New Year with Baba

We had new years at Babas with the whole family.  Hannah enjoyed all the attention.  

We all gave Baba an IPad.  This is Ma-chan showing her how to use it.

As always,  we ate really well.  The tradition at New Year is to prepare food in advance so the ladies can relax and don't have to cook so much.

The bentos are mainly boiled vegetables and mushrooms, fishcakes, and pickles.  Very nice and healthy.

 Makoji-chan made charcoal-grilled rice-cakes on the hibachi.

As well as catching-up on family gossip, it was a great chance to relax

The kids played games on the Wii.

I went for several runs up and down the valley and enjoyed the fresh winter air.  This is one of the temples near Ikadaba.

Tokyo

After the Onsen we went back to Tokyo and stayed 2 nights before going on to Ikadaba.

In Tokyo we did some shopping...

Had a really good Italian meal in a posh restaurant at the Kieo Plaza hotel that I had wanted to go back to...
  

Hannah had spaghetti with cheese sauce made in a huge parmesan cheese.   

We went out for Dinner with Kyo-chan to our favorite local Chinese restaurant in Sangubashi

And to Fumi's Grill in Ebisu, which we used to go to many, many years ago, not long after it first opened.

For christmas Kyo-chan gave me a cool tea-maker so I can make green tea at work.  Here it is in operation.

Thanks Kyo-chan!

Shichigosan

For our day in Tokyo we spent an afternoon at Studio-Alice having a photo-shoot for Hannah's Shichigosan (7-5-3).

Shichiogsan is a tradition of celebrating and taking photos of children when they reach the milestones of 3, 5 and 7 years old.  Rika tells me this dates back to times of high  infant mortality.  Wikilink (here).

Hannah absolutely loved dressing-up with her choice of kimono and dresses, being made-up, and having pictures taken.

Of course Hannah chose the big pink princess dress.

Studio Alice has an interesting approach.  The photographers spend plenty of time and take lots of great photos with different costumes and props.  You are not allowed to take your own photos during the shoot although video is OK  (the images here are all stills from my I-phone video).

At the end you can choose the best couple of dozen photos and buy a disk of the files.  But the catch is that you have to wait a year for the disk.  In the meantime they will sell you prints, memorial books, key-rings etc.  at eye-watering prices.  We bought the disk and a dozen prints including a set for Granny and Grandad, for about JPY 50k in total.

Video:  Shichigosan photo-shoot

Snow Monkeys

We visited Korakukan onsen because it is is located inside the Jiokokudani nature reserve, which is populated by a large troop of wild Japanese macaque monkeys or 'snow monkeys'.

Video:  monkeys in the snow

Jiokokudani is famous as the only place in the world where monkeys get into the hot-springs to warm-up (as you can read at the official website).  It is very popular with american tourists.   All day long a steady stream tramp along the forest path,  many with shell-shocked "this is much further / colder than I expected" expressions.

This is the monkey's hot-spring bath, surrounded by tourists.

Video:  Snow monkeys in the hot-spring bath.   Notice the pairs of monkeys grooming each other.

They say that if you carefully observe their behavior for long enough, you will have a profound sense of how little difference there is between you and the monkeys.  

Watching this monkey scratch his bum, Daddy had to agree.

While we were taking photos of the hot-spring, the monkeys suddenly got-out and raced to pick-up food that was being scattered in the snow by the staff of the nature reserve.   So I realized that the monkeys are not exactly 'wild' but rather 'salaried' or perhaps 'tenured'.

Thinking about it further,  I suspect the reason this is the only place in the world where monkeys get into the hot-spring is because the monkeys pee and poop in the water.  The hot-spring would soon become a health-hazard unless it was regularly cleaned out - probably by the same staff who distribute the food.

So perhaps Jiokokudani is a beautiful example of natural symbiosis:  tourists visit because the monkeys sit in the hot-spring.  The monkeys can sit in the hot-spring because it is cleaned by the nature-reserve staff.  And the nature-reserve staff clean the bath because the tourists visit.

Lookalike (10)

The Snow Monkeys and Hannah's family must surely be related...

Snow Monkeys                       

Hannah's Family

Jigokokudani Onsen

On Christmas day we flew to Japan for our year-end holiday.

