(thing) besides my computer can view them . . .

A New Era Here at Home

Our youngest is now in school, albeit only three mornings per week, and I do sometimes hear some variation of that commonly asked question, "What are you doing with "all that 'free' time now?"

A few appropriate answers might be that

I catch up on all the things I've been neglecting to do around the house for all these years.

I get together on occasion for coffee with some of my friends that I don't see often enough.

I eat bonbons. I had to throw that one in there. I only eat bonbons occasionally, and always when I'm multi-tasking anyway, so it doesn't really count as eating bonbons, does it?

I get in touch with myself. I'm not kidding—time for artistic endeavors, including writing, suffers tremendously under the strict regimen of daily administrative details that modern life seems to require.

I run errands. Sadly, it's true. There are some things better left for when the kids just aren't in the car and asking for every other toy/candy/treat/fill-in-the-blank that commercial enterprises choose to display at a child's eye level.

On occasion, I even read.

I blog. Or will do when I can find time in between all the other things on this list.

And speaking of which, there are a number of other items from the list calling out to me even as I type. It's good to be back and toying with words again, but I shall bid adieu with the intention of returning very soon.

Until next time . . .

Long Time, No Write

Wow. Well that was quite a hiatus. I think I'll quickly post this just to tell myself that I'm back. Anyone still out there? I hope to be blogging a bit about Japan, though we've been back for quite some time now.

Japan, Finally

Where to start? I've had to share my computer with a number of family members on this trip, and time and access to the laptop have been in short supply, it seems. Good thing I'm not expecting to get paid for these blog entries.

Q: Why has the U.S. still not discovered the convenience of simple syrup in a single-serve size for iced coffee and tea in restaurants? We had them when we lived here 20 years ago, and we in the U.S. still live without them in 2010 for Pete's sake!

Fact (from here on noted by the letter "F", followed by a colon): My four-year-old officially learned how to spell her own and her sister's name while on this trip. She also learned how to use the room-to-room phone.

Q: Why do I find better bread products, including croissants, in Tokyo than I can find anywhere in the States?

F: Money in currencies other than one's own always feels like play money and is so easy to spend because it doesn't feel real.

Q: Why does Starbucks offer Short, in addition to Tall, Grande, and Venti in Japan, but not in the U.S.? (Anyone reading this post, I challenge you to walk into a Stateside Starbucks and ask for a "Short." Go ahead, you know you want to!)

F: I forgot how melted I get halfway through a summer day in Japan without my air-conditioned automobile. The trains are a great convenience, but in 98 degree weather, it's hard to arrive looking and feeling fresh and ready to party. It's more like wilted and ready for a dip in the pool followed by a nap. sigh.

Q: Why do Japanese look so much taller now than they did when I lived here twenty years ago? Now I'm just as diminutive here as I am anywhere else in the world.

F: Fashion in Japan has taken a decidedly casual turn since we were here eight years ago. The world's (and Japan's) economic slump has taken a toll on high fashion here. No more suits and heels. Now all we see are leggings, cropped pants, sun dresses, hawaiian shirts and sandals on both the men and the women—well, except for the sundresses. And lots of surfer hair in all shades. Kinda cool, though, because it's easier for a yank to fit in these days. A little bit, anyway.

I've had so many thoughts on our trip that I did not write down because we were in a hurry to go to one place or another. I'll try to be better about it since we leave Tokyo tomorrow morning for presumably slower-paced destinations. I just hope that connecting to the internet is easy.

Here's to posting more enlightening observations, with a bit more depth and analysis.

Dreams, anyone?

It's easy to forget to dream. The problem with forgetting to dream, though, is that you are leaving behind a part of yourself. I challenge anyone reading this to share just one dream out loud, in print, right here. :)

Tappahannock Eats & Drinks

Here we are at the "Gateway to the Rivah", known to most as Tappahannock.

And now for small review . . .

This Fourth of July my parents decided that cooking was a nuisance, and since I'm not one to argue with someone who says, "Let's let someone else do the work this time," I happily agreed, with my brood in tow, to try out the newest restaurant in town. We weren't sure what we would find, but I'm glad we took the chance.

