Beast featured in ELLE

When you’re living abroad you tend to miss the strangest things from your home country. The things I crave most (aside from people and places) are the things I rarely gave notice to before moving to Tokyo. Things like boxed macaroni & cheese, television, Nestle Toll House chocolate chips, grass to sunbathe on, sliced turkey or whole wheat bread. The other night I surprised some fellow American friends with homemade cookie dough. I had to ride my bike to two different grocery stores to find all the ingredients, but it was worth it. We practically finished off the dough before it made its way to their microwave oven. You get the idea. I also really miss magazines. For me, these days any English language magazine, no matter the subject, is a slowly savored treat. They’re just so expensive here that I never bother buying them. I’m talking $10.00 - $25.00 for magazines ordinarily costing around $4.00 in The States. But with Driscoll off to LA for work, I decided to go ahead and splurge on some mags for entertainment purposes. One of the magazines I bought was ELLE. Somewhere between catching up on clothing designers pushing for sustainability in fashion and Madonna’s latest whatever, I saw a full-fledged article on Portland’s Naomi Pomeroy and her restaurant, Beast! I couldn’t believe it. I asked myself, “Is this the same Beast I get those emails from?” I was heading over to have dinner with some friends, so I brought the mag with me and upon entering their apartment, promptly shoved the article in their faces (so much pride), “Look!”
“Oh that’s great, Bonnie,” they said. Right then I realized that being from NYC, they must see their local restaurants featured in magazines all the time. Still, it’s fun to see Portland making its way to the notable map. It may not be the biggest city (most people here seem to think it’s all Nike and countryside) but it sure has a lot going for it including–speaking of things I crave–all those fantastic restaurants! Don’t get me wrong, the food here is amazing, but all those Portland restaurants are such a piece of home.

May Day

Oh this old blog. It’s been hard to keep up with lately. Aside from being a little distracted, as soon as I decide what to write about, we do or find something new and then whatever I was going to write about seems like old news. I’ll try and recap a few things here…

Just after our return to Japan (from The States) our friend Allison showed up, which was great fun. We had just bought bikes. I can’t believe we waited so long to buy them. Bikes are actually a pretty fun and easy way to get around town. Allison borrowed D’s bike and together we rode all over–up to Shinjuku’s New York Bar, through Yoyogi Park, around Harajuku, Aoyama and Shibuya all in one day/night.

Then, last weekend Driscoll and I went up to Okutama. Driscoll left a day before I did to do a solo hiking expedition climbing Mt. Kumotoriyama, covering 20 miles in 2 days! He must be nuts, but he had a great time. Within the first half hour of his hike he saw a giant snake followed by multiple bear warning signs and finally a woman walking down the trail. She crossed her fingers at him (this is sort of like a NO symbol here) and exclaimed, “Abunai!!” over and over again. Abunai means LOOK OUT, DANGER! He was a little freaked but kept on. We met up the next day and stayed at a ryokan (a Japanese style hotel with a hotspring). In the morning, after our breakfast of fish, rice, raw egg and green tea (ah, just what we westerners crave before 9:00 am), we followed the Tama River for a long hike up to Okutama Lake. The area seemed to be the greenest of the places we’ve been in Japan. The scenery was quite stunning with rolling tree-covered hills reminding us of Oregon and Vermont.

Aside from that, we’ve mainly been working, hanging with friends and continuing to get more and more acquainted with Tokyo. The city’s offerings seem endless. We’re just scratching the surface of the 160,000 restaurants (compare that to NYC’s 40,000). I got that stat from D so don’t hold me to it. We’ve also been contemplating our next move. And despite the New York Times’ best efforts to scare us away from The States, we’re hoping to make it back to our home and dear friends in Portland, Oregon at the end of the year. Perhaps we should wait for the outcome of this year’s election to make our final decision…