Hannah had been so inspired by 'Frozen' that she asked to have a winter holiday in the snow and the chance to make a snowman.   So after an overnight stop in Tokyo we took the shinkansen to Nagano and then a bus to Jiokokudani Onsen on the way to the Shigakogen ski area.

The onsen is in a nature reserve 2km from the road along a forest path.

It was snowy and so cold that Hannah couldn't even sing "Let it Go".

Korakukan onsen at Jiokokudani (hell's gully).   It is a rustic 'minshuku' next to a hot-spring with friendly staff.    Rika and I stayed there 16 years ago (!) when we were first dating.

This time we booked for 2 nights and got a very comfortable room with a nice view up the valley.

Another view of the onsen the 2nd day.

The buildings had a good covering of snow and an impressive collection of icicles, one more than 2m long!    We thawed-out with a good soak in a private family bath before dinner. 

As is usual for Japanese onsens hotels, the evening meal was a feast, with fish, mountain vegetables, wild boar stew.  And plenty of hot sake.

At breakfast the next morning, we could see monkeys just out the window from our table.

On the second night Rika, Hannah and I went out to the rotenburo (outside bath) around 9pm to find it occupied by monkeys.    It was bitterly cold and snowing steadily.

So we slipped in and sat next to them for 40 min.  I counted 14 monkeys in the bath, mainly pairs of mothers and children.  The larger monkeys seemed to be sitting outside on the warm rocks huddled together in groups.   The closest were about 1.2m from us, and every so often a baby would swim toward Hannah and then swim back to its mum.  

Normally monkeys get threatened and upset if you stare at at them too directly.  But the bath was dark and lit by a single light from the hotel.   Since we were strongly back-lit, we could observe the moneys without them being able to see more than our silhouettes.   It was all very peaceful and relaxing except for one moment when a big male walked around the bath,  and the others started chattering excitedly among themselves - perhaps saying things like 'shall we eat the humans?'.   That was unnerving and we got-out shortly afterwards.

The monkeys were still in the bath when I visited at 6:30 am the next morning. 

Video: monkeys in the rotenburo (outside bath) in the morning.

Rotenburo with monkeys in the morning.  We had been sitting in the right foreground part of the bath.  

This monkey had been huddled on rocks warmed by the hot-spring.  He hissed at me after I took his photo, because Id looked into his eyes (a threatening act in monkey-society).

You can see how dirty it gets after just one night of monkeys pooping.   The hotel manager said he had do a lot of work to clean the outside baths every morning.

The weather cleared on the 2nd and 3rd day.  Hannah was able to build her snowman on our way back to the bus-stop.

On the bus back to Nagano we had a beautiful view of the Japan Alps.

Festive Season

The festive season arrived at the end of November with new decorations at Elephants Mall at ICC.

This years theme was railways, sponsored perhaps by Hornby.   The centerpiece was a large model winter village with a  train-set.  The christmas tree also had larger trains circling it at 3 levels.

Hannah looking at one of the smaller model villages in a different part of the mall.

My company put on a Christmas 'Happy Holidays' party for the children of staff.   The highlight for Hannah was to visit my office and meet my colleagues .   She came away determined to join the company when she grows up.    

The party was very well done by the parents' network.  There were clowns....

and face-painting....

... and of course 'Father Holidays'.   Clever Hannah said she had been an exceptionally proactive and high-performing little girl this year,  and asked Santa for call options on the Swiss franc.

Seriously though, the next week Hannah's school asked the students to write a letter to Santa asking for what they most wanted.

This was Hannah's letter:

"Dear Santa,
My name is Hannah.  Please may I have fun for Christmas because almost every day my friends say unkind words to me.  When I go away from my friend and go to another friend I say 'Hello can I play with you?'  my friend says 'No'.  So please can I have fun?  What does ?? like?
Love Hannah"

At the bottom she pasted a picture of 3 girls laughing together.

This letter made everyone feel very sad for Hannah.  I think she wrote it at a low point and she generally she seems to be making friends well.   I was also encouraged that Hannah already understands that friend and fun are more important than toys or other possessions (even call options on the Swiss franc).