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).

Faust vs The Wizard of Oz

One Saturday in early December we were able to go to see Hannah's group at Faust perform some short plays that they had made-up themselves.

It was called Ice Mouth Dragon vs Fire Mouth Dragon.  Hannah was a cheerful mouse who protected the Ice Mouth Dragon with her magic diamond.

Video:  edited highlights from Hannah's group

Towards the end of the school-year, Hannah's school put on a production of the Wizard of Oz.   In the weeks before hand Hannah was often singing the songs at home "how do you get to wonderland..." etc.   The production was very well done and we enjoyed it a lot.

Hannah was so well behaved that we had trouble finding her in the chorus!  Thats a sign of the progress she has made this year.

Solar System Model

On Sunday Hannah, Mummy and I made a 'scale model' of the solar system, at a scale of 1-to-6 billion.   We used the instruction from this link.   It was a lot of fun (at least for Dad).

First, we assembled objects to represent the sun and planets at their relative sizes.   A pink football for the Sun, a yellow pingpong ball for Jupiter, small peppercorns for the rocky planets like Earth etc

1. Sun- ball, diameter 8.00 inches
2. Mercury-a pinhead, diameter 0.03 inch
3. Venus-a peppercorn, diameter 0.08 inch
4. Earth-a second peppercorn
5. Mars-a second pinhead
6. Jupiter-a chestnut or a pecan, diameter 0.90 inch
7. Saturn-a hazelnut or an acorn, diameter 0.70 inch
8. Uranus-a peanut or coffeebean, diameter 0.30 inch
9. Neptune-a second peanut or coffeebean
10. Pluto- a third pinhead (or smaller, since Pluto is the smallest planet)

Then we went down to the long main path of Royal Ascot and placed our planets in their relative positions from the Sun:   Mercury 10 meters, Venus 19m, Earth 26m, Mars 40m etc.

Photo below:  The Sun from Earth.  The sun is the peppercorn in the foreground, and the Sun is the ball placed on a traffic cone just behind Rika in the left back-ground.

Bu the time we got to place-down Jupiter at 135m, we could hardly see our Sun in the glare of the real Sun.  Even with Rika sitting next to it ('god like')

Saturn (247m) and Uranus (500m) were placed down in second half of the main path, hidden from our Sun by a walkway,   In the photo below Hannah is standing by Saturn, and Jupiter is out of sight in the far background, 10m beyond the end of the visible part of this path.  

We put Uranus near the end of the path and found we didn't have enough room in Royal Ascot to place Neptune (800m) and Pluto (c. 1,000m).   Wow! the solar system sure is big!  and very, very  empty!

Bridge Project

Hannah is doing an interesting 'unit of enquiry' at school about buildings and structures, and was given a homework task to build a structure.

She started off building a house but I convinced her it would be more fun to let Daddy build a suspension bridge instead.    I can't think of a better way to see tension and compression.

Version 1.  main span 420mm

So we built a bridge using lego, some thread and Plarail tracks. 

  Amazingly it was able to hold a 400g train  despite the towers not being properly anchored to stabilize the lateral forces.

So I got thinking about the limitations of the design and bought some better thread and 'popsicle sticks' at the craft shop downstairs, and we built a 2nd version on the floor of the lounge,  

Version 2.  main span 840mm, towers 290mm high

This version is cable-stayed design, with strings going through 3 beams each made of 3 popsicle sticks glued together, and anchored to the floor with Sellotape.   The 4 tracks were stuck to the beams and towers  using blu-tack which made it less fragile.

This design has 2 cables per side no trouble bridging 800m, which made me curious how long we could make it.  So I cut some longer strings and next weekend we made another.

Version 3:  main span 1,266mm, 2,100mm

This time I anchored the strings to the floor using popsicle stick beams spaced apart in a classic cable-stayed pattern.  This made it easier to adjust the tension.

Hannah suggested joining the cables together with Sellotape in the middle to stop the track dipping when the train passes across.

The bridge easily bridged the 1,200mm river and Daddy regretted not cutting strings long enough to try a 8 track (1,700mm) version.   But by this point Hannah had long since lost interest.

Video :  Bridge Project

I had to nag Hannah to do the narration for this video to take to school.   The idea was to film shots of Hannah demonstrating the construction in reverse order and we edited them together 'backwards'.

Tooth Fairy

Hannah's remaining front tooth has been threatening to come out for over a week.  It was protruding at an odd angle and Hannah has enjoyed playing with it.

It finally came out on Wednesday when she was chewing a sweet.

Hap Mun Beach

Although it is almost October the weather is still very warm, and very pleasant as the humidity has dropped off.

On Saturday Hannah wanted to go to the beach.  So we took a taxi round to Sai Kung….

and then a kaido across Port Shelter to Sharp Island and Hap Mun (Half-moon Bay) beach.

This is Sai Kung town from the Kaido.  In the background is Ma On Shan and to the left the ridge that Daddy hiked along last month.

Hap Mun is an small attractive beach in a nice cove.

Once again we thanked our good-fortune for being able to live in Hong Kong.

The beach was ripe for improving and H went to work rearranging the sand with gusto.   And the water was very pleasant for swimming. 

Hannah and I swam out to the platform together.  Unfortunately H got a small cut on her foot, but the lifeguards were charming and efficient in patching her up.   

Hannah and Daddy on the raft.

We caught the last Kaido home at 6pm and had dinner in Sai Kung Town.   Daddy chose 'A######'s Ranch',  encouraged by fond memories of 'Texas', our favorite Tex-Mex-Jap steak-house at Opera City in Tokyo.  

AR is "dedicated to delivering top quality real Texan smoke-house foods" and "serves arguably the best American grub this side of the USA".    I'm sure it is a fine example of its type, and the staff were lovely, but it just showed us how Asian our tastes have become. 

The ambience was authentically US right down to the high proportion of super-sized  customers.  The next table had a group of 6 ladies who clearly didn't get to Hong Kong in economy-class seats.  I don't just mean very overweight, but rather morbidly obese to the degree that you rarely see in Asia, and which my med school friends referred to as 'land whales'.    Frankly, I was surprised not to see plankton on the menu.  

And from the menu it was easy to how they had ended-up that way.  With the exception of boiled broccoli (super sized!) everything on the menu was deep-fried, smothered in cheese, and/or dripping in fat.   Even the salads were high-calorie with the lettuce merely a delivery-platform for lashings of cheese and rich dressing.    

We tried the mixed starters - onion rings, deep-fried wings and cheese 'poppers', fried potato with cheese, ribs and nacho chips - but could barely eat a quarter.   Even Hannah found it too 'junky'.   Rika's steak was very good but it knocked her out for the rest of the meal.  I went for the light option of chicken fajitas which I liked but couldn't finish.   Nostalgia then drove me to ignore the clogging feeling in my arteries and order apple-pie with ice-cream .   The pie was nice but remained unfinished, as did Hannah's sundae, when we waddled-out with our bowels wondering quite what had hit them.   We all slept-in on Sunday and I had to fast for the day to recover.