Made it to Hakone

A couple weeks ago, Driscoll and I took a long weekend and went to Hakone. Hakone is just east of Tokyo near Mt. Fuji. Thanks to a much-appreciated mistake by the Prince Hotel, we ended up with a mountain-view room facing Lake Ashi. It was pretty exciting being so close to Mt. Fuji. On rare visits to the Park Hyatt in Tokyo, we strain our eyes to see Mt Fuji through the hazy horizon. The view always leaves something to be desired, that something being the mountain. But from Hakone, Mt. Fuji is crystal clear. When we first arrived, we sat in our room staring at it for a couple hours. We must have taken a million photos. After that we went for a long hike. It felt really nice being in the fresh air again, surrounded by so many trees. Hakone is famous for all of the quirky, touristy modes of transportation. We decided to board the pirate ship and cruise around Lake Ashi. Later we took the gondola above all the volcanic steam rising out from cracks in the ground. The following day, freezing our tails off, we ducked into a little café for hot ramen and oyako donburi. There’s something very soothing about hot Japanese food on a freezing cold day. We also went to the Picasso museum and an open-air sculpture museum, which we enjoyed quite a bit. The onsen at the Prince Hotel was lovely, but they don’t do private reservations, so I doubt we’ll stay there again. It’s so much more fun to skinny-dip in hot spring water with your partner or friends than alone with strangers. Maybe that’s just the American in me talking.

Yeehee D-san turns 32

You know you’re getting old when the two of you would rather go to dinner than spend a night out on the town with a bunch of people. I made a reservation at Il Buttero in Hiroo for Driscoll’s birthday. It’s a Florentine restaurant, which we’d been meaning to check out for a while. The number of super authentic and delicious French and Italian restaurants in Tokyo continuously blows me away. They are a real lifesaver when you’re craving something western. Il Buttero was fantastic. Probably the best (but most expensive) Italian restaurant we’ve been to here. It was the traditional appetizer, pasta, entrée, vegetable and finally dessert course set. So by the end we were so stuffed they practically had to roll us out of the restaurant. Good thing we took the long walk home. That’s one nice thing about dining out in Tokyo. As full as you get, you can usually walk it off by the time you’ve made your way home. Here, the waiters sing Driscoll an Italian birthday song.

Hokkaido Trip

One of our goals this year is to try and do as much Japan travel as we can. We decided to visit Hokkaido first. Next on the agenda are Hakone, Okinawa, Niigata, Nagano, Kyoto (again) and Hiroshima. Of course the whole work thing as well as visits to The States get in the way; we can still dream. What is it about living abroad that makes us want to travel, travel, travel? It’s like we’ve opened a box of cookies and one or two cookies just isn’t doing it. We want to eat the whole freaking box.

Hokkaido is the largest of Japan’s most northern islands. In addition to being known for its produce, dairy farms and Sapporo beer, the island is famous for incredible skiing and snowboarding. It’s become an international destination for winter sport, with loads of Australians buying real estate and taking 12-hour (or longer) flights to spend their holidays skiing at Hokkaido resorts. Siberian storms blow over Hokkaido’s mountains coating them with fresh powder snow all winter long. And while there are tons of places to ski in Japan, we kept hearing that Niseko in Hokkaido was ranked #1. We couldn’t wait to check it out. We decided to go during February so that we could simultaneously see Sapporo’s annual snow and ice sculpture festival. One of the days/nights we stayed at an onsen. We also took a day trip to the small town of Otaru, walked along its famous canal, made a pit stop at the Otaru brewery, and tried Hokkaido’s famous butter corn ramen. This trip was really special. Definitely one of our favorites. We’re hoping to fly to Hokkaido again this summer. I’ve heard that the summer months stay nice, sunny and cool, while Tokyo turns into a muggy hot-hole.

Sukiyaki

Our friends, Shig and Shurei had us over on Sunday night to check out their new apartment near Shinjuku. They surprised us with a home cooked sukiyaki dinner. Sukiyaki is a Japanese meal using an oversized pot to cook thinly sliced steak, veggies and tofu in a savory broth. You cook the food bit by bit as you eat it. With your chopsticks, you take your piece of meat or vegetable, dip it in your very own bowl of raw egg, and then stick it in your mouth. This was our first sukiyaki experience. The raw egg step was a little funny at first, but the food tasted great.

Wedding Book

Driscoll made this great wedding book for me as a Christmas gift. I love the full bleeds and that it's an actual book rather than a photo album. Such a cool idea.