Tappahannock boasts a few well-known, local, longtime (and long-ish-time) restaurants. There are Lowry's and Ferebee's, T n' L BBQ, and Java Jack's Coffee House to name a few. Others have come and gone with barely a whisper. When the opening of Buoy 17 was announced, my father was immediately skeptical that it would last, if only because of the string of ghosts the location has wandering about it's perimeter. No, not real ghosts, just the ghosts of restaurants past.

Sometimes it matters which side of the tracks you're on. Or in this case, which side of the road. I guess the same would be true of any road that cuts through the middle of a small American town: if you own a gas station, you want to be located on the right side as people are leaving; if you own a restaurant, you want to be on the right as they are coming in. Buoy 17 sort of bucks that notion, but, heck, someone has to do it.

So what genre of food do you get at Buoy 17? Seafood, Steaks and Burgers, just like it says on the front of the menu. Now, these sorts of establishments in a small riverside town can be the proverbial dime-a-dozen, so my expectations were not all that high, but it had been a while since I had indulged in the All-American version of fruits de la mer, so I scanned the menu with an open mind.

There are enough items on the menu that listing them here, untested and untried by our group, would be a complete waste of time—I'll leave it to the next reviewer to choose something else from the menu. We chose to order the Crab Dip with fried pita disks and the Fried Calamari with sweet chili lime sauce to start. Both, I must say, were excellent. Easy on the palate and enough to share.

My youngest, below kindergarten age, had the mini-burgers from the kids' menu. She's not very adventurous for someone who loves to cook.

The others of us ordered the Calamari Dinner (see sweet chili lime connection above), Fish and Chips, the Crab Cake Sandwich meal (the special), the Broiled Haddock Fillet entree, and my husband and I ordered our meal to split between us: one Tossed Garden Salad, the Seafood Platter Dinner, and two orders of the homemade Bread Pudding.

I can tell you that everyone was happy with what they ordered, with the possible exception of the youngest, who these days loves the idea of food more than the reality of it. Whether the seafood was breaded and fried or broiled with butter everyone noted the flavor, freshness, and texture. The cole slaw was flavorful, not overly saucy, and, as my husband put it, complex enough that you felt the person(s) making it actually cared about the food people would be eating. The portions were good, the prices were right, and from the sound of it, they will be adding to the menu as they go along.

If I had to make a suggestion, it would be to increase the number of broiled, light (easy on the butter) seafood plates offered and increase the number of colorful veggie side items as well. But as they've only been open since the Friday before July 4th, they're already doing pretty well, and tweaking the menu over time should be pretty easy.

Everything on the menu seemed to be genuinely homemade—nothing tasted like something I could pull out of the grocer's freezer and toss on a pan for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F. They do all their own hand breading of fresh seafood items, I was told. Mary, our server, was pleasant, helpful, and seemed genuinely happy to be sharing time and space with everyone around her.

We had the opportunity to chat with Melissa Girouard who, along with her husband, Dan, owns Buoy 17. I'm still amazed that with no idea in January that they would become restaurateurs, they purchased the building in March and were ready for business by July 4th weekend. Melissa (I hope she doesn't mind my using her first name) said it's been a great deal of work, but with her family stepping up to the plate to help, it's all come together.

They do not have a liquor license as yet, but she is hopeful that it will come through any day, and by the look of it, the bar area is a lively sports den waiting to happen. I could see the wide screen TV from where I was sitting in the main dining room, and I could easily imagine hanging out in the bar area once they're up and running.

Melissa says they are planning to institute a kids' night and lunch specials with an eye toward a catering arm down the road.

They're still working on getting the web site up and running, but Mrs. Girouard says that even with no advertising whatsoever their opening day was fantastic. They seemed to get a steady stream of customers coming through the door simply through word of mouth (you can do that in a small town, you know).

www.buoy17.com  will be the web address once the site is up and running. Everything has happened so quickly that not every detail is in place, but as the saying goes, if you wait 'til all the lights are green before you leave the house, you'll never get to the grocery store.

One thing I can give you are the address and telephone number:

Buoy 17
1309 Tappahannock Blvd.
Tappahannock, VA 22560
804-443-8024

The other thing I can give is a recommendation that if you're passing through town or staying for a visit, you should give Buoy 17 a try. If the food stays true to opening weekend, you'll be glad you did.